Genghis Candy in Xanadu

Jehangir Pocha of the International Herald Tribune reports that the emergence of democracy in Mongolia has fueled a popular obsession with that peerless champion of democratic governance, Genghis Khan:

Now, as Mongolia is reinventing itself as a free-market democracy, it is also searching its past for the means to define itself. And no one looms larger in its history than Temujin, who took the title Genghis Khan, or Universal Ruler, after forging the world's largest land empire in the early 1200s.

Evidence of a renewed romance with Genghis Khan is everywhere. Children, streets, hotels, vodka, cigarettes, banks, candy bars, beer, products and businesses of almost every type all carry his name; his face is on Mongolian money, stamps and official buildings, and is spray-painted on street corners.

Whole thing here.