Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

The communist interpretation of Vingngün’s contemporary history was re-enacted that night by the village’s propaganda team who staged a show for my benefit on the local garrison volleyball ground. A troupe of young Wa girls sang and danced waving scarves in front of a huge banner bearing a hammer and sickle. Then each girl produced a length of red ribbon and they danced close to one another. The climax came when, ingeniously, they wove the ribbons together and in an instant formed a five-pointed star. I asked Aung Htet what they had been singing about.

  “They say they’re gathering flowers and that they’re going to send the prettiest ones to Chairman Mao.”

  It was all such a tired anachronism. Such a display might have had some relevance in the heady days of revolutionary fervour in 1968. In 1986 it was, at best, a gathering of flowers for the grave of the epic but brutally flawed Maoist experiment. And, in Vingngün the only flowers around were opium poppies; the first of the season were now in bloom.

  The land south of Vingngün was sparsely populated. Apart from a few Wa villages with their surrounding poppy fields, there was virtually no sign of cultivation on grassy hills across which we marched. I was also astonished to see the poor state of the poppy fields. The Wa Hills were considered to be the main opium-growing area in Southeast Asia after Kokang. But that assessment evidently owed more to American satellite imagery than reality at ground level.

  In Kokang, the fields had been neatly laid out on the hillsides, facing north to benefit from maximum sunshine. In striking contrast, the Was planted their poppies wholly haphazardly: not a single field we passed was planted in orderly rows. Some poppies which caught the sun appeared strong and healthy; others, hidden in shade, were wretched, straggling growths.

  This was all a very far cry from one official—and not atypical—American report I had read that referred to “vast poppy farms, guarded by machine-gunners and cultivated by farmers who have been forced to do so at gunpoint by the insurgents.” It was exactly this type of heavily politicised reporting, distinguished by a sweeping ignorance of facts, which characterised the contributions of one of Washington’s more imaginative governmental bodies, the Drug Enforcement Administration; and which set the parameters for debate both in official U.S. circles and the Western media more generally.

  But while the Was were aware of opium as a cash crop, they had totally ignored another potential source of income: ganja which grew in profusion across several mountains I saw. None of the locals, however, appeared to be aware that this was also a drug which could be smoked. Instead, the hemp was used to make coarse blankets and shoulderbags.

  We reached the market village of Loi Leün that afternoon and stayed overnight in the local CPB office. Aung Htet, who had studied local history, told me that before “liberation” Loi Leün had been ruled by a local chieftain called Khun Nan.

  “He used to ride on people’s backs when he went hunting because a horse would make too much noise. When our Party liberated this area, we arrested him and he died of illness shortly afterwards.”

  Just how accurate an interpretation of events this represented was another matter. I had no doubts the petty chiefs in the Wa Hills had, when necessary, exercised power ruthlessly. But I was inclined to believe that their wealth and importance had been deliberately exaggerated by the CPB the better to fit them into the Marxist categories of “feudal” lords. In the Wa context they may well have been rich—which may have meant they owned a rifle, some silver coins and possibly a few slaves.

  Slavery in the Wa Hills was, in any case, a relatively recent phenomenon, linked to the introduction of money by Chinese merchants. Peasants borrowed money from local chiefs and, if they could not repay their loans, the creditor was entitled take the debtor’s children as slaves.

  Generally, girls were preferred since they were considered more obedient and less prone to run away. They had also to serve as the bedfellows of any male in their master’s family, which increased their value on the slave market, especially if they were pretty.

  In Mong Mau I had heard that, as late as 1977, a girl from a nearby Wa village had been given away by her parents to a money-lender when they could not pay their debts. But she was released after intervention by the CPB and went down in the local history as the last slave sold in the Wa Hills.

  The house where we stayed in Loi Leün was a run-down mudbrick pile with an earthen floor. Large rats lumbered unhurriedly along the wooden beams under the ceiling and I took precautions to protect the food we carried in our mule packs. The nonchalance with which the locals regarded the rats, the main carriers of disease in the Wa Hills, was something that never failed to surprise me.

