A group of people of the same age from the Republic came to the Yunnan frontier from the cities to receive re-education from the poor and middle peasants. And some of them, for various reasons, left their homeland and joined the revolutionary movement in another country.
More than 30 years have passed, and these educated youths who wandered to the Golden Triangle are like seeds that have been accidentally sprinkled, naturally germinating, growing, withering, and withering in foreign lands, until they fall into mud and dust, and they are left to fend for themselves and silently.
The history of these young people who regarded Che Guevara as a spiritual idol is now known to very few people.
I hope that this story can reopen the fragments of memory that once scattered in the tropical jungle and lead everyone into the depths of history that is about to be forgotten.
On the Qingming Festival in 2023, at a cemetery in Beijing, a group of people wearing police uniforms came to mourn an elderly man who was buried here.
After an old man at the head leaned over and offered the flowers in his hand, he said softly: "Brother, don't worry! Now, they will no longer dare to set foot in the country!"
The old man is a head of the Ministry of Public Security, and he is surrounded by staff of the national anti-drug agency.
Lying here is a legendary old man named Zheng Yi, who died in 2022 at the age of 72.
And his story begins half a century ago.
In 1972, 22-year-old Zheng Yi came to Yingjiang County, Yunnan Province from Shanghai to settle in the team for three years.
Zheng Yi's family identity is not good, his father is a big capitalist in Shanghai, and he died of illness after liberation.
His father was gone, but he and his mother did not escape, as a "dog cub", he has experienced raids and various criticisms since he was a child, and he has not been able to raise his head.
After a red storm was set off, the state called on young intellectuals to go to the countryside, and Zheng Yi, who graduated from high school, did not hesitate to sign up.
While others were still crying and wiping tears for leaving his hometown, he was full of passion and hoped to change his life through his own efforts.
Although Zheng's mother was reluctant to let her son go so far away, she felt that this might be his chance to change his fate, so she could only send him on the train in tears.
A week later, Zheng Yi and his fellow Shanghai educated youths were taken by train to a farm in Kunming, Yunnan Province, but after the person in charge of the other party saw his file, he was transferred to Yingjiang County on the Sino-Burmese border with a stroke of a pen.
In fact, it doesn't matter where Zheng Yi goes, he just hopes to work hard in this wave of revolution and wash away the stain of his family background with practical actions.
Fortunately, when he was a child, his family was good, Zheng Yi learned calligraphy since he was a child, and wrote a good hand, because of this specialty, he was barely accepted by other comrades-in-arms.
Like all fanatical young people at that time, Zheng Yi cherished this opportunity and actively participated in various revolutionary activities while writing big-character posters.
If you want to write well, you have to practice, but at that time, there was a shortage of paper, so Zheng Yi could only practice with newspapers.
Such habits soon brought disaster to him.
One day, a new camp instructor came to Zheng Yi's dormitory to inspect.
He paced under Zheng Yi's bed and found a lot of newspapers for practicing calligraphy, so he picked them up curiously and flipped through them.
It didn't matter what he saw, his face immediately changed greatly, and he hurriedly beckoned the people around him to arrest Zheng Yi.
It turned out that he had found that the photos of the leaders in some newspapers were actually stained with ink.
Zheng Yi usually pays attention to it, and deliberately avoids large photos of the leader when he writes. No matter how careful you are, it's inevitable that some ink will accidentally fall onto the photo.
The camp instructor was very excited, he had just arrived, and he was worried that he would not have a chance to stand up, so he decided to "open the knife" with Zheng Yi.
Zheng Yi felt very wronged, contradicted him a few words, and was immediately branded as an "active counter-revolutionary".
As a result, Zheng Yi and several other intellectuals who had been arrested on other charges were detained and awaited further trial by their superiors.
Just when Zheng Yi was still full of hope that the higher authorities could help him "rehabilitate Zhaoxue", some well-meaning comrades-in-arms brought bad news, and they had been characterized as "counter-revolutionaries who had not been reformed well" and might be shot.
Zheng Yi, who was in deep despair, decided to "run! Anyway, if you don't run, you will die, and if you run, you will die, and if you run, it doesn't matter." ”
In 1974, 24-year-old Zheng Yi and his "cellmates" worked together to pick the door lock and run from Yingjiang, Yunnan Province to Ruili, which is adjacent to Myanmar.
When they crossed pillar 51 across the border, they plunged into the dense jungle without looking back.
In fact, Zheng Yi and the others did not run around aimlessly, but rushed to participate in the Burmese revolution.
In the 60s of the last century, because the Communist Party of Burma expressed support for the mainland policy and won the appreciation of the leaders, the Communist Party of Burma also copied the domestic political storm at that time to its own internal situation.
