Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  “Is it Claes?” I shouted at the top of my voice. There was so much echo on the line that it was all but impossible to hear anything beyond my own voice bouncing back.

  “Yes! Speaking! Who’s that?”

  “It’s Bertil!” I shouted again, in Swedish.

  “Who?”

  “Bertil! Bertil Lintner! Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, but who is it? Albert?”

  “No, Bertil! Bertil!”

  There was silence on the other end for a while. I thought I had been cut off.

  “Nu hör jag.” Now I can hear.

  It was quiet again, as if he was trying to convince himself that he was not imagining it all.

  “Lever du?” Are you alive?

  “Yes, and I need your help. We’ve crossed into China illegally and need help from the Swedish Embassy in Beijing immediately! Can you contact them via Bangkok? It’s urgent!”

  Claes, who was one of the few who knew about our trip before we left Bangkok, quickly understood what to do and asked me for details:

  “Where are you?”

  “Jinghong, Yunnan. I’ll be at the government guest house tonight and wait for a call from the embassy in Beijing. The phone number is –.”

  “Jing what?”

  “Jinghong! J-i-n-g-h-o-n-g! In Yunnan!”

  The line was so bad I had to repeat my message four times, but eventually he got it. Fortunately, we had carried out our loud conversation in Swedish which I was certain no bystander or public security official monitoring overseas phone calls would be able to understand.

  “The schnapps and herring will be on me!” I yelled as I rang off. By the time I had paid for the call, fully half our cash was gone. But it was done. Contact had been made.

  We went to the tourist lodge to wait for the call back. A sour Chinese lady at the reception asked me sharply what I wanted. I explained we had lost our passports—which was not entirely untrue—and had informed the Swedish Embassy in Beijing. They were going to call us back later that night, I explained.

  We sat in the reception for some hours—until finally the telephone shrilled. It was for me. Claes, it later transpired, had managed to get in touch with the duty officer at the embassy in Bangkok who had sent an urgent telex to Beijing. The officer I spoke to seemed well aware of our case; apparently, the letters we had written from Panghsang had reached Beijing. We were told to wait at the tourist lodge for further instructions—in other words, until our case had been cleared with the Chinese authorities.

  Fortunately, a Chinese interpreter was at hand and he requested the receptionist over the phone to let us check in at the lodge. Embassy personnel would come down from Beijing with new passports and we would have to wait for them, he said, as well as for money to pay our hotel bill since we did not have sufficient foreign exchange certificates.

  It had been a long and exhausting day, but an amazingly successful one. Within 23 hours of my leaving Wan Hsa, we had managed to meet up in Jinghong, divest ourselves of our sensitive belongings, contact the Swedish Embassy, and secure a room in a government lodge without having either to pay or to show our passports! Our luck, it seemed, was holding.

  The following day was a Sunday, so we went sightseeing in Jinghong. From a small shop on one of the main streets we bought an old-fashioned pushchair for Hseng Tai and set about trying to look the part as tourists. As the days slipped by we became acquainted with other foreigners at the tourist lodge. The building itself was beautifully situated overlooking the Mekong River that flows through the Jinghong valley.

  I also made daily phone calls to Beijing. By now, the Chinese foreign ministry had been informed of our illegal entry. Negotiations were underway but would take time, I was told. Diplomatically, it was a delicate matter. But the embassy was fairly certain we would not be sent back to Burma again as it had been made clear that such an expulsion would severely affect relations between China and Sweden—especially if the Swedish press found out. Perhaps in an attempt to convince myself that there would be no more walking ahead—and also because they were completely worn out—I quietly dumped my old shoes into a waste bin at the lodge’s reception. That left me with only a pair of rubber flip-flops.

  On Thursday April 23, I walked past the reception and saw four uniformed policemen checking the hotel ledger. The receptionist looked up and summoned me over. I thought at first a clearance must have arrived from Beijing.

  “You Bertil Lintner?” a policewoman asked me.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Your wife come Burma?”