  I was even more taken aback when later that evening I went into the kitchen where a section of Wa soldiers were cooking their own meal. They were squatting around a big black pot containing a mess the mere sight of which made me instantly queasy: a watery rice gruel on which floated a big chunk of pork fat, a few limp vegetables and scores of large, dried chillies.

  “They always eat like that.” Aung Htet had caught the expression on my face. “Ordinary boiled rice is a luxury they can’t afford. They make the gruel and throw everything they have into it.”

  I quickly retreated to my bowl of khao soi and a new supply of Ma Ling luncheon meat which we had secured in Vingngün.

  I kept a candle burning all night to ward off the rats, and woke up at dawn. The mules had decamped during the night and pandemonium reigned as soldiers ran off into the forest in pursuit, shouting and yelling, while others sat laughing and sniggering at their comrades’ futile efforts.

  I could not but think of Sgt.-Maj. Dingring Naw Bawk and Kachins and wonder why the CPB, despite all the aid they had got from China, had not been able to build up a more professional army.

  Leaving the escort to round up the errant mules, Aung Htet and I set out alone and marched for six hours before reaching the next village, Ting Aw. It was Chinese and located on a high mountain, overlooking the Chinese border and the rugged mountains of Yunnan on the other side.

  That afternoon, we heard artillery rumbling in the far distance. News reached us that the government forces had opened a second front at Pangyang, about 50 kms to the west of Panghsang. This was apparently an attempt to tie down communist forces there and so prevent their being redeployed to reinforce the units at Hsi-Hsinwan to the north. A month after the initial attack, the fighting there was still raging. But there was a disconcerting scarcity of details as to the direction in which the tide of battle was turning.

  Long lines of militiamen marched through Ting Aw that evening on their way to relieve the Panghsang headquarters garrison from regular duties. Several battalions of CPB troops had apparently already been sent to the newly opened front at Pangyang.

  Ting Aw itself was a wretched place of rough stone houses packed closely together along muddy alleys. Typically, it seemed populated predominantly by packs of snarling dogs and massive swine. Poppy fields covered every nearby hillside. But there was not a proper vegetable garden to be seen.

  “This is a typical Chinese village,” Aung Htet said over a glass of rice liquor that night.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It’s filthy. A Shan village would never look like this.” I suddenly realised how tactless this sounded as Aung Htet’s wife in Panghsang was Chinese. He was not offended, however, and with a laugh remarked:

  “You’re just saying that because your wife is Shan!”

  I laughed too, and we raised our glasses to the next day’s march, the last before Panghsang.

  The following day, the rumble of artillery from Pangyang was clearly audible, and we met more militiamen on their way to Panghsang. They were a sorry spectacle: unkempt bands of peasants armed with semi-automatic rifles, some barefoot, others shod in tattered Chinese tennis shoes. There was a ruined pagoda on a hilltop on the way. Solidly built of stone and concrete, the year “1922” was inscribed on a lintel over one of the doors. It looked eerie in the middle of the wind-swept, grass-clad hills. I stoppe
d and took some pictures while the rag-tag militiamen filed past.

  Several hours’ march brought us to the crest of a ridge. Way below, I could make out a large and flat, horseshoe-shaped bend in the Nam Hka border river. Inside the bend, houses were scattered while across river stood white concrete buildings. The narrow valley lay between high mountains which rose like dark shadows on either side of the Nam Hka.

  “That’s Panghsang,” said Aung Htet. “And across the river, you can see Meng A in China. Your wife and daughter will be waiting for you at our headquarters.”

  The thought of Hseng Noung and Hseng Tai lent speed to my feet. We marched fast downhill passing numbers of tribal people, mostly Was, trudging home towards their villages in the hills. It was market day in Panghsang and they were carrying baskets of vegetables and the odd luxury item—a torch, a pair of plastic flip-flops or a new Liverpool 33 T-shirt.