However, these internal struggles seriously weakened the strength of the Burmese Communist Party, and the Burmese government army took the opportunity to launch a large-scale attack, which eventually forced the Burmese Communist Party to split itself.
In 1971, Burmese leader Ne Win visited China, and the governments of China and Myanmar restored friendly relations, and the foreign aid received by the Communist Party of Burma was decreasing.
At this time, the Communist Party of Burma was barely supported by local armed forces such as the Wa mountain people and Kokang.
However, due to the unity of faith and the attractiveness of the revolutionary slogans chanted, the Communist Party of Burma still continued to attract countless Chinese intellectuals with the idea that "the world is red" to secretly join.
It was at this time that Zheng Yi joined the team of the "Kokang King" Peng Jiasheng and became a machine gunner in the Second Special Service Battalion directly under the Northeast Military Region of the Communist Party of Burma.
Located on the border with Yunnan, Kokang is inextricably linked to China historically.
For a long time, the Kokang was nominally under the jurisdiction of the Burmese government, but it remained a highly autonomous tribe.
In 1963, the Burmese military junta took control of Kokang and other autonomous regions by force, and recruited Peng Jiasheng as the head of the Kokang Self-Defense Forces.
Because the military junta has maintained a high-pressure policy towards Kokang, the Kokang people are extremely dissatisfied, and the two sides continue to clashes.
In 1965, Peng Jiasheng, who was removed from his post by the military government, secretly organized an armed group and officially unveiled the uprising.
Because Peng Jiasheng's team was too weak, especially being chased and beaten by his old classmate Luo Xinghan, he had to withdraw to Yunnan with his team, where he joined the Burmese Communist Party.
In January 1968, after receiving the reorganization, Peng Jiasheng followed the People's Liberation Army of the Communist Party of Burma to counterattack northern Myanmar, and Peng Jiasheng led his troops to return to Kokang first.
When the fighting began, the Burmese communist forces were overwhelmed, forcing the Lo Sing Han garrison in Kokang and the government forces to abandon Kokang and retreat south.
In April of the same year, the Communist Party of Burma announced the establishment of Kokang County, and Peng Jiasheng concurrently served as the county magistrate as the deputy commander of the Northeast Military Region of the Communist Party of Burma, known as the "King of Kokang".
Zheng Yi's Second Special Service Battalion is a very special unit of the Northeast Military Region of the Communist Party of Burma, almost all of which are composed of Chinese educated youth, all of whom are courageous and strategic, and their combat effectiveness is very strong.
But the cruelty of the war was far beyond Zheng Yi's imagination, and many Chinese intellectuals like him who were looking forward to making contributions in foreign lands were sometimes killed before they could see where the enemy was.
Not only that, but the complexity of the war also made Zheng Yi and his Chinese comrades-in-arms at a loss.
Due to the complexity of the factions within the CPM, it has to fight not only with government forces, but also with the Kokang Army, the United Wa State Army, and the Kachin Independence Army, which are also "allies", for territory.
And the blind command of their superiors forced them to go around in circles in a humid and stuffy environment, wasting their physical strength in vain.
Troops often march for several kilometers in the jungle in the middle of the night before suddenly receiving an order to turn around and turn back.
After a night of tossing and turning, I didn't have time to rest before I had to go into a new battle.
The cruelty of the war and the harsh environment did not break Zheng Yi's will to fight, but he couldn't bear the reality of being a Chinese educated youth with a low status in the army.
Although many Chinese intellectuals within the Communist Party of Myanmar have become commanders at all levels by virtue of their military exploits, the Chinese are not trusted in these tribal armies.
After the war began, it was often the troops composed of China's educated youth who were the first to charge into battle. But after the sacrifice, some of them did not even have time to bury their bodies, so they were abandoned in the jungle.
Zheng Yi had seen too many such situations, which slowly shook his firm revolutionary convictions.
What was most unacceptable to Zheng Yi was that his unit openly cultivated opium.
At that time, because the Communist Party of Burma had no foreign aid and did not have its own "hematopoietic" function, it followed the Chinese model to carry out "land reform", hoping to obtain resources through this powerful means.
However, most of Myanmar is still an extremely primitive agricultural economy, with no obvious class division, and there is no even land sale, so how can there be any "landlords" to criticize?
This unrealistic model of class struggle, coupled with the forced expropriation of grain, eventually led to the flight of peasants in the area under its jurisdiction, leading to the paralysis of the Burmese Communist Party's economy.
As a result, many military leaders of tribal origin offered to grow opium to solve the problem of funding.
Dechen Paden, then chairman of the Communist Party of Burma, was adamantly opposed, believing that such a move would not only have a bad impact, but would also seriously tarnish the reputation of the troops.
But at that time, the troops of the Burmese Communist Party could not eat enough, and basically no one listened to his words.
