Text/Laura Shen
Photo: Reviewer - Sun Lu, Typesetting - Wen Qi
Audio: Narrator - Laura Shen, Producer - Sai Ann
Cover image: ©THAMMANIT PANOMSUK/Shutterstock
On November 15, 2020, Myanmar ushered in its third general election after the political transition of 2010, and the NLD led by Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory.
As the eldest daughter of General Aung San, the father of the Burmese nation, Aung San Suu Kyi has great prestige in Myanmar, in line with the "daughter of the Father of the Nation" of Bey Bhutto in Pakistan and Indira Gandhi in India. Burma and India and Pakistan were once British colonies, which also shaped myanmar today.
From left: Aung San Suu Kyi, Bey Bhutto, Indira Gandhi
图：Wikimedia Commons
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Burmese years
When writing my thesis on Myanmar, I thought of a Burmese Chinese classmate at school who would say something Chinese, and I wanted to interview him to learn about Myanmar's society and reform, but after the invitation was issued, he politely refused. Although Myanmar has been reforming democracy for many years, Burmese people still avoid talking about politics, especially when it comes to foreigners.
The reason why I chose Myanmar as the subject of my research is probably inseparable from my childhood memories. The first time I went to Myanmar was in 1999, when I was a child, I came to Jinghong, Mengla and Menghai in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, and entered Mengla, Myanmar, via the Ta luo border.
Draft: Sun Green
It was April 1999, during the dry season of the tropical monsoon climate, and the sun was shining brightly and hot. The China-Myanmar border under the sun is bright and brilliant, and I knew for the first time as a child that the original colors can be so colorful, even if it is a sacred national gate. The tadpole-like Burmese characters on the national gate also made me feel interesting, like children's paintings.
Dalo Port
Image: azx118 / Figureworm Creative
As soon as I entered Burma, I received a pamphlet issued by the Burmese authorities, the front page of which was printed with a dark man who seemed to me to be very ugly and had a crossed face, wearing a military hat and military uniform, with a variety of medals hanging on his chest. Photo below: Admiral Den Shwe, Supreme Leader. This is the name that everyone must know after entering Myanmar.
Tan Shwe, known as the Emperor of Burma, came to power in 1997, and I came to Burma at the peak of his power, and In 2003 Than Shwe resigned.
Figure: evernovember.blogspot.com
There is a drug rehabilitation theme museum at the entrance of Myanmar, which introduces the Myanmar government's efforts in fighting drug crimes and catching drug trafficking syndicates in the Golden Triangle region. Mengla is located in the northeast of Myanmar, Shan State, located at the junction of China, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, which is also known as the Golden Triangle of the world.
I was more attracted to the poppies introduced at the beginning of the museum than to the anti-drug crackdown. The red flowers are a symbol of the fallen soldiers of the First World War in Britain, but they have become a source of evil in Asia.
"That's the poppy field over there," the guide said, pointing to the hillside not far from the museum, "and it's full of poppies, which are farmers' main crop." "Although the anti-drug museum has repeatedly emphasized the evils of poppies, it is ironic that the outside of the museum is full of poppies and is still the main source of income for locals."
"This flower is so bad, why do you have to plant it?" I asked.
No one answered my question.
I found that what adults say and do is not the same.
Menla's drug problem has been grim,
The picture shows the anti-drug activities held in Myanmar on the occasion of the International Day against Drugs last year.
Figure: paukphaw.com
Menrata with dance
Pictured: Color-eyed Man Wang Ziyu / Figureworm Creative
After the tour, we went to see a shemales show, which is said to have been transferred from Thailand to Myanmar for business. The demon is tall and beautiful, singing Teresa Teng's song on stage. After the performance, I came out of the room and took a group photo with the tourists, in broad daylight, the demons with heavy makeup seemed to dance like a group of demons, but there was a demon dressed in a white cheongsam with elegant and distinctive temperament. I proposed to the adults that I wanted to take a picture with this beautiful sister and run to her side.
At that time, the top of my head was just above her waist, and she put one hand on my shoulder, and I turned my head to look at her hand: it was the palm of a large, rugged man. She is indeed a man, and the appearance and substance of a person are not the same.
A country of contradictions
Myanmar is a country that is inconsistent with its appearance and substance, and full of contradictions. In the process of studying Myanmar, my inherent cognition is constantly being challenged, and self-righteous things are constantly subverted.
Map of Myanmar
Myanmar's current country names and some place names are artificially made up, that is, more than 20 years ago. In 1989 Burma decided to colonize Britain by changing its name, Burma to Myanmar and Rangoon to Yangon. It is the same as Mumbai in India from Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata in Kolkata, and Chennai from Madras to Chennai.
