A Glimpse into Burma
Mandalay Hill
MANDALAY HILL IS northeast of the city and rises like a giant anthill from the alluvial plane. We pack ourselves into sardine tin trucks. Ten minutes of switchbacks, the road is pocked and the locals are walking up the incline. Shoes and socks: off. An escalator (escalator?) handles the remaining elevation, and a young woman at a folding table collects a camera surcharge of five hundred kyat.
A few more stairs; you are there, and it is stunning. The sun coquettish, peering from behind a veil of clouds, concluding its arc. The Irrawaddy River ambles to the west, broad and muddy and ill-defined, ablaze in the splendor of sunset. Distance affords the city far below an air of order and calm absent at street level. At its center, a great morass; a perfect square mile of tree and shadow ringed by the living city; the royal court, home of Burma’s last kings, snuffed out in 1885 by General Harry Prendergast and Her Majesty’s Burma Field Force.
The Sutaungpyei pagoda, ornate and grand and many-pointed, is perched atop the hill’s apex. A broad balcony surrounds the structure and grants three hundred sixty degree views. The ceramic floor tiles have just been washed; the water let stand cools the feet and invites shimmering reflections of sky and gold tipped spires. Inside a group of lay people bow and chant quietly. Monks pass noiselessly beneath archways inscribed with the names of donors in lovely, looping Burmese script.
A young man approaches me and asks me where I am from. You’ll find that a lot of Burmese walk up Mandalay hill just to practice their English with tourists, we have been informed. I am desirous of soaking in the beauty and significance of this place in silence. "De España," I lie. "¿España? ¿Donde en España?" My would be conversation partner speaks fluent Spanish. I play along, equal parts amused and ashamed with the duplicitous scenario I have landed myself in.
By the time I loose myself from this ignoble role play, the sun has disappeared beyond the distant hills, amber lamplight illuminates the balcony, and the ripening moon shines brilliantly in the east. One can just make out the irregular patchwork of endless rice fields to the north, the countryside utterly devoid of electric light. The exception is an enormous, horseshoe-shaped complex of buildings lit up like a birthday cake a few miles north of Mandalay.
"This view lost a bit of its magic," Dwight tells me, "when I found out that is a prison."
The void created when the British marched into Mandalay in many ways has never been filled. Seventy years of colonial rule followed by devastation at the hands of both Axis and Ally during World War II left a weakened and divided nation, a nation that just fourteen years after its hard won independence fell victim to a military coup d’etat that has persisted in one form or another since 1962. Military rule in Burma has been characterized by oppression, corruption, fear, xenophobic foreign policy, and disastrous domestic policy. The ruling junta’s priorities are evident in the wide, well-lit boulevards of the remote, restricted, and newly-built capitol city of Naypyidaw and the crumbling streets of Yangon, the crowded former capitol they left behind. While the countryside and the historical heart of the country’s second city are cloaked in darkness, the resources of the nation are channeled into a sprawling prison complex at the foot of Mandalay hill.
A handful of young monks have engaged our group of students. They are open and amiable and inquisitive. Burma is full of monasteries and monastics, and every male Buddhist in Burma is expected to briefly ordain as a novice monk at least once in his life. As I listen to the monks earnest questioning and easy laughter, I cannot help but wonder if the continued vitality of Buddhism in Burma represents the inner quest for freedom that has so long been denied outwardly.
It is time to go and we bid farewell to the young monks. I take a last look at the Irrawaddy, now inky black and flecked with moonlight. We descend the stairs to board the waiting trucks that will bring us down into the dark and pulsing streets of Mandalay.
Bangkok
THE AMERICAN’S NAME was Sid. He was middle-aged, paunchy, with a sandy mustache and a world-worn air. The Burmese were all quite young. None looked to be over twenty-five. They were quiet and furtive. We all sat or knelt on the floor and the shades were drawn.
This was Bangkok in September of 1999 at the office of the small non-governmental organization Burma Matters. The eight of us American students were here on a two week study tour of Asia, part of a cross-cultural education fellowship organized by Volunteers in Asia. Thus far, the trip had primarily consisted of visits to temples and museums as well as home stays with students we had hosted months earlier in California. This meeting was something quite different.
Sid spoke first. He explained Burma Matters mission of raising awareness of the plight of the Burmese people living under a brutally oppressive military regime. The Burmese who worked with him, he continued, did so at considerable personal risk. They were among the two million Burmese who had fled Thailand seeking a better life or more breathing room to mobilize opposition against the junta.
Then the Burmese began to speak, softly at first, but unwaveringly. They told of forced relocations of ethnic minorities, of conscripted labor, of cooperation between the government and foreign oil companies to clear a “buffer zone” around a pipeline that was under construction. They told of friends or relatives who had been apprehended and never heard from again.
When each Burmese had spoken and our questions ceased, we talked casually, lightly, and simply became young people relating to other young people. We said goodbye and walked towards the hotel, stirred and reflective.
Years later, I learned that the Burma Matters office had been closed by the Thai government. Sid was thrown out of the country and has not been able to return. I do not know what happened to the Burmese.
DWIGHT CLARK WAS Dean of Freshman Men at Stanford University when he took a group of students to volunteer at an orphanage school in Hong Kong during the summer of 1963. The experience was a transformative one for many of the young undergraduates, just as it was for their group leader. By popular demand, subsequent trips followed. Dwight—struck by the inspiration, focus, and, and open-mindedness students were drawing from their experience and the deep cross-cultural connections that were being established—formed Volunteers in Asia, and began to slowly expand the organization’s reach.
I met Dwight in the fall of 1998 while nervously awaiting an interview for the Payson Treat cross-cultural fellowship, the program that would see me eleven months later squatting on the floor of the Burma Matters office in Bangkok. We shared five minutes of easy conversation over green tea. When my name was called, I realized I was no longer in the least bit nervous.