  Since I had no idea how much the police knew, I decided to be evasive. I was also having difficulty understanding her heavy accent.

  “Yes, she was born there. But now she holds a Swedish travel document.”

  “You try cross Meng A twenty-two January?”

  I inferred from this line of questioning that the local authorities had received word of the Meng A affair, but they evidently had not yet been in touch with superiors in Kunming or Beijing. The danger was that the Jinghong authorities, unaware of high-level negotiations underway in Beijing, might now take some summary action that would further complicate matters. I concluded a little forcefulness might not go amiss.

  “Yes, that’s correct. And now we are here. Our case is being discussed in Beijing between your government and mine. We can do nothing here, just wait for their orders.”

  I might have saved my breath.

  “You no permit come China.”

  I pulled out a copy of the Beijing Review from a stack of magazines that lay on the reception desk. Turning the pages, I found a picture of the Chinese foreign minister.

  “My government is talking to this man.” I pointed at the picture. “He’ll decide what to do. We must wait for his orders.”

  She gave me a cold, sceptical look.

  “You come police station.”

  I said that would be fine and that from the police station we could contact both the Swedish Embassy and the Foreign Ministry. The suggestion was met with a curt:

  “You follow me. I decide where we phone.”

  The atmosphere was unambiguously hostile and I was now becoming apprehensive, wondering if perhaps I had not taken the wrong tack. Clearly, a report on us been sent out to all police stations along the border. Equally clearly, it was a considerable loss of face for the Jinghong authorities that we had not only managed to stroll past their border patrols but had also been relaxing at the main tourist lodge and enjoying the sights for several days.

  Now the foreigner appeared to be suggesting he or his friends were personally acquainted with the foreign minister. The frostiness in the air was unmistakable. I asked for permission to return to my room to get some documents and to inform my wife. The request was granted.

  “The police!” I gasped, bursting into the room. “They’re here and they’re going to interrogate me at the station. If I’m not back by five, phone the embassy in Beijing and tell them we’re in trouble.”

  Hseng Tai continued to sleep quietly on the bed while her mother quickly jotted down the embassy phone number in her notebook.

  “All right. Keep cool. Whatever you do, don’t lose your temper even if they’re aggressive. It’ll just make things even worse.”

  The interrogation at the station lasted more than two hours. From the beginning, it was hampered by the language barrier. The policewoman was the only one who had any English and that was pretty elementary. We frequently had to resort to her Chinese-English dictionary which was long on flowery turns of speech but short on the basic words we needed.

  “Is your wife Burmese?” she asked repeatedly. I was quite sure they could not deport me to Burma. But if they thought Hseng Noung was a citizen of that country, she might well be in trouble.

  “No, she’s not Burmese,” I insisted firmly. “She’s Shan. Tai. Like the people here in Sipsongpanna. But she has a Swedish passport now.”

  A policeman who had been sitting quietly in the backgro
und taking notes suddenly looked up. He addressed me in Shan:

  “Me su pen tai ha? Su lat gwam tai ha?” Is your wife Shan? Do you speak Shan?

  “How lat gwam tai it-it, kha.” I responded, glad to realise I could at least communicate with somebody. Although by no means fluent in Shan, I was able to answer all his questions. A map was brought out and I pointed out our entire route through northern Burma—omitting the part where we had sneaked through China at Ruili—and tried to be as forthcoming and helpful as possible.

  The Shan policeman eventually ordered cigarettes and tea. And the tension began to ease. I stressed the point that our case was being discussed by the authorities in Beijing. He seemed to believe me but remained non-committal.

  “All right. You have no visa so you will have to stay in the tourist lodge compound. There’s a shop there where you can buy what you need and there’s a restaurant also. Stay there and wait for further instructions. Meanwhile, you’re not allowed to go out. And tell no other foreigners about your case,” the policeman finally instructed me in Shan.

  A wave of relief washed over me, which must have communicated itself to the others in the room. Even the policewoman now softened up. She smiled and asked me about our baby. I promised to bring the little girl next time I came to the police station.