The military districts of the Communist Party of Burma also did not care about saving face, and began to grow opium one after another, and solved their own food problems through the opium trade.
Among these people, there is the army of "Kokang King" Peng Jiasheng.
Seeing a fait accompli, Dechenba had no choice but to turn a blind eye to the summit.
And Zheng Yi can't understand these situations at all, he has studied history, he is very aware of the harm caused by opium, and he understands that this thing is completely contrary to his lofty ideals.
Who knows, Zheng Yi at this time suffered another death.
Due to the repeated setbacks in the confrontation between his unit and the government army, a large-scale purge and purge began in the northeastern military region of the Communist Party of Burma.
Zheng Yi, who came from a bad family, once again bore the brunt of the attack, and the internal anti-rebel agency also found his wanted warrant from China.
His boss told him that he was about to be vetted and that he was ready.
Zheng Yi, who had spent some time in the Burmese Communist Party, knew very well what the so-called "censorship" meant, and he had no choice but to flee again.
In 1975, 25-year-old Zheng Yi stole a gun and escaped from the army.
On the way, in exchange for some food and money, he sold his gun to a nearby farmer.
Unbeknownst to him, the peasants had just finished making a deal with him, and turned around and betrayed him to the government army.
After Zheng Yi was arrested, he spent half a year in a prisoner of war prison in Lashio, until one night he was woken up and put in a car with more than a dozen other prisoners.
In the middle of the night, they were taken to the Nam Yao River near Lashio.
After getting out of the car, Zheng Yi immediately noticed that something was wrong, he heard the familiar sound of a bullet being loaded, and turned around to see that the government soldiers had already raised their guns.
The desire to survive made Zheng Yi wake up, and took advantage of the night to run to the Nanyao River and jump straight down.
The moment he entered the water, he heard a dense burst of gunfire.
Following the current, Zheng Yi swam to the opposite bank of the Nandu River and plunged headlong into the vast dense forest.
Here, he met a group of horse gangs bound for northern Thailand.
After walking for several days, Zheng Yi finally arrived in northern Thailand, which is the famous "Golden Triangle" region.
At this time, he was hungry and tired, and collapsed directly to the ground.
When he opened his eyes again, the muzzles of several black holes appeared in front of him.
Exhausted, Zheng Yi was taken to a camp by the armed men, and he noticed that although they were wearing Shan State uniforms, they spoke fluent Chinese.
When he saw the "blue sky and white sun" flag flying over the camp, he understood that he had fallen into the hands of the remnants of the Kuomintang army that was said to be entrenched in the "Golden Triangle".
In January 1950, after the People's Liberation Army entered Kunming, it launched a stormy offensive to sweep away the Kuomintang troops in Yunnan.
At that time, the Kuomintang 8th Corps (including the 8th Army and the 26th Army) stationed in Yunnan had to retreat south into Vietnam, and most of them were immediately disarmed and placed under house arrest by the French colonial army.
Among them, the troops composed of the 709th Regiment of the 237th Division of the 8th Army were the first to settle in the "Golden Triangle" area, and then joined the remnants of the 93rd Division of the 26th Army who fled behind.
The two remnants of the army, numbering about 1,400 men combined, were commanded by Li Guohui, the highest-ranking military officer, forming a lone Kuomintang army active on the Yunnan-Burma border.
Because of the special position of this unit and the fact that it "hanged" the Burmese government troops who came to encircle and suppress them from time to time, the Taiwan authorities had the idea of sending their "old commander," Li Mi, commander of the 8th Army, to take over the command.
Taiwan's idea is very clear, hoping that this lone army can become a pawn in the "counterattack on the mainland" in the future, so it gives money and weapons to give this remnant army a breather.
As the saying goes, "it is not permissible for others to sleep soundly on the edge of the couch," the Burmese military government immediately sent people to negotiate with Li Guohui's ministry and asked him to lead his troops back to China.
But Li Guohui knew very well that there was only a dead end in returning to China, so he naturally refused sternly.
The Burmese government mobilized thousands of elite troops at that time, and even borrowed six planes from Singapore to try to eliminate the remnants of the army with superior forces.
Who knows, this group of Kuomintang lone troops who could not defeat the People's Liberation Army completely crushed the Burmese army, not only repeatedly defeated the troops that came to attack Burma, but also shot down the plane of the commander-in-chief of the Burmese Air Force, and completely gained a foothold in Burma after a complete victory.
In May 1951, the victory of the lone army overjoyed the Taiwan authorities and the Americans behind the scenes, and they once again airdropped a large amount of aid, hoping that they would "make new contributions."
After a temporary victory and a large amount of military aid, Li Mi also got a little carried away and led his troops to start a "counteroffensive", successively capturing Cangyuan, Shuangjiang, Gengma and other county towns in Yunnan.