In the intervening years, I have never strayed far from VIA’s orbit, and Dwight and I have become close friends. Whether or not I was working for VIA, as I did from 2003 to 2006, he an I have made a point of convening for dinners that invariably lead to long, rambling discussions about politics and foreign affairs. Around 2003, our conversations began to regularly turn to a country that increasingly held Dwight’s attention: the troubled Southeast Asian nation now officially known as Myanmar. The seeds of interest were being planted.
"THESE DAYS IN Bangkok allow us to speak, and to question, a bit more openly than we will be able to in Burma." Dwight emphasizes the latter half of the sentence with a grin. We are all here now: the four Taiwanese; the three Thais; the eleven Japanese; Dwight, and myself. This first meeting commences in a lecture hall on the second floor of the Political Science Department of Chulalongkorn University. The air is thick and hot, and Dwight is in the midst of an orientation preamble. "In Burma, we will quickly learn the art of diplomatic conversation."
Except for Dwight, Kentaro, Shinji, and myself, everyone in the room is a current undergraduate student. They are a diverse group, ranging in academic focus from urban planning to media studies to the psychology of terrorism. Many have lived abroad. There is a delightful mix of youthfulness and maturity about them.
A guest joins us after lunch—a British writer and journalist. Emma Larkin is the pen name she uses so as to ensure continued access into Burma.
"How many people know your two identities?" someone asks.
"My mother, my publisher, and me. Hopefully," she knocks on the desk, "it will stay that way."
Larkin looks to be in her late thirties. She wears a short-sleeve collar shirt and her hair pulled loosely back. After spending much of her childhood in Thailand, she took an interest in Burma and studied the language in London after college. Her language ability gives her unique access to Burmese current affairs and culture and puts her in a very small category of westerners who have learned the language.
It is a beautiful language with this wonderful, strange, and circular script, she says and then laughs as she recalls the commentary of an American official who had mastered Burmese. He told me once, “You know, it sounds lovely. But it’s like reading a damned bowl of Cheerios.”
Larkin’s book, Finding George Orwell in Burma, is a fascinating exploration of that writer and the country in which he served as a young man for five years as a member of the British military. Some Burmese, says Larkin, refer to Orwell as “the prophet” because his books seem to predict the tragic trajectory of their country. His novel Burmese Days paints a picture of moral decay during the British colonial era. Animal Farm’s allegorical tale of a socialist uprising gone awry mirrors the disastrous “Burmese Way to Socialism” overseen by General Ne Win in the 1960s and 70s. And 1984’s depiction of totalitarianism all too eerily foretells modern Burma, a country in which neighbors are apt to suspect one another of espionage and the “Press Scrutiny Division” scrubs media clean of any potentially subversive content.
"People come to Burma for two or three weeks and think everything’s OK. People look happy. What’s the big deal?" Larkin explains. "Well, what you have in Burma is “invisible oppression”. Nobody knows how many spies work for Military Intelligence. In effect, it doesn’t matter how many spies there are as long as people think they are potentially everywhere. What you get is an erosion of trust. The psychological stress of guarding yourself all of the time is huge. After the 2007 protests, spies have even entered the monasteries. The government isn’t taking any more chances of political ferment starting with the monks. They learned that lesson."
Our group listens in rapt attention and peppers Larkin with questions, which she good-naturedly answers long after the talk is scheduled to end. Finally, she must be going. She is finishing up the manuscript for her next book on Burma. She leaves us with this advice: "Look for the absences, for what’s not said and what’s not published. If you flip through Time magazine, note which pages are missing. Listen for rumors. Rumors are an indication of the people’s hopes, and their fears."
I WAKE EARLY the next morning and set off to explore the neighborhood before the sun grips the city. In 1999, Bangkok was in a state of suspended animation on account of the Asian financial crisis. Skyscrapers stood half built and abandoned. Tracks for the new Skytrain system ended abruptly midair, tarped and gathering dust. A strange and listless energy bubbled in the streets.
Ten intervening years had seen the Skytrain completed, the skyline bristled with ever more office buildings and luxury apartments, and a sleek and enormous international airport had been constructed. I turn away from the broad, choked avenues and follow a narrow pathway along a canal. The water is a limp and lifeless gray, churned every few minutes by long, arrow-like diesel commuter boats. Morning glories and ferns spring from cracks in the pavement. A man is shaving in front of his ramshackle house; a woman is washing clothes and watching a Korean soap opera; scrawny white cats duck apologetically behind cinder blocks and potted plants.
I turn down a street thick with cart vendors. A newspaper deliveryman pulls up to a stand on his motorbike, orders a bowl of porridge, and proceeds to eat without dismounting. Two barefoot monks walk quickly with their arms cradling their big alms bowls. I find a coffee cart and take a seat at the small plastic table the proprietor has set up with a faded blue tarp jury-rigged to block the sun. I order coffee and the coffee man and his assistant spring into action, mixing ingredients like a alchemists in cans of Carnation condensed milk. The brew is thick and intensely sweet. I share the table with a voluble, pickled old woman and a toothless old fellow with a bald head, wry smile, and a few long, stray hairs sprouting at random from his grizzled face. We all watch the world go by: school kids in uniform, a truck full of day laborers, a woman strolling across the intersection, twirling a rainbow umbrella absently. The alchemists pop up every time they see a regular approach, pouring the concoction into plastic bags for those on the go. Not a word passes during these transactions, a detail I note and puzzle over.
IN A POORLY ventilated multi-purpose room on the eighth floor of the Evergreen apartment building, British journalist Larry Jagan is a torrent of anecdote and information. Formerly the BBC’s Burma correspondent, Jagan now works as a freelance journalist in Bangkok. Even as he relates the difficulties of modern Burma, Jagan has the ebullient air of one whose passion and paycheck happily derive from the same source.
"Currently," Jagan says with some relish, "I am banned. I’ve just turned in my eighty-seventh visa application, and I am anticipating my eighty-seventh rejection. From 2002 to 2004, there was a brief window of time when I could get in, and I went every month. But now, I’m back on the black list!"
