Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  The origin of this agrarian Wa tradition is obscure and will most probably never be fully fathomed. But many Was, and historians as well, retell an old legend according to which decapitation began with a trick played on the Was by Chu Ko-liang, the famous Chinese warrior of the Three Kingdoms period (A.D. 220-280). Chu is said to have given the Was boiled rice to plant, which, naturally, did not grow. He then told the Was their rice would grow only if they sacrificed human beings and cut off their heads. After the tribesmen heeded this advice, Chu gave the Was proper rice seeds which grew.

  In this way, ran the tale, intra-tribal warfare and headhunting expeditions became an annual event among the Was. This satisfied the Chinese, who preferred to see the unruly tribals to be pitted against each other, and so more easily malleable. Since the hill tribes depended on Chinese merchants for daily necessities, it seemed that Chinese heads were not in danger. Whatever the real genesis of the practice of head-hunting, the story served well enough to reflect the bitter anti-Chinese sentiment harboured by the Was—and the power they attributed to Chinese shrewdness.

  None of which was to say the Was were incapable of developing their own preferences as regards heads. Many old Was said they actually preferred Sikhs, if available, complete with a beard and a turban. The Shan historian Sao Saimong Mangrai relates in his The Shan State and the British Annexation that “during the Wa States tour of a British officer in 1939, a Sikh doctor had to be rushed out of the head-hunting area under an escort of a platoon of troops when it was learnt that the Was had come and offered 300 rupees to some of the camp followers for his head which, with its magnificent beard and moustache, they said would bring enduring prosperity to their village.”

  While tribal headhunting weakened the Wa society and to a great extent also hampered its economic development, it seems to have worked to their advantage as well. The more “civilised” plains people feared them and, quite understandably, seldom dared venture into the hills. The Was were thus left more or less to their own devices and managed to maintain considerable local autonomy well into modern times.

  Once the CPB had conquered the Wa Hills, they found the warlike tribals made formidable fighters. And once resistance had been broken, persuading young tribesmen to fight against the government was no difficult task either. For generations, they had been defending their hills from those they perceived as invaders. A tradition of resistance to outside authority was well ingrained even before the arrival of the communists.

  One day, after about a week at Mong Mau, I began feeling weak and feverish and completely lost my appetite; all I could face was a boiled egg and a cup of tea. Sweat trickled down my forehead and I was overcome by spells of dizziness. The following day, my temperature rose ominously to 41 degrees Celsius. A CPB nurse, a stout Chinese woman in her forties, was summoned to examine me. I watched in alarm and disbelief as she cleaned a syringe in a glass of murky water, administered an injection, and then offered me the same glass of water to swallow two tablets with.

  During my interviews with local CPB administrators, I had been casually assured there was a well-equipped hospital in the village with 26 China-trained nurses. It was now quite apparent that CPB statistics, let alone health services, left much to be desired.

  That night, I slept under a stack of blankets. But while I sweated copiously and my skin burned to the touch, I was shivering as if my bones were about to freeze. My condition was deteriorating steadily and if the CPB had any competent medical staff, it was all too clear they were somewhere else.

  Over the next few days, I sank into fevered delirium. Only one of the hallucinations I experienced during this time remained distinct in my memory. I felt as if I was sinking gently through depths of darkness in a bottomless abyss. Then I would propel myself back to up consciousness only for the same sequence to repeat itself yet again.

  I was close to giving up the struggle to survive when the encouraging news reached me that Brang Seng and his Kachin and Shan escort had arrived at Mong Mau. I requested to see them, certain that Brang Seng would have at least one qualified medic in his party. That same night, Brang Seng and his personal physician Hein Wom came along. They stared down at me in concern.

  “You’ve got a severe bout of malaria,” Brang Seng said softly.