The actions of these remnants of the army were purely "if you don't do it, you won't die", and since late June, the People's Liberation Army has gathered forces and begun a large-scale counteroffensive.
Soon, the People's Liberation Army not only re-liberated the previously occupied county town, but also expelled the invading Kuomintang forces from the country again.
Seeing that these lone Kuomintang troops were beaten by the People's Liberation Army, the Burmese government was confident again, and in early 1953, it mobilized tens of thousands of troops and launched a campaign against the lone army again.
In the early days, the Burmese army was caught off guard by Li Mi because of careful planning, and suffered heavy casualties.
Li Mi was very angry, can't you beat the People's Liberation Army, can't you beat the Burmese army?
Therefore, he borrowed from the tactics of the People's Liberation Army and made full use of methods such as luring the enemy into depth, roundabout operations, and night raids, and defeated the Burmese army again.
After the battle, the Kuomintang suffered more than 100 casualties, while the Burmese army suffered more than 500 casualties and 17 were captured.
At this point, the Burmese government's plan to militarily exterminate the Kuomintang alone army has failed, and it can only hope that the international community will solve the problem.
Although the Kuomintang alone won a military victory, the Burmese Government has repeatedly complained at the United Nations, which has greatly embarrassed the Taiwan authorities. Under pressure, from November 1953 to June 1954, more than 6,000 lone soldiers were evacuated.
For various reasons, about 3,000 Kuomintang troops remained in the "Golden Triangle" after the withdrawal.
Due to the lack of external assistance, these lone soldiers were internally divided, some of them were attached to the "Golden Triangle" drug lord Khun Sha and became the notorious drug traffickers, while others defected to the Thai government and became the "People's Self-Defense Force in the mountainous areas of northern Thailand."
The capture of Zheng Yi is actually not a lone army of the Kuomintang, but the "Shan State United Army" of Kun Sha.
It's just that it was Zhang Suquan, the lone "instructor" of the former Kuomintang, who commanded this unit, and he was also a "nobleman" of Kunsha.
Zhang Suquan was originally a "special operations instructor" sent by Taiwan to the lone army, and formed the so-called "110 special forces" in the lone army.
At the same time, he opened a number of military academies in the local area, so as to cultivate pro-Kuomintang forces.
After the lone army was dismissed, he was useless as a military instructor, and he was unwilling to return to Taiwan, so he took more than 200 of his subordinates to struggle in the forest, robbing opium everywhere in exchange for living materials.
During a "black eats black" operation, his men and horses were surrounded and ran out of ammunition and food.
Just as he was about to break through desperately, someone on the other side shouted his name, and that person was none other than Kun Sha, who had been his student.
At that time, Kunsha's men were just one of the many drug trafficking gangs in the "Golden Triangle", and they were inconspicuous.
During that period, the real big drug lord in the "Golden Triangle" was the strong Luo Xinghan, the brave man who drove Peng Jiasheng away.
Kun Sha knew Zhang Suquan's military talent and tried his best to win him over.
Zhang Suquan knew that it would be difficult to survive in the "Golden Triangle" on his own, and seeing that Kun Sha himself was quite ambitious and respected himself, he agreed to lead all his subordinates into the gang and become Kun Sha's chief of staff.
Zhang Suquan did not disappoint Kun Sha, and in a short period of time, he turned these rabble into a well-trained army that could fight tough battles.
Kun Sha, whose military strength has greatly increased, has stood out in the Golden Triangle with large and small armed forces, not only driving Luo Xinghan's forces out of the "Golden Triangle" area, but also leveling other drug trafficking groups around it, becoming a new generation of drug lords in the "Golden Triangle".
Although Kun Sha started his career by selling drugs, he demanded that his subordinates must not be contaminated with drugs, and even shot anyone if he found that he was taking drugs.
This is naturally not how "kind" Kun Sha is, but that he knows too well the harm that drugs bring to people.
It is said that Kunsha's father died when he was 3 years old, and his mother died of an opium overdose when he was 5 years old.
Khun Sa's rapid rise finally caught the attention of the Burmese government, who designed to detain him.
Zhang Suquan and the old Khun Sa tribe immediately took advantage of the identity of the Khun Sa Shan people to erect the banner of "Shan State Independence and Nationhood" and reorganized the troops into the "Shan State United Army" (SUA), which became a powerful rebel force in Myanmar.
This is Zhang Suquan's strategy, hoping to wash away the identity of Kunsha's drug lord.
Under military pressure from the Shan State forces, the government was forced to release Khun Sa and put him under house arrest in Wa Thanh.
At this time, the "Shan State United Army" also became the "Zhangjia Army", but Zhang Suquan was the first to look forward.
