Growing interest in traditional Mongolian writing

Preserving identity: Calligrapher Ganzorig Gulguu writing Mongolian scripts at his home in Ulaanbaatar. — AFP

Ulaanbaatar: In a classroom in Mongolia’s capital, students pass over the Soviet-era Cyrillic alphabet they grew up with and turn their copybooks sideways to practise the traditional, vertical Mongolian script that dates back to the empire of Genghis Khan.

Teacher Batbileg Lkhagvabaatar leads the class, tracing lines of the flowing, dotted characters on a whiteboard and explaining grammar rules to the group of young men and women and a smattering of children.