BEIJING – With more than 170 A-list movie stars from China and Hong Kong, "The Founding of a Republic," is breaking box office records – raking in  $33.8 million during its first 10 days in theaters.

But this is nothing like the products pumped out by Hollywood. Instead, it's a propaganda film made by the state-owned China Film Group.

Launched to mark the 60th anniversary of the communist era, the 135-minute movie depicts Mao Zedong's rise, tracking the 1945-49 war in which the Communist Party of China (the CPC) led by Mao and the National Democratic Party (the KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek fought fiercely for power..

The lengthy cast list includes many of the top names in modern Chinese film, including martial arts stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," action movie director John Woo, among others. And most of the famous actors took little or no pay for their work – rather, considering it an honor to have just a few brief lines in the film. 

VIDEO: Blockbuster movie celebrates Mao's victory and 60 years of Communist rule

Movies in China usually don't sell a lot of tickets during the so-called "red season," the summer and early fall months that are dominated by national holidays ( July 1 is the Communist Party of China's Founding Day, Aug. 1 is the People's Liberation Army Day and Oct.1 is National Day). The films that are released are typically dull, mind-numbing propaganda films only viewed by students or government staff with free tickets. 

But "The Founding of a Republic" seems to be an exception. The box office numbers are still skyrocketing the China Film Group says it expects the tally to pass $350 million within the next couple of weeks.

Director: It's a 'good story'
Huang Jianxin, one of the two directors of the big hit, proudly told NBC News that he believes a lot of younger movie goers were happy to buy tickets of their own accord (a ticket costs $5-10 in Beijing), not because they were told to, as was often the case with government-made propaganda films in the past. Huang acknowledged that the celebrity-packed cast was clearly a magnet for younger viewers, but added that the movie, "would not attract them without a good story, no matter how many stars are in it."

There's no question that the "The Founding of a Republic" is made in a refreshingly different way. Unlike other propaganda movies, which usually portray Mao's Nationalist Party rivals as ruthless, cold-blooded, "counter revolutionaries," Chiang Kai-shek and his son are shown for the first time having down- to-earth father-son moments. And his officers also display a human side, even when they talk about assassinations.

The movie also contains a rare sight – a drunken Mao and a singing Zhou Enlai (the first premier of the People's Republic of China). Still, Mao and his party, living in earthen huts and forced to save candle light for meetings, are always portrayed as righteous and invincible against the U.S.-backed, totally corrupt, Nationalist forces (who eventually lose and flee to Taiwan).

SLIDESHOW: China celebrates

Zhang Lianjuan, an account associate at an multinational company, chose to go to the theater as a small celebration right after her marriage registration, but she was disappointed by the film. "I don't have a special feeling for this movie, it merely went through a lot of history in two and half hours," she said. "The celebrities didn't give an outstanding performance in the movie at all."

But Zheng Yunfeng, a 30-year-old radio host in Beijing, thought it was a "well-balanced" movie. "It doesn't vilify the KMT [the Nationalist Party] as mainstream movies used to in the past. It objectively illustrates the real history – KMT had both corrupt and righteous moments at the time."

A patriotic time
Still why would such a stellar cast take part in such a propagandistic project, and for such meager paychecks? Huang, the director, attributes it to a sense of patriotism ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of China.

"China's 30 years of opening and reform has made China come back to the world stage," he said. "Fast economic growth and increasing state power has again brought back self-esteem [to the] Chinese people," said Huang.

However, he doesn't stress the real powers behind the movie: the Central Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China and the State Administration of Radio Film and Television. The two government departments decide what's allowed to be shown on TV, in movie theaters and in newspapers, and what books and movies are allowed to be imported into China.

Their efforts to create a blockbuster film to celebrate the Party's 60 years in power have clearly been a big success.

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CASABLANCA, Morocco – Casablanca, Morocco's largest city, conjures images of Rick's Bar, couscous and the third largest mosque in the world, built at fabulous cost on land reclaimed from the sea. Only those in Mecca and Medina are bigger.

Critics complain that the close to $1 billion spent in the 1990s on the Hassan II Great Mosque, which has a thousand ton sliding roof and the world's tallest minaret, could have been better spent on helping people more directly, like cleaning out Casablanca's legendary slums.

The mosque is indeed spectacular, with praying room for more than a 100,000 people. But the problems of the slums are spectacular too – places of mindless violence, desperate poverty and hopelessness.

All 12 suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Casablanca in 2003, killing at least 33 people, were Jihadist products from the local slums. So were the bombers in 2007 who killed a dozen more. 

The government is working hard to move the country's slum-dwellers to better homes. But to see the lives of the people still left behind, about half a million people nationwide, is truly shocking – yet in a few cases, humbling and inspiring.

That's because of Boubker Mazoz.  

VIDEO: Teaching self-respect in Casablanca's slums

White-haired, mustached, bronzed, slim and charismatic, the 58-year-old voluntary community organizer is a dead ringer for Omar Sharif, the famous actor. Seven years ago, while continuing with his day job at the public affairs office of the American Embassy, he founded an organization with the goal of bringing hope into the lives of the hopeless.

"Education is everything," he said, as we strolled in one of his classrooms among 10-year-old boys and girls being taught English, French and Arabic by high school seniors, all volunteers, many of them slum-dwellers themselves. "They must stay in school, become independent and especially, not be dragged down by all these stereotypes people have of them that they are failures, criminals, the bottom of society."

Mazoz grew up in Sale, a city near Rabat, and was grateful for the educational opportunities that gave him to make a better life for himself. He's worked at the embassy for the last 30 years – while most of his country cousins are still back in the poor village where his father grew up. When Mazoz came to Casablanca, he wanted to help people make the best of themselves – especially through education.

At the community center I watched as one young girl, her hair covered in Islamic traditional style, enthusiastically pointed at letters. She mouthed them, and two boys and a girl, leaning across the table, one half-sitting on it, stroked the letters with their fingers and imitated her. A drone of English and French and Arabic vowels rolled across the room.

"They're all from the neighborhoods," Mazoz said proudly. "They are such good kids, they just need a chance."

"Who is the girl teaching them?" I asked. And therein lies a tale.

In a dark place – new light
Her name was Leila Gouaich, and she took me to her home in the slum known as Al Hofra, or Big Hole. The sun shone brightly on the apartment buildings next to her home, but her cluster of concrete blocks was in the shade.

We ducked between clothes drying on lines, and brushed by hordes of children playing in the dirt, as older folks sat and chatted or dozed. Young men lounged against walls, their faces blank, yet menacing. One woman watched us through a small square window barely big enough to peer through.

We entered a narrow alley, but it was a boulevard compared to the corridor of warrens that we came to next. Each room was a home, each home connected by a path so narrow that I had to edge sideways. Steep, narrow, broken stairs led to the next floor, where more rooms held families. Roughly 100 people lived in the excuse for a building, with no running water or toilets.

We came to the end of one alley and went into a room. It was about six feet high, seven feet long and four feet wide. Plaster flaked from the ceiling and it smelled damp.

"It used to be the toilet," Leila said. "This is where I live. Ten of us sleep here, including my sister and her husband."

It didn't seem physically possible."How?" I asked, "Where?" She shrugged and merely said, "It isn't easy."

Leila's father died of cancer when she was three years old. Her mother, who held her hand while she talked to me, is deaf and dumb. It wasn't clear to me how she had grown up. They didn't earn a penny and nobody gave them a penny. I didn't understand how they survived, but it was the same story for almost everybody in the slum.

Leila pointed to the crumbling plaster, and complained of the stench, the damp, the rainwater that poured in through a hole in the wall, the respiratory diseases that were almost universal, as well as the lack of medical insurance, medicines, privacy and above all, dignity.

 "I used to hate this place," she said. "It was a place of darkness that robbed me of life, of hope, of everything. People murder for a cell phone or 20 dirhams ($2). And then I heard about Mr. Mazoz's organization."

A role model for others 
When Mazoz first started working in the slums, they were an incredibly dangerous place to be.

"Even the police didn't dare enter," he laughed.

Today, he is received like a rock star, swamped by residents asking for help. Raising funds from charitable donations, he gave this legless old woman a wheelchair, that woman a sewing machine, while this man asked for help to move out, to anywhere. They all needed something and he was the only person who came to help.

When school began this year he gave out more than 500 backpacks filled with new clothes, pens and exercise books. "Remember," he said, "it's all about education, and pride, and role models."

At first, Leila was afraid to go to Mazoz's community center, but when she finally got up enough courage, she was astonished at how well she was received.

"They welcomed me. I had never had anything like that before," she said.

One of her first assignments as a young community worker was to come back to her own slum, with 20 volunteers, to sweep the streets.

Six years later, Leila says that with the knowledge she gained through her community work, she has grown to appreciate the people in her neighborhood, their challenges and their strength. She no longer hates her home, but wants to improve it.

And she has become a role model now. Children crowded around her asking for help to get a backpack and asking how to enroll in classes at Mazoz's community center. One little boy turned around and she used his back to write down a list of children's names who needed help.

She has come a long way in a short time.

"Boubker gave me money for books," she said, with tears in her eyes. "He helped me all the way. He brought light into my life."

Today, incredibly, this 23-year-old girl from the slums is in her third year at university, studying physics. She wants to be an aircraft technician.

"But where do you study?" I asked her.

"In the street, when everybody has gone to bed," she said.

And now she teaches other slum children to read and write. Four boys and girls, about 10 years old, ran up to her while we visited. I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Two wanted to be a doctor, one a pilot, and one a policeman.

If I had asked them the same question five years ago, one of the other volunteers told me, they would have probably ran off with my wallet.

'You gave me my life'
Later in the day, we all returned to the classroom where I had first seen Leila among the volunteers teaching the children. I took her aside and Mazoz joined us to translate.