Jagan has twinkling, bespectacled eyes, and sports a salt and pepper goatee, jeans, and smart-looking sneakers. He is jovial, self-depreciating, and utterly tangential. He is talking about the elections coming up in 2010.
"The junta has what they call the “roadmap to guided democracy”. They’ve just finished up step four, which was the new constitution. Step five is the upcoming election. Of course, the constitution is a bit of a sham, and the regime conveniently skipped step two, which was freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. And fully twenty-five percent of the seats in the new government will automatically go to the military, and the president and the vice-presidents will also be selected by the junta. But my Burmese friends all say 2015 is the election to watch. That’s when things may get interesting."
Jagan is sitting forward in his chair now.
"Both the beating and imprisonment of the monks during the 2007 protests and Cyclone Nargis have had a big impact leading up to this election. Irrespective of politics, people were outraged at how the military treated the monks. And Nargis, because the government did almost nothing, has empowered people. Community leaders had to take initiative, and they’re the ones that are going to be running for election in 2010 and 2015."
Inquisitive hands are now sprouting up all about the room. Yoshifumi asks about pro-democracy leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and the prospects for her National League for Democracy party if she continues to be held under house arrest.
"There will be no legitimacy in the election if Suu is not freed. The NLD has said it will boycott the election. But the NLD’s influence and support is declining somewhat. The leaders of the 1988 uprising, when they were released from prison in 2004, they got it. They understood the key issue is not democracy; it is survival. They used the international press to call attention to economic issues. They were demanding not democracy, but economic rationality."
"Daw Suu, on the other hand, is focused on democracy. “Larry,” she would always tell me, “Democracy first, development second.” She is still the people’s hero, but her party is losing ground and losing it’s common touch."
There are more questions: about sanctions, about the influence of China, about drug trade and instability in the ethic areas. Larry is clearly enjoying himself. At length he looks at his watch and raises his eyebrows.
"You have to be careful with us journalists!" he laughs. "We’re like wind-up toys. Wind us up, and we can go on indefinitely!"
THE STUDENT-LED PROTESTS of 1988 began at 8:08 on the morning of August 8. Eight is an auspicious number in Burma, and those involved in the uprisings that began that day became known as the ’88 generation. Thousands of civilians were killed or jailed in the ensuing government crackdown. Many survivors fled to the eastern hills waiting for international support of an armed struggled against the junta. International support never came.
Myint Wai had been a technician in the Burmese Airforce before the ’88 movement began. He left the military and joined the flood of people gathering in the Shan Hills. When it became clear that there would be no concerted, internationally supported move against the junta, he had little choice but to flee to Thailand. He has not been back to Burma or seen his family for over twenty years.
With his voice a low rasp, Myint Wai explains to us the history and function of Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma, the non-governmental organization he heads.
There are two million Burmese in Thailand, he says, We try to do something to support them.
Seated next to Myint Wai are a half dozen young Burmese who work with a sister organization, Development of Education and Awareness for Refugees of Burma, in some capacity. Together, they paint a picture of Burma’s remarkable ethnic diversity. Each stands in turn and introduces himself or herself and shares the circumstances that brought them to Bangkok. Most are university students. They have come from the far corners from Burma: from Shan State, from Karen State, from the Mon State, from Yangon, and from the delta region. The young Mon man is stocky, dark, and jovial.
"We all faced many difficulties," he says, the smile momentarily leaving his face. "Yes, we faced many difficulties."
"The issues facing Burma," a young Karen man continues, "are not just internal. Human trafficking, regional stability, the drug trade—these are problems everyone faces together. Hope for Burma is fifty percent in the hands of the Burmese, and fifty percent in the hands of the international community."
We break out into discussion groups. A young Karen man wears a sheepish look and is being chided by two of his friends.
"I was at the protest at the embassy the other day," he tells me. "Usually we don’t go because we don’t want to get identified by Military Intelligence and have our visa revoked. But the one time I go, I end up in a newspaper photo!"
"What if your visa is revoked," I ask.
"Oh, we have ways of getting in and out," he says casually. "It’s just… it’s just a bit more complicated."
Yangon
RICE PADDIES STRETCH out below like a lush, green carpet, dotted with cotton swab clouds and their corresponding shadows. Crumbling, bustling, sweltering Yangon drapes heavily on the landscape just northeast of the vast Irrawaddy Delta. Villages, veiled by clusters of dark trees, bulge along rivulets.
Passing through customs and baggage claim, we enter a throng of taxi drivers and people awaiting their loved ones. Nearly everyone wears traditional, sarong-like longyi. We are greeted by Robert, our guide, and Justin and Aung Soe, two of our student hosts. Among the crowd, two men casually take pictures of our group with cell phone cameras.
"Smile for Military Intelligence," Susuke jokes dryly to me under his breath.
After Bangkok, the streets of Yangon seem positively tranquil. Motorbikes are illegal, purportedly because of a solitary incident in which a biker cut off a high-ranking general and ceremoniously offered a certain finger for his consideration. Life congregates on the sidewalks, the heat and humidity slowly roasting those who would endeavor to stay indoors. Aside from a narrow pathway for pedestrians, every inch of sidewalk real estate is accounted for by fruit vendors, booksellers, shoe repairmen, sign makers, food carts, tobacco and betel venders, and teashops. Walking requires vigilant attentiveness, as storm gutters cut across the path and concrete slabs jut up irregularly. Faces of diverse features and complexion flow past; the women’s cheeks are slathered with yellow thanaka paste, an indigenous sun block and moisturizer made from sandalwood bark. A smile or laugh is likely to reveal a mouth stained red by betel.
Even before the British marched into Mandalay in 1885, Yangon (then called Rangoon) was a trading hub with a strong international presence. Rangoon was the seat of British colonial power, a history that is immediately evident in the grand and dilapidated architecture of much of the city. “Parts of the city,” writes Emma Larkin, “look as if London had been transplanted into a tropical landscape and left to moulder for a century or two.”