  Panghsang, the renowned headquarters of the Burmese communists, soon came into view. Perhaps inevitably, finally setting eyes on it proved anti-climatic. There were neither red banners fluttering in the wind, nor billboard sized posters depicting the revolutionary pantheon of Marxism-Leninism. The first sign of anything out of the ordinary was a decrepit Chinese-made truck by a wooden bridge, a tractor and a collection of mud-brick houses. The fires of proletarian revolution were burning low.

  We hurried past a by now almost deserted market place where a few idlers stared in wide-eyed wonder at the unusual visitor and his armed escort. A wide but rough dirt road ran east from the market and Aung Htet led me into a more solid-looking cluster of barracks where a crowd of people were gathered on the lawn outside. Armed guards were posted at the entrance, a bamboo gate.

  “This is our command headquarters,” Aung Htet proudly pointed out as we walked through the gate.

  But I was paying less attention to that than to a slight long-haired figure in a brown corduroy jacket holding a baby. I embraced both of them, but after more than a month’s separation, it was hard to find words to express my joy and relief. Hseng Noung was the first to break the silence.

  “Look at Hseng Tai. She can walk now.”

  She put the baby down and let her totter unsteadily around. Hseng Tai stopped and gazed at me pensively, as if she wanted to say: “I’ve seen that fellow before. But who is he?” I offered her my hand and after a moment’s hesitation, she appeared to recognise me. She put her hand in mine and for the first time we walked together. Hseng Noung slipped her arm through mine and we all walked over to an old Chinese army truck parked beside the headquarters and climbed into the cab.

  A short drive along a rutted, bumpy road brought us to a solid U-shaped brick building further inside the horseshoe-bend in the river where we were to stay. The strain of the journey and the after effects of malaria had left me weak and exhausted. But we were reunited and finally in Panghsang; and for the moment, nothing else seemed to matter.

  12

  PANGHSANG

  Early the following morning, the sun rose over the green paddy fields in Panghsang and Meng A across the Nam Hka border river. The rays soon dispersed the mist in the valley and the chill of the December night evaporated. Breakfast was served in a room next to ours in the concrete, U-shaped building which now was our temporary home. To my surprise, we were treated to bread and butter, boiled eggs and tinned ham from China.

  The building was surrounded by a brick wall and Hseng Noung had told me it was the CPB’s old broadcasting station from where the clandestine “People’s Voice of Burma” (PVOB) once transmitted party bulletins and fighting reports. The CPB’s first transmitter had actually been located in Yunnan where the top party leadership also stayed during the first years of the fighting in the northeast.

  But when Deng Xiaoping returned to power in Beijing and a new Chinese foreign policy was adopted, the CPB’s entire central office had to move across the border to Panghsang in 1978. Along with it came the PVOB and this radio station was built. The facility was here for seven years until the PVOB suddenly and unexpectedly went off the air in April 1985.

  Many observers thought the Chinese had ordered the CPB to cease its broadcasts once and for all. But then the transmissions resumed in early 1986 from another, secret location. The presence of a rebel radio station so close to China and obviously drawing its power from across the border had proved a diplomatic embarrassment on the occasion of a visit to Beijing by Ne Win in early 1985.

  The Chinese had agreed to cut the power lines. But then, after a suitably discreet interval, they had made available to the CPB a new, much more compact transmitter mounted on the back of a lorry along with a mobile generator. The tapes for the broadcasts were still recorded in the old studio in Panghsang and then sent by courier through China to a rendezvous point near Mong Mau in the northern Wa Hills where the lorry is based.

  After breakfast, I strolled around the compound and peered through the dirty window into the former transmitting room, where the old Chinese-made equipment was still intact but gathering dust. Other rooms contained offices for the CPB’s propaganda department, a library of party literature and communist magazines from various parts of the world.