After learning about Zheng Yi's identity and experience, Zhang Suquan was very interested and personally participated in the interrogation.
Some people were worried that Zheng Yi was a spy and wanted to kill him, but Zhang Suquan stopped them, saying that they were also Chinese and could write calligraphy, so they could stay in school and teach.
At that time, the "Shan State United Army" opened various military schools and children's schools in order to train talents, and was in urgent need of all kinds of teachers.
In this way, Zheng Yi was left in the children's school of the "United Shan State Army" to teach calligraphy, which can be regarded as picking up a life.
Zhang Suquan left Zheng Yi because he was very interested in his military background, because they received different military education systems from each other, and their tactics and combat concepts were completely different.
Soon, Zheng Yi was appointed by Zhang Suquan as a major staff officer of the "Shan State United Army".
Zheng Yi, who was under the fence, was also willing to communicate with the former Kuomintang soldier who seemed to be a "Confucian general".
Through chatting, Zheng Yi knew that Zhang Suquan had actually been quietly preparing to rescue Kun Sha.
After all, this army, which was formed with the strength of the nation, relied on the prestige of Kunsha. If the Supreme Commander is gone, it means that the hearts of the people will be scattered.
During Kunsha's detention, Zhang Suquan orchestrated a kidnapping.
He kidnapped two Soviet doctors and tried to threaten the Burmese government to release Khun Sha, but the plan failed because the Soviets did not respond.
While Khun Sa was imprisoned in Wa Cheng, Zhang Suquan had already established a base for the "Shan State United Army" in the "Manxingdi" in northern Thailand.
Being able to settle down in Thailand was actually due to the fact that Zhang Suquan had already reached an anti-communist and anti-communist agreement with the relevant Thai authorities, which allowed the "United Shan State Army" to obtain a legal identity.
Because Zheng Yi gained Zhang Suquan's trust and accurate marksmanship, he was also pulled into the rescue team secretly formed.
On the night of February 7, 1976, under the careful planning and arrangement of Zhang Suquan, the rescue team drove an American jeep with Kunsha after makeup and quietly drove out of Wacheng and came to the base "full of stars".
Although Zheng Yi was promoted to lieutenant colonel after participating in the rescue of Kun Sha, he was still ostracized by Kun Sha and his subordinates and still taught at the school.
Zheng Yi is also happy to do this, because Kun Sha has been unscrupulous in drug smuggling in order to expand his power, and he is really unwilling to go along with it.
On the surface, Khun Sa flaunted the banner of "Shan State Independence", but in fact he has become a major drug lord in the "Golden Triangle", and the famous No. 4 heroin came from him.
Before Kunsha, most of the drugs in the "Golden Triangle" were opium and No. 3 heroin (a mixture of morphine, codeine, and the original heroin).
Heroin, commonly known as white powder, is made from opium (opium poppy), which is more toxic, more addictive, and very difficult to quit.
No. 3 heroin was originally created during the Luo Xinghan period, and the purity was not high, and the workmanship was rough. After the joint crackdown by the governments of Myanmar and Thailand, the quality of drugs in the "Golden Triangle" has not improved.
After Kun Sha returned to power, in order to increase the "competitiveness" of the product, he invited professional poisoners from Southeast Asia to develop No. 4 heroin with a purity of 99.9%.
Due to the high purity of Khun Sa's No. 4 heroin, it is popular with drug traffickers around the world.
In order to distinguish the heroin produced in other parts of the world, Kunsha also branded its No. 4 heroin packaging with the logo of "Two Lions on Earth", which became the brand product of the "Golden Triangle" at that time.
Khun Sha, who is not short of money, has invested heavily in the purchase of a large amount of munitions, from man-portable anti-aircraft missiles to American-made artillery, and every Shan soldier is armed to the teeth with American-style equipment, and its combat effectiveness is not inferior to that of any army in Southeast Asia.
Because Khun Sa sent troops to control the long border between Myanmar and Thailand, the warlords and drug dealers of all sizes in the "Golden Triangle" had to sell him raw opium, and Khun Sa made a lot of money.
The "Starry Stack" where the Shan State Army is entrenched is close to Chiang Rai, Thailand, and has convenient transportation. With the money he earned from drugs, Khun Sha vigorously ran the area, making it gradually become the most well-developed and commercially prosperous area in the "Golden Triangle" region.
When Kun Sha was alive, he said, "I have never sold a single gram of drugs to China."
This is not entirely a lie, because at that time, the border management near the "Golden Triangle" was very strict, and the border people were far less convenient to travel than they are now. Trying to smuggle drugs into the country from under the noses of the heavily guarded People's Liberation Army is really a fool's dream.
