Genghis and the airport

While most of the world is looking with a slight bewilderment at the images and other display of Chinggis Khaan during the recent celebrations it is somehow the airport that still can bring people from miles and miles away to emotional outbursts, as in The Guardian:

"Sombre news from Ulan Bator. In honour of Mongolia's 800th anniversary, its airport has been renamed after Genghis Khan. This reflects the newly assertive stature of the former communist state. ...

[Genghis] is credited with a belief in meritocracy, decimalisation, female emancipation, freedom of religion and flat taxes (after a fashion). He also specialised in mass slaughter, razing cities to the ground (saving only the engineers and artists), and pouring molten silver into the ears of insurgent leaders or, if they preferred, suffocating them under his table while he ate dinner. Neoconservatives still often declare themselves 'well to the right' of him.

How all this will play with tourists landing at Ulan Bator airport is not clear. Genghis Khan told his generals to treat foreign foes by 'robbing them of their wealth, bathing their loved ones in tears,"

Apperently, while here it seems an innocent rename to a local hero, for some the link between the brutal Genghis Khan and an airport seems to be a hounting one.


---
technorati: mongolia