From the ninth floor window of my hotel room, I watch schoolchildren in white shirts and forest green longyi playing soccer in the square below. A thick, gray cloud stretches endlessly over the city like a padded ceiling. The spires of an old brick church reach towards the cloud cover.
After dinner, the students take us to Shwe Dagon pagoda, the heart of Buddhist life in Yangon. The central stupa is covered with gold leaf and shimmers in an otherworldly light. The complex is huge, and it takes us twenty minutes to slowly circumambulate the main temple.
"What day were you born?" asks Myint Aye.
"November seventh," I reply.
"No, no. What day of the week?"
I plead ignorance.
In Burma, the day of the week you were born is very important. People do special rituals at the appropriate shrine at the base of the pagoda. There are eight shrines, one for each day of the week.
I shoot her a puzzled look.
"We consider Wednesday to be two days," she continues. "We say that the Buddha attained enlightenment on Wednesday morning, so that is its own day symbolized by the white elephant you see there. Wednesday afternoon is another day, symbolized by the black elephant."
Aung Khan saunters up beside me. He is sixteen, tall and self confident, with impeccable English.
"Have you already ordained as a monk, Aung Khan?" I ask.
"Yeah, sure. It’s nice, the life of a monk. You get up early, you meditate, go on your alms round. There’s a lot of time to reflect. It’s a nice life."
We continue on in silence, taking in the activity all around us. A little girl dips her hand in a pool of water at her birthday shrine. Three men sit silently, eyes closed, on the steps of a side temple. A young couple talks giddily, oblivious to the world.
The pagoda is really a place for community, a gathering spot, Aung Khan says. You come here, and life makes sense for a while.
SHINJI AND I have ordered mango juice, and Dwight has opted for green tea. Khin Toe is drinking coffee.
We are in an upscale restaurant on the twentieth floor of the Sakura building in downtown. All of Yangon rambles out before us, and hip-hop music wafts discordantly in from the bar.
Khin Toe wears a thick purple longyi, a rumpled brown plaid shirt, and heavy-sitting glasses. His thinning hair is tousled and moving decidedly towards grey. His smile is nearly constant and his laughter irrepressible.
Khin Toe, Dwight told Shinji and me this morning, is the closest person I’ve encountered who might reasonably be called a renaissance man. He followed with the supporting evidence: doctor, writer, businessman, translator, educator, and school founder. But the thing is, he is so humble you would never know he does all of these things.
Khin Toe speaks quietly and quickly with a thick Burmese accent. We all crane our heads forward.
"One of the problems with education in Burma," he begins, "is that our schools do not emphasize critical thinking. We learn by rote, and we don’t learn to question."
We pause as a Chinese family sits down at the next table. Khin Toe cleans his glasses with his shirt.
"We have been working with some of the monastic schools. We’re encouraging them to take a critical thinking approach. These schools serve very poor children, usually only through grade four. So we’re really just trying to plant a seed. At this point, we have been sponsoring monks to train in Thailand. We would like to set up a training center here in Burma, but…" he smiles an imperturbable smile, "but the timing isn’t right just yet."
"When, if ever," Dwight asks, "Do you expect to see substantive political change in Burma?"
Khin Toe looks off in the distance for a moment. "Five years. If things are going to change, I think it will start within five years."
"What about climate change," I ask. "Is anyone concerned with its implications, given the vulnerability of the delta region to rising sea levels?" Khin Toes face becomes serious.
"That," he says flatly, "is a big concern. That is the big concern. Most people here have more immediate problems to worry about, but it is a huge issue that effects all of us. I have been translating articles and books, you know, on climate change into Burmese so that there is more awareness. It is a challenge for the whole world, I think."
We continue on in lively conversation for nearly two hours. Of his recent trips to Malaysia and Cambodia as part of a peace building program bringing together the different ethnic groups from Burma, Khin Toe says with a laugh, "You know…we Burmese don’t have much of a chance to make friends while we’re in Burma!"
Contacts are shared, books and articles recommended. We descend from the tranquil, air-conditioned environs of the restaurant and onto the teeming streets.
You must come and visit my school. I think you will find it interesting, Khin Toe says as he clasps my hand in both of his and smiles as if he is bidding farewell to an old and dear friend. Dwight and Shinji receive the same heartfelt goodbye. Khin Toe waves as we disappear into the river of people flowing east down Bogyoke Aung San Road.
SHINJI AND I walk Dwight back to the hotel, head south on Pansodan Street, and search of a place for cold beer and continued conversation before dinner. Men at teashops are seated at doll-sized plastic tables all along the sidewalk. We leap over an open storm gutter and pass a dog lounging on a worn stoop. At the intersection, we wait until a Burmese woman makes her move and shadow her weaving motions through traffic.
We duck into a dark cave of a place next to an electronics store and order a pitcher of Myanmar beer. The waiter pours our glasses, motions as to offer to sell us cigarettes, then joins the bartender at the door to leer at women as they walk past. We are the only customers in the bar. We raise our mugs, exchange kampai’s, and take a long, thirsty sip of the cool, light lager.
"So," I say, "Let’s here more about this plan."
Shinji laughs and pulls out of his bag a journal labeled “39”.
The plan in question is Shinji’s vision to transform Japan, starting with revitalization of its aging and emptying countryside. Shinji is thirty years old, amiable, and wildly talented. At twenty-four, he was the youngest person to ever attend the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, an elite graduate school for rising civil servants and future politicians. But Shinji is cut of a different cloth. He travels widely in the developing world, works as a disc jockey, hosts a nationally broadcast radio program, mentors university students, and works as a management consultant. All of this, of course, is part of the plan.
"How long have you been scheming this up, Shinji?" I ask.
"For twelve years."
I choke on my beer. "Twelve years?!"
He opens journal 39.
"The past twelve years, I’ve been kind of “training” myself—developing the skills and relationships I’ll need. The next eight years… well, you know Star Wars? I love Star Wars. I call the next eight years Episode I."