  Fortunately, Hein Wom was equipped with all kinds of medicine. He plunged a—sterilised!—syringe into my buttock and gave me small plastic containers with daily doses of the pills I needed. Brang Seng’s contribution to my recovery was a tin of Ovaltine from his own bag of rations. That was welcome since I still could not eat solid food. Before long I began to feel much improved, although my legs were so weak I could walk only short distances. Nevertheless, I tried to maintain a routine of basic exercises around the house where I was staying.

  Brang Seng and his men left a few days later to continue their journey to Panghsang and on south to the Thai border. Sam Mai meanwhile had returned to Mong Ko, so there was the problem of finding an interpreter to replace him. With my health as poor as it was, I felt it important to be able to communicate with people around me.

  The only English-speaker in the vicinity lived in a nearby village, and was duly summoned to Mong Mau. His name was Ba Maung and he was a short, middle-aged Indian from Taunggyi who had joined the CPB in the late 1970s. He had once worked as a waiter at the old Strand Hotel at Ngapali Beach on the Arakan coast and whenever I called him, I was treated like a hotel guest ringing for room service.

  “What would you like to have for breakfast, Sir?” was his customary opening salvo of the day, and I was sorely tempted to order three slices of toast and marmalade, a glass of chilled mango juice, a mushroom omelette and a cup of coffee.

  Reality was rice gruel and rubbery chicken.

  To facilitate our conversation, Ba Maung had brought an old and well-thumbed dictionary which he had obviously preserved from his days of capitalist exploitation at the Strand. It was of the old-fashioned kind which has survived only in former British colonies. Under the headline “Abbreviations in common use” it listed, inter alia, FACCA. I was ashamed to admit that I had not known this stood for a “Fellow of the Association of Certified and Corporate Accountants”—of whom there could not have been many in the Wa Hills. “Head-hunter”, on the other hand, was conspicuous by its absence.

  One day, without warning, an emissary arrived from Panghsang. He introduced himself without ado.

  “My name is Aung Htet,” he said, striding into the room where I lay prostrate under a pile of blankets. “I’ll be coming with you to Panghsang.”

  He was about forty, of frail appearance, and carried a Chinese army pistol in a holster on his belt. His English was almost flawless and I learned he had once studied at Mandalay University.

  “By the way, this is for you.” He handed me a brown envelope chopped with the party seal. I opened it and was delighted to learn that Hseng Noung and Hseng Tai had arrived safely at Panghsang after an uneventful journey by bus through China.

  As we became acquainted, I discovered Aung Htet came from a family of distinguished Burmese writers. His father U Hla and his mother Ah Ma had edited the last independent newspaper in Burma, the Ludu, or the People, in Mandalay before all private publications were banned by the military regime in the late 1960s. Aung Htet himself had spent several years in detention, including a spell at the infamous penal colony on Coco Island in the Indian Ocean to which political prisoners were deported in the 1970s.

  His company was a welcome tonic and I soon felt up to digesting a bowl of khao soi and a slice of the inevitable Ma Ling luncheon meat. Aung Htet busied himself with preparations for our onward journey. By now I was heartily weary of the vicissitudes and privations of the road: the prospect of Panghsang seemed to shimmer before me like an oasis in an interminable expanse of desert.

  When finally we left Mong Mau on December 13 I was still feeling frail and slightly feverish. Ahead of us lay a six-day journey to Panghsang through the heart of the Wa country. Our group con
sisted of Aung Htet, the Indian from Taunggyi, a section of Wa troops and two mules to carry the luggage and provisions.

  To my relief, the trail followed a grassy mountainside and so made for comparatively easy going. And the weather, clear and crisp, was ideal for walking. Even so, the uphill stages, slight as they were, exhausted me, and any strenuous effort brought on sudden dizzy spells. Without the aid of a bamboo staff, I would have collapsed more than once.

  As the sun was setting, we reached the Nam Ma, the main river in the northern Wa Hills. The old wooden bridge had been washed away during the rains and had been replaced with a less than inviting bamboo and cane structure which was suspended from steel wires attached to trees on both banks. Only one person could cross it at a time and the bridge swayed ominously as each of us crossed in turn. Three metres below, the flood swirled and seethed around outcrops of sharp rocks. Once I had teetered across, Aung Htet gave a long sigh of undisguised relief.

