Under the Dragon

by Rory Maclean

  ‘Our need is to leave Lashio. You must look forward, or for ever be an old maid.’

  According to Confucianism, man is in essence a social creature, bound to his fellows by jen – that is sympathy, or human-heartedness. Jen is expressed through the five relationships: sovereign and subject, parent and child, elder and younger sibling, husband and wife, friend and friend. To many Confucians the filial relationship is the most virtuous bond. Kwan had had suitors, bachelors who had taken an interest in her modest manner and lucrative business. She had understood that marriage would enable her labour to be shared. But her devotion to her parents outweighed her wish for a partner. It was not that she had no feelings for the living, but that those emotions were overpowered by the debt of birth. Her parents remained her deepest love, even in death. They bound her to life, even after their memory was beaten out of her during the Red Badge riots.

  It had long been believed in China that, with correct conduct and a sense of virtue, the millennial ‘great commonwealth’, or union of mankind under ethical rules, would be attained in time. But after twenty centuries of autocracy and thirty years of civil war, the Communists had lost patience with waiting for an ethical Utopia. Their commonwealth, or People’s Republic, aimed to unite men by imposing upon them a central vision. In pursuit of a classless society private property was seized. Labour was organised. Agriculture became owned by all for the benefit of all. Work was performed in the service of the state, not for the advancement of the individual. Food and land distribution was made more equitable. The natural obligation to be virtuous that had rested upon all men was supplanted by the demand for adherence to a pragmatic interpretation of the common good. Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ was intended to speed the attainment of this ideal by imbuing the people with revolutionary vigour. In the process it devastated China’s small entrepreneurs. Local businesses were replaced by labour-intensive industries. Family control was surrendered to peasant groups. Wealth shifted from the people who had made it to those whose labour had produced it. Tens of millions died of starvation on the road to Utopia.

  In Burma too an attempt was made to redress the imbalances and injustices of the past. After the 1962 coup, all shops were nationalised and tenancy rights abolished. People’s Councils took control of land use. But they were packed with soldiers who had no experience of paddy production. The result was inefficiency and corruption. By 1967 there were acute shortages of food throughout the country. Farmers had to buy rice on the black market to fulfil the obligatory quotas. To deflect public anger the government incited anti-Chinese riots. Their excuse was the refusal of some Sino-Burmans to remove their Mao badges. It was put about that the Cultural Revolution was causing Burma’s destitution. Furthermore, Chinese traders were rumoured to be hoarding rice.

  The zealous young men who arrived at Lashio’s railway station did not wear uniforms, but no one doubted where their allegiance lay. They took possession of food stalls and seed stores. They ordered the Chinese proprietors out of their shops. Zhang Chow, the manager of the textile firm, was driven from his home. His cousin’s rice mill passed into the hands of a workers’ cooperative. The soldiers advanced under the clay-tiled roofs from the cotton spinners to the dye house, the employees of each pressing them forward. A crowd gathered behind them, driven by hunger and ready to vent their frustration. The Chinese were scapegoats, Burma’s Jews or gypsies. No one wanted to miss out on the redistribution of their ‘secret’ stocks.

  It was not until late morning that the mob reached the herbalist’s shop. Even though the town was small there had been many enterprises to search. Fear opened all doors before them, and the Shans and Burmans looted as they pleased. But the failure to discover any hoard had enraged the crowd.

  Kwan stood on her threshold, blocking their path, halting the advance. She explained, with good grace, that she had nothing to hide. ‘My father came to Lashio because he believed in the uprightness of the Burmese people,’ she said. ‘It is unjust to submit his house to a search.’

  The leading soldier shoved her aside. She held her ground and took hold of his cuff. He shook it and her, sneering at the spectacle of the petite, powerless woman gripping onto his clothing. The crowd laughed with him, mocking Kwan and goading Liu Wei, who had followed them up from the station. He confronted the soldier and demanded to know if he made a habit of beating old women. He provoked the mob by telling them he was hungry too. In truth his first concern was not for his sister-in-law. It was terror which made him speak out. Wei was defending the twins’ property more than Kwan’s honour. May, who had chased after her husband, apologised for him. She called him a fool. She tried to pull him and her sister away. But the soldier turned his fury on the man. In the scuffle baskets and jars were overturned. Wei was seized by a dozen hands. Kwan was knocked to the floor. As she fell her head hit a chest of fresh herbs. She lay unconscious among the crushed mint and dust.