Although once a British colony, Burma was different from other British colonies. British colonial rule brought modernization to some regions, such as Singapore and Hong Kong, but did not benefit Myanmar much, and Myanmar's economy was still backward; although English was popular in India and Singapore, it was very weak in Myanmar.
Burmese family in the 19th century.
India and Pakistan are countries created by British colonialists, but Myanmar is a country with a long history of ancient civilization, with a complete system, royal family and state apparatus.
Oil painting depicting the Burmese royal family.
图：Fukuoka Asian Art Museum
For this ancient country that has existed for thousands of years, the colonists have to pay a price. It took the British to annex Burma at the cost of three Anglo-Burmese wars, the first of which was the longest and most expensive in the history of British India.
First Anglo-Burmese War
In 1885, the British incorporated Burma into British India, and Burma became a province of British India, and it was not until 1937 that Burma broke away from British India and became the burmese headquarters of the British Empire. The history of merging with India led to population exchange, and many Indians and Bengalis emigrated to Burma, which became the root cause of the rohingya problem in the future.
Figures dressed in Burmese and Indian costumes in 19th-century oil paintings
Figure: creativecommons.org
Although Myanmar has bagan's Vantaa City or Golden Pagoda, this is only a one-sided corner of the propaganda film. Myanmar is actually a complex multi-ethnic, multi-religious country, including Burma, Shan, Mon, Karen, Kachin, Kayyap, Hua, Rohingya and other ethnic groups, most of them believe in Theravada Buddhism, Kachin and Karen believe in Christianity, Rohingya are Indo-Pakistani Muslims, believe in Islam, and a small number of Indian Burmese believe in Hinduism.
Myanmar can be described as China's most iron partner, but in many histories taken for granted, Myanmar has subverted its imagination.
In the greatest patriotic war in the history of the Chinese nation, that is, the War of Resistance Against Japan, Myanmar had a delicate attitude. General Aung San, the father of the nation, was not an anti-Japanese element at first, but an anti-Chinese element. In 1941, China supported the British army in Burma against the Japanese army, that is, the Chinese Expeditionary Force that fought in Burma for three years and three months, and the opponent was not only the Japanese army, but also the Burmese Independence Army led by Aung San.
During World War II, Aung San expels the British colonists with the help of Japanese fascism and cooperates with Japan to establish the Japanese puppet regime "Burma State" in 1943, which the Chinese Nationalist Government refuses to recognize, but is recognized by Wang Andu and Manchu. At the end of World War II, seeing that Japan's defeat had been decided, Aung San turned against japan. Although the Sino-Burmese-Indian War annihilated 49,000 Japanese troops, China paid a terrible price of 67,000 casualties, of which 30,000 died of tropical rainforest miasma and plague during the retreat from northern Myanmar.
The National Martyrs Cemetery in Tengchong, Yunnan, commemorates the Nationalist army that marched to Burma to resist Japan, and is the largest national army anti-Japanese memorial cemetery in China.
Picture: Dd_11 / Figureworm Creative
The anti-Japanese resistance in Burma, which is regarded by China as a national martyr, is a different description in the eyes of the Burmese. Sao Sanda, a princess who fled from the Shan state court in Burma, recalled the Chinese Expeditionary Force in her autobiography Moon Princess: Memories of Shan State: "There was no evil in Burma, and it was burned and plundered everywhere it went, just like the Japanese army." ”
The reason why the Burmese military government that came to power in the coup was able to govern for a long time was inseparable from China's support, but after Ne Win came to power, he targeted the Burmese Chinese, closed Chinese schools and newspapers, and set off a wave of Chinese exclusion.
The democracy advertised by Aung San Suu Kyi is only selective democracy and does not apply to the Rohingya, who do not recognize the Rohingya as the Burmese nation and use repressive measures to cause a humanitarian crisis for refugees.
In the 2011 movie "Aung San Suu Kyi", Yang Ziqiong played Aung San Suu Kyi.
Figure: p3.no
Myanmar's contradictions and entanglements, in the final analysis, lie in the fact that as a small country between the cracks between large countries, it is wavering for survival. If the national position is set aside, from a human point of view, this tragic struggle is particularly prominent in the Burmese historical figure Wu Su.
There are not many records about Wu Su, and I read about him in my memoir, Moon Princess: Memories of Shan State, and lamented his two long and tragic journeys. The round-trip journey between Myanmar and the UK experiences drastic turns and suddenly becomes an unexpected drift.
