Northern Myanmar mostly refers to the Shan and Kachin states bordering China in northeastern Myanmar
The four words "northern Myanmar" have become hot words on major short video platforms for a while.
In the fantasy of the girls, they will meet a soldier king boy like the following in the dense forest of northern Myanmar:
And in the fantasy of the youth, they themselves are the king of soldiers, and they will make achievements here and become a warlord.
After putting on the delusional filter of this group of boys and girls, northern Myanmar is wild, mysterious, and full of opportunities, as if as long as it goes, it can make people's lives restart.
However, in the real northern Myanmar, there is a high probability that your life will not restart, but will directly end.
Because the reality of northern Myanmar is cruel and bloody most of the time, from time to time, it will transform from a place of suffering into a purgatory on earth.
An addict in a drug rehabilitation center in Kachin State
First of all, in the past two years, various reports from CCTV and other major media have stated this fact to us:
If you want to go to northern Myanmar now to get money, there is a high probability that you will kill yourself.
Now northern Myanmar has a nickname, called "the paradise of telephone scams", and the deceived and cheated are basically Chinese.
The scammer leader will first spread false news on the Internet and lure Chinese to come to northern Myanmar to make money with high salaries.
Once these people come to northern Myanmar, they will be forced to engage in telephone fraud, online gambling and other businesses, work 12 hours a day with high intensity, wake up and start working, with almost no rest.
If they fail, they are arrested for human drug trafficking, and women are forced into prostitution.
And if they try to escape, they are detained, beaten...
You will even be put in a water prison, chopped off your fingers, stuck in the back of your head with a screwdriver ...
Moreover, even if they can really escape, they are not familiar with life in northern Myanmar, how many people can cross the border alone?
As a result, young people who came to northern Myanmar with dreams of making money either lost their lives or were tortured to the point of not being human.
In this case, being caught by the police in China and locked up in a detention center will make these people feel reassured, after all, they can be considered home.
Some people may be asking:
So what if I don't go to northern Myanmar to make money, but simply settle there? I heard that the natural scenery over there is good, and the people are very simple, it should be a good life, right?
Big mistake and very wrong.
If making money in northern Myanmar is a painful fixed-term sentence, then living in northern Myanmar is a dark and long life sentence.
The rampant fraud in northern Myanmar is inseparable from the chaotic and volatile situation in the region.
For a long time, northern Myanmar has been shrouded in the cloud of war, and government forces and local armed forces often exchange fire, which has shaped the two lifestyles of most local people, especially those in rural areas: preparing for war and experiencing war.
In the stage of preparing for war, the most important thing that warlords need is money, and in a realm where light and heavy industries are not developed, the only way to get money is to go crooked.
The aforementioned telecommunications fraud is one of these crooked paths, and if you want to say that the most well-known and notorious money evil in northern Myanmar is not drugs.
Even today, Myanmar remains the world's second-largest producer of opium and heroin, and thousands of Myanmar farmers depend on opium poppy cultivation for their livelihoods.
Poppy fields in southern Shan State
Farmers grow poppies, not only because they are suitable for growing at high altitudes, but also because they are suitable for the warlords' strategy of "fighting with drugs", which can cover 70% of the annual consumption of their families. What's more, in the chaotic north of Myanmar, other livelihoods are unlikely to last long.
In the village of Nang Kham in Shan State, a villager recalls that in the 90s of the 20th century, they also tried to grow other crops or develop aquaculture.
But when the war came, agricultural land was destroyed, cattle ran into the mountains, and suddenly they had nothing left but to return to their old business of growing poppies.
However, in recent years, synthetic drugs (such as methamphetamine, or methamphetamine) have become more mainstream, the Myanmar government's efforts to eliminate poppy fields, and the impact of the new crown epidemic on trade, all of which combined to reduce opium production by 11% in 2021 and selling prices by nearly half.
Myanmar officials are destroying drugs
The days of poppy cultivation seem to be coming to an end, but drugs are already deeply in the blood of northern Burmese – people who grow drugs and also use drugs.
Drug abuse rates in northern Myanmar are extremely high, with 30 per cent of the population in the worst areas taking drugs. On the streets of Lashio, Shan State, you can buy four yaba (methamphetamine and caffeine pills) for $0.75 (about 4.9 yuan), and heroin is sold next to oranges in grocery stores in Shan Sib.
People use methamphetamine, heroin, opium, yaba, cough water... Truck drivers skate to keep their spirits alive, university toilets are full of syringes and needles, farmers replace rice with white powder, and plantation owners add yaba powder to their drinks, making them unknowingly addicted.
