Crazy Shagdar

Crazy Shagdar (Mongolian: Shaγdar soliyatu, 1869–1930s) was a wandering lama from the Baarin banner (in what is now Ulanhad city) in Inner Mongolia. He is the hero of a number of, usually quite critical, tales, in which he mocks corrupt nobles, other lamas etc. One tale deals with how he rebuked Chinese traders on a temple fair:

The annual Baarin temple fair had always attracted many traders from Inner China.

Shagdar came very close to the side of the tent of one of these traders, made a fireplace from three stones, pulled a Tibetan cooking pot from his bundle, then he helped himself to the water from the traders' clay ton and made a fire from their wood. When the eldest of the traders scolded him and called him crazy, Shagdar replied

I, Shagdar, only drank from the waters of my homeland,
Made a fire with nothing but the wood from my hills.
I used none of the water or wood you brought from Shandong!
Squeezing out the people's blood -
That's where you belong, bastards!

That is how he swore at them in both Mongolian and Chinese.[1]

A collection of tales about him appeared in Mukden[2] in 1959, and some of those have been translated into German.[3][4]

References
  1. from the German translation in Walther Heissig, Helden-, Hollenfahrts- und Schelmengeschichten der Mongolen, Zurich 1962, p. 276f
  2. Walther Heissig, Die Mongolen. Ein Volk sucht seine Geschichte, Wiesbaden 1964, p. 73 says they appeared in Kalgan.
  3. Walther Heissig, Helden-, Höllenfahrts- und Schelmengeschichten der Mongolen, Zürich 1962, p. 269–300, 310ff
  4. Walther Heissig, Die Mongolen. Ein Volk sucht seine Geschichte, Wiesbaden 1964, p. 73–74


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