Shinji goes on to explain how he will return to his hometown of forty thousand and work in three realms—education, business, and media—to help bolster the local economy, create local energy infrastructure, and encourage community building initiatives throughout the city.
"What’s Episode II look like?"
That will be working on a national level, either as Minister of Education or first as a kind of governor. If you work your way up through the National Diet, it can take a long time to become a minister. So I am thinking about different routes. The goal is to take what we know about educating the whole person and revitalizing communities and then sharing best practices throughout Japan.
Shinji speaks matter-of-factly, genially, and without arrogance.
"And Episode III?"
He gives a sly smile and laughs. "Episode III? The world!"
And I know he is only half joking.
The dark cave is suddenly illuminated by stage lighting to my right. A woman walks measuredly to center stage and begins to sing Burmese songs to karaoke accompaniment. We are still the only customers. It is time to get back for dinner. We settle the bill, and Shinji puts journal 39 back in his bag.
"Quite a strange place," I say. "We are back on the sidewalk."
"Yes. It was a very strange place!"
WE ARE ALL in the lobby of the Panorama Hotel. There is a good-natured inertia every morning as we meet again with the Burmese students and cobble together the day’s plans and logistics. We hover and buzz in small pockets and splinter off as groups are self-selected: this one off to visit CARE International, that one off to visit Yangon’s largest Hindu temple. I am chatting with David, one of the Taiwanese students. Dwight joins us wearing a grin that is half staged, half amused. Leaning close and speaking through his smile, he says:
"Care to play spot the M.I. guy?”
My eyes scan the room discreetly.
"This fellow in the chair?"
"I’m pretty sure I saw him yesterday. He’s just been reading the paper amongst our group. But of course…we could just be indulging in childish games."
It is an odd and disconcerting thing to know that there is always a chance you are being watched, or listened to; to feel that someone is perhaps sitting a touch closer than they need to; and to wonder if the man you meet on the street is being more inquisitive than he ought to be. Suspicion and mistrust are subtle but ever-present, like background chatter in a crowded restaurant. On a handful of occasions, Dwight and I would be talking about the upcoming election or rumors that the monks would stage a protest march when, mid-sentence and without skipping a beat, he would veer wildly off course. "…yes, I do like Oregon. But I don’t think I could live anywhere outside of California." I would play along until the potential informant was out of earshot.
This is all on my mind one early morning as I stroll back from the teashop that has quickly become my locale of choice to engage in people watching. The proprietor is friendly, perhaps entertained by this foreigner who has adopted his stretch of sidewalk. This particular morning, I brought my journal along for company. My writing seemed to arouse casual suspicions.
"What are you writing?" the teashop owner asked with a raised eyebrow. I told him.
"Uh huh… and where are you staying? … Yes, Yes … Why you came to Myanmar? … OK, OK."
Nothing unusual about this banter, but there is a certain “looking cautiously through the peephole” tinge to the conversation.
The extent of it hit me, Dwight told me over lunch one day, when one of the Burmese students from a few years back told me that he didn’t feel comfortable speaking openly with his classmates. He thought one of them might be an informant.
Passing a bearded man with Indian features repairing shoes on the sidewalk, it struck me how quickly distrust and doubt had been seeping into my own thoughts and actions. I had lied to the teashop owner when he asked me where I was staying. Why would he want to know something like that? Even if he doesn’t work for military intelligence, maybe he gets some sort of commission for reporting on suspicious behavior. Should I even go back there tomorrow?
It was ridiculous, all of it. I was doing nothing the least bit subversive or political and had nothing to hide. But somehow, the very thought of Military Intelligence made me feel as if I had something to hide. I was surely guilty of some sort of Orwellian thoughtcrime.
This insidious distrust and suspicion is one of the primary reasons the junta has managed to maintain power as long as it has. How can an opposition movement grow when people do not trust one another? By spying on their own citizens, and by turning their own people into spies, the junta has injected Burma with a corrosive and debilitating poison. It is a tactic old as empire.
I am back at the hotel. I note for the first time the enormous, truck-sized generator outside that keeps the hotel humming even when power outages and nightly blackouts darken the surrounding buildings. Two young girls pass by, their cheeks adorned by perfect circles of thanaka. I think back to the teashop, its garrulous owner, and my brief lapse into paranoia. Who am I kidding, I think to myself, I’ll be back there tomorrow morning, if not sooner.
Mandalay
THE ROAD FROM Mandalay Airport to the city is broad, tree-lined, well-maintained, and nearly devoid of traffic. Our bus lumbers along the flat and thirsty-looking countryside. Cactus and sugar palms serve as natural fences between small farmsteads.
We eat lunch at a restaurant on a broad and shaded deck perched on stilts above the Irrawaddy. Two small fishing boats launch off the bank below and set off for the gentle, midstream waters. A barge, low and squat, chugs slowly down stream. Time flows like molasses.
I take a swim at the hotel and set off to explore the city. It is true what they all said in Yangon; Mandalay is really, truly hot. The city is laid out in a tidy grid; the buildings are all relatively modern, the legacy of near complete destruction during World War II.
I find a seat at what I assume to be a teashop, but I quickly realize I am at a more general eatery. It is too late; I am committed. The rudimentary coaching I have received in the art of teashop selection goes like this: Go to a place that only serves tea. Look to see if the tea is served with a small spoon. If it is, the teashop is using real condensed milk and, therefore, real tea. No spoon, you are likely to be getting powdered tea mix.
I order my tea from one of the young boys who helps run the shop. He returns a few minutes later, cup in hand. Alas, no spoon.
Teashops are an almost exclusively male domain. Men linger over their small cups, chatting of this and that, watching soccer on television, taking in their surroundings. Each teashop employs a small army of young boys to take customers’ orders and clean tables. It is hard work. I asked my teashop friend in Yangon what time he got up for work.
"Three-thirty in the morning," he said.
"And you work everyday?"
"Everyday."