When I asked how she had changed, how helping others had helped her, after she had been helped by Mazoz, words failed her. She sprung from her chair and embraced Mazoz and kissed him. Then she grabbed his hand and tried to kiss it, but he withdrew it, saying, "No, no, you mustn't do that."

He was clearly moved though. His eyes glistened, as Leila said to him, fighting her emotions, through tears and smiles: "You gave me my life."

For more information on Boubker Mazoz's charity visit the website: sistercitiesmorocco.org

UPDATE: Please visit the Web site: sistercitiesmorocco.org for more information about Boubker Mazoz's work. They have updated the Web site and added an English language section with information about the organization, its objectives and how to donate. In addition, Mazoz can be contact directly at the email: mazozboubker@gmail.com

DONGGUAN, China – "It's been a rough year," Ben Schwall shouted above the rumbling furnaces of a giant Chinese glass factory. He watched as workers, blowing down long tubes, transformed blobs of molten glass into juicers, bowls and lights.

"Orders are picking up. Things are getting better," he said. "The telephone is starting to ring again. Everybody feels there is something coming back."

We were in Dongguan, in the manufacturing heartland of southern China. Frequently called the "workshop of the world," the region was battered last year when the world stopped buying and exports collapsed.

Schwall supplies Chinese lighting equipment to the United States, linking American buyers with Chinese factories. Before the economic crisis, he was shipping 70 containers a month, but then his business fell by nearly two-thirds.

Thousands of factories across China closed last year, and some 20 million migrant workers lost their jobs.

Suddenly, though, this region is buzzing again. Factories are being renovated and are hiring. Vast public works and infrastructure projects have transformed parts of the area into sprawling building sites. Shops are full, with electronic goods flying off shelves; car sales have almost doubled over last year.

Economic jump-start
Beijing is confident of achieving a growth rate of 8 percent this year, easily outperforming the other members of the G-20 nations gathering in Pittsburgh for a summit this week.

The Chinese economy has been jump-started by an astonishing government spending spree – a $600 billion stimulus and more than a trillion dollars in easy loans from China's state-directed banks.

"That's something unheard of in China's history. That's unheard of in world history," said Dong Tao, Chief Asia Economist at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong.

Dong, like most regional economists, applauds the speed by which Beijing moved to shore up China's economy. "China was the first country getting out of this mess," he said. But the downside is a big asset bubble is in the making, with more than $250 billion flooding into stocks and property, sending prices of both soaring.

"Maybe Beijing will have to hit the brakes," Dong said. "And that will create another round of instability in the economy."

He also wondered whether Chinese leaders have fully grasped that their export-led model of growth may now be over.

"This crisis marks the end of America's lifestyle. Americans can no longer have zero savings rate. And that also marks the end of Asia's growth model."

But many, like Schwall, built their businesses on the export trade. "It was a real frenzy," he said, "year after year of growth. But I don't think we are ever going to ever see that again."

At the bar of the Hollywood Baby, a lively expatriate watering hole in Dongguan, nobody wants to shout too loudly about the recovery. But they are quietly confident the worst is over. The turnaround may have come too late, though, for the Thirsty Dog, a nearly deserted bar just down the road that was a favorite of buyers in the hard-hit furniture business.

Frank Jaeger, who runs the Hollywood Baby, also owns a factory making cables for robots, computers and other electronic goods. "For the first time, I've put together a sales team to target domestic consumers," he told me. "The market's growing. You see the newest items, the shops are full, [and] people are buying."

The longer term hope is that Chinese and Asian consumers increase their spending to fill the void and lift the world economy – what economists call rebalancing the world economy – but that may take some time to happen.

Still, the recovery in Dongguan is remarkable, though uncertain. A year ago, Schwall said it was like factory owners where being hit over the head with a baseball bat. I asked him how they are feeling now.   

"Some of the guys got knocked down and they're never going to get up again. Some folks are staggering after the hit, but they are regaining their senses. They've still got a headache, but I think they're beginning to recover."

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BUKIT LAWANG, North Sumatra, Indonesia – It's said one should not take work along on vacation. "Leave the BlackBerry at home!" my supervisor insisted. But, no way was I going to leave behind the camera with the opportunity to spend a week on an eco-tour in Indonesia.

In the forests of North Sumatra, Indonesia, there's a delicate balancing act going on, witnessed by a few eco-friendly tourists every year. It's not easy to see, but well worth the trip. And you might even see a little piece of yourself looking back at you from high in the trees.

The location was new for me and the trip was special, hardly work, particularly when I can share the experience (through the video links here) with others.

VIDEO: Saving Sumatra's orangutansÂ

I set out to find a critically endangered species, the orangutan, in their native habitat before they become extinct. Its estimated just 6,600 Sumatran orangutans remain.

With reddish-brown hair the "person of the forest," as they are known, is actually a lot like us – at least in mannerism, if not in looks.

They typically stand about 5 feet tall, weigh 75 to 250 pounds, and have hands with four long fingers and a thumb. Their arms are twice as long as their legs and they grip branches with curved toes as they swing from tree to tree.

They are remarkably intelligent and with a mournful look they seem to know they are endangered and disappearing at an alarming rate.

VIDEO: Eco-tourism's delicate balancing act

Looking for the 'person of the forest'
The Gunung Leuser National Park, which is 3,200 square miles, is what's left of the Sumatran orangutan's natural habitat. Their forests are being replaced by lucrative palm plantations that feed the palm oil industry. The oil is used in everything from lipstick to detergent to bio-fuels.

Bukit Lawang is a small tourist village at the bank of the Bahorak River next to the National Park. It is known for its sanctuary of Sumatran orangutans and a rehabilitation center attempting to preserve the decreasing orangutan population.

But a flash flood hit Bukit Lawang in 2003. The disaster was the result of illegal logging and destroyed the local tourist resorts. It also killed 239 people and around 1,400 locals lost their homes. 

Felix Lilisuheri survived the flood, and now he's a licensed expedition guide. Lilisuheri used to work at the orangutan rehabilitation center and knows many of the animals that have been recovered and released back into the jungle. "Bukit Lawang owes its recovery to the orangutan. They bring the tourists," he said.

VIDEO: Running out of rainforest

A good local guide is essential to navigate the area. Getting around is a challenge. Roads are few and built for logging trucks. Where the road ends and the jungle begins, Sumatran elephants, also an endangered species, took us through deep and steep terrain. The real treat of the trip was lending a hand to help bathe the elephants in the river. 

One of the other treats was trying to catch a glimpse of the orangutan as they ate. Park rangers, who call the orangutans down from the treetops by banging a rhythm with sticks, have set up a feeding platform. For a small fee, visitors come too and sit quietly in a viewing area. But the orangutans don't always com, especially when the fruit is ripe in the forest.

Sugary fruits are the orangutan's favorite food. So to see an orangutan in the wild it is necessary to hike to where the fruit is ripe and plentiful.

VIDEO: Elephants take a bath

The orangutan prefers to be left alone in their shrinking world. But being endangered doesn't leave a lot of options. They are so elusive that they've become a rare treat for eco- friendly tourists.

Just as the town needs to bounce back from the tragic flood, so too do the orangutans and each needs the other to do it.

KABUL, Afghanistan – If there was ever one "foreign devil" on the Silk Road who most fascinates amateur history buffs, it must be Sir Marc Aurel Stein.

The Hungarian-born British archaeologist's career sparked an obsession of mine – and no doubt of countless others – with the history of the Silk Road, a series of trade routes linking China to the Mediterranean.

So upon hearing Stein was buried in Kabul, I made a beeline for his gravesite as soon as I arrived here.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The British Cemetery sits on a dusty road in central Kabul.

Born in 1862, an era when archaeologists could still raise funds for lavish expeditions and gallivant about the globe, Stein single-handedly put the Silk Road back on the map, as it were, with a series of incredible discoveries in his later life. 

The fruits of his excavations and scholarship shed new light on the region by tracing the original trading routes along the Silk Road and, most importantly, documenting the spread of Buddhism from India to China.

Inspired by the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuan Zang, who traveled to what are now known as India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan during the 7th century, Stein conducted four major expeditions in Chinese Turkestan as well as countless other surveys and digs elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East.

But it was the first two voyages to Chinese Turkestan (now western China) that would secure his place in the pantheon of great explorers.

Stein undertook his first expedition in May 1900, setting out for the Taklamakan Desert, described by the Chinese as "a place in which you enter but never leave." 

During his two-year journey, Stein unearthed numerous invaluable Buddhist paintings and sculptures, Sanskrit texts, and some of the oldest Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts ever known.  Among the most compelling finds were wooden tablets dating from the year 105 A.D. and written in an early Indian script.

His finds – which ended up in dozens of museums across the world – sparked a fever for Silk Road treasures, pitting archaeologists from around the world against one another in a decades-long quest for ancient Buddhist riches.

Stein endeavored to lead his next expedition to Afghanistan, which had fascinated him from a very early age when he first learned about ancient Bactria and Alexander the Great's Eastern Campaign. But his application to explore Afghanistan was denied. So Stein turned back to Chinese Turkestan, this time using a different route, determined to cover as much new ground as possible. 

The second expedition garnered him even greater fame around the world but also ill repute in China. Stein wound up near Dunhuang to investigate the largely forgotten "Caves of a Thousand Buddhas," some 400 grottoes carved out of rock and decorated with lush paintings and sculptures. A hapless monk, Abbott Wong, was the gatekeeper for the caves as well as an enormous library of thousands of precious manuscripts and silk paintings in various languages such as Chinese, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Turkic from the 9th-10th centuries. Among them was the world's oldest example of a printed book – a copy of the Diamond Sutra from 868 A.D.

