Cable Freedom Is a Click Away

Evan Sung for The New York Times

Danielle Bilton, the writer's wife, using a wireless mouse called the Loop to operate the couple's television set.
Welcome to our living room. Take a seat, make yourself comfortable. Would you like to watch a movie, or the new “Family Guy” episode?

Oh, that, over there. You want to know why there’s a pile of gadgets and wires on the floor? My wife and I usually don’t talk about that clutter. We actually refer to it as the Gadget Graveyard. Mostly, we pretend it doesn’t even exist. But since you asked, I’ll explain.

This digital necropolis isn’t your typical sanctuary for retired devices. Instead, here you’ll find technologies that tried to provide the best viewing experience and program options with a television, but ultimately fell short. Everything is relatively new, and comparatively unusable — to me at least.

Among this pile you can find my old remote controls and wires from my cable box. Then there’s the dreaded Apple TV, now a $250 paperweight. There’s also the $80 Roku box, a device that allows you to stream video from Netflix, Amazon.com and other sites directly to your television. But wait, there’s more! A Vudu player, a Slingbox and a handful of other single-serving contraptions.

Those devices are all behind me now. I disconnected everything, threw it to the side and canceled the cable months ago. Instead, now I have a Mac Mini, wireless mouse and a Microsoft Xbox hooked up to my television.

This quest for cable freedom has been a couple of years in the works. Before I called the cable company to bid my farewell I imagined that I would need a vast array of devices to fill the entertainment void: a device for games, something for television shows, a contraption for streaming movies through Netflix and, finally, something to control all of the above. But it turns out a computer can do all those tasks with some software upgrades and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I have to be honest, this isn’t as easy as just plugging a computer into a monitor, sitting back and watching a movie. There’s definitely a slight learning curve. One difficult part of this equation was getting used to the wireless mouse. We use a mouse called the Loop, made by Hillcrest Labs, that costs $99. The Loop looks more like a chocolate-frosted doughnut with buttons than something that navigates a television set. To navigate the screen you hold it out and wave your hand from side to side as if you are conducting an orchestra.

As for the computer, you don’t specifically need a Mac Mini. This set up can work with most inexpensive PCs; just make sure the video card can handle the streaming video requirements. Our refurbished Mac Mini cost $380 online.

Although the initial investment was costly, totaling $550, it took only a few months to recoup the money. Back in the olden days of cable we were forced to shell out a relatively standard $140 a month, for television service alone. This cost gave us access to a digital video recorder and hundreds of unwatched TV channels.

Contrast this with today, where our only expense is $9 a month to stream Netflix videos from the Web and the $30 a month that we always spent on an Internet connection. O.K., maybe that’s not completely accurate. When the wireless keyboard died a few weeks ago I was forced to spend another $4 for two new AA batteries. We’ve not yet recovered from that financial loss.

We still come home from work and watch any number of shows, just like the people who continue to pay for cable. We just do it a little differently, starting the computer and then using services like Hulu, Boxee, iTunes and Joost. Another interesting twist to this experience is that we’re no longer limited to consuming traditional programming. With these applications we can spend an entire evening flicking through videos from YouTube, CollegeHumor or Web-only programs.

Here are a few of the applications on our home setup:

Boxee is probably the most clicked icon on our television. You can download this free open-source application from Boxee.tv. It’s important to note that it’s still in test phase and a little rough around the pixels, but over all it allows you to access almost any type of video content online. You can easily stream CNN, Current TV, PBS and more. Most important for us, Boxee easily allows access to the Netflix streaming service, which offers up thousands of movies and television shows (just not always the most popular options).

Next there is Hulu Desktop, the joint venture among Fox, NBC, ABC and many other mainstream programming outlets. This service allows you to watch more than 1,700 television shows, including traditional favorites like “30 Rock,” “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Office.” Hulu’s downloadable desktop application, as opposed to hulu.com, works extremely well with large screens. Apple’s iTunes application replicates all the features of Apple TV, allowing you to buy or rent movies and listen to your music collection.

Be warned though that iTunes can get expensive. If you watch premium-cable television shows, you can pay more than $40 for the season of a single show. But even that is less than one month of cable. Since there are so many other entertainment options online, we just skip “Dexter” and “Weeds.” Trust me, there is a lot of great free or ad-supported content out there.

