Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  “Fighter-bombers,” cried Aye Tan. “They must be on their way from Lashio to Tang-yan.”

  We marched on to a big market village called Manghseng which was located very close to a string of government outposts. Rangoon’s only toehold east of the Salween between Hopang-Panglong and the Mawhpa area consists of Man Kang village opposite the garrison town of Tang-yan. Man Kang was never captured by the CPB in the mid-1970s and an entire battalion, sometimes two, are stationed in and around the village in well fortified bunker positions on a mountain overlooking Manghseng.

  We rested overnight in a CPB army camp outside Manghseng, avoiding the village itself as it was frequented by traders from Man Kang as well as Tang-yan across the Salween. The following morning, we detoured to the east, crossing the Nam Nang stream which separates the CPB’s Northern and Southern Wa Districts.

  Once on the other bank, we climbed a high mountain range which ran parallel to the stream. On the opposite range, on the western ridge of the Nam Nang, were the government positions. We bivouacked in a small Wa village, from where we would descend into the Nam Nang gorge again, cross it safely to the north of Man Kang, and then, hopefully, catch up with Brang Seng and his party near the Salween.

  I woke at dawn to the sound of heavy machine-gun fire. Aye Tan and I rushed out of our hut. Smoke billowed from the mountain range behind Manghseng, across the Nam Nang. The rattling echo floated across the hills, followed by mortar explosions and the loud reports of recoilless rifles.

  “What’s going on?” I turned to Aye Tan. Do you think they’ve got news of our arrival and think we’re still on that side of the Nam Nang?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes our troops and theirs exchange fire. We have one battalion encircling their bunkers.”

  But the intensity of the shooting suggested something more serious than that. We assembled our packs and the Wa boys loaded the mule. Then we set off north, following the ridgeline above the Nam Nang. On the opposite range, intermittent firing sputtered on for two hours, finally to subside altogether.

  It was not until the next day, when we reached another Wa village in the hills, that we found out what had actually happened. The local people in a village called Man Ngawn, between Manghseng and the Burmese Army camp on the mountain top, had had a housewarming ceremony the night before the shooting began. Some soldiers from the CPB, who had relatives in Man Ngawn, had joined the festivities, returning to their camp around midnight. The government outpost, it seemed, had been alerted by an informer in the village.

  Early next morning—long after the CPB soldiers had left the village—government troops had surrounded Man Ngawn and bombarded it indiscriminately with heavy weapons.

  There were conflicting reports as to how many villagers had been killed and wounded, but the number seemed to be substantial. Several houses had been totally destroyed by mortar bombs. The surviving villagers had fled and the government troops had looted their homes after the attack.

  I could only shake my head in disgust. Doubtless, the army unit responsible would have radioed back to their company headquarters, reporting an engagement with the “enemy” and claiming at least 30 or 40 “insurgents” killed. It was hardly surprising that government troops were heartily detested in the region. That is not to say the CPB, let alone its Marxist-Leninist philosophy, necessarily enjoyed widespread affection. But they at least did not behave like this. Most importantly, they also supplied the villagers with guns for self-defence, a policy the tribespeople surely appreciated.

  We reached the place where Brang Seng and his men were waiting the following day. It was a small Wa village near the Salween, but well-hidden in thick forest. His escort had dug trenches and foxholes around the village, partly because of the shooting at Man Ngawn, but also due to another operation in progress across the Salween. US-supplied aircraft were spraying the poppy fields there with a chemical called 2,4-D. Almost an entire government battalion had been detailed to provide ground security.

  Ironically, the American-sponsored spraying programme was based on the premise that aerial spraying would enable the Burmese authorities to reach inaccessible and remote areas controlled by various insurgent groups. But here, only a day’s walk from government-held Tang-yan, they were carrying out from the air what they could have done on the ground—and that with a herbicide whose side-effects are the subject in the West of considerable controversy.