Steeped in Oriental and Eastern religious scholarship, Stein immediately recognized the library's value. "Owing to the great size of many silk pictures, the delicacy of the material and other reasons, only a portion of these could be opened up and examined on the spot," wrote Stein in a report after the expedition. "But this examination has sufficed to prove that their importance to the study of early Buddhist pictorial art in China is quite as great if not greater than that of the frescoes of 'The Thousand Buddhas.'"
 
In an act that today raises questions of morality, Stein took possession of tens of thousands of manuscripts by flattering, cajoling, deceiving, and bribing the abbott.  In fact, he procured them "for a sum which will make our friends at the [British Museum] chuckle," wrote Stein in a letter to a friend.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Sir Aurel Stein's final resting place in the British Cemetery in Kabul.

Most of the items are now housed in the British Museum, the British Library, or the National Museum in New Delhi. Not surprisingly, Stein's loot earned him the wrath of Chinese authorities, who branded him a plunderer and a thief. In fact, China soon after tried to ban foreign excavations of all their ancient sites.

Today, Stein could be accused of imperial archaeology, but biographer Annabel Walker makes the case that the explorer believed "if objects were at risk in their original locations, they must be moved to a place where they were available to scholars."

Indeed, many people today inside and outside of China believe Stein did a good thing by carting off his discoveries back to Europe. In the decades of political and social upheaval that followed his expeditions to Chinese Turkestan, China lost untold numbers of great cultural riches, particularly in that last political spasm known as the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), when Red Guards ransacked museums and destroyed and defaced monuments and sites across the nation.

Moreover, in addition to uncovering manuscripts and other historical artifacts that scholars are still learning from today, the archaeologist was an unparalleled explorer. "Stein's contributions to our geographical knowledge of many parts of Asia were unsurpassed," according to the Handbook to the Collections of Sir Aurel Stein in the UK (2008) edited by Helen Wang and John Perkins.  

In one region alone, he surveyed nearly 50,000 square miles. Two of his journeys alone covered almost 25,000 miles. His assistance in mapping the region invariably made him a key player in the Great Game, the struggle among Britain, Russia, and France for supremacy in the region from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

 
Despite his legendary finds in Central Asia, however, Stein was still missing one piece of the geographical puzzle – Afghanistan.

Forty-one years after his first unsuccessful application to explore Afghanistan, Stein was finally granted permission to travel to Kabul in 1943.  In October that year, he set eyes on the Afghan capital for the first time in his life, only to contract bronchitis and then die within the week – a month shy of his 82nd birthday.

On a dusty road, behind a great stone wall and two wooden doors, lies the British Cemetery.  It's a lovely oasis meticulously tended to by an Afghan couple. Dozens of tombstones litter the lush green lawn, their owners reflecting the great panoply of nationalities that have converged in Afghanistan: British, Polish, South African, Chinese, American, Swiss, French, German, and so on.

To the far side of the cemetery, under a tree, I finally found Stein's tombstone:

"Marc Aurel Stein
Of the Indian Archaeological Survey
Scholar Explorer Author
By His Arduous Journeys In
India China Turkistan Persia and Iraq
He Enlarged the Bounds of Knowledge
Born at Budapest 26 November 1862
He Became An English Citizen in 1904
He Died at Kabul 26 October 1943
A Man Greatly Beloved"

It seems a cruel ending for someone who labored for so long to explore Afghanistan.

But, even on the doorstep of death, Stein was gracious about the incredible access he had enjoyed to Central Asia. "I have had a wonderful life," he told a friend. "And it could not be concluded more happily than in Afghanistan, which I have wanted to visit for 60 years."

BANGKOK, Thailand – Paper plane champ Mong Thongdee returned to the Thai capital Monday with a bag full of trophies after competing in a Japanese paper airplane contest – but the young boy's joy may be fleeting.

The 12-year-old boy, who has no official nationality, brought home a third place win in the division for elementary school students in the Chiba, Japan paper plane competition. And his three-person Thai team also won first place in a group competition where the young contestants had to quickly fold their planes and then throw them into the air. 

Koji Sasahara / AP

Mong Thongdee prepares to release his paper plane during the team indoor flight duration competition at the All-Japan Origami Airplane Contest near Tokyo on Sept. 19. Â

Mong glowed while cameras flashed as he greeted his Myanmar migrant parents – whose trip to Bangkok from their home in northern town of Chiang Mai was made possible by a last minute sponsorship from an airline.

Mong's story captured media attention when he appealed for travel document to compete in Japan, where he would represent Thailand.

The initial rejection of his request to travel – on the grounds that he isn't a Thai citizen and can't leave the country without losing his temporary residence permit – brought to light the complicated issue of thousands of people who live in Thailand, but have no citizenship or official status.  

At the airport on Monday, Mong thanked all Thais for giving him endless support throughout his journey and said he wished to give his medals to the Thai king.

But after going all the way to win his paper plane titles in Japan, Mong returned home to the same state he's been in: a stateless boy in the country he calls home.  

As a child of migrants born in Thailand, Mong can apply for Thai citizenship, but like everyone else, his case will be considered on a case by case basis. A Thai authority in charge of granting citizenship appeared reluctant to say he would gain citizenship quickly when asked by reporters Monday. 

The reason for the official's reticence may be because other stateless people in Thailand, who are estimated to number about half a million, may take too much hope from Mong's case and bombard the authority with applications and unrealistic expectations.

VIDEO: Paper planes carry kid's dreams

Still, in the afterglow of his successful trip, the Thai science minister announced in front of the media gathered at the airport that Mong would be made a junior science ambassador, and promised to pay his tuition expenses until he graduates from college.  

It isn't hard to picture Mong, propelled by dream and determination, as a PhD candidate following his passion in aeronautical engineering.

But it is hard to imagine him being a pilot or an engineer – two jobs among dozens of professions that are restricted for Thai citizens only – without him being a citizen in the first place.

LAHORE, Pakistan – Religious piety isn't something you normally associate with McDonald's. But during the holy month of Ramadan, everybody gets into the game.

For one month every year, Muslims around the world fast from dawn-to-dusk during the ninth month on the Muslim lunar calendar. Every day, from sun up to sun down, millions aim to practice restraint by abstaining from eating, drinking, smoking and indulging in anything in excess.

It's meant to be a time of reflection, modesty, and spirituality, but the mass-market appeal is hard for retailers to ignore.

McDonald's pushes a dessert deal called "Sweet Blessings." Pizza Hut offers a "Ramadan Special" all-you-can-eat buffet after sundown. Even Dunkin Donuts has a "Ramadan Feast" meal package on its menu.

McDonalds's

McDonald's advertises a special dessert deal during the holy month of Ramadan called "Sweet Blessings" as a treat for people breaking their  daily fast.

According to Pakistani writer and blogger Asif Akhtar, corporate marketing teams across all industries latch on to this idea during Ramadan.

"Cell phone companies have Ramadan packages where you can call a certain number and get Quranic verses sent to your phone," said Akhtar. "Radio stations, instead of playing more hip and happening party songs, they start playing more religiously oriented music."

The pressure to adhere to religious practice can be intense. Even those not fasting feel they must at least pretend to fast in public, so as not to incur the wrath of others. One young man in the capital city of Islamabad said that despite the fact that he's unsure of his faith, and therefore chooses not to fast, he keeps up appearances in public because it's easier than the alternative.

"Chewing gum in public will get you some dirty looks," he said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. "Drinking water in public may lead someone to say something disapproving or nasty to you. And eating in public? Forget it." 

SLIDESHOW: Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr around the world

Moon sighting
The month of fasting finally ends with the sighting of the new moon and three days of celebration called Eid al-Fitr, but even that can be a source of tension here. The science behind officially "seeing" a new moon is shaky, and the process relies on a special council of clerics and mullahs known as the Ruet-e-Hilal, a quasi-government group whose sole responsibility is sighting the moon.

On the expected last day of Ramadan, the council meets. News cameras and reporters with notebooks at the ready turn out to cover the event. The clerics' lay out their cell phones across the table. Official "witnesses" from around the country call in to report whether they've seen the new moon or not. A representative positions himself with a telescope on a rooftop. Another takes his search to the skies in a helicopter.

Yet despite all these efforts, a faint sliver of light in a sky is a tough thing to see – leading some Muslim countries to celebrate Eid on one day, while others celebrate it another.

Even within a country, there can be disagreement. The semi-autonomous Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan makes its own moon-sighting decision, which this year led to a public rumble among the clerics played out in the papers. One cleric "rejected" the Frontier Province's decision. Another called the decision "shocking." The move by Frontier leaders to celebrate Eid early was seen by some to be as much about politics as it was about religion.

But as of Sunday night, the new moon was officially sighted. So that means the end of fasting, the end of pressure to prove your religious conviction, the end of public battles over the moon – and instead three days of celebration.

A suicide car bomber killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians Thursday in the heavily guarded capital of Kabul.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack for the Italian contingent in the country. Violence has increased since the U.S. sent thousands more troops to push back the resurgent Taliban and bolster security for last month's still-unresolved presidential election. It's the fourth major attack in five weeks in Kabul. NBC News' Adrienne Mong reports from Kabul.

VIDEO: Bomb blast kills several people in Kabul

The Obama administration has eased travel restrictions to Cuba -- making it easier for Cuban-Americans to fly to the communist island. NBC's Kerry Sanders reports.

VIDEO: More Cuban-Americans are flying from Miami to Havana

 

BANGKOK, Thailand – Mong Thongdee is a rare champion.

The 12-year-old boy lives just behind Chiang Mai airport, in northern Thailand, and makes paper planes for hobby. That's where he gets scolded by his father for littering the place and wasting papers.  

"I barely have enough money to buy notebooks for school and there he was, tearing papers to make airplanes," said his father, Yoon Thongdee.