I sip my tea, light hewed and very sweet. It seems like a nice town, Mandalay. If only it weren’t so frighteningly hot. I had miscalculated and dressed in a dark shirt. It was like wearing a solar oven.
In the center of town stands the imperial palace and its grounds, shielded from the ill-intentioned and the common throng by a wide moat and red brick walls. The compound is massive. I allot myself an hour and twenty minutes to walk around it one morning, only to turn back after walking the length of just one side.
Immediately across from the palace are a number of old churches that either escaped the worst of the World War II clashes or were rebuilt. St. Mary’s is handsomely built of brick. The clock tower reads 1887, just over a year after the British took Mandalay. They didn’t waste a minute putting that one up, I muse to myself.
East of the palace is an older, denser neighborhood. In its midst is Phaung Daw Oo, a school run by monks that educates some seven thousand children and teenagers who otherwise would not be able to afford an education. School costs can easily overwhelm a Burmese family’s budget. Aung Soe, one or our student guides, spoke of the dilemma his family faced in deciding whether to pay eighteen dollars per month for his school fees. His father was earning forty dollars per month at the time.
Phaung Da Oo is housed in several milky-green, five- or six-story buildings. An elder monk, carrying a shade umbrella and wearing heavy glasses and a wide smile, comes to great us. He and Dwight are old friends. They clasp hands, and the monk turns to introduce himself to us as U Nayaka, the school’s founder. He shakes each of our hands in turn.
"Come!" he exclaims, and starts abruptly for the nearest milk-green building. "Come meet our students!"
We make the rounds through a half dozen neat, sparsely furnished classrooms, starting with the first grade. A regular routine is established; we are greeted with a song, and then a brief moment of pandemonium ensues as our group pairs up to talk with the children. Such joy and such a lovely diversity faces. I strike up conversation with several teachers, all young and bright-eyed. I later learn these teachers’ salary; I decide they all must be saints or, more appropriately, bodhisattvas. I also learn that our visit fell on a holiday, and that the teachers and students alike came in just to receive us.
In the evening, we visit a very different educational endeavor. You enter Intensity English through a narrow storefront, pass through the shopkeepers living room, and arrive in a long open-air structure with a corrugated roof. Picnic tables are all akimbo, and the forty-odd students are eagerly awaiting a pairing with their newly arrived conversation partners.
Myint Aung, the shop owner’s son and the enthusiastic founder of Intensity English, has devised a theatrical, number-out-of-a-hat matching procedure that is received with much delight and fanfare by the students. I select my number; there is a roar of cheers, and three bashful teenage girls emerge from the throng.
The Intensity English students typically come to Myint Aung’s humble classroom for two hours every evening, six days per week, to practice conversational English. The students are mostly in their late teens and twenties. At least a third of them are monks. For many in Burma, as across much of the developing world, English is seen as a way out of poverty, a ticket to opportunity. Two of my three young conversation partners tell me they hope to go into the tourism industry, anemic as it currently is in Burma. This explains the intrepid Burmese who hike Mandalay Hill evening after evening.
In a country in which work is hard to come by and wages are extremely low, a five-dollar tip from a foreign tourist represents several days worth of average earnings. Many young Burmese also learn Spanish, Italian, or Japanese; the mother tongues of the majority of Burma’s foreign tourists.
Our third night in Mandalay, we arrange to have dinner at our new Intensity English friends’ homes. I find myself weaving through city traffic on the back of Ti Ha Kyah’s well-loved Honda motorbike, and then deposited at the home of Sinita Koirala.
The small first floor of the Koirala household is a bike shop, and Sinita bids me sit at a small table surrounded on all sides by cubbies full of bolts, hubs, spokes, and other parts and gadgetry of the trade. Koirala sisters and a young brother keep emerging—five in all, ranging in age from nine to seventeen. I ask them about their interests and their dreams for the future. The answers are as follows: business woman, teacher, singer, Bollywood star, soccer player. I ask for the twelve year-old future Bollywood star’s autograph, assuring her it will be worth a fortune some day. She laughs and writes her name in both Nepali and English in my notebook.
The Koiralas are Hindus of Nepali ancestry. Sinita, the eldest of the five children, says she is happiest in the summers when she attends a Hindu school to practice meditation and study the Upanishads. That, and when I am with nature. I like to be silent and sit next to an old tree.
Mother Koirala, compact and mirthful, descends the stairs with rice and curries. The future Bollywood star learns that I studied history in college and asks for a lesson in United States history. Do they know about Abraham Lincoln? I ask. No, is the reply. I bring out pen and notebook and produce the most grossly oversimplified, ten-minute account of Lincoln and our nation’s great struggle with itself that one can possibly imagine.
Dusk has come and gone, photos taken in every possible permutation, dessert plums consumed, and Ti Ha Kyah indicates it is time to move on. The Koiralas file out of the bike shop, arms around one another, waving as we disappear into the night.
IT IS STILL dark when the alarm goes off. Jonathan, an urban planning student from Taipei, and I stumble out of our hotel beds, gather our things, and make our way downstairs. Breakfast is quiet.
The bus ride to the dock is not long, perhaps fifteen minutes. The boat has two cabins below and a long deck above with rows of wicker chairs. Towards the front is a bar selling snacks and drinks. A small sign reads: Hot Tea—Complimentary until 11:30. I vow to make the most of this perk.
The boat is loosed from its moorings, and the engine hums rhythmically. The sun is low in the east, and a pair of small fishing skiffs with royal purple sails ply the water upstream. I select a deck chair under an awning, pull out a book, and settle in to enjoy an eight-hour float down the Irrawaddy.
Aside from our entourage, the boat is sparse in passengers. There are a half dozen or so Burmese, a well-bronzed young French couple, an elder European of undetermined nationality, and a handful of other westerners. Yoshifumi is writing in his journal. Sota is leaning pensively over the side of the rails. Maya and Naomi are teaching Stephanie a few Japanese songs.