Finally there’s Joost.com. Although it’s not a downloadable application and only accessible through a Web browser, Joost offers free streaming movies and a strange variety of cartoons.

While Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (starting at $200), is not absolutely necessary for this setup, it delivers an array of lively entertainment options. I can, of course, play video games, but I can also rent movies (through the Xbox marketplace or through Netflix’s online viewing service), and browse Twitter and Facebook, with a new feature that lets you watch a streaming interface of your social networks flow across the screen.

I understand this kind of living room experience isn’t for everyone. It’s a lot less work to just click a button up or down on a standard remote control. And it can be difficult to explain how to use this unfamiliar toolbox of buttons, programs and devices.

Over Thanksgiving a friend graciously house-sat at our apartment. It took my wife more than an hour to write a detailed description explaining how to use our new TV setup. After explaining how to use the mouse and keyboard, we had to describe how to switch among applications. The instructions read:

“If you want to watch “Ugly Betty,” or “Saturday Night Live,” you will need to load up Hulu. If you’d like to watch some of the movies we’ve downloaded, you will have to quit Hulu, open up Boxee and navigate to the movies folder. To use Netflix, you’ll need to switch to the Xbox and. ... ” But after a few hours of randomly clicking into cyberspace, our friend figured it out.

There is one other showstopper. I know the sports and technology enthusiasts don’t often mix, but if you’re one of the few people who live in both of those worlds you might have to look for other options. To watch baseball you can buy a little dongle that plugs into the back of your computer and streams free over-the-air high-definition channels. I bought this for the Yankees games and it worked perfectly. If you’re an ESPN fan you have two options. Stick with cable, or go to a bar to watch the basketball games.

Over all, I couldn’t be happier with our computer television setup. Now, I just have to figure out what gadgets I’m going to buy with the $1,600 a year I no longer send to the cable company.

Hamstrung by Delays, Fitbit Explains and Tries to Deliver

Nicholas Cole was determined to shed a few pounds after the holiday season. So when he heard about a nifty new fitness device called the Fitbit Tracker, a wearable sensor that tracks movement, distance traveled and calories burned, he decided to take the plunge and order one.

That was 13 months ago. Mr. Cole is still waiting for the $99 gadget to arrive, as are legions of other eager customers.

“I haven’t heard anything yet, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to get it in a month or two,” said Mr. Cole, a 20-year-old student living in New Brighton, Pa.

Others, unwilling to wait any longer, have forked over as much as $350 to buy a Fitbit on eBay from other consumers.

That was 13 months ago. Mr. Cole is still waiting for the $99 gadget to arrive, as are legions of other eager customers.

“I haven’t heard anything yet, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to get it in a month or two,” said Mr. Cole, a 20-year-old student living in New Brighton, Pa.

Others, unwilling to wait any longer, have forked over as much as $350 to buy a Fitbit on eBay from other consumers.

Fitbit’s tale of expectation and delay is a classic start-up story: a couple of entrepreneurs with a hot idea generate excitement, then run into a range of real-world problems in actually trying to make their product and get it to customers. With bigger companies like Nike and Philips Electronics making similar fitness devices, Fitbit runs the risk of getting stomped by competitors before it can really get going.

But the company’s unusual frankness about its problems may also help it survive its growing pains.

“They’ve been really open and transparent about where they are in the process, and that’s made it easier to tolerate the wait,” Mr. Cole said.

A prototype of the Fitbit Tracker was introduced in September 2008 by the co-founders, James Park and Eric Friedman, at TechCrunch 50, an annual showcase of innovative products and Web services.

The thumb-size device uses an accelerometer to sense a user’s movement, then translates that into calories burned. In addition, users can wear the device at night to track the quality of their sleep and can manually input their food consumption to get a better grasp of their overall health and well being. A home base station collects information each time the user passes by and uploads it to Fitbit.com.

The concept appealed to fitness enthusiasts, and Fitbit began taking preorders right away, expecting to be able to ship them within a few months.

Instead, the company, which is based in San Francisco, found that it took eight months to refine its prototype into something that was ready to manufacture, Mr. Park said in a recent interview.

Mr. Park and Mr. Friedman are experienced entrepreneurs, having started two previous tech companies together.

But this was their first foray into hardware. The Fitbit has more than 100 electronic components and 22 plastic and metal parts. Its complexity resulted in unexpected problems in making everything work together.