Mong's parents, who came from Shan state in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, earn $7 a day from construction work to feed their family of four. They all squeeze into a tiny square room in a row house where their neighbors are other migrant workers.

AP

Mong Thongdee, left, poses with Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and paper airplanes during a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand on Sept. 3, 2009.

At the national paper plane contest late last year, Mong's dart floated 12.5 seconds in the air and made him a winner. Ever since that victory, he's been training two hours a day to prepare for the origami airplane competition in Japan this month, where he will represent Thailand.

But when Mong requested to have a travel document to go Japan he was rejected. Even though he has lived in Thailand since he was born, he is still a son of migrants and doesn't have citizenship. Like his parents, Mong resides on a temporary permit – which will be terminated when he leaves the country, and turns him into an illegal immigrant if he returns. 

Stateless limbo
"Mong isn't a Thai citizen nor he is recognized by Myanmar's government," said Achara Sutthisoontharin, a case worker at Bangkok Clinic, an organization that provides legal counseling on personal rights and status. "His parents left Myanmar since 1995 and never went back. So Mong doesn't exist there."  

Achara sent Mong's story to a newspaper and very quickly a troupe of reporters were following him to chronicle his struggle with various authorities. His plight also highlights overdue issue of stateless and nationality-less people – or those without official status and citizenship – which is estimated to be over half a million living in Thailand.

"Most of them are migrant workers from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia who come to look for a better job, but some are also Thais whose parents – out of ignorance, poverty and inconvenience – did not register them when they were born," Achara said.

Stateless children like Mong are entitled to basic education and can file a request for Thai citizenship. However, the request will be considered on a case by case basis by a Thai authority. Achara said some cases took as long as seven years. 

Without official status and proper documents, a stateless person has no access to basic health care and faces hurdles in career choice – which places them at a disadvantaged position that often leads to abuse.  

VIDEO: Paper planes carry kid's dreams

The initial rejection of Mong's call for travel documents – sparked an outcry. Activists, lawyers and ordinary people poured their support and encouragement after they saw a picture of him silently shedding tears while sitting next to an official.  

Finally the Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva stepped in to intervene. Mong now holds a temporary passport that allows him to travel and a Japanese visa that's valid for 90 days.

An inspiration
"I know some people thought, 'A son of migrant making paper plane? Big deal!'" said Winasrin Meesap, Mong's teacher at Ban Huay Sai school.  "But it's their only pastime. They can't afford other kinds of toys. And we should support our children to achieve their best no matter what."

Ban Huay Sai is a primary school with only six teachers and 83 students. About 60 percent of them are children of Myanmar laborers whose main source of income is from construction works. 

Teacher Winasrin said that after completing 9th grade, most of her students tend to drop out because their parents cannot afford further education.

But now Mong's victory has become an inspiration. After school boys and girls gather to make airplanes from papers in a recycle bin, dreaming of their own highflying day. 

Mong said he wants to be a pilot so he can fly an aircraft for real. He also wants to win in the Japan competition. "I hope to fly longer. Maybe 17 seconds."

"But if I don't win, I hope that other children will not give up," he said as he sat next to his father, ready to go buy a nice pair of jeans for the trip. "I hope they can be as good as I am."

RISHON LEZION, Israel – By 10 a.m. on a recent morning, the line of people in an underground parking lot in this Tel Aviv suburb, was getting longer and longer. The frustration level was intensifying along with the rising temperature – it was hot and sticky with no fresh air. 

But, for many, it was a line worth waiting in. The Pitchon-Lev organization was handing out the basic needs for the upcoming Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah – which begins at sundown this Friday, Sept. 18 and will be observed on Saturday.

While there are some signs of hope that the global recession may be receding, for many of the people on line here, hard times are here to stay.

VIDEO: Helping Israelis celebrate Rosh Hashanah

Tal Eisenbaum, manager of the Pitchon-Lev aid center, left a cushy hi-tech career for this grueling job of helping the needy and the poor.

"I was a C.E.O of a software company, I have a third degree in marketing and I came here because of my conscience, I decided to work for a few years for the community, to feel good with myself," said Eisenbaum. "I see that I'm actually helping people and it feels good."

But the global recession has hit organizations like Pitchon-Lev hard. "Donations dropped dramatically, down 30 percent to 40 percent," Eisenbaum explained. But at the same time, the need for donations has grown. "The amount of people coming here went up 20 percent and our customers are now teachers and engineers, people we never saw before." 

According to Eisenbaum, out of a population of approximately 7.2 million in Israel, over 1.65 million live under the poverty line, including 800,000 children. So the need for aid organizations like Pitchon-Lev is great.

"The pictures you see around me – its Israel 2009 and not Rwanda and not 1920," said Eisenbaum, referring to an era when large numbers of Jewish migrants were settling in Israel. "The population here is very heterogenic, Arabs and Jews, Ethiopians and Russians. All earn less than minimum wage which is about $900 per family per month."

But Rosh Hashanah, which literally means "head of the year" in Hebrew, is a time for celebration – and reflection. It's a Jewish holiday celebrating the new Jewish calendar year, the month that God created the world. 

The central home ritual of the holiday consists of a special festive meal, which includes eating a piece of apple dipped in honey to symbolize a new sweet year.  

So at the aid center, Pitchon-Lev was giving out apples, honey, bread, oil, flour, wine, meat and a haircut. Yes, a beauty parlor donated its workers and in the middle of the parking lot they put up a mirror, set up some plastic chairs and gave haircuts.

Hopefully a full stomach and a new look will help usher in a happy New Year.

BEIJING – After a short summer break, I returned to Beijing to find the city under siege.

At least that's how it looks these days – two weeks before the National Holiday on Oct. 1 to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

As I rode through central Beijing over the weekend, an armored vehicle was poised on the corner of the Dongsi@!$%#iao roundabout. A soldier was sitting on top of it, wearing a balaclava and with a machine gun at the ready. Pedestrians stopped, stared, and then took photos with their cell phones.

Police checkpoints now ring Beijing's outskirts, monitoring traffic from the surrounding provinces and inspecting vehicles entering the capital. Busloads of troops have been unloading around the city. And jets screamed across a beautifully clear sky over Tiananmen Square on Saturday morning.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

With increased security in Beijing, some officials who are new to the city try to find their bearings.

The square itself, the Forbidden City opposite it, and the major road arteries flowing south of Chang'an Avenue – which bisects the capital – were all closed to the public this past weekend.

What sounded like half-hearted fireworks sputtered through the late evening near the Workers' Stadium, but with the high visibility of soldiers and police, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was gunfire.

In short, authorities here are taking no chances.

After all, it's a big anniversary. It's especially significant because in Chinese culture sixtieth anniversaries are a big milestone – their significance is equivalent to that of a centennial elsewhere.

But anyone under the impression the celebration is for the people might want to think again.  This is a party for the party – the Chinese Communist Party. 

For one, the general public won't be allowed anywhere near the big event – a massive parade showcasing China's military might, the likes of which are not seen around the world these days (except for North Korea). While attendance will be seriously restricted, the highly choreographed event will of course be broadcast on China's state TV.

Ng Han Guan / AP file

Chinese soldiers are drilled on Sept. 10 in preparation for a military parade planned for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic on Oct. 1.

I tried to get an impression of the event to come. Cycling past the Forbidden City on Saturday afternoon, I could see reviewing stands, presumably for the leadership, outside the Gate of Heavenly Peace (the front entrance of the Imperial City where Mao Zedong's iconic portrait hangs).

Meanwhile, a huge video monitor loomed across the street, and crowds of people dressed in uniform walked in and out of Tiananmen Square. Traffic barriers lined Chang'An Avenue. Security checkpoints have sprung up on strategic corners. Police waved me away from the south side of the street; they waved me away from stopping on my bicycle; and waved at me to stop taking photographs.

Even more forbiddingly, residents are being restricted in their very own homes. 

At diplomatic compounds overlooking the road that becomes Chang'An Avenue, property management offices have sent out fliers asking residents not to invite friends into the area between Sept. 30 and midnight on Oct. 1; not to open windows or balcony doors facing Chang'An during the same period; and not to stand on the balcony to watch the ceremony on Oct. 1.

And for several weekends running now, residents have found themselves trapped in certain parts of the city, unable to cross town because of roadblocks. Several friends told me stories about being stranded overnight one weekend when they couldn't get across Chang'An Avenue to get home.

Which makes it all the more ironic that one of the 50 Party-approved slogans marking the 60th anniversary says: "Put people first, realize, safeguard and develop the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people!"

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A checkpoint set up on Chang'An Jie, or the Avenue of Long Peace, leading up to Beijing's Tiananmen Square.Â

It might seem a stretch, but it's hard not to wonder how much all of this might become "situation normal." Before last summer's Olympics, authorities put into place several security measures that have endured long after the games have ended. Some of them were for the "safety" of Beijing residents, but many of them came into being soon after the March 2008 unrest in Tibet. 

Bags are still being x-rayed at subway entrances. Tiananmen Square is still fenced off and visitors must walk through a metal detector and a bag search before entering the area.  Police still conduct random ID checks at people's homes. And after years of laxness, the guards in diplomatic compounds, like the one that houses the NBC News bureau, are still persnickety about checking Chinese ID cards.

Not to mention the general crackdown on dissent. Although a prominent activist lawyer, Xu Zhiyong, was recently released on bail, critics of a wide-ranging number of issues have been rounded up during the past year. And YouTube, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and Chinese-language blog sites like Bullog.net all remain shuttered. 

All a far cry from 18 months or so ago when optimists crowed that the Beijing 2008 Olympics would usher in a new era of openness in China and argued that the tightening political climate was temporary – just a blip, as it were, that would ensure a smooth Summer Games. 