  Wei fared less well. Beneath the open window on which May had first fixed her eyes, his life was beaten out of him. She uttered a deafening, impatient scream.

  The next morning May’s son ran away, a railway timetable tucked under his arm, chased by his mother’s plea, ‘Watch out for the rickshaw drivers of Soochow,’ and a promise, ‘I will follow you.’ Armed with her knowledge of transportation systems, he rode lorries and trains, evaded Burmese border police and the Red Guards to reach Hong Kong and then, after waiting for three months for her to arrive, sailed on to America. He did not know that May could never follow him. The winding lines of road and rail, so often travelled in her mind, would remain unexplored. For Kwan had been wounded. She had lost hold of the threads of memory, as well as her sense of smell.

  In her dark room, above tailor Ch’ien’s shop, Kwan stared at the photographs of the family. Six matching faces glared back at her. Two sepia patriarchs wore pigtails and stern expressions. A silvered woman in embroidered robes gazed out of a daguerreotype. A bride and groom ventured a smile in their wedding portrait. There was also a snapshot of a small boy playing outside a booking office. Kwan knew the pictures and noted the sitters’ similar features: the high family forehead, the rounded shoulders, the pinched nose. But she no longer recognised the faces. Her ancestors were strangers to her.

  On the street below the dogs howled. In the bare room next door May tossed and turned. She always slept poorly after playing the airline game. No amount of fu ling could calm her spirit. It was not simply that the game reminded her of her son. She slept no better when their imagined journeys avoided America altogether, venturing instead out on Yangtze ferries or into the Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Macau. The fantasies that diverted and amused May always left her with a sense of dissatisfaction. She often cursed them, stopping in mid-flight and swearing never to play again. Yet less than a week would pass before she insisted on resurrecting the entertainment. Kwan obliged her not so much because she enjoyed the game, but because she was dependent on her twin. All her knowledge of the past came to her through the sister who didn’t honour it. She remembered nothing of her life before the riot, except for the smell of mint and dust.

  Burma and China are ancient adversaries. The Burmese have long been suspicious of the intentions of their powerful neighbour. But in 1988 and 1989 the two countries were drawn together by their respective massacres; first in Burma and then at Tiananmen Square. The governments found mutual solidarity in the face of Western outrage. And when Beijing ended its support of the Burmese Communist Party, political expediency smoothed the old animosities. History books were rewritten to overlook the numerous Sino-Burmese wars. State agriculture agencies were instructed to purchase Chinese hoes and shovels, not home-produced tools. Schoolchildren were taught that linguistics linked the two nations, both Burmese and Chinese being Sino-Tibetan tonal languages. Textbooks failed to mention the Red Badge affair. The old enemies became new friends; and the SLORC generals had a dependable source of weapons.

  The official cross-border trade, which swapped teak and jade for bul
lets and mortars, also enticed new entrepreneurs from Yunnan and Szechwan. As soon as Chinese law permitted it, migrants poured across the border to settle in Lashio, which straddled the only road between Yunnan and the sea. They set up shops and hotels, trucking lines and import-export agencies. To them Burma was a land of opportunity. Its isolation and poverty had left it backward, with resources unexploited and locals vulnerable to fast deals and flashy tat. It was a good place for the Chinese to get rich quick.

  After the attack May had buried her husband. She then carried her sister into their parents’ sleeping chamber and waited at her bedside. Kwan had not fully recovered consciousness and May fed her like a delirious child, changing her bedding and explaining over and over how they would leave Lashio as soon as her health improved. For the first twelve months she rarely left the house. She avoided the station and never talked to strangers. The Burmese neighbours, the strangers who had watched Wei being killed, now brought food and medicine. Offerings of rice and curry were left on the table inside the storehouse door. Every morning for four years fresh limes appeared in her kitchen. The doctor called by every third week and never once asked for a fee. May did not thank her neighbours, but she held no grudge against them. No one in Burma who valued their life stood up against soldiers.