For example, “we would discover the product used more power than we’d originally thought and have to decide if we wanted to include a larger battery,” Mr. Park said, “which meant going back to the drawing board to figure out how that impacted the size and form factor.”

The company also encountered setbacks during the testing phase, including equipment that at one point got stuck in customs in Indonesia.

Even now, once the products arrive in California from the manufacturer in Singapore, Fitbit employees must spend several minutes updating the software on each device before sending it out to fulfill orders.

To assuage the growing restlessness of its customers, Fitbit has been e-mailing them and posting updates on the company blog about the progress of the Fitbit Tracker, including photos and videos showing production and testing of the devices.

“It’s definitely a way to help people stay interested,” Mr. Park said. “Most products on back order are in a black hole of information.”

Some customers who have received their Fitbit, like Andrew Chen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, say it is worth the wait. “I love how simple and convenient it is,” he said. “I just put it on and don’t think about it.”

However, Mr. Chen managed to get his device only after complaining on Twitter about his mounting impatience over his back order. One of the investors in the company then shipped him a unit directly.

Now, Fitbit says it is planning to ship the remainder of its back orders by the end of January, when the stand-alone devices will also be available in retail stores.

Jon Callaghan, founder and managing partner of True Ventures, which led a $2 million round of seed financing to Fitbit, acknowledged that it would have been better not to miss the holiday shopping season.

But it was more important to get the product right. “I would not like a warehouse full of products customers didn’t like,” he said. “That would be disastrous and short-term thinking. We’re going to be around for next Christmas.”

Bernie Tenenbaum, an expert on small businesses who has no connection to Fitbit, said the delay was not likely to do permanent damage to the company’s reputation.

“Yes, they’ve missed some sales and some revenue opportunity” and created some excitement prematurely, “but that’s not fatal” compared to shipping a flawed product, said Mr. Tenenbaum, managing partner of the investment firm China Cat Capital.

Still, Fitbit may have lost valuable momentum, he said. “It’s not as if there aren’t enough other shiny new tech things floating around at this time of year. That’s not to say the passionate aficionados won’t be there with bated breath, but for everyone else, there are too many other choices in the world.”

While the Fitbit struggles to fill old orders, the competition has moved in.

Many Web sites allow users to track various aspects of their health, similar to what users can do on Fitbit.com.

And other companies are getting into the gadget side of the business. Philips, a consumer electronics heavyweight, has introduced a fitness tracking device called DirectLife. And other rivals have come out with the BodyBugg, a calorie-tracking monitor worn on the arm, and WakeMate, which monitors sleep cycles and selects the ideal time to rouse its wearer within a given time slot.

So far, none of this appears to have diminished demand for the Fitbit — which does not surprise Jim Silver, an industry analyst and editor in chief of TimetoPlayMag.com.

In the age of Twitter and Facebook, word of mouth operates on hyperdrive, whether it is for the Fitbit or this holiday season’s hot toy, the battery-powered hamsters called Zhu Zhu Pets.

“Even people who aren’t parents or associated with toys know what they are, which opens the door to more sales, just because it’s a hot item,” he said.

The Challenge of Indian Art

What is art? Is it a purely utilitarian object with some trappings of decoration, or is it pure aesthetics which has absolutely no purpose whatsoever than to appeal, rather hedonistically if you will, to the senses?

This debate has raged amongst art circles from the earliest documented periods of art history : from the seminal essays of Alois Riegl to the lines and periods drawn up by institutions and art academies of the 19th and 20th centuries. This distinction between art and artisanship, between the artist and the artisan, is also coincidentally one of the chief divisions that separate South Asian, or Indian art, from its counterpart in the West. Indian art has often been held to be repetitive, a craft rather than a display of true and original intent. It is only recently, when paradigms of global histories are being tested in schools and academies across the world, that the appendage position occupied by South Asian art within the canon of art history is being seriously questioned. This in spite of certain scholarly positions that argue for the complete hegemony, as it were, of the Western model of writing histories of and appreciating art. Is the history of Indian art then doomed to forever be in the shadow of a larger, global narrative? These questions are important, for in some ways they allude to the intellectual hegemony held by the Western academy over forms and ways of knowing, where even emerging powers like China and India are forced to adopt methodologies and systems of art appreciation that have been developed in the West.