Others have observed that 2009 is full of difficult, troubling anniversaries – March 14 (the one year anniversary of the Tibet unrest), June 4 (the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown), and  October 1 (the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic) – and that government officials are trying to minimize the potential for unrest or open dissent.

But what if this isn't a blip? What if this is the new normal?

I'm flying off to Afghanistan for a month-long assignment. We'll see if the barricades are gone by the time I return.

KABUL, Afghanistan –I was led into an office at the British Embassy this morning, where an official was going to help us with some consular issues. The officer was trying to get rid of two men in the room so we could have the privacy to deal with our matter.

One man left immediately, but the other took his time, engrossed in filling out a form.

I took a second look at him; it was Stephen Farrell, the British-born New York Times reporter who was dramatically rescued from a Taliban hideout Wednesday. While he survived, his Afghan colleague and a British soldier were killed in the raid. 

VIDEO: New York Times journalist rescued in Afghanistan

Farrell was not wearing the traditional Afghan clothes and hat in which he was shown in photos after news of his release – and his beard had disappeared, too.

Having briefly met him before during previous reporting assignments, I asked how he was. He shook my hand and gave me a despondent, withdrawn look as he told me what a difficult time it has been for him.

The temptation to ask more was interrupted by the consular official anxiously ushering him out of the room.

As he left, it struck me how big the story was surrounding this subdued figure.

The aftermath
It's been a dramatic series of events: the initial details about the kidnapping of Farrell and his Afghan colleague, Sultan Munadi, by Taliban militants; the rescue raid by British commandos; the death of Munadi and a British soldier during the raid; and the ensuing outrage by Afghans at the way in which Munadi's death was handled. 

(Farrell wrote his version of events for the New York Times.) 

Munadi, 34, was an experienced journalist who was well-respected in the Afghan media. He was also married and had two children.

After the raid, Farrell was flown to Kabul and taken to the British Embassy. But Munadi's body was left behind, only to be picked up later and driven by pick-up truck from Kunduz to Kabul by his own family. Hundreds of Afghan journalists gathered to mourn and bury their colleague on Wednesday evening – but no foreign media or non-Afghans were allowed at the burial.

Afghan journalists are outraged at Munadi's treatment and what they see as a double-standard: Western journalists are whisked from danger, while Afghan journalists are left to pay the ultimate price. Their anger is directed at both the Taliban who commit the atrocities, but also at the international forces who, they believe, value Western lives more than those of Afghans.

In protest, the Media Club of Afghanistan called on the local media to boycott any reporting on Taliban activities for the next three days and urged the Taliban to apologize for Munadi's abduction. They also condemned the coalition forces for what they described as reckless behavior during Farrell's extraction and called the action of leaving Munadi's dead body behind "inhumane."

At the British Embassy, Farrell came back into the room to grab something he had left behind. I studied him again: the slightly stooped figure did not seem to fit into the big story unfolding around him.

The U.S. soccer team is only one match away from qualifying for the FIFA World Cup finals and England assured it's place after beating Croatia Wednesday.

But how prepared is South Africa to host this biggest of all soccer tournaments? ITV's Martin Geissler reports from Johannesburg.

VIDEO: South Africa gets ready for World Cup

Aunt Dee is the real pundit of my family – an opinionated, 80-year-old independent spirit if there ever was one. You never know whom she'll target next, so getting an e-mail from our own gadfly is always special.

Her latest feint and thrust – on the war in Afghanistan – came about two weeks ago: "Well, I have to get started on dinner so will close this now. We see nothing about that war in Afghanistan. It's like it doesn't exist. And, no one is asking Obama, 'What are we doing there?'"

Since that e-mail, it's as if every politician and editorialist – on both sides of the Atlantic – is reading Aunt Dee!

"What's the mission?" asks one. "To prevent another 9/11," answers another. "To build a viable Afghan state," chimes in a third. And on and on...

VIDEO: IEDs increasing U.S. deaths in Afghanistan

Some analysts wonder why we're even in Afghanistan at all, when most "terrorists" and terror attacks are in, or originating from, Pakistan. Other experts rejoin that if we withdrew from or failed in Afghanistan, then Pakistan – and the rest of South Asia with it – might implode.

A maelstrom of opinion has burst wide open, and in its wake, even traditional positions have shifted.

Debating what the 'other war' has become
U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, a die-hard Democrat and astute peacemaker, sounds utterly hawkish on Afghanistan: "This is not Vietnam," he recently told me at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. "We're here because the enemies of America, the people who did 9/11 … are out there, protected by the Taliban, and we have no choice but to succeed here."

On the flip side, George Will, an arch-conservative columnist, is now touting a kind of a Clintonesque way out, writing in the Washington Post that America should focus on cruise missile and drone attacks, and "do only what can be done from offshore" to minimize casualties. The war, in his mind, has gone on too long, and in any case, is unwinnable.

Of course, the debate is really about what that "other war," for years slightly off the radar screen, has suddenly become: A steady increase in body bags and coffins returning from front lines and the fearful likelihood of perhaps tens of thousands more U.S. troops heading into danger. 

U.S. commanders talk about a "new strategy" to better protect the Afghan people – we're told – so that they can rebuild their lives and thus have something bigger to lose in their own fight against the Taliban. This, we're assured, is a tried and true counterinsurgency approach. It made a big difference in Iraq, and could be a game-changer in Afghanistan. Still, at least according to the latest polls, most Americans only see more violence, and death.

New York Times contributor Thomas Friedman wrote in a recent column that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has morphed from "babysitting" a people to "adopting" a nation. Friedman believes that this much larger undertaking should be more thoroughly debated by the American public before we go any further. 

Well, Aunt Dee, let the debate begin: What is the mission? 

Again, why are we there?
The "believers" say that, ultimately, the mission hasn't changed: disrupting al-Qaida, and along with it the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqanis, the Mehsuds, and all the other jihadist militant groups and networks operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan before they spread their turbulence to India or to China or, once again, to America.

In 2001, that required a minimal number of U.S. forces "invading" behind pro-U.S. militias to defeat the Taliban. Eight years later, it means a substantial surge of U.S. troops and experts, "going long and deep" to build up Afghan forces and the "human terrain" in an attempt to lay the foundation of a state that can one day protect itself.

But the critics – growing by the day – don't buy it. They say that nation-building is a waste of life and treasure in a narco-state whose government reeks of corruption, where the latest national elections remain mired in fraud, and where Taliban commanders, warlords, drug lords and armed civilians are often one in the same, under an ever-shifting turban. 

So why are we there? Those in favor insist that the best defense against al-Qaida is a stable, self-sustaining Afghan government, especially in the land where 9/11 was hatched.

They say the U.S. needs to stay as long as it takes to see that Afghan government emerge. "There is no alternative but for the United States to remain committed to rebuilding a minimalist state in Afghanistan,'' wrote Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who is an expert on the Taliban, in Sunday's Washington Post.

Those opposed say the U.S. – whatever its real intentions – increasingly appears to Afghans as occupiers, and predict it will fall into the same quagmire as the Soviets and the Victorian British before it. Losing lives and facing a ''roadless, broken and undeveloped country, an absence of any strategic points, a well-armed enemy with great mobility and modern rifles, who adopts guerrilla tactics,'' as the young Winston Churchill, an embedded reporter for the Daily Telegraph, described the Anglo-Afghan campaign … in 1897.

Frankly, I've heard many intelligent, articulate voices on either side of the issue. Columnist Nicholas Kristof, in Sunday's New York Times, argued effectively for more "modest goals" in Afghanistan, warning that "sending in more American troops … in the Afghan south may only galvanize local people to back the Taliban …" 

But equally compelling was Haroun Mir, an Afghan-American analyst living in Kabul, who recently told me to disregard the signs of plummeting U.S. support for the war. "What's true is that the Afghan people welcome your presence here," he said.  "After three decades of conflict, people are tired. Everyone wants to have a peaceful life. And we know that won't happen here without the support of your forces."

VIDEO: Richard Holbrooke and Haroun Mir weigh in on the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan

But how many U.S. troops are necessary, for how long, and at what cost? George Will's answer is "get out now." Otherwise, he believes, "Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.''   

A decade or more …

Déjà vu all over again?
A decade ago, few Americans could have easily found Afghanistan on a map. Neglect and isolation were the petri dishes from which emerged the mayhem – civil war, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

Today, most Americans are finding out that Afghan tribes, who rule over a mostly lawless land, pay no mind to nuisances like international borders or "new" U.S. counter-insurgency strategies.

Amid all the chaos of opinion, framing a debate isn't easy. Finding consensus is even harder. But I would break it down into two "generic" camps.

One camp is made up of those who think that the prospects for peace in Afghanistan are as elusive – even illusory – today as they were generations ago. 

In his insightful book, "Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan," BBC South Asia Correspondent David Loyn describes the events of 1840 (that's right, 1840) in the same ethnic Pashtun areas where President Obama is most likely to send more U.S. troops.  

Loyn's account reads like a dispatch from any of today's papers: "a growing Islamist insurgency … overstretched foreign troops unable to quell a widening and worsening conflict [read: NATO]; a cultural clash with Kabul as the occupiers behaved in a way  that offended local sensibilities [read: "civilian casualties"]; an Amir who could not rule without foreign support [read: President Hamid Karzai] …''

And another camp for those who believe that Afghan history was made to be rewritten, not repeated. Taming the militants in so-called "Pashtunistan," whether from Kabul, Jalalabad, Gazni or Kandahar, much less from London, Moscow or Washington, has never succeeded before. But, these optimists say, it might – just might – succeed today.

What to do about an ancient, distant land of impenetrable havens for holy warriors of all stripes, unified in their hatred of infidels and any central government?

It's crunch time. The stakes are enormous. And Aunt Dee deserves some hard answers.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London who has reported from Afghanistan regularly since 2001.