Throughout the 80s, the drug sales of the Khun Sa Group were sold to Southeast Asia and the rest of the world through Thailand, and the United States was the main sales channel, becoming the world's most famous drug trafficking group.
In the early 90s of the last century, Kunsha gradually gained trust in Zheng Yi and sent him to Southeast Asia and other places to participate in the drug trade.
It was also during this period that Zheng Yi really discovered that heroin brought far more harm to mankind than opium.
In Thailand, Zheng Yi saw a mother who was addicted to drugs and sold her own daughter to an underground brothel in order to buy drugs;
According to United Nations statistics, in 1949, opium production in the "Golden Triangle" region was only 37 tons, soared to 1,000 tons in the 60s of the last century, and by the early 90s, opium production had reached a terrifying 2,500 tons, accounting for 85 percent of the world's total opium, and another 250 tons of heroin, accounting for more than 60 percent of the world heroin market.
After a large amount of heroin flowed into the United States through various channels in Southeast Asia, the drug-related gang fights, AIDS, and various crimes proliferated, which also caused a deep headache for the US government.
Witnessing all kinds of dehumanizing behaviors brought about by drugs, Zheng Yi was very conflicted, he knew that he was aiding and abusing, but he was powerless to get rid of it.
At this time, Zheng Yi learned that his mother who remained in China had died of illness a few years ago, and the "historical hat" held in their family had been removed, and even his "wanted warrant" had been revoked.
But Zheng Yi was worried about his experience in the "Golden Triangle" in the past few years, and he never dared to return to China.
In order to alleviate the guilt in his heart, Zheng Yi, who has never been married, quietly sponsored several poor children who were in the farm to study.
During this period, the United States and Thailand jointly carried out large-scale sweeps in the "Golden Triangle" area, but did not capture Khun Sa, but made him more and more alert.
In the years that followed, the more prosperous Kunsha's business became, the stronger the guilt in Zheng Yi's heart became.
At the same time, Kun Sha was also anxious to get rid of the title of "drug king", and then became the only big drug lord in the world who sought to build a country with drugs.
In December 1993, despite Zhang Suquan's strong opposition, Khun Sa proclaimed the establishment of the "Shan State Republic" and promulgated the Provisional Constitution of the Shan State Republic, with its capital in Kha Mong.
Khun Sha served as the president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, integrating the power of the party, the government, and the army.
Ke Kun Sha's "self-talking" behavior angered the Burmese government and the Wa State, which had been working against him, and joined forces to surround the "Shan State" and beat him violently.
After the war lasted for a while, due to Zhang Suquan's anger and return to Taiwan, riots began to appear within Kun Sha, blaming Kun Sha for not reusing the Chinese and snubbing the real Shan people.
In the schools under his jurisdiction, from primary school to middle school, the first language is Chinese, followed by Shan and English; all languages of the official documents of the army and management departments are also Chinese, and the selection is even more Chinese.
In 1996, under the domestic and external difficulties, coupled with the Burmese government's assurances that he would not extradite and not go to prison, Khun Sa was forced to surrender and was subsequently placed under house arrest by the Burmese government in Yangon.
When the Kunsha Group fell apart, the 46-year-old Zheng Yi had already moved the idea of returning to China.
Zhang Suquan chatted with him when he left, saying, "We are all descendants of Yan and Huang, no matter where we go, we will eventually return to our roots." ”
It was also in this year that after a small leader in Khun Sha's group surrendered to the Burmese army, he bribed officials and separately incorporated some of Khun Sha's subordinates to become a new generation of big drug lords in the Golden Triangle region, his name is Nuo Kham.
When Zheng Yi was hesitant to return to China, he sneaked back to Yunnan to see how the children he sponsored were doing.
When he learned about the children's situation through acquaintances, he was completely desperate in his heart.
Because these children have been completely ruined by drugs.
Without exception, they became addicted to drugs by smoking cigarettes handed by outsiders.
As soon as Zheng Yi heard it, he understood that this was a lack of morality done by the "seeding team" of the border drug trafficking group.
The so-called "seeding team" refers to the fact that drug organizations deliberately add highly pure drugs to cigarettes in order to make more people addicted to drugs, and then lure young people to smoke them.
After people become addicted, they are contacted by special "harvesting teams", or defrauded them of money, or tricked into joining drug trafficking organizations.
Another child was forced to smuggle drugs, ingesting drugs wrapped in condoms in advance, and smuggling them from the border to mainland cities.
Unfortunately, the child died on the way due to the breaking of the drug package.
Another child was addicted to drugs, and his family had no money to buy them, and after the onset of drug addiction, he became very manic, and used the family hoe to stone his parents to death, and he was also arrested and imprisoned.
While sneaking back to China, Zheng Yi also saw villagers in a certain village tying drug addicts with ropes and imprisoning them somewhere.