  In Sweden, the use of 2,4-D is banned anywhere near mature food crops; in the Golden Triangle opium farmers invariably grow vegetables between the poppies in the fields. From other areas, I had already heard reports of uneducated villagers, who had eaten sprayed vegetables, falling sick and in some cases even dying. No alternative crops had been offered to these villagers before their only income had been wiped out by the chemicals. In the distance I could hear the drone of the aircraft. In its own way, the operation was as idiotic as the shooting at Man Ngawn.

  I found Brang Seng in a bamboo hut guarded by a few Kachin and Shan soldiers. He was his usual good-humoured self.

  “Looks like I can never get rid of you! I got a radio message the other day saying someone wanted to see me. I guessed it was our intrepid Swedish reporter again. What’s up this time?”

  I explained what had happened at Meng A and the insistence of the CPB leaders that we should go down to the Thai border. Brang Seng shook his head.

  “It wouldn’t be safe for you to come with us. I can disguise myself. But not you.”

  We agreed the only possibility was China, even if that risked embarrassing the Chinese and possibly provoking a Burmese protest. The alternatives were simply unacceptable.

  “You’ve got a little baby also,” Brang Seng added gravely “She’s spent enough time in the jungle already. You shouldn’t take any more risks with her.”

  The chance to talk with someone I could really trust was a great relief. Having decided on our own course of action, the conversation turned to the spraying campaign across the Salween. As Brang Seng explained, it was an attempt to depopulate the villages near the ferry to make it more difficult for the insurgents to use it.

  Normally, scouts would be sent ahead to villages on the other bank to make sure the route was clear of government forces. If the poppy fields were sprayed, the locals would be forced to move elsewhere, and a major rebel line of communication would effectively be cut. Rangoon would not, of course, be briefing its American sponsors on the finer points of the operation. Evidently, these had nothing to do with opium eradication as such.

  I was back at the old broadcasting station at Panghsang on February 5, thirteen days after setting out. It had been a long walk for a two hour conversation, but I reckoned it worthwhile. We began preparing for our next attempt to sneak into China.

  We spread out a map across the concrete floor of our room, and studied the various possibilities. We knew the small town of Jinghong in Sipsongpanna—Xishuangbanna in Chinese—had been open to tourists for several years. It is a Shan—or Tai—area inside China, so we would be able to speak the local language if we ran into difficulties. Jinghong is located about 100 kms from the Burmese border opposite the CPB’s Mekong River Division, which until recently was known as the 815 Military Region.

  “That’s about two weeks on foot east of Panghsang,” I said measuring the distance on the map with a ruler.

  Much to our surprise and delight, Hseng Noung had heard from the local Shans in Panghsang that the small village of Ta Mong Long—which the Chinese corrupt to Da Meng Long—had just been opened to tourists as well. It has a beautiful Buddhist pagoda which often appears in tourist pamphlets. More to the point, it was only ten kilometres from the border.

  Lahu New Year in Weng Gao, 1987.

  “If we can make it that far, we can mix with the tourists and go up to Jinghong by bus. From Jinghong we can contact the Swedish Embassy in Beijing before the Chinese even found out we’re there. The main thing is to avoid the local policemen along the border. Once our case is being discussed
in Beijing, it’s on a governmental level and it should be easier to solve.”

  Hseng Noung readily agreed. Hseng Tai was toddling around in the walled compound of the broadcasting station, playing with sticks and pebbles and whatever else she came across. We looked at her. Hseng Noung smiled.

  “Poor Hseng Tai. She doesn’t even know what her crazy parents have dragged her into.”

  To be prepared for all eventualities, however, we decided to try a semi-legal way as well. Since we had been turned away at Meng A on the grounds that we had no visas, we decided to pre-empt any possibility of a repeat. Obtaining a Chinese visa these days is not difficult. Indeed, provided they have your passports, photographs and the required fee, travel agencies in Hong Kong can complete the formalities in a single day.

