Every time a new Mongolian-language edition of Cosmopolitan magazine is released, Tselmeg Erdenkhuu sits down with a friend to explore a monthly dose of Hollywood gossip, glitzy fashion and scintillating sex.
“They talk about sex a lot in this magazine, like what position is healthy or how to make men go crazy,” said the 28-year-old businesswoman, who is a single mother.
The titillating revelations are just part of a US media invasion of the once remote country, which has ridden a globalisation wave since shaking off communism two decades ago.
Mongolians are avid readers and the country’s litreacy rate is more than 97 per cent, a legacy of the Soviet-era education system which saw village boarding schools set up for nomads’ children.
Even in the vast nation’s distant grasslands herdsmen are to be found reading crumpled two-week-old newspapers inside their felt-covered yurts.
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