When drug addiction occurs, these people cry one by one, bang their heads against the wall, hit their heads full of blood and don't realize it, and even lick their own blood with relish.
All kinds of human tragedies made Zheng Yi suffer in his heart, and remorse and anger made him unable to sleep all night, and finally made an important decision.
In 1997, after watching the ceremony of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, 47-year-old Zheng Yi walked into a border guard corps in Yunnan and chose to surrender.
One year later, 48-year-old Zheng Yi returned to the "Golden Triangle" after being reviewed and trained by the public security department.
This time, he became a "special agent" of the public security department.
When Zheng Yi returned to the "Golden Triangle", the first thing he went to was the Kokang Special Zone in northern Myanmar.
There has been a change of dynasty and is ruled by the new commander and chairman, Brother Yang Maoliang.
Although on the surface, many warlord forces in the "Golden Triangle" region have said that they no longer touch drugs, but most of them are just talking, after all, at that time, there was really no money that could make money faster and more than drugs.
The Yang brothers were more vigilant and inquired about Zheng Yi's details through Zhang Suquan.
Fortunately, Zhang Suquan gave him a guarantee, and the relevant departments did careful cover work for the time of his "disappearance", which dispelled his suspicions.
Later, Zheng Yi learned that he had actually been under the secret protection of the public security department, because the "special situation" around Commander Yang was far more than him.
Zheng Yi lied that he went to Thailand to do business and make some money, and gave Commander Yang more than a dozen sets of military communication equipment in the name of a meeting gift, which won the favor of the other party and was hired as a military adviser to the Kokang Army.
Because of the protection of Commander Kokang, Zheng Yi can participate in the internal drug smuggling research in an open and honest manner.
Only then did Zheng Yi know that there were more than a dozen so-called "military advisers" in the Kokang Army, and all of them were Chinese.
Their task is not to staff officers how to fight, but to let them "brainstorm" with the background of Chinese, thinking about ways to smuggle drugs into the country without easy detection.
After all, drug smuggling is so lucrative!
At that time, as long as drugs were sold from the "Golden Triangle" to Guangzhou, the value could increase dozens or even hundreds of times.
For example, a kilogram of narcotics was less than 10,000 yuan in Burma, but when it was shipped to Kunming, it was 100,000 yuan, if it could reach Guangzhou, it would be 500,000 yuan, and if it could be obtained in Hong Kong, it might be 1 million yuan.
Such high profits have made countless drug dealers continue to take risks.
In order to smuggle drugs, drug trafficking organizations really do everything they can.
For example, in order to confuse drug detection dogs, some empty the soap to hide drugs, and some use bottles filled with chili powder as a sandwich to fill drugs.
There are those who wrap drugs in plastic film into vertical strips with a diameter of about 5 mm and sew them into the pattern of skirts, and there are even those who directly make hard book cases for books and extract them through hydrolysis.
There are cases where drugs are injected into eggs through needles and mixed with real eggs, and there are cases where drugs are hidden in various poultry and smuggled through the sale of poultry.
It can be said that all kinds of drug trafficking methods have come up one after another, and it is impossible to prevent them.
But the most dangerous way to sell drugs is to hide them in the human body.
In order to transport as many drugs as possible, drug dealers make poison pills the size of thumbs and then have people swallow more than 80 pills at a time.
Because there are so many of them, it takes a long time for people to swallow them, and it takes several days to excrete them after entering the country.
Because the dose of the drug is too large and the concentration is too high, as long as one of the packaging in the stomach accidentally breaks, it will kill you on the spot.
After Zheng Yi became a "special agent", he sent out these carefully packaged drug information in a timely manner through "special channels", so as to prevent more people from being harmed by drugs.
Because Zheng Yi won the trust of Commander Yang's brothers, and someone covered him, he almost never missed.
In the face of repeated setbacks in the "business", the Yang brothers can only sigh that the Chinese police are too brave.
But with the occurrence of a tragic case, Zheng Yi, who had been undercover in the "Golden Triangle" for many years, could no longer stay, and finally left there under the protection of the relevant departments.
On October 5, 2011, the Chinese cargo ship "Hua Binh" and the Burmese cargo ship "Yuxing 8" were found in Thai waters on the Mekong River, and all the crew members died.
The Thai side claimed that the Chinese merchant ship was spotted by the Thai military for drug trafficking in Thailand, which led to a shootout between the two sides and 13 Chinese crew members were killed.
The Chinese government did not believe the Thai investigation, but sent a special investigation team to the place where the incident occurred to secretly investigate and found many suspicious points.
A few days later, the bodies of the murdered Chinese crew members were found in Thailand.
Most of them were blindfolded, their hands bound or handcuffed, and they had been beaten and abused before their deaths.