This is not to say that there have not been laudable attempts at chronicling South Asian art. One of the earliest modern historians of Indian art was Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. Living in Ceylon during British colonial times, Coomaraswamy did much to inscribe meaning to Indian art and architecture within the Western imagination. For Coomaraswamy, there was no art, or meaning in art, unless one understood the principles that guided its creators. Without an understanding of these principles, Indian art became simply a collection of strange looking gods, fanciful sculptures, and apparently misshapen forms. It took his interpretation of Indian art as a predominantly religious and spiritual work to make the Westerner begin to appreciate art, painting and sculpture especially Hindu art on a basis comparable to that of its Western contemporary. 1

But if making Indian art comprehensible to the Western observer is one of the challenges that faces the writing of a South Asian art history, what is perhaps even more serious is the way that Indian art is often appended as a subsidiary culture to the grand narrative that is the history of Western art. This grand sweep of history from the Pyramids to Picasso, has a very definable center, consisting of the Western Renaissance and its allied movements. To this center all other movements, all other cultures must adhere and spring from. Thus a survey course in art in Western schools, till very recently at least, ran somewhat like the following :

Egyptian, Ancient Near Eastern, and Classical Art; Early Christian, Byzantine and Medieval Art; The Renaissance, Baroque and 18th century Europe; 19th and 20th century Europe; Photography and Film, Art of the United States and Canada; Native American, Pre-Columbian and Latin American Art; Asian Art, Islamic Art; African Art; African Diaspora; Art Criticism and Theory. 2

It is clear from this grouping that the entire gamut of Asian Art (Chinese, South-East Asia, South Asia and even Middle Eastern) is clubbed under the catch-all phrase Asian Art - a category that comes much after mainstream European art, and is clubbed with overtly religious classes like Islamic Art, with a hint of primitivism like Latin American and African Art, and certainly is an offshoot of the main branches of art history. This is the second challenge that South Asian art faces: to evolve and emerge from being an offshoot of the art history tree to being a unique discipline in its own right. Much like architecture, South Asian art faces the challenge of being marginalized, of having to answer to canons that are developed in the West. This quasi-Darwinian legacy of Asian art also means that Asian artists are forever struggling to make their art answer to principles of art appreciation that have been evolved in the West, making Indian art a branch, not a main focus of study. Indian art remains Indian, and struggles to make the leap from its prefix to that of simply art.

This introduction to Indian art strives to overcome these fallacies in different ways : by ascribing meaning and intent to Indian art, by unearthing the purpose of the artisan and patron so as to ascribe a meaning that can be judged on the basis of original intent rather than Western aesthetics, and also by treating Indian art at a par with its Western contemporaries.

This introduction will also avoid dividing Indian art into dynasties, avoiding narrow divisions such as Gupta art, Hellenic art, Islamic art, and so on. The reason for this is that art in the Indian subcontinent was as much a product of traveling groups of artisans rather than dynastic or kingly patronage. This is the reason why Hellenic art, for example, can be found in South Asia just as much as Greece, why Persian influences mix with the Hellenic in Kushan art, and why Rajasthani schools of painting and Mughal schools borrow so much from each other to create a composite picture of miniature painting.

The second facet of this introduction is its geographic sweep. Indian art I purposely avoid for the moment the word South Asian also includes within its ambit influences from, and outward impulses to, geographies of the world as diverse as Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, Persia and Central Asia. This series will attempt to bring these diverse influences, where possible, under question and examine the truly continental nature of ancient and medieval Indian art, as also the global influences that modern Indian art has imbibed, as also the ways in which a globalized, connected world has influenced the production of art in South Asia. It is only by stressing upon the global nature of South Asian art that we can perhaps make the jump from treating this subject as an offshoot of the world history of art, to a synchronous event in world history that is as connected to its global cousins as it is indivisible from them. This approach would be proper, as it is no longer possible for the serious student or professional of art or cultural history to remain within a narrow confine of cultures, continents or time periods.

References:
1. Ananda K Coomaraswamy. An Approach to Indian Art. Parnassus, Vol. 7 No 7 pp. 17-20
2. Robert S Nelson. The Map of Art History The Art Bulletin Vol 79 No. 1 pp. 28-40.

Images:
Detail from Three Pujarins. Jamini Roy.
Detail from Portrait of a Gentleman, Raja Ravi Varma.

Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong

Ho Xuan Huong (1772-1822) was a Vietnamese woman poet born at the end of the Later Le Dynasty (Period 1428–1788: the greatest and longest lasting dynasty of traditional Vietnam) who wrote poems with unusual irreverence and shockingly erotic undertones for her time. She is considered as one of Vietnam's greatest poets, such that she is dubbed "the Queen of Nom Poetry” and has become a cultural symbol of Vietnam. I came across her name first in a travel guide where one of her poems was listed. It led me to search more of her poems. It was a sheer delight to read her poems in the book titled “Spring Essence”, which is what her name means in Vietnamese language.

The epoch she lived was marked by calamity and social disintegration. A concubine, although a high-ranking one, Ho Xuan followed Chinese classical styles in her poetry, but preferred to write poetry in an extinct ideographic script known as Nom, similar to Chinese but representing Vietnamese. And while her prosody followed traditional forms, her poems were anything but conventional: Whether mountain landscapes, or longings after love, or apparently about such common things as a fan, weaving, some fruit, or even a river snail, almost all her poems were double entendres with hidden sexual meaning.

She brought to life the battles of the sexes and the power of the female body vis-a-vis male authority, human weakness and desire, and boldly discussed various aspects of religious life, social justice, and equality including sexual freedom, as well as a range of other issues and experiences potentially detrimental to the status and aspirations of women. On close scrutiny, her lyrics offer surprising insight into a private Vietnamese past: the candid voice of a liberal female in a male-dominated society.

In a Confucian tradition that banished the nude from art, writing about sex was unheard of. And, if this were not enough to incur disfavor in a time when impropriety was punished by the sword, she wrote poems which ridiculed the authority of the decaying Buddhist church, the feudal state, and Confucian society. So, in a time when death and destruction lay about, when the powerful held sway and disrespect was punished by the sword, how did she get away with the irreverence, the scorn, and the habitual indecency of her poetry? The answer lies in her excellence as a poet and in the paramount cultural esteem that Vietnamese have always placed on poetry, whether in the high tradition of the literati or the oral folk poetry of the common people. Quite simply, she survived because of her exquisite cleverness at poetry.

Her poems were copied by hand for almost 100 years before they finally saw a woodblock printing in 1909.

Below are some samplers of her playful poetry. I am sure it will delight you as much as it did me. The reader will experience Ho Xuan Huong's lonely, intelligent life, her exquisite poetry, her stubbornness, her sarcasm, her bravery, her irreverent humor and her bodhisattva's compassion in these poems.

Swinging

Praise whoever raised these poles
for some to swing while others watch
A boy pumps, then arcs his back.
The shapely girl shoves up her hips,
Four pink trousers flapping hard,
Two pairs of legs stretched side by side.
Spring games. Who hasn’t known them?
Swinging posts removed, the holes lie empty

Male Member

New born, it wasn’t so vile. But, now, at night,
even blind it flares brighter than any lamp.
Soldier-like, it sports a reddish leather hat,
Musket balls sagging the bag down below

Jack Fruit

My body is like the jackfruit on the branch:
My skin coarse, my meat thick
Kind sir, if you love me, pierce me with your stick
Caress me and sap will slicken your hands

Weaving at Night

Lampwick turned up, the room glows white.
The loom moves easily all night long
As feet work and push below.
Nimbly the shuttle flies in and out,
Wide or narrow, big or small, sliding in snug.
Long or short, it glides smoothly.
Girls who do it right, let it soak
Then wait a while for the blush to show

The Man - and - Wife Mountain

A clever showpiece nature here displays
It shaped a man ,then shaped a woman, too
Above some snowflakes dot his silver head.

Below, some dewdrops wet her rosy cheeks.
He flaunts his manhood underneath the moon.
She rubs her sex in view of hills and streams.
Even those aged boulders will make love.
Don’t blame us, human beings, if in youth….

(On a journey, the poetess saw two huge rocks, one poised on top of the other, resembling a couple engaged in sexual intercourse)

The Condition of Women

Sisters, do you know how it is? On one hand,
the bawling baby; on the other, your husband
sliding onto your stomach,
his little son still howling at your side.
Yet, everything must be put in order.
Rushing around all helter-skelter.
Husband and child, what obligations!
Sisters, do you know how it is?