  With this in mind, we had our pictures taken in a small studio in Panghsang market and I typed out all the details which would be needed for a visa application. The documentation along with our passports I sealed in a big brown envelope and addressed it to Frank, a friend in Hong Kong. We first thought of suggesting he return the passports and visas to a post office box in Meng A, but eventually decided against it. Mail can be extremely slow in China and it would be better to send our passports to Jinghong; or, best of all, if Frank was free and willing, to bring our passports and visas himself.

  San Thu and his wife San Yi looked after the Lintners during their stay at Panghsang

  To allow enough time for these various stratagems, we decided to try and time our arrival in Jinghong for the water festival in mid-April. At that time, tourists flock to Sipsongpanna and we would be able to conceal ourselves more easily in the crowds. I wrote to Frank saying that, if it were at all possible for him to come, he should leave a message on the notice board at the main tourist hotel in Jinghong.

  “I can always sneak up to Jinghong before you and check if everything’s all right. Then you can cross the border,” was Hseng Noung’s suggestion.

  At first we had contemplated leaving Jinghong as soon as possible for Beijing. But then we learnt there is a checkpoint just north of Jinghong, primarily to make sure no people from Burma go too far inside China—but also to register the movements of foreign tourists. So that plan was out. We would have to stay in Jinghong and make contacts from there.

  The CPB leadership was less than enthusiastic about our schemes: they had their own sensitive relations with China to worry about. We insisted it was our idea and our risk. They grumbled and did not even try to hide their displeasure. In any event, a friend was going to China, so we gave him our big brown envelope to be sent by registered mail from there.

  February passed peacefully at Panghsang. Hseng Noung went for daily Chinese classes and I worked on my notebooks and listened to the radio at night. Occasionally, we went to market or visited the SSA house. But we were always closely followed by armed CPB soldiers who seemed to be guarding rather than protecting us. We began to feel increasingly isolated inside our compound and entries in my diary also became shorter and shorter; there was simply nothing much to write about. A typical day’s entry might read:

  “Woke up early. Hseng Tai was very noisy. Heard artillery from the direction of Pangyang at 7.30 am. Stayed in the house all day. Did some writing and read a book. Played backgammon and listened to the BBC at night.”

  On March 8, the CPB celebrated International Women’s Day with a meeting, revolutionary music and a lecture—on the role of women during the Long March in China. Hseng Noung went along to take some pictures. I stayed at home, wondering when the CPB was going to catch up with contemporary reality be it in Burma or anywhere else.

  At last, on March 19, a message came from one of our local, private contacts. Preparations were being made for my journey down to the border opposite Ta Mong Long. Hseng Noung and Hseng Tai were to go by bus through China and meet me in a camp across the border on the Burmese side. We told some friends we were leaving and the CPB, reluctantly, agreed to provide me with an escort and mules for the journey east. They had finally given up trying to persuade us to trek south to the Thai border.

  The night before we were due to leave, we went to see San Thu and San Yi. San Thu and I shared a bottle of Chinese moonshine and, for the last time, he reminisced longingly about his days in Moscow—skating in Gorky Park and eating Russian sausages with mustard. Before turning in, we sat and listened to the BBC’s Burmese Service.

  We had been behind rebel lines during one of the most eventful years in the history of the civil war in Burma. And now the radio broadcasted a translation of an article from the Far Eastern Economic Review analysing the country’s deepening economic crisis. It was high time to be back in Bangkok and to find out what changes were taking place in the rest of Burma.

  13

  OVER THE KENGTUNG HILLS

  I had decided to start well before dawn to avoid being seen by merchants at the market or government informers—almost certainly active—in the headquarters area. The alarm clock rang at four and by the time we were up, the muleteers and guards were already busy assembling the packs in the compound outside the old broadcasting station.