 KABUL, Afghanistan – It is a brutal first impression. The moment my feet touch the sand as I step out of a Stryker armored vehicle, I hear an explosion. It's far away; about half a mile. I hear a big deep thud and look over my shoulder.  I see a cloud of brown dust expanding in an Afghan village. 

The village walls and houses are all made of mud. One of the houses has just exploded into a brown cloud. American soldiers were inside the booby-trapped structure. Within seconds, we hear radio traffic. 

One American is dead. Others are wounded. The radio calls are urgent, but formal. No names.  They don't use names so soldiers who listen to the radio don't become upset in the midst of what is now a rescue operation to save the wounded soldiers.

VIDEO: IEDs take toll on soldiers in Afghanistan

I've been here for less than five minutes. 

The Medevac helicopters fly in. They take away the wounded first. Nothing more can be done for the dead. The wounded are the priority.

Part of the surge in Afghanistan
In my blue spiral notebook I start to take notes to figure out where I am, and what's going on. 

The notes are short:
I'm in the Arghandab valley, just outside Kandahar. 
It's a Taliban stronghold.
It's mostly desert with a few green orchards around the mud-walled villages.
I'm with the Army's Stryker brigade. These soldiers were supposed to go to Iraq. Some learned Arabic before they were diverted to Afghanistan in February.
One soldier is dead.  He's the seventh soldier the Stryker brigade has lost in three weeks. 

I write a number 7 in my notebook and circle it.

A few minutes later I meet the unit that's hosting me on this mission. The troops I'm joining, Alpha Company, are led by Capt. Mike Kovalsky.  He's 26 and from New Jersey. He talks fast and is a fan of Frank Sinatra and martinis. He likes to quote famous historians and music. He has a fantastic memory for quotes. 

But Kovalsky wasn't supposed to be the company commander.  He was a staff officer, working back on base. He's replaced another commander who was killed along with three other soldiers.  They were on a mission to deliver medical assistance to a village when their vehicle was destroyed by an improvised explosive device. Kovalsky was asked to fill in.

He's still trying to gain the respect of the men, but has confidence beyond his age. They seem to respect him. He was part of the surge in Iraq.  Now he's part of the surge here.

Kovalsky tells me the mission they have is to enter a village near the one where I'd just watched a soldier lose his life and search for Taliban fighters and weapons. We'll leave at first light. It's already starting to get dark. We eat Army rations out of plastic bags and drink as much as possible. It'll be hot in the morning: 110 degrees Fahrenheit or more. We'll be out all day. 

The men huddle in the desert before bedding down in the sand. The chaplain says a prayer for the soldier lost this afternoon. He asks the Lord to protect the men and grant them success on the mission tomorrow morning. We sleep in the desert. 

It's cold at night in the sand. For a pillow, I use a use a tourniquet, a strap soldiers carry to cut off the flow of blood if they're blown up. The soldiers all carry them in their pockets.  I carry one, too.  If you're blown up, the medics use your tourniquet. They keep theirs for even worse emergencies.

Before going to sleep I'm told one of the wounded soldiers from this afternoon died while being evacuated.  In my notebook I cross off the 7 and write an 8. 

Eight soldiers killed from just this brigade in three weeks.  Eight families back home who have lost their sons and fathers.

In the morning, we're joined by a few Afghan soldiers. They seem professional. All are wearing clean uniforms. They seem well trained and carry their weapons well. But I'm shocked at how few they are. There are just 20 or 30. There are more than 100 Americans. 

We're warned about IEDs – improvised explosive devices – a somewhat desensitized way of saying bombs that can blow you to pieces and throw your body 75 feet in the air. The entire area is seeded with IEDs. They're around all the villages and by every entrance. They're hidden in the orchards. The place is like a minefield.

Some of the Strykers, the soldiers' armored vehicles, are fitted with giant rollers. They stick out in front of the big armored trucks, making the Strykers look like the machines that pick up golf balls at a driving range. The Strykers push the heavy wheels of the rollers over the sand. If the wheels hit an IED, the device will blow up.  If not, the ground is safe. 

We walk in a double-file line in the tracks left by the rollers. I try to walk in the footsteps of the soldier in front of me. I notice an Afghan soldier is two feet behind me. He's walking in my tracks.

We walk slowly and gingerly. Time goes slowly too. So far, no IEDs. The Afghan soldiers search houses while the Americans guard the perimeter. Americans aren't allowed in the houses.  It's considered culturally insensitive.

The Americans comb the public areas of the village. They look around the houses and search doors for booby-traps. They search the walls.  Many of the IEDs are homemade fertilizer bombs like the one used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing, only smaller. Most of fertilizer bombs weigh 20 to 30 pounds and are packed into plastic water bottles and then buried in the ground or into the walls of structures. That's what killed the soldiers the other day. The houses can explode. 

It's around 4 p.m. and 115 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm out of water.  I never remember to bring enough. I've already drank two liters. The soldiers plan to search until dark. They want to finish sweeping through the village and the adjoining orchards. But they're nervous about the orchards. 

At least in the open ground they can look for wires or "pressure plates" that trigger the IEDs.  Most of the IEDs are detonated by pressure plates. They're primitive triggers, two pieces of metal attached to wires with sand, paper or wood typically used to keep them apart. If a soldier steps on the top of a pressure plate, he pushes the two pieces of metal together completing an electrical circuit and detonating the bomb. A soldier tells me he's seen a pressure plate made out of a candy bar wrapper with paper stuffed inside to keep the two metallic sides apart. They're that easy to make.

In the orchards the soldiers can't see much. A tripwire could be under any branch or in the grass.  The Afghan soldiers refuse to go in the orchards.  It's too dangerous. 

But the orchards are clear. The day's mission is complete.  The men walk back to their Strykers for another night in the sand. 

As we get ready for bed, word comes over the radio that another soldier, part of the same brigade, was killed nearby. Another IED.  I scratch out the 8 in my notebook and make it a 9. 

We never saw a single Taliban fighter.

NANJING, China – In the middle of Yuhuatai Martyr Memorial Park in Nanjing, southeast China's ancient capital, is a small building called the "Jiangsu National State Security Education Museum."

The sign in front of the gate is likely to trigger the curiosity of any passerby – but especially foreigners. It warns would-be visitors: "This exhibition service is available to Chinese citizens ONLY."

Bo Gu/ NBC News

The entrance to China's spy museum warns that "This exhibition service is available ONLY to PRC citizens."

As a Chinese citizen, I was permitted to enter, so I did.

The museum's exhibition halls display the history of China's security techniques and spy equipment dating back to the 1920s, when China's Communist Party came into being and began its battle against the Chinese National Party led by Chiang Kai-shek.

One of the largest exhibits focuses on the decades-long spy war between mainland China and Taiwan – both before and after Chiang Kai-shek lost the battle for China and fled to the island with his followers in 1949.

The exhibition rooms are full of large photos of Communist Party spies who successful concealed themselves as Nationalist Party members and infiltrated their ranks. One of the most prominent photos was of Shen Anna, a Communist spy who managed to disguise herself as a stenographer and sat in on many of the Nationalist's high-level meetings.

The museum features a large display of Cold War era spy tools that are reminiscent of early James Bond movies. The exhibit includes tiny pistols disguised as lipsticks, a calculator with a radio microphone hidden inside and a camera sewn inside a suit pocket so it could secretly take pictures of important documents.

Message: protect the motherland
Stories of foreign espionage activities are also an essential part of the museum – and serve as cautionary tales.

Bo Gu / NBC News

An exhibit of spy "tools" in China's Jiangsu National State Security Education Museum.Â

For instance, one exhibit tells the tale of Japanese military attaché Hiromasa Amano and Lt. Col. Bradley Gerdes, an assistant air force attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, who are said to have stealthily entered a forbidden Chinese military zone without authorization and were caught taking photos in 1996. Gerdes was subsequently ordered to leave the country by the Chinese.

"Espionage is all pervasive and we should keep our eyes wide open," the museum notes say in conclusion to the story.

The last part of the exhibit highlights what are said to be China's "contemporary enemies" who try to "infiltrate" the motherland.

The rogues' gallery includes photos of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader; Li Hongzhi, the leader of Falun Gong, which China considers to be a "cult religion"; and some Uighur separatist leaders from China's restive Xinjiang province.

Bo Gu / NBC News

A poster of Shen Anna, a Communist Party spy.

I was stopped by one of the many uniformed staff in the museum when I tried to take a picture of the photo of the Dalai Lama. "You are not allowed to take any photos here," he said with a stiff gesture. "There are cameras everywhere and you'll be seen by our people."

In fact, a tiny room showing the power of high-tech cameras proved that he wasn't exaggerating. I walked into the room and immediately found dozens of cameras with red lights that demonstrate to visitors that their moves can be monitored every second. A screen in the middle of the room showed my image: front, back, head, feet – and the images were in such high resolution that I could even read the label on my backpack.

However, despite all the intrigue, I was never asked to show my ID when I entered the museum. And many of the stories and pictures displayed in the museum can be found easily on Internet. Perhaps the "Chinese ONLY" sign is meant to make visitors feel mysterious, serious and more patriotic.

If that's the goal, the technique just might be working. At the exit of the museum, there is a big notebook where visitors can leave comments after taking the tour. 

One student from Beijing wrote: "I can only become a useful person to my motherland through studious work at school and we shall always keep ourselves vigilant of any suspicious activities."

BUREN SOUM, CENTRAL PROVINCE, Mongolia – In Beijing, we're used to hearing about the problems of desertification. 

Roughly 400 million people in China and a third of its land are affected by desertification – the consequence of several factors that include not just climate change but misguided farming policies, deforestation and drought. Some estimates say, at this rate, roughly one million acres of grassland in China are being devoured by the desert each year. 