  Most of these foreign publications were dated since several of the CPB’s sister parties now were defunct along with such papers as The Forge from the Canadian Maoists or The Call from the US. But still, every week, a few publications arrived from the die-hard Marxist-Leninist rump scattered in pockets around the globe: the Vanguard from Australia, Class Struggle from Britain, the Pyongyang Times from North Korea and, interestingly, Frontier, the independent left-wing weekly published in Calcutta, at whose office we had begun our search for the Nagas and the NSCN in March 1985.

  Leafing through these publications, which must have tiny circulations, one had a view of the distant world from a very odd perspective. Judging from the Vanguard, a socialist revolution was imminent in Australia.

  Panghsang seemed to be one of the world’s last bastions of orthodox Maoism as it once had been taught and practised in pre-Deng China. It was a bizarre experience to walk around the old radio station examining almost as in a museum these relics of the revolutionary decades of the 1960s and 1970s.

  Seen in a different perspective, I once more had to admire the Indian approach to ethnic insurgency and radical political activism. What harm could the CPB do if it stayed in a back-lane office in Rangoon and published something like Frontier? Rangoon’s present policy only seems to perpetuate the civil war.

  The party chairman, Thakin Ba Thein Tin, summoned us to his residence later that morning. All three of us were picked up by an olive green Shanghai jeep made in China, and the driver took us down the small hillock on which the old broadcasting station was located, along a winding dirt road further inside the Panghsang horseshoe. Several checkpoints, manned by young Wa soldiers, lined the road. After driving for two kilometres, we entered a big open space, resembling a parade ground. The jeep pulled up at a building, which had neat flowerbeds outside and an armed guard by the door.

  An old man, slightly overweight and dressed in a green communist uniform waited outside. He was wearing spectacles with pebble lenses and held a walking stick in his hand. Two young soldiers stood on either side, supporting him under the arms.

  “Bertil, welcome,” the old man said in a firm voice. “So you have made it to us at last.”

  It was Thakin Ba Thein Tin himself and I shook his hand. We went inside his house where a number of other party leaders had assembled. The first one I was introduced to was Khin Maung Gyi, the secretary to the CPB’s central committee, who is considered the party’s main theoretician. He was about sixty, plump but with sharp features and bright, intelligent eyes. Several sources had told me he was the brain behind the CPB’s official announcements and even some of Thakin Ba Thein Tin’s speeches. He spoke English softly, carefully searching for the correct words or the right expression.

  Beside him was Kyaw Mya, a septuagenarian communist veteran from the Arakan Yoma near the
Bangladesh border who had come to Panghsang in 1979, following intense fighting at his old stronghold in western Burma. Kyaw Mya looked almost Indian and was thin and frail. Aung Htet was there also, as a secretary taking notes of our discussion.

  On the wall hung portraits of Thakin Than Tun and Thakin Zin, prior chairmen of the CPB. Than Tun had been killed by a government infiltrator in 1968 and Zin when the Burmese Army occupied the CPB’s then headquarters in the Pegu Yoma mountains north of Rangoon in 1975. A white plaster bust of Mao Zedong stood on a small table and the bookshelves along one wall were filled with works by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, plus a few novels, mostly of Chinese origin.

  “For so many years, we’ve been waiting for a foreign journalist to come to our liberated area,” Ba Thein Tin said as an orderly served us tea with milk and Chinese biscuits. “We revolutionaries need journalists, you see. Our Chinese comrades had Edgar Snow. I’d like you to become the Edgar Snow of Burma.”

  I nodded, but refrained from comment. I have a lot of respect for Edgar Snow, a brave and excellent writer, but I consider my work very different. Snow had openly sided with Mao’s communists during the Chinese civil war.

  In early 1987 the Lintners met Chairman Thakin Ba Thein Tin at the Panghsang headquarters of the Communist Party of Burma. Earlier, in late 1986, they had met Brang Seng, the leader of the Kachin rebels

  The market in Panghsai, stocked with contraband from China.

  Although I have had my own opinions on the Burmese conflict, my desire has always been to be as objective and factual as possible—and to describe the war from the point of view of all the innocent people who are affected by it rather than glorifying the various armies involved. But I listened carefully to what Ba Thein Tin had to say.