The torture and killing of Chinese on Chinese ships is a serious provocation.
As for the murderer, the Thai military said that it was the Shan State Armed Forces, the Thai media said that it was the Wa State Armed Forces, and the Thai folk rumors were that it was the Thai police...
But after careful investigation, the Chinese police targeted the Nuo Kham group in the Mekong River basin.
After the surrender of Khun Sa, Nuo Kham organized an armed force of more than 100 people and has since entrenched himself in the Golden Triangle basin of the Mekong River.
In the Mekong River Basin, Nuo Kham not only produced and sold drugs, but also often armed robbed boats to and from the Mekong River, and he and his subordinates were also engaged in human trafficking.
Relying on smuggling alone, Nuokang Group has tens of millions of dollars in revenue every year.
Due to the complexity of the case, the Chinese police are not yet fully certain that Nuo Kang was responsible for this case.
Therefore, Zheng Yi was instructed to find a way to inquire about the whereabouts of the key people behind the "10.5 Mekong River tragedy".
Zheng Yi also gritted his teeth with hatred about this matter, and he soon learned through his "informant" that a leader of the Nuokang organization named Yan Xiangzai was being resolute.
Soon, Iam Sang-jae was arrested by the Chinese police, confessing that his boss Eli (the No. 3 person in the Nuo Kang Organization) had boasted to him that the "10.5 Mekong River Massacre" was that they had killed people after robbing goods.
In 2011, the Chinese police, Eli, a key member of the Nuo Kang Group, arrested and admitted that the Mekong River Massacre was committed by the Nuo Kang organization in collusion with individual outlaw soldiers in Thailand.
According to Eli's confession, the Thai soldiers asked Naw Kham to get some drugs and scapegoats for them to seize, so that he could be promoted for meritorious service, and in return, the Naw Kham group could sell drugs freely on the Mekong River in the future.
After the facts of the case are clear, all that remains is how to arrest the main culprit as soon as possible.
Since Nuo Kham was hiding in Southeast Asia and other places, the Chinese police task force decided to hand over the arrest to the military police of Myanmar and Laos, but the Thai military and police did not need to participate.
But I don't know if the military and police in Myanmar and Laos are really weak, or if there are internal problems.
The first arrests began in December 2011, and for five months, each arrest was informed in advance by Nuo Kang, resulting in the failure of the operation.
On April 24, 2012, Zheng Yi learned through his "informant" that Nuo Kham was in Myanmar and was preparing to infiltrate Muang Mo County, Pokeo Province, Laos.
The Chinese police immediately notified the Lao military police to make a secret arrest.
On April 25, Naw Kham and three of his men were caught by the police as soon as they disembarked from the port of the pier in Bo Kiang province, Laos, and the other members were subsequently arrested.
At 11 a.m. on May 10, 2012, the Lao police and China held a handover ceremony to officially hand over Nuo Kham to the Chinese side.
Because Zheng Yi was too eager to inquire about the information of Nuo Kang's gang, he was finally suspected by the Yang brothers.
The investigators also caught one of his "informants", who eventually exposed Zheng Yi's identity.
Fortunately, Zheng Yi received an urgent notice from another "special agent" in time and safely withdrew to China.
On March 1, 2013, Nuo Kang and several other key cadres were executed in Kunming, Yunnan Province.
Zheng Yi, 63, had returned to Beijing by this time, and he stared at the TV as he watched the scene, tears welling up in his eyes.
In the aftermath of the Mekong River tragedy, China led the "China-Laos-Myanmar-Thailand-Mekong Joint Law Enforcement" and Chinese public security began armed patrols of the Mekong River.
Since then, no drug dealer on the Mekong has dared to provoke the Chinese, and the prosperity of the past has been restored.
The "Golden Triangle" resembles a drug trafficking syndicate like Nuo Kang, and compared with the drug lords of the past, it is like a grasshopper shaking a tree, and it is no longer a climate.
So far, Chinese law has stipulated that no matter how narcotics are produced or trafficked within the territory of China, they will be severely punished by the law! Anyone who smuggles more than 50 grams of narcotics will be directly sentenced to death, regardless of nationality.
postscript
After returning to China, under the protection of relevant departments, Zheng Yi has been living in a community in Beijing and died of illness in 2022.
During his more than 10 years as a "special agent" in the "Golden Triangle" region, he delivered hundreds of valuable pieces of information, effectively preventing the spread of foreign narcotics in China.
The life of this legendary old man has not only witnessed the process of the four generations of drug kings in the "Golden Triangle" from prosperity to decline, but also witnessed China's determination and strength to combat drugs.
(Adapted from a real person, at the request of the parties, the names of the main characters in the article are pseudonyms)
END