  “I forgot to ask you whether you could swim.”

  “I can. But I’m not too good in mountain torrents. If I had fallen in, I would have survived the malaria just to be washed away by the Nam Ma.”

  After the crossing, we climbed steeply up again. But it was already dark and the evening cool made the ascent far less arduous than it would have been in the heat of mid-day. An hour later, we reached a small Wa village of a dozen ramshackle bamboo huts built on stilts on a hillside and decided to stay overnight there. Barking dogs, crying children and a vocal water buffalo, tied to one of the stilts under our house, kept me awake until late. But I was thankful that I could at least walk again without too much difficulty.

  The country south of the Nam Ma through which we marched the next day was the most rugged I had seen since the Naga Hills. And the similarities did not stop at the terrain. This was the home of the “Wild Was”. Their villages were large—some of 100 houses or more—and built on well-chosen ridges offering panoramic views; as in the Naga Hills, a precaution against attacks from rival villages on the warpath for heads.

  Hseng Tai, 14 mouths old.

  In those days—a mere decade earlier—the villages of the “Wild Was” were surrounded by a high growth of dense thornwood with dead and living branches intertwined to form an impenetrable barrier. At each end of the village path, a tunnel-like trench cut under the hedge; but could be closed on the inside by solid gates hacked from tree trunks.

  Each village had also had a “drum house”—the Wa equivalent of the Naga morungs—where important meetings were held. The big drums, made from wood and stretched animal hide, served as alarms. When their deep throbs reverberated through the village, the inhabitants knew that enemies were approaching, and the gates would be closed immediately. Outside the drum house, enemy skulls were kept in baskets high on bamboo poles, grim reminders of the villagers’ own triumphs.

  Such fortifications around the Wa villages had, of course, disappeared. But as we entered a village called Lalai that morning, there were eerie echoes of not so long ago. The old trenches were still there along with remnants of the thornwood barrier. The village itself stood on a high ridge commanding a magnificent view over the surrounding mountains.

  In the far distance, on another green ridge, was the village of Konya where in 1972 fierce battles had been fought between Wa warriors and the CPB. The communists’ B-40 bazookas had wrought terrible slaughter on the tribals armed with spears, swords and muskets and eventually forced them into submission. And it was at Konya that in 1974, Chao Ngi Lai had seen some the last severed heads in the Wa Hills.

  As we trudged through Lalai single file, I looked around curiously. It was hard to gauge whether the villagers now actively supported the CPB, or whether they had merely been beaten and cowed into a passive acceptance of the status quo.

  Outside thatched huts, women sat suckling infants; the old men dozed in the shade of bamboo thickets; and hordes of naked children scampered along the muddy paths.

  Although the human crania were no more, animal skulls were displayed on high bamboo poles. The village was clearly desperately poor and appeared to depend entirely on the income from the surrounding poppy fields. This too was in sharp contrast to the “Tame Wa” area north of Mong Mau.

  But in Lalai and the other villages through which we marched it was something else that struck me most forcefully. I saw only women, children and old men. There was a yawning age gap on the male side between the ages of around 15 and 50. That the Was had formed the bulk of the CPB’s fighting force since the party’s conquest of the hills I already knew.

  It was only now, however, that I realised how total the conscription had been—and how heavy the casualties must have been. Human-wave tactics may be a viable military option for the Chinese, with a population base of over one billion to draw on. But when the cannon fodder consisted of recruits from a small hill tribe like the Was, the result was a social and demographic catastrophe.

  That night, we arrived at Ai Kyin, one of the largest villages in the old headhunting area, and now, under communist rule, a township centre. It boasted a few bamboo barracks and a deserted marketplace. We stayed in the township office which did not appear to have any real administrative function but which was staffed by six men, all permanently disabled. They were missing either feet or legs and hobbled around on crutches. One man had lost both legs and sat on a wooden chair, listlessly smoking rough Wa tobacco.