And the miners who work in the jade mines.
Since the 90s of the 20th century, the jade mining industry began to flourish in northern Myanmar and gradually became another important industry in Myanmar today, and in 2014, the output value of the industry was even close to half of Myanmar's GDP, bringing extremely considerable income to both the government and the military.
Therefore, in Hpakant in Kachin State today, there will be 10~200,000 miners working in jade mines every day to make money, they usually live in shantytowns next to jade mines, the age is basically 16~30 years old, and some are about 10 years old child labor.
Some of them are migrant workers employed by mine owners who earn 500 kyats (2 yuan) a day. And more, it is illegal jade miners who come to retrieve treasures without any protection.
Every day, these jade miners rummage through the stones pulled by trucks for better quality jade.
People looking for jade in the stone
If you are lucky, you can earn tens of thousands of kyats (about a few hundred yuan) on one stone, and your monthly income can easily exceed ten times your usual salary.
The price is that these jade miners do not have any safety measures, and once the danger occurs, they will have nowhere to escape.
In July 2020, torrential rains caused a landslide at a jade mine in Hpakant, burying 168 miners in an instant by falling mud and rocks.
The high risk and exhaustion led these miners to habitually turn to drugs for solace – Hpakant is a jade mining town and a drug den. In the shantytowns of the emerald mines, you can often see people gathering to inject heroin.
Some mine owners will also take the initiative to give yaba to masonry, because this thing is cheap and allows people to work "energetically", and as for addiction and physical overdraft, no one cares.
Drugs and jade are entangled, sucking the blood and sweat of the people of northern Myanmar, and making them give everything they have to the rebels, the government army, and the war that seems to never end.
And once the war began, the long torment of the common people finally came to an end, replaced by greater suffering.
When the war begins, all productive activities have to give way.
The Burmese army, whether from the government or not, would begin recruiting people in villages to do portering labor.
This is still a blessing, because during these years, the military has used men as human deminers and women as tools to vent their desires, killing civilians and even children at will.
A civilian who had been attacked by Burmese soldiers showed a gunshot wound
There are ordinary people who choose to flee, but the results are usually unsatisfactory: they are either captured by the army and trapped in place to fend for themselves; Or get lost in the process of escaping and fend for themselves in the dense forests of northern Myanmar.
Therefore, when war comes, in many cases, the best option is to join the army.
At least, in this chaotic period, the army is the only place where there is some order.
Despite the common problem of young soldiers, "I am as tall as my gun" has become a true portrayal of many soldiers in Myanmar.
Anti-Scout propaganda signs on the streets of Myanmar
But the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) teaches workers, doctors, and teachers to take up arms to defend themselves, and the Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP) lynches the rape of a 6-year-old girl.
For girls born in northern Myanmar, if they do not join the army, they are likely to be carefully packaged by traffickers, sold to the border of China, and in prison and torture, they will become the so-called obedient and virtuous "Burmese brides" on major short video platforms.
But if you join the army, although you will face the threat of death, at least this group of girls has the right to fight.
A female Burmese soldier
However, it should be noted that in Myanmar today, there is no war about meritorious achievements that those novels fantasize about, only about ethnic contradictions, religious beliefs, and warlord interests.
And the people who manipulated these wars, or the son-in-law of some historical widow before, or the henchmen of a former drug lord, from a very early on, this land will not leave the slightest possible room for the so-called "dream of the soldier king".
As for what is a warlord's aunt, let alone whether you have this bloodline, a 2019 survey showed that at least one in five women in Myanmar has suffered domestic violence, and there is still a saying in some local villages: "Beat your wife to a broken bone, and she will love you with all her heart." ”
Women subjected to domestic violence in Myanmar
And being a warlord's lover in such a cultural atmosphere, presumably there is no need to talk about what the final result is.
Yes, northern Myanmar does have its beautiful side, it has pure natural scenery, unique stupas and Buddha statues, and is a hospitable border city.
But northern Myanmar has its cruel side, war, famine, epidemic, death, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have ravaged the land, plus drugs, exploitation, and despair.
There are no romantic fantasies of the warriors and warlords, only the long-term suffering built by drug addiction and blood.
By the way, in March 2021, when the "This is Northern Myanmar" fire in China triggered countless people to want to go to this seemingly infinitely beautiful land, thousands of people in the real northern Myanmar Shan and Kachin states were trying their best to flee to countries around Myanmar because of coups and wars.
This is the irony created by dreams, this is the siege created by ignorance.