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Mushrooms, in Mongolian Markets and in the Mind
Written by Tirthankar Mukherjee
Thursday, November 22, 2007.
A SPECIAL charm of life in Ulaanbaatar during the warmer months this year was an open-air market near the railway station. This did not sell as many things that I would have liked, but most, if not all, of the vegetables on sale were claimed to have been grown in Mongolia, mainly in Selenge aimag. We often will our judgments in such things to go the way that satisfies us, but the potatoes, the onions, the tomatoes, the small cauliflowers and broccolis – these did seem to taste somewhat different and better than those imported from China, where chemicals rule the farms.
This market also sold berries of quite a few varieties. These were much
in demand. It is hard work to pluck them so maybe the relatively high
prices were justified. This did not stop ordinary people from buying
them. That was not the case with the fresh mushrooms on sale. Since I
bought them by the bagful, it took me time to pick and choose, so I
could watch and exchange thoughts with other buyers, and I had the
impression that they were all somewhat more urbanized and cosmopolitan
than the average Mongolian.
It is true that mushrooms are not a part of the common fare in a
Mongolian home and there does not seem to be a single traditional
Mongolian dish where mushrooms are the sole or main ingredient. There
is the steppe white mushroom soup but this is most likely so called as
some small bits and pieces of mushroom are the only things to be found
there apart from the meat.
I have seen lots of mushrooms in the wild in my walks in the
mountainous regions of Mongolia but maybe these are the inedible
varieties. I am told there are less than 10 types of mushrooms found in
the country, mostly in the Khangai and Khentii mountain areas. Whatever
is sold or eaten is freshly harvested; there is as yet no commercial
growing, nor any facilities to dry them and sell them throughout the
year. Maybe both could be tried, as the stocks in the Korean and
Chinese food shops indicate a healthy demand.
Confirmation that mushrooms do not play any role in Mongolian life
comes also from the answers to questions I asked a number of people. No
one could think of any folk tale where mushrooms play a role, any
painting of mushrooms in the wild, or any idiom or proverb or common
saying where mushrooms are used. The only one I heard was about the
proliferation of numbers of anything being likened to “mushrooms after
the rain”.
Popular in the kitchen or not, Mongolia has issued more than 30 stamps
on the mushrooms in the country over the years. A group of them is
shown here.
What about any possible links between ancient shamanism and magic
mushrooms, or shrooms as they are now called in cult circles? These
hallucinogens have been credited with much to do with early religions
and mystical experiences, so it is credible that they contributed to
shamanic practices too. Many people, including academic researchers and
not just those seeking transcendent experiences, think that prehistoric
cultures used magic mushrooms, that the true origins of religion lay in
an early mushroom cult, that the magical Soma drink cited again and
again in the Rig Veda was actually made from mushrooms, that the
mystical raptures reported at the ancient Greek celebrations at Eleusis
were mushroom orgies, and so on.
Terence Kemp McKenna, whom Wikipedia calls “a writer, philosopher, and
ethnobotanist”, believed that these fungi once acted as the “portal to
a shamanic realm”.
Speculators on evolution have said that when our hominid ancestors left
the African forests for the plains, they ate psilocybe mushrooms
growing in cattle dung. This sharpened their visual acuity and
conferred an evolutionary advantage.
These mushrooms worked as aphrodisiacs and improved their reproductive
success. This is all theorizing but much of it would apply to
proto-human movement/migration across the Siberian region, so there
indeed might have been some link between the development of shamanism
in the area and such mushrooms that must have been plentiful where
they lived and went.
I must make clear, however, that there is not a single unimpeachable
piece of evidence in any form of any role that a magic mushroom might
have played in history. There is no archaeological record, nor any
unequivocal written support to believe whether the ancients worshiped
“the holy spores of God”. We really do not know, one way or the other,
and there it rests.
To return to tangibles, this year I found that mushroom prices were
higher here than they were two years ago. I am told this is not just a
part of the general price rise. Even if the Mongolian does not eat it
as food, the steppe white mushroom is widely used in
traditional/Tibetan medicine here, to treat a wide range of conditions
ranging from fever to gynecological problems. Supply has not kept pace
with demand and so prices have gone up, according to some, three times
in the last five years.
Did we have more mushroom on sale in Ulaanbaatar this year? Worldwide
reports say mushroom hunters have never had it so good. Picking edible,
fleshy fungi may now be carried out over an extended period of time,
thanks to the much whipped weather monster — climate change. A study
reported recently in the journal, Science, describes how a team of
ecologists in the UK have found that many fungal species now fruit
twice a year, a response to climate change not yet seen in other
organisms.
Interestingly, the data the scientists used for the research came from
the lead author’s father — Edward Gange. Though not a scientist, Gange
senior has meticulously kept nearly 52,000 individual fungal fruiting
records, collected from 1,400 locations in southern England over 55
years. Of these, the researchers chose 315 species, each of which had
been recorded for over 20 years. Many of these fungi are edible, some
decorative and some poisonous as well.
According to the researchers, the increase in overall fruiting period
is dramatic. While the average fruiting period was 33.2 days (plus or
minus 1.6 days) in the 1950s, it has more than doubled to 74.8 days
(plus or minus 7.6 days) in the current decade. Similarly, for the
species that fruit early, the first fruiting date was on an average
advanced by nearly nine days per decade, whereas for those which fruit
later the fruiting date was delayed by about an average of eight days
per decade.
The detailed analysis by the scientists has shown that the changes in
fungal fruiting have coincided with changes in the British weather,
particularly since 1975. They found that over the past 56 years, August
temperatures have increased, as has October rainfall. The increase in
late summer temperatures and autumnal rains has caused early season
species to fruit earlier and late season species to continue to fruit
even later. I fear no such data are kept in Mongolia so we cannot say
for sure that we shall have more mushrooms in the coming years, unless
some enterprising entrepreneur enters the field.
City Weather
Ulaanbaatar-24°C
For the Record
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the continuing upward trend of raw materials prices on the world market, the substantial reserves of natural resources in Mongolia, and the favorable legal environment for investors have greatly contributed to the rapid development materialized in the mining sector, in recent years.
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Front page 
A SPECIAL charm of life in Ulaanbaatar during the warmer months this year was an open-air market near the railway station. This did not sell as many things that I would have liked, but most, if not all, of the vegetables on sale were claimed to have been grown in Mongolia, mainly in Selenge aimag. We often will our judgments in such things to go the way that satisfies us, but the potatoes, the onions, the tomatoes, the small cauliflowers and broccolis – these did seem to taste somewhat different and better than those imported from China, where chemicals rule the farms.
-24°C 