  Doubtless, the battle of Hsi-Hsinwan was at that very moment producing a fresh crop of such casualties. I could not but feel a profound wave of pity for this simple, stone-age people dragooned into a war fought for a moribund ideology they could not begin to comprehend. It was a peculiarly Twentieth Century tragedy.

  The way beyond Ai Kyin was easy. We hit what might once have been a road or, at least, an attempt to build one. Parts were already overgrown with weeds and creepers, and people had made short-cut paths across the bends. The road itself had been levelled sufficiently broadly to accommodate motor vehicles—which had apparently never used it.

  “The party build this road,” announced Aung Htet as we trudged along. “But there are so many streams and we don’t know how to build bridges. So it’s been left like this.”

  The road was another ambitious CPB project which had never really got off the ground. It had been intended to connect Panghsang and Mong Mau and introduce motor traffic to the centre of the Wa Hills, which would have revolutionised transportation in the area. Instead of six days on foot, the journey would have taken one day by jeep or truck.

  As we walked, I recalled a story Kyaw Nyunt had told me at Hsi-Hsinwan. Unimpressed by the indiscipline and sloppiness of the Wa troops, I had asked him about their fighting ability. He answered promptly.

  “They’re good because they don’t know what fear is. They learn how to use modern weapons easily, but there are other things they don’t understand.” He laughed.

  Once, he went on, Kyi Myint, the Chinese commander at Hsi-Hsinwan, had captured the town of Mong Mit in northern Shan State. There, for the first time, many of the Wa troops had had the opportunity to take a close look at cars. They had seen these fast-moving objects at Panghsai, but never fully understood what they were. To Kyi Myint’s astonishment, his Wa troops at Mong Mit had gone around smashing the headlights of all the cars they saw. When the last headlights had been vandalised, a Wa platoon commander had come to Kyi Myint and proudly announced:

  “The cars can’t follow us when we retreat, now. They’re all blind.”

  There were many such stories surrounding the cultural confusion the Was had experienced as the CPB dragged them into modern warfare. Even now, it was common for Wa troops to beat war-drums and dance before battle, as in the old days when they set out on headhunting raids in their own hills.

  Government troops stood in considerable awe of their Wa foe. This was not due to any tactical sophistication on the part of the tribals, but rather the very opposite—no matter how heavy the casualties, how solid the defence, the Was would
simply keep on coming, assault rifles blazing on full automatic, dead and wounded piling up around them.

  This blood-curdling ferocity and almost child-like disregard for death was, understandably enough, psychologically taxing for government troops; and, predictably, only went to encourage CPB commanders to rely on costly human-wave tactics.

  Another six hours march brought us to Vingngün, the next centre of any size on the road to Panghsang. Rows of bamboo and mudbrick houses clustered around a large, covered market. Aung Htet and Ba Maung, the Indian, went to the market and returned with pineapple juice, oranges and khao soi. We had now left the old headhunting zone and entered another “Tame Wa” area.

  Vingngün or “Silver Town” in Shan was one of the oldest settlements in the Wa Hills. The old mines in the vicinity were worked by the British during the colonial era and after Independence in 1948, they became the property of a local “Shan-ified” Wa prince. Following the communist victory in China, his sons became involved with the retreating Kuomintang, and established their own private army which traded in opium with Thailand and helped organise cross-border raids into Yunnan.

  When finally in 1972 the CPB took over the tiny principality, one of these scions called Mahasang, retreated south to the Thai border and set up his own Wa National Army. By that time, the silver had been mined out, but it was rumoured that before his retreat, Mahasang had buried hoards of it in the nearby forest. The local people dreamed of unearthing this silver, and there were always tales of those who had found some—along with a perennial absence of any eyewitnesses to these discoveries.