Nadam Festival
( 2005-09-13 )

To shoot from a standstill means to draw a bow to shoot while standing still. The distance from the target to the archer is in accordance with specific conditions, but it is usually fixed in the same competition.

To shoot while riding is to draw a bow and shoot while riding a horse galloping on a special track. Generally, the track is a special channel that is four meters wide, eighty-five meters long, and half a meter in depth. There are two targets standing on the left side while one on the right. In the competition, an archer, entering the track on horse and drawing a bow while the horse speeds, aims at the target to shoot at his best.

The mass sports activities such as horse racing, wrestling, and archery play a very important role in both physical training and the enrichment of grassroot-level culture life.

Winners of the three sports are usually given horses, camels, sheep, brick tea, and silk as awards.

At the start of every Nadam Festival, herdsmen and herdswomen will converged from all directions in complete-new national costumes, riding their horses and carrying yurt and all kinds of meat and milk products on their light wooden cart. While putting up the yurt on the greensward, people begin to simmer tea and stew meat. As smoke curls upward from kitchen chimneys on the whole grassland, all the people will be absorbed in a joyous atmosphere.