  We spent the next few days in the tourist lodge compound, which fortunately was very extensive with its own lawns and garden. It was necessary to find excuses for not joining the other tourists on excursions around town and Hseng Tai’s health provided a suitable pretext.

  I was called in for several more interrogations at the police station, which seemed to resolve nothing. Then early in the morning of Saturday 25, April, we heard a jeep drawing up outside the lodge. I looked through the curtain and saw the young policewoman together with the Shan officer. I went outside to ask what was going on.

  “Pack your bags immediately. We’re leaving for Kunming as soon as you’re ready.”

  Five minutes later all our belongings were packed and loaded on the jeep. Some tourists, upstairs in the same building stared down from the veranda, perplexed. Avoided looking in their direction, I climbed into the jeep. It took us first to the police station where the policewoman left us. Then we set off again with three policemen, including the Shan. They were all dressed in civilian clothes, although I noticed they were armed with small pistols which they wore in holsters under their jackets.

  We drove across the Mekong bridge at noon and continued up into the hills beyond the river. The scenery was as beautiful as on the Burmese side. But here were signs of development, conspicuously lacking in the CPB’s area. Many hillsides had been recently reforested, while at lower elevations, extensive rubber plantations were spread out.

  The drive to Kunming took all of three days along a road that wound over the mountains of southern Yunnan. We slept in small guesthouses along the way, watched closely but treated with every courtesy. Hseng Tai as usual slept most of the way, but when awake clearly enjoyed the novelty and speed of wheeled transport.

  On April 27, we reached Kunming, the first big city we had seen since Calcutta. But with its wide, tree-lined boulevards flanked by imposing stone-grey buildings and modern shops, it was a far cry from the chaos and squalor of Calcutta. The jeep drew up outside the headquarters of the Gong An Ju or Public Security Bureau, China’s police and internal security apparatus. Our arrival was expected. A saloon car drove to meet us and led the way to a secluded guesthouse where we were to spend the night.

  Awaiting us was a young police officer who spoke excellent English with a broad American accent.

  “We’re going to put you on the plane to Hong Kong tomorrow,” he said with a smile. “For the sake of the good relations between our countries, it’s been decided to let you through.”

  Emergency travel documents and a cash allowance for our onward journey had been delivered by a courier from the Swedish Embassy in Beijing.

  Early next morning, a minibus with darkened windows was parked outside the guest house. Two burly plain-clothes policemen waited with it, walkie-talkies in their pockets of their smartly pressed jackets, each with a conspicuous bulge under the left armpit. We bade farewell to the Shan policeman who had escorted us from Jinghong and set off for the airport. An unmarked police car sped in front of the minibus, the two vehicles maintaining walkie-talkie contact both with each other as well as with the airport’s security office.

  There were no departure formalities. The two vehicles drove straight out onto the tarmac while the other passengers waited in the terminal building. Once aboard, the quarantine was strictly maintained. The entire forward section of the CAAC airliner had been reserved for us. Two security officers in dark, Western-style suits occupied the first row while we took the second, our luggage piled on the seats across the aisle. A block of three rows of seats behind us was kept vacant, and we had already been instructed to speak to nobody.

  Shortly after one o’clock, the Boeing 737 taxied out onto the runway and took off for Hong Kong.

  Two hours later, the green patchwork of the Chinese countryside gave way to a sprawl of grey skyscrapers and vast petrol depots. Tankers and freighters ploughed across the mud-brown waters of the Pearl River estuary which stretched south of the concrete blocks covering the Kowloon peninsula.

  The plane swept down and landed at Kai Tak airport. It was April 28, 1987, ten days since I had walked over the border range from Wan Hsa to Ta Mong Long; and one year, six months and six days since we had crossed the Indo-Burmese frontier at Longva.