In December 1941, Wu Su went to Britain to fight for the self-determination of the Burmese nation, but was ruthlessly rejected. Disappointed, Wu Su went to Portugal on December 29 to negotiate cooperation with the Japanese fascists, not wanting the intelligence to be held by the British, and on January 12, 1942, Wu Su was arrested by the British in Palestine and sent to Uganda for three years of imprisonment. A short trip with hope that ended in exile in Africa and a three-year journey to become a prisoner.
After his release from prison, Wu Su did not give up, in 1947 he went to Britain again, to fight for national self-determination, and finally returned to Burma smoothly, he could not imagine a more tragic fate waiting for him, 6 months later General Aung San was assassinated, the cause of death is still in doubt, Wu Su was recognized as an executioner, and was executed in 1948.
Wu Su's two trips ended in captivity and death, respectively, although he struggled for a lifetime for national self-determination and was eventually abandoned by history as a clown.
Moon Princess: Memories of Shan State
Figure: saohpa.org
Burmese-Chinese past, orphans in Asia Minor
Myanmar is a southeast Asian country with fewer Chinese, and the Burmese Chinese are mainly Yunnan, some of whom are Fujian, Guangdong and Hakka. Although the Chinese have a higher economic status in the local area, they are not as prominent as the Indonesian Chinese and the Filipino Chinese.
Hu Wenhu, the king of tiger label gold oil and the tycoon of galaxy newspaper industry
Born in Yangon, Myanmar.
Hong Kong sister Zhu Lingling was born in Myanmar.
In addition to the well-known Chinese businessmen, another presence of Burmese Chinese is the big drug lords and warlords. Luo Xinghan and Kun Sha are drug lords active in the Golden Triangle. Peng Jiasheng is a Kokang warlord, the hereditary touts Yang clan of Kokang, which began in the Small Dynasty of the Southern Ming Dynasty in Burma, and the family has been kokang toast for generations until 1959.
There is also a group of Chinese hovering on the brink of oblivion, namely the Nationalist army that defeated Burma in the Chinese Civil War. In 1949, the Nationalist army retreated to Yunnan and Burma, and after the 1942 expedition to Burma to resist Japan, another expedition to Burma began.
This time it was not anti-Japanese resistance, but "counterattack on the mainland", but no longer commemorated by the state like the anti-Japanese expedition, but reduced to exile, not only hopeless to counterattack the mainland, unable to return home, but also besieged by the British army and the Burma National Defense Force, who twice defeated the Anglo-Burmese army, attracted the condemnation of the United Nations, and were not recognized by the Taiwan authorities, becoming homeless and exotic warriors.
Taiwanese director Zhu Yanping's film "Exotic" put this real history on the screen, the film is divided into 1990 and 1993, bringing together the mainland Hong Kong and Taiwan first-line all-star lineup, but because the theme was sensitive on both sides of the strait at that time, there was no big hit, but the theme song "Orphans of Asia" sung by Luo Dayou was a widely circulated classic.
Movie "Exotic", "Hero of the End of The Exotic"
In 1953, part of the Burmese national army withdrew into Taiwan and settled in the village. There are many Burmese-style Yunnan restaurants in Taoyuan Village, Taipei today, and this unique taste that has been lost can only be found in Taiwan, corresponding to the history of the withdrawal of the Yunnan national army from Myanmar.
"Mikan" is a unique flavor of the Yunnan people on the island of Taiwan, these Dian troops and their families who entered Taiwan from Myanmar speak the Southwest Mandarin, a considerable part of them are Yunnan Hui, and they live in places where in addition to Dianwei restaurants, there are mosques. (As for why there are Hui and southern Muslims in Yunnan, I will tell you in future articles, please pay attention)
Longgang Mosque near Dian Cuisine Restaurant
Taiwan's "generation of crossing the sea" is dying of old age and has passed away, but the history of Burma and China has not been forgotten by the younger generation, and Taiwanese-Burmese director Zhao Deyin is one of the few directors in the film industry to take Myanmar as the theme of filming, shooting a series of stories involving the Border between China and Myanmar and burmese Chinese, preserving memories.
"Goodbye Wacheng" starring Ke Zhendong
It tells the story of Burmese Chinese working in Thailand.
Documentary "The Returning Man"
Tell the story of a young Burmese who works in Taipei and return to Myanmar.
Myanmar's contradictions and conflicts need to be resolved urgently, the military, ethnic minorities and economic development issues have always been the three most important themes facing Myanmar, and it remains to be seen where the 75-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi will lead her people, but the NLD victory shows that Myanmar is not willing to go back, but will only move forward.
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