But desertification knows no boundaries, especially when it entails the Gobi Desert. Not only is Asia's largest desert expanding from north to south across China, it's creeping south to north, too, farther into Mongolia.

VIDEO: Mongolian's battle the growing Gobi Desert

"Seventy percent of our territory is affected by desertification," said Tsognamsrai, a project officer with the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) in Ulaan Baatar.  (Like most Mongolians, he goes by just one name. But fortunately, for tongue-tied Westerners like us, he has a nickname: Namsrai.)

An ecologist by training who used to teach at the Agricultural University of Mongolia, Namsrai has seen first-hand the impact of the growing Gobi.

For two years now, he's been working with local communities in the Middle Gobi – the northernmost reaches of the desert – to help them combat desertification.

"We should change people's attitudes towards the natural ecosystem," he said. "People [are] trying to use the ecosystem and the natural resources, but people need to understand they need to do something to improve the…living environment."

Knowledge and adaptation are key to Namsrai's effort. In Buren Soum, in Mongolia's Central Province, for instance, the population has been shrinking – from 5,000 in the 1990s to now about 600. As a result of increasing desertification, people have been fleeing, literally, for greener pastures.

A longtime resident, Erden, said the environment has changed dramatically. "When I was small, the grass grew easily," he recalled. "But now during the spring, it's very dry. And there are sandstorms everywhere, much more than before."

We could see small piles of sand that had blown up against the fences surrounding every property.  "(The sand) affects my health," said Erden. "I cough, sneeze, and have more allergies."  

Still, the shopkeeper said he wouldn't leave.

"I'm 45 now. I have nowhere to go," said Erden, who owns a corner shop in this dusty one-horse town.

Like many, Erden believes the problem is not just climate change but also herding – in particular, raising goats. "The number of goats has increased, and some people say they're destroying the pasture land."

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Raising goats may turn a profit, but ecologists say it's hard on vegetation.

 
Trying to halt overgrazing
Goats, say environmentalists, are hard on the land because they chew the grass down to the roots. And herders in recent years have increased the numbers of their livestock because they make a decent profit from selling the goat hair to cashmere producers. 

"It's like ruining your future because of today's cash," said Lkhamdulam Natsagdorj, executive director of People Centered Conservation, a grassroots non-governmental organization.

But eliminating the practice of herding isn't a realistic option.

Nomadic herding is as much a part of Mongolia as the vast steppes that occupy about half of the country.

In fact, shepherds have played a long historical role in Mongolia's economy just as hunter-gatherers or warrior horsemen did thousands of years ago. Today half of the country's population are herders who depend on their livestock.

"I don't think there's a way to change the lifestyle. It's really unique. This is our tradition," said

Natsagdorj.  "But I think there's a way to regulate and govern it. Governing the situation and also to use these adaptive methodologies, and also by economic policy, it should be manageable."

And there is a precedent for good practices and methodologies. "We have a really good tradition [in herding]," noted Namsrai. "Ten years ago, people used to use their pasture in rotation because they had good knowledge about it. But after the [end] of socialism, people didn't have much knowledge [about] how to use the pasture properly."

Adrienne Mong

Myagmarbaatar, who is usually a goat herder, tries his hand at farming.

Greening the desert
One solution, overseen by the UNDP in Buren Soum, is teaching herders the benefits of rotating pasture land. Nearby, in the temporary settlement of Bayangbalak, seven nomadic herding families last year planted a vegetable plot.

They grow potatoes, cabbages, carrots, and other vegetables, which they will harvest in the autumn, explained one of the herders, Myagmarbaatar, who had never farmed before, but said he now understood the value of rotating the land for grazing.  In the winter, he continued, they would use the patch of land as a reserve pasture for their livestock.

"It wasn't difficult trying to farm here," he said. "We are quite satisfied."

The UNDP is also encouraging non-herders to cultivate a green thumb – similar to the Green Wall of trees built across the border in China – to help stem the spread of the desert and to ease the impact of sandstorms. 

Erden, the shopkeeper in Buren Soum, recently began to grow a small garden, using donated seedlings and relying on water that comes from a newly installed irrigation system funded by the UNDP.

Sitting in shade cast by his house, he gestured across a garden path to the handful of plants thriving under the blazing desert sun. "Planting trees will help keep the Gobi back," he said.  "The land will be renewed again so there will be fewer sandstorms."

"But the main thing is the plants give the land moisture and softens it. It smells very nice," he added, smiling. "Maybe in two or three years, I will have lots of trees and then I can lie in the shade of my trees."

Related links:
Mongolia's 'reindeer' people jump into the future
Mongolia celebrates 'manly' Olympics
VIDEO: Boy jockeys race in Mongolian Olympics
SLIDESHOW: Mongolia's scenic side
Listen to a Podcast of NBC's Adrienne Mong discussing how China is viewed in Mongolia

Rickshaws, that ancient human-powered mode of transportation, has long been the backbone of India's local transportation system. Even as they are criticized for not being modern enough and for causing congestion, rickshaws have caught the attention of environmentalists. NBC's Ian Williams reports from Delhi, India.

VIDEO: Rickshaws down, but not out

Amid celebrations marking Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's 40 years in power, government officials in Britain are calling for a full investigation into the early release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. NBC's Tom Aspell reports from Tripoli.

VIDEO: Libya marks 40 years of Gaddafi

HOVSGOL PROVINCE, Mongolia –  Bayanjargal laughed as she watched the three of us from NBC News turn on our cell phones for the first time in 24 hours and maniacally start emailing and texting. We probably were a ridiculous sight – hungry, dishevelled, basically slightly worse for wear after having flown two hours and then bumped along another ten hours inside a Russian UAZ van.  But that wasn't why Bayanjargal was grinning so widely.

"I'm happy to see you on your cell phones," said the 40-year-old, who like many Mongolians goes by just one name. "It means there is a signal up here!"

"Up here" was Tsagaannuur, the northernmost town in this part of Mongolia, where we had stopped briefly during a strenuous three-day journey to the taiga, a subarctic area on the Siberian border. The region ranks amongst the most isolated and harsh environments in the northern hemisphere. It's so remote there are no power or phone lines. But there is cell phone service, which became available this past year. 

VIDEO: Helping Mongolia's reindeer people

Mongolia's smallest ethnic minority
Bayanjargal moved to Tsagaannuur when she was eight, but she still misses the taiga despite annual visits.

"It's my parents' birthplace," she told us over mugs of hot tea and coffee as we stretched out our legs. "I miss the environment, and I miss especially the reindeer milk."

Yes, reindeer milk. 

Bayanjargal is one of the remaining 500-odd Tsaatan, or "reindeer" people – half of whom still live in Mongolia's Hovsgol Province. Originally from Siberia, the Tsaatan are a Turkic people who make up the nation's smallest ethnic minority. Their native tongue is Tuvan, and they practice shamanism, not Buddhism.

For thousands of years, these nomadic herders have survived the damp climate of the forested mountains, moving their families, tepees, animals and a few worldly possessions anywhere from five to ten times a year. They have always lived in the forests of the taiga – the only environment in which their reindeer can survive.

On the edge of subsistence living, the Tsaatan rely on the reindeer for all their basic needs – the milk, which is also used to make cheese (it tastes, by the way, like a very sharp Parmesan); the antlers, which they use to make tools; and transport. Unlike similar reindeer herding communities in Siberia itself or Scandinavia, however, they usually do not eat reindeer meat, instead relying on wild game such as elk, moose, or boar.

"The reindeer is the most important thing in our lives," said Ganbat, a community leader.  "If there were no reindeer, we would not exist."

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

"If there were no reindeer, we would not exist," say the Tsaatan people. Click to watch video of how the Tsaatan people live with reindeer.

A one-time visit turns into a calling
In 2002, the Tsaatan were facing the threat of possible extinction.  Their herd – then numbering fewer than 500 – was suffering from a host of diseases, some of which were previously unknown to the community. One in particular, a type of bacterial infection, was causing sterility in the reindeer.

"We didn't have money to buy medicine or treatment for the reindeer," recalled Ganbat.  So they reached out to a young American woman named Morgan Keay, who at the time was researching the community.

Keay – a tall redhead from Chappaqua, N.Y. – was then just a junior at the University of Colorado-Boulder, majoring in environmental biology and religious studies.  Driven by the twin desires to explore the world and to do some good, Keay was spending a year abroad in Mongolia when she went up north to study the Tsaatan.

"I expected it to be a one-time visit to the community," said Keay, who accompanied us on our trip. But she wound up making a full commitment to them and to Mongolia by establishing a non-governmental organization, the Itgel Foundation. 

Through the organization, she raised money and found veterinary and health experts from overseas and from within the country. They worked with the Tsaatan, she said, "to make sure that they are learning the cutting-edge skills and treatments so that when we leave, when we are not there, they can make the same treatments for generations to come."

The health project has been so successful that this year the reindeer population reached 1,000 – more than double what they had been when Keay first visited the area. 

However, recovering the health of their animals was just the beginning for the Tsaatan, a proud people who wanted a means to generate income for themselves and the community.

"There's a veterinary aspect, and there's also this sustainability aspect in the 21st century that [Itgel is] working on," said Sophia Papageorgiou, a PhD candidate in epidemiology at the University of California-Davis who has been working through Itgel to research tick-borne disease among the reindeer. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A view of the subarctic lake at Tsagaannuur. Click to watch video of the beautiful, but bone-jarring journey up to Mongolia's Hovsgol Province.

"Of course the health of their reindeers is of critical importance to their survival and subsistence, but the community faces other challenges," said Keay. After the upheavals of Mongolia's socialist era (1921-1991) and more recent regulations like strict hunting laws and land use in the region, the herders had become "extremely marginalized politically, socially, economically, and culturally."