(A very touching poem capturing the social issues of women)

On Sharing a Husband

Screw the fate that makes you share a man.
One cuddles under a cotton blanket, the other’s cold
Every now and then, well maybe or maybe not.
Once or twice a month, oh, it’s like nothing.
You try to stick to it like a fly on rice
but the rice is rotten. You slave like a maid,
but without pay. If I had known how it would go
I think I would have lived alone.

The Unwed Mother

Because I was too easy, this happened.
Can you guess the hollow in my heart?
Fate did not push out a bud
even though the willow grew.

(This poem is a classic gem of leaving unsaid everything but what is needed. A heart unfolding. In those times, for an upper class woman, pregnancy out of wedlock could be punished by being forced to lie down while an elephant trod on her stomach, killing both mother and unborn child.

For peasants, socially far more free in sexual encounters, there's a folk proverb:

"No husband, but pregnant, that's skillful.
Husband and pregnant, that's pretty ordinary.")

Questions for the Moon

How many thousands of years have you been there?
Why sometimes slender, why sometimes full?
Why do you circle the purple loneliness of night
and seldom blush before the sun?
Weary, past midnight, who are you searching for?
Are you in love with these rivers and hills?

Autumn Landscape

Drop by drop the rain slaps the banana leaves.
Praise whoever’s skill sketched this desolate scene:
The lush dark canopies of the gnarled trees;
The long river, sliding smooth and white.
Tilting my wine flask, I am drunk with rivers and hills.
My bag , filled with wind and moonlight, weighs on my back,
Sags with poems. Look and love even men
Whoever sees this landscape is stunned

(What an amazingly beautiful sketch it is! ‘Look and love even men’ has a subtle sarcasm.)

Spring –Watching Pavilion

A gentle spring evening arrives
Airily, unclouded by worldly dust
Three times, the bell tolls echoes like a wave
We see heaven upside- down in sad puddles
Love’s vast sea cannot be emptied.
And spring of grace flow easily everywhere.
Where is Nirvana?
Nirvana is here, nine times out of ten

(This one is a masterpiece indeed. Seeking solitude in nature, she realizes that it is nature itself, not any organized religion or other construct of the human world, which holds the key to the search for nirvana and sometimes can see heaven upside- down in sad puddles ‘)

Reference:
Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong translated by John Balaban

Mongolia

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Facts & Figures
Map of Mongolia
Map of Mongolia

President: Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj (2009)

Prime Minister: Sanj Bayar (2007)

Total area: 604,247 sq mi (1,565,000 sq km)

Population (2009 est.): 3,041,142 (growth rate: 1.4%); birth rate: 21.0/1000; infant mortality rate: 39.8/1000; life expectancy: 67.6; density per sq km: 1

Capital and largest city (2003 est.): Ulaan Baatar, 804,200

Monetary unit: Tugrik

More Facts & Figures
Flag of Mongolia
Index

1. Mongolia Main Page
2. Chinese-Russian Treaty
3. Mongolian Democratic Revolution

Geography

Mongolia lies in central Asia between Siberia on the north and China on the south. It is slightly larger than Alaska.

The productive regions of Mongolia—a tableland ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 ft (914 to 1,524 m) in elevation—are in the north, which is well drained by numerous rivers, including the Hovd, Onon, Selenga, and Tula. Much of the Gobi Desert falls within Mongolia.
Government

Parliamentary republic now in transition from communism.
History

Nomadic tribes that periodically plundered agriculturally based China from the west are recorded in Chinese history dating back more than 2,000 years. It was to protect China from these marauding peoples that the Great Wall was constructed around 200 B.C. The name Mongol comes from a small tribe whose leader, Ghengis Khan, began a conquest that would eventually encompass an enormous empire stretching from Asia to Europe, as far west as the Black Sea and as far south as India and the Himalayas. But by the 14th century, the kingdom was in serious decline, with invasions from a resurgent China and internecine warfare.

The State of Mongolia was formerly known as Outer Mongolia. It contains the original homeland of the historic Mongols, whose power reached its zenith during the 13th century under Kublai Khan. The area accepted Manchu rule in 1689, but after the Chinese Revolution of 1911 and the fall of the Manchus in 1912, the northern Mongol princes expelled the Chinese officials and declared independence under the Khutukhtu, or “Living Buddha.”