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Updated Monday, February 18, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Deborah Kuo, CNA

Genghis Khan back in Mongolia with Taiwan’s help

While that dream has yet to be fulfilled, the Rotary Club’s Chan decided to do the next best thing and offer Mongolia a large reproduction based on the original. Chan’s husband and fellow Rotary Club member Wang Chen jung, who owns a building materials company that imports Italian and Spanish mosaic tiles, took the initiative in producing the giant portrait. He first approached National Palace Museum officials for their permission to reproduce the painting, and after long negotiations, the museum finally agreed to offer the Rotary Club a digitized image of the portrait early last year.

A thrilled Wang then ordered expensive 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm crystal mosaic tiles from abroad and recruited mosaic experts from Germany to prepare to travel to Ulan Bator to put together the portrait, which would stand 9 meters tall and 6 meters wide. The tiles were shipped to Ulan Bator in May last year, and the German workers assembled the portrait in September. It will be the centerpiece of an 11 meter by 7 meter monument to Genghis Khan when work is completed.

To many historians and peoples around the world, Genghis Khan is viewed as a destructive warlord capable of breathtaking cruelty, but Batchimeg said the man revered by Mongolians was responsible for many positive developments.

Genghis Khan’s mounted Mongol army consolidated the Silk Road, laying a solid foundation for trade, cultural and religious exchanges between East and West, and he also laid down laws that were similar to Mongolia’s existing constitution, Batchimeg said.

Diplomacy was developed in the Mongolian empire, where foreign envoys were respected and well-treated, while “golden plates” — similar to today’s passports — were used to facilitate diplomatic exchanges among nations, Batchimeg noted. And now Mongolians will be brought closer to their founding father through a project made possible with the assistance of Batchimeg’s Taipei Office, the Ulan Bator mayor, an ad hoc committee organized by the Mongolian Civil Aeronautic Administration and officials from the Genghis Khan International Airport, Chan said.

Chan said she and her husband as well as other Rotary Club memberswill travel to Ulan Bator in April to witness the inauguration of the Genghis Khan monument.

The two have also decided to visit rural areas of Mongolia later this year to inspect water-supply systems and help with the construction of deep-water wells around the drought-stricken country.

Batchimeg, who took graduate-level courses at Taipei’s National Chengchi University in 1997-1999, is a graduate of Beijing Language and Culture University.

One of the key figures in arranging the establishment of Taiwan and Mongolia representative offices in each other’s country, Batchimeg said she is glad that a result of increased bilateral ties Taiwanese friends no longer ask her questions like “Did you ride a horse to work in Mongolia?”

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	A huge portrait of Genghis Khan, composed of more than 430,000 crystal mosaic tiles, is being constructed at Ulan Bator’s international airport. The work will soon be inaugurated, thanks to the help of several Rotary Club members from Taipei. (CNA) Enlarge Photo


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