The Tsaatan had a solution in mind: eco-tourism.

"The tourists were coming here…and treated us like objects in a museum," said Bayanjargal, referring to the growing presence of safari-like tours popping up in the taiga.  Ethnic Mongolian guides with no ties to the community were leading extremely lucrative tours to the herder camps. "Tour operators were taking Americans and Europeans out to this remote place, charging thousands of dollars," said Keay.  "And the community wasn't getting a penny of that."

So Keay – who was concerned about the possible negative impacts of widespread tourism on the Tsaatan and the taiga – worked closely with them on coming up with a sustainable approach. 

One of the results is the Tsaatan Community & Visitors Centre (TCVC) in Tsagaannuur. Volunteers once again were brought in, this time to help train the reindeer herders and teach them much-needed skills like how to run and manage the center. In its first full year of operation, the TCVC – which is now managed by Bayanjargal – hosted more than 100 tourists.

"The biggest achievement was establishing the TCVC," said Borhuu, one of the Tsaatan managers of the project who also doubles as a guide. "Before, we didn't have an income source like this. Now we are working and earn a salary."

"I enjoy being in this environment, with nature, but I also like having a job," echoed Bayanmunkh, another guide (and, with his high cheekbones and the jaunty tilt of his fisherman's bucket hat, one of the Tsaatan's most dashing poster-boys).

Income earned from the TCVC also goes to a community fund, which Bayanjargal said helps with health care, education and emergencies, services the Tsaatan were never able to afford in the past.

"What we do is not about reducing poverty, increasing wealth or moving towards wealth in a material, monetary sense," said Keay.  "A lot of what we've done is about empowering the community to use their voices to express their needs on their own."

And so Itgel seeks to aim for longer-term strategies that don't just focus on the basic needs of survival.  "You need to think about the ambitions, hopes and dreams of the community," continued Keay.  In fact, the name "Itgel" means "hope" in Mongolian.

"I see us as being successful," said Bayanmunkh confidently.  "Morgan has done what she needed to do [to help us].  Now it's up to us to follow through." 

For more information about visiting the Tsaatan, see this website: http://visittaiga.org/index.html

Click here to see more of Mongolia's scenic sights

Click here to read about Mongolia's 'manly' Olympics

Listen to a Podcast of NBC's Adrienne Mong discussing how China is viewed in Mongolia

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia – You won't see Michael Phelps at these Olympic Games.

Sometimes billed as the Nomad Olympics, the Naadam festival in Mongolia features competitions in the three "manly" sports – horseracing, archery, and wrestling.  

The event dates back 800 years, to the days when the great warrior horseman, Genghis Khan (known as Chinggis Khan in Mongolia), and his men swept down from the grassland steppes to conquer empires in Asia, Russia, the Middle East, and as far as Europe.

VIDEO: Hundreds of boy jockeys race during Mongolia's Olympics

It's believed that Genghis came up with the festival to keep his men in fighting shape when they weren't conquering new lands. Today, the three-day event marks Mongolia's independence from China in 1921 and Tsarist Russia. Everyone takes off work to watch – whether in front of their televisions or in person. 

A couple of days before the festival earlier this summer, we noticed Mongolia's bright blue and red national flags springing up on cars all over the country

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Wrestlers at the National Stadium on the opening day of the Naadam festival in Ulan Bator.

Families in Ulan Bator, Mongolia's capital city, shopped for live goats or sheep from shepherds, who had traveled long distances to reach the edge of the city with their herds.

And at least in Ulan Bator, Mongolia's capital, the recent festival had a state fair feel to it – lots of food, families, and fun. Smaller-scale, local Naadam festivals also are held all across Mongolia. 

The 'manly' sports
Despite the event's community and social elements, sport remains at the heart of Naadam, which in Mongolian means "game."

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Archers practice for Naadam in Ulan Bator.

Wrestling, in particular, is tremendously popular, and why not? Extremely large men dressed in extremely minimal clothing tussle with each other until one falls – a wrestler loses if any part of his body, apart from their hands and feet, touches the ground.

It's a test of strength, but also strategy and wit. And my favorite part: whoever wins gets to imitate the "flight" styles of a hawk, falcon, or the mythical bird creature, Garuda.

Folklore has it that once, long ago, a woman won the wrestling title, which precipitated the minimalist uniform – an open chest vest and snug shorts.

Today, women are allowed to compete in one sport – archery. The bow and arrow was, of course, the main form of weaponry centuries ago in Mongolia, and the contest was designed to test a warrior's strength, marksmanship, and patience. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Arrows with rubber tips, but they still hurt if you get hit.

A woman archer we interviewed emphasized the gender advantage; apparently, women are more patient than men.  But men do have to shoot farther with more arrows – they shoot 40 arrows from a distance of about 250 feet while women shoot 20 arrows from about 200 feet.  

As a spectator sport, it would seem a little tame, but try standing in the target area. Those arrows travel at high speeds.

For a real adrenaline rush, however, horseracing wins hands down. Unlike in the West, the races at Naadam are tough cross-country events, with horses thundering at full speed for distances up to 19 miles. Distances are run according to the age of the horse. For example, five-year-old horses will run 19 miles, while two-year-old horses compete at half that distance.

What's more, the jockeys are little boys, some as young as five years old – although due to safety concerns it's increasingly rare to see riders that young.  We found a seven-year-old, nicknamed Jijigee, who was running his first Naadam – a rite of passage of sorts for young boys from the countryside who are all keen on proving themselves at the greatest horserace all year.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

A group of young jockeys train in the early morning.

Better to watch
And then there's ankle bone shooting, which isn't one of the official "manly" sports, but it's definitely played by men. 

Described by one contestant as a form of "indoor archery," ankle bone shooting entails flicking a shaped piece of ankle bone – taken from a sheep, goat, or deer – at a target about 17 feet away (at least at the competition we watched; in some competitions it's as far as 33 feet). Competitors play in teams of seven or eight, with four men at a time trying their luck. 

I tried my luck, too, and quickly decided the best part of Naadam was watching, not doing.

VIDEO: Watch NBC's Adrienne Mong try to master the art of ankle bone shooting

Click here to see a slideshow of Mongolia's scenic sights during the Nomad Olympics

Click here to read about Mongolia's 'reindeer' people

Listen to a Podcast of NBC's Adrienne Mong discussing how China is viewed in Mongolia

TOKYO – Sunday's landslide victory for Japan's main opposition, Democratic Party of Japan, or DJP, is being heralded as a new beginning for Japanese politics, squarely putting an end to the near continuous postwar rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

The Liberal Democrats only lost power once before in 1994, when a center-left coalition took over the helm of the nation for six months. But that was quickly followed by two years of a pseudo-comeback for the LDP when they combined forces with the polar opposite Socialist Party – but had to give their leader Tomiichi Murayama the front seat to run the nation.

Itsuo Inouye / AP

Yukio Hatoyama, leader of Japan's main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, speaks with red rosettes attached on victorious candidates' names in the background during the ballot counting for the parliamentary elections in Tokyo on Sunday.

But Sunday's election was a particularly stunning defeat for the incumbent party of Prime Minister Taro Aso with an unprecedented voter turnout of 69 percent, overwhelmingly ousting 181 politicians from the Liberal party, including former ministers, and replacing them with 143 freshman opposition candidates.

Still given the entrenched power of the Liberal Democrats, many voters are welcoming the change of party, but tempering their expectations.

"I don' have any high expectations for the Democrats. They're inexperienced and I don't think things will work out so smoothly," said 59-year-old office worker Kazuo Sasaki. "But it's worth giving them a chance. We need to change the way things are done here."

Yasuhiro Tanaka, 28, agreed. "It was a process of elimination," he said. "There was absolutely no hope with the LDP."

Scion of political family
The leader of the Democrats, Yukio Hatoyama has his own thoughts about his party's victory. "I believe people's anger directed at today's politics manifested itself into their hope in our party. And from that perspective, we will humbly strive to build a political system that addresses the voice of the public."

A former professor of business administration with a Ph.D from Stanford University in industrial engineering, Hatoyama, who is widely expected to become Japan's next prime minister, left the LDP during the mid-90s to champion political reforms. But as a politician, he has been faulted by the Japanese media for lacking leadership skills and charisma.

"He's perhaps too nice and too intellectual to be an effective politician. His qualities are: He's very agreeable, balanced and sees two sides of the issue, a go-along get-along personality, and suddenly he has to become harder and sharper," said Professor Jeffery Kingston, who teaches at Temple University in Japan.

But he comes from a distinguished political family. His brother Kunio was most recently a minister within the Aso administration. And, ironically, since he just ousted the LDP, his grandfather Ichiro Hatoyama founded the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955 and served as its first prime minister.

Now, Hatoyama is challenging the very political institution built by his grandfather which led Japan out of its post-war recovery and created the world's second largest economy.

Modern Japanese politics is often characterized by the strength of government bureaucrats, particularly in conceiving and creating the nation's legislation. They were key characters during the great industrial leap of the 1960s, but in recent decades have been blamed for wasteful and bottleneck politics.

"I think it is embarrassing to have become so dependent on bureaucrats, and we will aim to create a political system which does not rely on them," Hatoyama said on election night.

As a departure from the previous party, the Democrats are planning to place as many as 100 of their parliamentarians within the government to monitor and check the budgetary and policy initiatives of the ministry officials.

That said, "DJP's future hangs primarily on economic recovery and that's not going to happen without being on the same page as the bureaucrats and the business people," said Kingston.

But the single biggest change may be that Japan is finally getting a two party political system in which no single political institution will be guaranteed a dominant role in Japanese politics.

"We're at a time of political competition. It's still a transition period," said Kingston. Nevertheless, "DJP is entering a new era where voters feel they can hold them accountable and they will be scrutinized closely."