  The postman stopped demanding payment for the letters that reached her from California. Her son described a new world of rapid-transit systems and jumbo jets. He worked nights as a baggage handler at LAX, enrolled at UCLA, bought a beige Ford Pinto. He graduated with a degree in mathematics and became an air traffic controller. As she watched her sister sleep, May fantasised about her own escape to America. She imagined her flight on its final approach. Over the cockpit radio she listened to her son talking down the aircraft. ‘Roger, Pan Am 002. You are on course for touchdown on runway two-niner. Have a nice day.’ After the landing he took off his headset, strolled down from the control tower and drove her home to his house in Long Beach. He had written that each room had its own television set. In another letter he wrote that forty-two different airlines flew into Los Angeles International and then listed the name of each one, from Aeroflot to Varig Brazilian. He marked with an asterisk each carrier that served South-East Asia. Yet as desperate as May became, as much as she missed her son, she never considered going to America alone. Kwan was her twin, half of a whole, and she could not imagine them ever being parted.

  In time Kwan regained her health. She walked from room to room, moving with unfamiliarity through the familiar house, fingering unknown objects which she had always known. May, who preferred to talk about the future, told her little about their past.

  As they had lost the family business, Kwan suggested they open a small market stall with the money sent every month by May’s son. It was a sensible proposal. Their savings would buy herbs and a simple weighing scale, with a few kyat spare to bribe the appropriate official. They could build on their father’s reputation, and with luck one day expand into a little shop on Lashio’s main street. Kwan stood beside the market’s only herb vendor and whispered to her sister. ‘Do you see?’ she asked, speaking in Chinese so that the Burman would not understand. ‘Poor quality. And he has neither gan cao or ginger. None of the new Chinese will buy here. We could do very well.’ She had already chosen a fine spot in the shade of a tamarind. ‘We can lay out our herbs in baskets here.’

  ‘Baskets,’ interrupted May. ‘Now that is something to consider.’

  ‘You want to sell baskets?’ asked Kwan, disappointed but not surprised by her sister’s dismissal of her idea.

  ‘Not old bamboo baskets, no,’ said May, shaking her head. She wanted to break with the old ways. She saw the new possibilities. ‘I think these newcomers want something different.’

  ‘Different baskets?’

  ‘Wouldn’t they rather walk through the market carrying their shopping in a bright plastic bag? Something colourful, with words on it?’

  On the dusty lanes around them every woman carried a bamboo basket. Every man had a woven Shan bag with a broad shoulderstrap. There was probably not a single plastic carrier in Lashio. Those found elsewhere in Burma had been imported by tourists or business travellers, and were considered status symbols, especially if emblazoned with English or American advertising slogans. They were prized even after their handles had ripped, their bottoms had torn and their colours had faded.

  ‘You want to make them?’ asked Kwan.

  ‘I want to import them. They will fetch a healthy premium.’ Plastic bags could make May’s dream of travel come true, if she could raise sufficient capital to begin the venture.

  ‘But no one is unhappy with bamboo,’ said Kwan, shaking her head. ‘And they don’t need plastic bags.’

  ‘It isn’t a question of need.’

  ‘I would prefer to sell spices.’

  ‘Then you’ll do it without me.’

  May could risk being dismissive, even though she needed Kwan’s help, for she knew that her sister would never set up the stall alone. Kwan needed to feel contained, either by the family or by tradition. She had always lacked the confidence to step out into the unknown. May felt a new sense of urgency with the passing years. Day by day age was diminishing her future. She had to seize the chance to earn enough money to buy their passage to the United States.

  Glacé fruit and citrus preserves were popular delicacies in Burma. But local factories, having been starved of investment for forty years, were unable to produce a consistent supply, so the luxury was expensive. Limes, on the other hand, were cheap. They grew in the hills around Lashio. It was in this discrepancy that May saw her opportunity.

