T-land Wrestling

So, on May Day, a popular Russian holiday, we heard from friends that there was a big Khuresh (T wrestling) festival down at the stadium. We decided to go check it out.

It turned out to be a pretty big day out! I had been to a minor tournament before, but not one of the big ones so this was a whole new experience. It was a lovely day, though - perfect for being outside.

The day kicked off with a series of dances and performances, the first of which represented T-land's history. Above you can see the dancers representing the Mongols, as they lead their attack on T-land (represented by the white "yurts"). They were followed by the Chinese and Russians, in what had to have been fraught with political symbolism which we were fortunate to not really understand.

Anyway, the T people "won" in the end, and then all danced around what was basically a Maypole. Here's the concluding ceremony as everyone celebrates that T-land retained its culture:

This guy for some reason was chosen as the representative of the T people's resilient victory, coming in on a cart beating a giant drum. All of the announcing was in T and thus we understood little, so I'm admittedly piecing together the story as best I could, but I think we got the gist of it.

Then a proud moment - an acquaintance of ours and good friend of our coworkers', M, was chosen to hoist the T flag. He's a champion wrestler and in fact was participating in the day's main event.

Khuresh is really an interesting sport. Half Western-style wrestling, half sumo, it's about getting your opponent to lose his balance and fall. The ceremony begins with a brief dance, called the Dance of the Eagle, where the wrestler waves his arms high and circles. He will generally then slap his thighs, front and back, and get into position for the match.

The success or failure seems to come down to the hold that each wrestler takes, so it can be quite a cagy affair at first, with lots of circling and slapping the other man's arm down, etc.

Eventually, in most matches, some sort of hold is formed (the only exception being a successful trip, which is rare). If one wrestler has the advantage, he will use his leverage to try to throw his opponent. If they're evenly gripped, it can last a while as both struggle to gain an advantage.

Eventually, one of them gets into a superior position, either by strength or balance, and then tries to throw the other. Whoever touches the ground first with anything other than his foot is out. If both of them fall together, and it isn't clear who touched first, the crowd will shout "Deng!" (meaning "tie") and a draw is declared. Then they start again from the beginning.

Below I managed to get a shot of a throw in progress - you can see that the wrestler nearest to us is going to lose in about half a second, though you might have to click to make it bigger to see it.

Here's a video of a brief match - sometimes they can go on for 5 or 10 minutes, sometimes they're over just this quick:

It was rather a warm day, and the boys got a bit cranky (after all, they didn't seem that interested in the wrestling so it was just a day where they had to sit on some bleachers in the sun all day). Fortunately, Matthew slept a little in the afternoon.

The tournament was a knockout style with 64 entrants, much like the American March Madness college basketball tournament. Whoever won, advanced, and whoever lost was out. Our friend M made it to the final, meaning he won 5 straight matches, but he lost the last one.

Between each round, to give the wrestlers a chance to recover, there were performances of songs and dances. This is a dance which somehow mocked the wrestlers, I think, because it involved some of the same moves, but exaggerated, and the T spectators found it hilarious.

So that was that. I thought I'd put a few pictures up of the boys just for the grandparents, so the rest of you can feel free to go. These are from the continuation of Matthew's birthday celebration. We took the boys to the pay-per-play playground in town, and I think they really enjoyed it.



It's kind of a similar place to a McDonald's Playplace, though a bit bigger and with a little trampoline. Unfortunately, it's way too expensive for us to do regularly ($8 per kid for a half hour!), but it was fun as a special treat to let them play for a half hour on it.

Steven looks longingly at the arcade games, most of which I'm sure he couldn't figure out how to play even if we did let him!

So, that's about it. Thanks for stopping by - if you're wondering what you can keep in mind for us this week, it's remodel week! We've been wanting to take out the wall between our kitchen and living room (so we can have more company over) for a while, so we're finally doing it. Or will be, whenever the contractors actually come.

We had an agreement with one to do it, but then he called and said he couldn't come, and then the next day he wanted more money than he had originally agreed on. Now we're on to contractor #2, which seemed more promising at first but they couldn't come today because the truck that's going to haul away the debris is in the shop. Hopefully next week?

We'll be sure to put up some pictures of the work whenever it's all done. Have a good week!