Downstream, the Irrawaddy leaves the great plain surrounding Mandalay and is flanked by hills on either side. Gold-tipped spires of stupas and temples poke through the dense foliage. The river, milk chocolate brown and a mile wide, is in no hurry. I find myself profoundly relaxed and happy.
"Care for a refill?" Dwight reaches for my flimsy paper teacup.
"Of course. From now until 11:30, continuously."
We retire to the back of the boat where the drone of the engine and the wind create a suitable atmosphere to talk politics. He has news on a small opposition party that shows some promise.
Several hours into the trip, we gather for one of several reflection sessions scheduled throughout the program. Each of us in turn has a chance to share our thoughts, observations, and befuddlements about our experiences in Burma before breaking into groups of three or four to discuss more in depth. I join up with Naomi and Aya, and we claim three wicker chairs on the top deck.
"It’s all so confusing," Naomi begins. "Compared to Japanese, the Burmese have almost nothing. Materially, that is. But they have so much that we seem to have lost: these loving, extended families; a slower pace of life. And they’re always smiling. People in Japan don’t smile so much. I know that there are many problems in this country, but it makes me wonder what development really means."
"I think about that all of the time," I add. "I think we get caught when we think in terms of “developed” and “developing” countries, as if it were some simple linear progression to a single goal. In the U.S. and Japan, in a lot of ways we’re overdeveloped. We’re consuming and burning through resources at an amazing rate, and, at a certain point, that high level of consumption doesn’t serve to make us any happier."
"And it’s never healthy to have such a glaring discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots—that always breeds unrest and inequality. I think the big question is; how do industrialized nations return to a simpler, less destructive lifestyle and help impoverished nations develop to a point where basic needs are met and some semblance of equity established."
Stephanie and her group pass by. The hour has flown by, and it is time to reconvene.
"How did your discussion go?" I ask.
"Great… for the first five minutes."
"And then?"
"And then this guy came up and sat near us. We thought he might be a spy. So we talked about food."
Bagan
AS THE BOAT nears Bagan, red brick temples crop up among along the banks with increasing frequency. I stand at the very aft of the ship, the small red and blue Burmese flag fluttering in the wind. Big, towering white clouds glide across an immense sky. The captain saddles us up to the landing, and a long wooden plank is placed to serve as our bridge to shore. I pack up and somewhat reluctantly bid adieu to the pleasant deck and the gentle waters of the Irrawaddy.
Awaiting us on the bank is a small army of artisans, trinket sellers, and would-be tour guides. I know that tourism has all but dried up in the past few years, and that these people’s already marginal living was under even greater strain. Yet I keep my head down, averting every gaze, and made a beeline for the waiting bus.
Bagan, now a sleepy tourist town on the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy, was once the very heart of the Buddhist world. Standing as a testament to that bygone era are well over two thousand stupas, pagodas, and temples in and around Old Bagan. When UNESCO declared Bagan a world heritage site in 1996, the Burmese government ordered the thousands of people living amongst the eleventh century ruins to relocate to the hastily built New Bagan. Today, Old Bagan holds a silent splendor, its spires interspersed among trees and fields of sesame plants.
The day’s heat is at its formidable peak when we arrive at one of the larger temples, red bricked and time worn. Narrow, pitch-dark passages lead up and out to a first viewing level. An artist selling sand paintings on a white blanket looks up as I emerge. The panorama is remarkable.
The majority of buildings from the Bagan’s golden age were built, without mortar, of a deep sienna-colored brick forged near Mandalay and then floated down the Irrawaddy. When the region was struck by a 7.2 earthquake in 1975, the newer buildings made with mortar fared poorly. The older buildings sustained very little damage. Without recourse to masonry, the builders of Bagan had developed ingenious methods of construction that withstood the ravages even of very large earthquakes.
I climb higher, favoring the shaded side of the building and snapping photos when my footing is not too precarious. As we make our way back to the bus, a young Burmese freelance tour guide strikes up conversation. "Where are you from?" he asks.
"California."
"Oh! California! Do you know David?"
I laugh.
“Well… David… there are a couple of Davids in California, you know. What is David’s last name?"
He doesn’t know, and we are, alas, destined to never discover whether or not we have a mutual acquaintance in David.
WE ARE THE only guests at the quaint and pleasant Ruby True Lodge. The innkeeper and her staff put on a traditional dance to welcome us. David’s friend the tour guide and a handful of others have followed us from the temple, hoping that their persistence will pay off. Several girls selling postcards and lacquer ware are also awaiting us. Our arrival seems to be a well-known and highly anticipated event.
During dinner, the house entertainment continues with an impressive puppeteer performance and more traditional dances. Giving a last round of applause, I cannot help but recalling a passage from Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things:
"In the evenings (for that Regional Flavor) the tourists were treated to truncated kathakali performances (“Small attention spans,” the Hotel People explained to the dancers). So ancient stories were collapsed and amputated. Six-hour classics were slashed to twenty-minute cameos."
I have always felt somewhat ill at ease with economies heavily based on tourism, particularly when those economies are a meeting point of first and third worlds. Not only are such economies vulnerable to the vagaries of travel fads, transportation costs, and (particularly in Burma’s case) geopolitical instabilities; heavy reliance on tourism also contributes to an increasing dependence on people and systems outside of the community’s control. As communities become more “specialized” in the tourist trade, they typically become less resilient and more one dimensional as local trades, crafts, and agriculture are often less lucrative and therefore left whither on the vine.
New Bagan is doubly afflicted. Alongside tourism, agriculture is the town’s primary economic sector. Years of drought have devastated many farmers, most of whom rely on rain water to irrigate their crops.
"The weather is bad, very bad. Too hot." This is from Lin Lin, one of the waiters at Ruby True. "My father is a farmer, but he is getting old. My brothers and I help him, but this year we hardly get anything."