  She knew of a cousin over the border in Kunming who would be willing to buy the fruit for its juice. She had heard too of a synthetic sugar mill in Kwantung that was in need of business. With the last of their savings the sisters bought a truckload of fresh limes. Kwan paid twenty-five pyas – a quarter of a kyat – for each. The price pleased the farmers, for in the past the People’s Council had often allowed the fruit to rot on the trees. The truck drove to Kunming, where the limes were squeezed to produce juice for the Chinese market, then carried the skins to Kwantung to be conserved in syrup. With the money from the sale of the juice, May paid for the printing of catchpenny wrappings to package the preserves. The lavish sleeves of dehydrated Burmese limes were then returned to Lashio as imports, and sold for twelve kyat apiece. The locals bought back their fruit at forty-eight times its original cost. May’s knowledge of trade had served her well.

  The profit enabled her to place an order with a plastic works in Yunnan. Five thousand plastic carrier bags were delivered one month later. May opened each bundle with care, smoothing the sleek surfaces, tracing the slogans of Lifebuoy soap (‘Protect the Ones You Love’) and Montana cigarettes (‘Your taste, baby’). She compared the logos of Aviation batteries, Kosmo lubricant and Jesus’s Cream Crackers. She was excited by the brash colours and bold lettering and held one carrier at her side. It read ‘Flour Power’.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked her sister.

  Kwan didn’t answer at first. She was too startled. Her nose, which had sensed nothing for years, was filled with the keen stink of new plastic. She didn’t like the smell. It percolated through their rooms and into her clothes. She gestured as if to sweep it out of her hair. Kwan wanted to breathe in sweet honeysuckle, or even the earthy aroma of ku sheng, instead she smelt only plastic. But she didn’t want to disappoint May, and nodded in approval.

  ‘One day every woman in Burma will carry one of our plastic bags,’ May crowed. ‘By which time you and I will have left this place for ever.’

  May had decided not to sell the carriers directly to the public. If anyone with a few kyat could buy a Coca-Cola bag, their rarity value would soon be lost. Instead she chose to sell them only to the new Chinese electronic stores, charging a premium that prevented the shopkeepers from giving the bags away with any but the most expensive purchases. The tactic hindered her sales at first
, but it established the carriers as luxuries by association, and earned them increased status. She took the same approach with shops in nearby Mu-sé and Bhamo, and started to build up the business in calculated steps.

  In a handful of months Lashio’s streets, which had been unaltered for generations, began to change. The brightest colours in the markets were no longer the crimson mounds of ground chilli or the morning-green dresses of Palaung. Levi’s denim blue had become more popular than traditional Pa-o turquoise. Yamaha yellow turned more heads than did the golden plaid of a Kachin longyi. ‘Have a Good Taste for your Life’, proclaimed one azure carrier. The brazen, synthetic glare of Pepsi and Sony transformed the look – and the aspirations – of the town. The vast majority of locals would never be able to afford the expensive Western goods, but they all wanted the plastic bags that were linked to them. There were fewer and fewer bamboo baskets to be seen.

  Success invigorated May. She was ninety years old, but moved like a woman half her age. Money won her respect in the swelling Chinese community. It lightened her step, so that she always appeared to be about to break into a brisk run. Her mornings were spent in the market visiting her outlets, discussing current designs with the young shopkeepers. The importers of Walkmans and whiskies guided her selection and became the town’s arbiters of taste. They suggested dropping Brut aftershave for Chanel, replacing Mandalay beer (‘The only local choice’) with Heineken (‘Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach’). May’s afternoons were reserved for planning, not for the business but for her travels. She pored over the ABC Airline Guide, shipped at considerable expense from an agent in Kunming, working out again and again her route out of Asia. Should she fly by way of Guangzhou or Bangkok? Air Mandalay had daily flights to Rangoon. Would it be better to travel with Thai International to Chiang Mai? Air China had the most competitive fares across the Pacific. May sat in the bare, white room and planned to travel the world.