  The man in charge of the mules took his duties especially seriously. He was a short, bow-legged Chinese, unusually dark for his race and with a voice like a creaking door. Mules were the stuff of his entire conversational repertoire and Hseng Noung and I immediately named him the Man Called Horse. The shared joke and laughter helped to ease the tension of our coming separation when Hseng Noung would take the bus while I began my long detour on foot.

  My guide was once again to be the young intellectual Aye Tan, while the security detail was made up of the usual high-spirited Wa boys. They joked and giggled as the Man-Called-Horse strapped the packs with our luggage onto his restless mules. Since Hseng Noung intended to travel as inconspicuously as possible through Chinese territory, nearly all our belongings were going with me.

  San Thu and his wife came up to say goodbye and I promised to send them mustard and sausages from Bangkok. Then I kissed Hseng Noung and Hseng Tai goodbye and turning my back for the last time on the old broadcasting station, set off behind the muleteer, his charges and the Was.

  We followed the main road past the Northeastern Command and turned left towards the school on the hill opposite Panghsang hospital. We were consciously hurrying to be well beyond Panghsang by sunrise, the ropes that secured the packs creaking as the mules tripped forward in the dark, the sound of our own footfalls muffled in the fine dust of the road’s surface.

  A platoon of soldiers, troops returning from the Pangyang front to their home base in the 815 area, were waiting for us at the Nam Hka River crossing, just before. Nalawt. The villagers were not yet awake, but across the steep hillsides which rose over the Nam Hka fires flickered in the blackness of the hour before dawn. The poppies had been harvested and the farmers were already at work clearing their fields for the year’s corn crop.

  We caught up with the platoon, crossed the Nam Hka in crude dugout canoes and marched on in the dark, uphill along the Chinese border towards the southeast. Aye Tan walked some paces behind me and in silence we ascended the mountain along a path which wound between tall grass wet with morning dew.

  The troops were evidently happy to be on their way home from the fighting west of Panghsang. As day broke over the stark frieze of the mountains along the border, they chatted loudly of the bloody engagements they had fought in, around Pangyang. After sunrise, we halted for breakfast in a small Wa village.

  For me there was the usual ration of khao soi and Ma Ling luncheon meat, while the soldiers ate rice and jungle greens fried in pork fat and heaped with hot chillies. My diet was Spartan by any standards, but compared to the soldiers, I could not help but feel privileged—not least reclining after the meal with a mug of steaming coffee and a Burmese cheroot.

  We pushed on all that day, for the most following a pine-clad ridge that ran parallel to the Chinese frontier. Brief halts were called only when we passed clear mountain springs
where men and pack animals paused to drink their fill. This was the end of March, the early breath of the dry season already on the hills. I felt elated to be on the last leg of our journey, back to the outside world. Leaving Panghsang had not occasioned the same sadness as our departure from Pa Jau the previous October. Hong Kong and Bangkok now beckoned.

  Twilight descended as we reached a narrow valley with fallow paddy fields cut through by a stream. We crossed another mountain spine and descended into a much wider valley, a typical Shan mong. By the time we reached a large market village called Mong Pawk, darkness had already overtaken us.

  A travelling cinematic show from one of the government-controlled towns was visiting the village and hundreds of people were crowding the market place where a noisy, generator-powered projector beamed out a Chinese Kung Fu movie onto a gigantic screen improvised from a dozen bed sheets stretched between two bamboo poles.

  Our own party halted outside the CPB’s township office—four totally empty mud-brick buildings—on the outskirts of Mong Pawk. Exhausted after the fifteen hour trek, I fell asleep almost immediately.

  Over breakfast the next morning, a local administrator told me that Mong Pawk boasted a Roman Catholic church—a real brick building to boot. It appeared an Italian priest had remained in the village even after the CPB take-over in 1974. He had worked among the hill tribes of the area most of his life and whether the administration was CPB or Ma Sa La was a matter of indifference for him. He had stayed in Mong Pawk until 1978, when he went on a trip to Kengtung—the largest government-controlled town in eastern Shan State—and was forbidden by the authorities from returning to his flock.