A trip to the farmers market at first glance belies the region’s agricultural woes. Piled high on mats and blankets are an enormous variety of fruits and vegetables. Closer inspection, however, reveals produce that is often small or yellowing, clear signs of heat stress. We venture to the outskirts of town and visit a small family-run farm specializing in peanuts, sugar palm, and sesame.
"How does this drought affect your crops?" I ask the lively old farmer through our guide Michael.
"The sugar palms are fine. But the sesame… well, you see,” he shrugs and nods his head in the direction of a parched and sandy field of scraggly, green-brown plants.
In this economic climate, it is little wonder that the young are desperate to find work elsewhere.
"My dream?" Lin Lin asks in response to my question. He smiles and looks embarrassed as if he is about to relate something that is utterly fantastical. "I want to go to another country—Japan, the United States, Germany, England—to make some money. I make thirty thousand kyat (about thirty U.S. dollars) per month here, but I don’t spend that. It goes to support my family."
It is sobering to think how long Lin Lin would have to work to save enough money to fly to any of the countries he has mentioned. Michael, our outstanding guide in Bagan, had not worked with a tour group for months before our visit.
"I was planning on trying to find work in Dubai, he tells me, but my wife and child are here, and a lot of these placement companies are a scam. Some friends of mine paid their fees, turned in their documents, and took some tests. They’ve been waiting for nine months now without any word, and I don’t think they will hear anything at all. There is very little work here," he shrugs, "but I think it’s better I stay. We have our problems, but this is also a very special place."
"WOULD YOU LIKE a bit of Mandalay Rum?" Robert has a clipped, British inflection that lends his invitation an elegant air. My ready acceptance brings a smile to his face.
Our time in Bagan is waning, and shortly thereafter we will be heading back to Bangkok. Robert and I take a seat in the hotel restaurant and raise our glasses. Robert is rail thin with rakish, unruly hair and nail-bitten, shaky hands. He lights a London brand cigarette.
"My father and I… we didn’t always see things the same way," he is telling me. "He worked for the government. I didn’t agree—you know how sons are. When the ’88 protests started, he put me under house arrest for ten days. That," he taps his cigarette and pours himself more rum, "took me some time to get over. But I did. When he was on his deathbed, I forgave him. I really did love him. But we had different ideas, you know."
"For a long time, I have not been very optimistic about the future of our country, about the possibility of change taking place in our government. Now, he raises a shaky thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart, I have a little hope."
"What changed?"
"You can’t always put a finger on it, but the people are waking up. The situation with the monks, then Nargis… I think—I hope—that people are stating to wake up again."
BACK IN YANGON, I walk past the booksellers and the Bollywood theater, past the Anglican church and the huge, vacant corner lot being cleared by day laborers. My teashop friend is happy to see me.
"You return from Mandalay! Welcome from Mandalay!"
I tell him that, sadly, I will be leaving the next morning. He pulls up one of the tiny plastic stools and leaves the tea making to his squad of youngsters.
"You will be back, yes?"
"I think so. I don’t know when, exactly. But I have fallen in love with your country. So I think I will come back when I can."
"You come back. I will be right here making tea!" He laughs and returns to his station.
I stir the condensed milk with the tiny spoon. A trishaw driver is sprawled in the cab of his vehicle, resting unperturbed by the city’s commotions.
Down towards the river, massive colonial buildings that once housed the bureaucracies of the British Empire are now occupied by the Yangon Port Authority, the Myanmar Central Post Office, and other state agencies. Some buildings are completely empty, fallout after the capitol was moved to Nawpyidaw in 2004.
The creation of a new capitol from the ground up is characteristic of the sudden, arbitrary, and drastic decisions often made by the junta. University campuses were moved from the major cities to remote locations to minimize the potential of campus rabble rousing spilling into the general populace, as it had in colonial times and in 1988. The country’s name, and the names of many of its major cities, were changed in previous decades for political reasons. And, most bizarrely and disastrously, General Ne Win, with guidance from his astrologer, destabilized the nation’s economy in the 1980s by introducing kyat currency notes divisible by the auspicious number nine.
I come to the Strand Hotel, a grand and genteel relic of the colonial era. The Strand was Yangon’s most elegant, opulent address prior to independence; a whites only establishment that reproduced upper class British life so faithfully that walking out its doors and into delta heat as opposed to London chill must have been profoundly disorienting. After decades of neglect, the Strand was bought by a Burmese businessman who has returned the hotel to its historic five star extravagance. I pass through the big entry doors and into the soft, classically adorned lobby, drawn by historical curiosity and a sharp desire for a good cup of coffee.
The barman is dressed in a crisp, white shirt and a dark gray longyi. He pours cocktails for two Portuguese couples; a bossa nova record plays lightly in the background. Artful, black and white photographs of Burmese village scenes, farmers, and monks adorn the walls. The coffee is as good as I had hoped, and I sink into an old leather chair near a stately grand piano and savor the taste, the cool, and the calm.
Packing my bags that evening, I flip through the business cards I have accumulated and the email addresses of students, teachers, NGO workers, and even monks that I have met in the past two weeks. I scan through photos I have taken, sort through receipts and ticket stubs and streets maps. I unroll a traditional sand painting of a horse that Lin Lin, the waiter at Ruby True, gave me one evening along with tea for a sore throat.
I fold my clothes and think of Robert, with his Mandalay rum and his shaky centimeter of hope. I think of Sinita and her siblings, bedding down in the room above the bike shop and dreaming their grand and varied dreams. I do not know what to make of it all. I do not know where I will begin to relate the experience to friends and family back home when I encounter their curiosity. All I know is that Burma has shifted for me from an abstraction to a web of relationship. An outpost of unfamiliarity and mystery on the world map has sprung to vivid, complex life and personal relevance.
I finish packing and look out of the window. Shwe Dagon pagoda shimmers to the east, and the Sakura Building where we had met with Khin Toe towers above the skyline to the north. The street below is dark and nearly empty. I close the shades, switch off the lights, and crawl gratefully into bed.
The names of people and organizations have
been altered for confidentiality in this writing