  The aircraft taxied to a halt outside the arrivals building. The two Chinese officers nodded a curt goodbye as we followed the other passengers out of the aircraft. Once the immigration formalities were completed, we caught a taxi outside the airport to Hong Kong island. With scarcely a word or second glance, the driver flicked on the meter and surged into an incandescent, neon-lit world of steel and concrete, noise, exhaust fumes and jostling, harassed humanity. Hseng Tai came down with tonsillitis the next day. We were back.

  EPILOGUE

  We returned to Bangkok in April 1987 after a few days in Hong Kong and got down to work almost immediately. The first stories stemming from our journey appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review on May 28, and June 4, 1987. These were followed by more articles and TV documentaries in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Britain, the Netherlands and Germany.

  We were satisfied to note that our journey and the attention it attracted helped increase the world’s interest in Burma. So, maybe, it was somewhat better prepared for the turmoil which followed in 1988-90 than would otherwise have been the case.

  Brang Seng, Zawng Hra, Sai Lek and the others had already arrived at the Thai-Burmese border by the time we reached Bangkok. Their journey on foot through central Shan State had taken three months since I had last seen them near the Salween River crossing on January 30, 1987. Almost immediately after the Rangoon authorities had discovered that they had reached Thailand, a major offensive was launched against the Kachin headquarters area around Na Hpaw and Pa Jau.

  Nearly 10,000 government troops were mobilised for the operation, which was to become the most massive attack ever launched against the KIA. Supported by heavy artillery and aircraft, government soldiers moved down the Myitkyina-Bhamo road. Dabak Yang was occupied on May 24 and Hkala Yang overrun shortly afterwards. Another column advanced north from Bhamo, detoured undetected through Chinese territory and attacked Na Hpaw from the rear on May 25. Outgunned and outnumbered, the Kachins retreated to Pa Jau. More government troops were thrown in and even Pa Jau fell on May 29.

  Dingring Naw Bawk, the sergeant-major who had commanded the unit that escorted us from the Triangle down to Pa Jau, was among those killed during the battle for the headquarters of the Kachin rebels.

  In a carefully orchestrated propaganda tour, foreign diplomats and defence attaches from Rangoon were flown into Myitkyina in January 1988 and from there helicoptered up to Na Hpaw for a brief visit. They wer
e shown the captured positions and Burma’s then intelligence chief, Khin Nyunt, assured his guests that Brang Seng had “fled the country after last spring’s offensive”—totally reversing the chronology of events.

  None of the foreign visitors had any chance to talk independently to the people in the Na Hpaw area—or to see the devastation of the nearby villages. In May 1987 alone, 18 Kachin villages around Na Hpaw and Pa Jau were burnt down and plundered. Dozens of villagers were shot, girls were gang-raped by Burmese troops and many other civilians were beaten up and tortured.

  When I read the list of villages which had been destroyed, I remembered many of them vividly. Mai Sak Kawng and Kum Bau near Hkala Yang. Prang Kawng and Zup Ra further to the south. These were villages where we had been welcomed with sticky rice, pork, rice beer and liquor by grateful peasants who had not seen a foreign visitor for more than two decades. Later, when we met some civilians from the area who had made it to northern Thailand in search of a new livelihood, they wept.

  Khun Nawng’s shy Burman wife, however, adapted quickly to the new conditions and was put in charge of a unit of Kachin women soldiers sewing uniforms for the KIA troops. Bawk Di struggled on in the 2nd Brigade area, still talking of becoming the first Kachin tank commander. “My legs are useless. But I still want to fight,” he had always told me. The idea that he, in that case, would have to become chief of a tank unit had developed into a joke between us.

  Zau Shan, the medical NCO who had taken care of my infected foot in the 2nd Brigade area, came unexpectedly into the limelight a few years after our leaving Kachin State. Having depleted his meagre stock of supplies, I promised to send him some new medicines from Sweden after our return. So we did—a couple of bottles of medical spirits, bandages and antiseptic cream—along with a personal letter thanking him for all his help during our stay in Kachin State. In the letter, I also mentioned that we were going to send some pictures we had taken of our first Kachin escorts, the platoon that came up to meet us at Kesan Chanlam. And I expressed my desire for peace in Burma.