| By JOAN WILLIAMS/MONG LA, SHAN STATE | JAN, 2003 - VOLUME 11 NO.1 |
Cosmopolitan, garish and connected to the outside world via Internet and mobile phones, visitors to Mong La wonder if they are really in Burma anymore. For a while it seems like a road to nowhere. Only army checkpoints and small clusters of huts indicate some life. Then, quite suddenly, the view widens into a valley and the road changes from dirt to tar. At dusk the city ahead looks like a space shuttle that descended upon earth. Abundant neon lights line the buildings. Along a wide avenue, street lamps flash like fireworks. This is Mong La, the capital of Special Region Number Four in eastern Shan State. One wonders if this is still Burma. "Yuan," demands an old woman selling water when she is given kyat. A Chinese employee in the hotel hands over the key without the form filling and other paperwork so typical of the bureaucratic control elsewhere in the country. A condom in the basket of toiletries suggests there are other freedoms to be enjoyed too. "You will not worry about how to play around as we guide," advertises the Lamton Nightclub. "Hot dancing team with beautiful and sexy girls from every country around the world perform colorful dances for guests aged from 18-100." "Sauna meets all requirements for those people pursuing perfect life." It is rush hour in the streets. Shiny taxis drive on and off. Hundreds of Chinese flock into brightly lit casinos to try their luck at baccarat and roulette. Chinese banks offer services around the clock for those running out of cash. "Massage? Massage?" giggle girls at the entrance of a nightclub; from behind their backs blares Madonna’s "Material Girl". A street musician with a guitar makes an attempt to perform, but his tune gets lost in the surrounding noises. "Business is good here," says a young woman from Rangoon. With her Chinese customers, Dior sunglasses at 800 yuan (US $97) sell easily, as do Prada coats for 1,200 yuan. It is hard to imagine that about 14 years ago Mong La was an unknown village in a sparsely populated area. Nowadays, it receives between 700 to 1,000 visitors a day. Some people call Mong La the Las Vegas of the East, others, the Anus of China. How did this transformation ever come about? A large billboard of two smiling men shaking hands gives a clue. The one dressed in a Shan national costume is Sai Lin, the ruler of Mong La. The other, wearing a military uniform, is Gen Khin Nyunt, Secretary One of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and head of the dreaded military intelligence. Sai Lin, a.k.a. Sai Leun—whose real name, Lin Mingxian, indicates his Shan-Chinese descent—is an ex-Red Guardist who came down from neighboring Yunnan in the late-1960s to strengthen the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). He became a field commander in CPB zone 815, or present-day Mong La. When the Party disintegrated after the Wa rank-and-file revolted against its leadership in 1989, Lin headed one of the largest breakaway factions, the National Democratic Alliance Army. He was one of the several ex-CPB commanders to sign a ceasefire with the government in Rangoon. To placate Lin and guarantee he would not take up arms again, Burmese authorities granted him generous terms. Mong La became an autonomous zone and his well-equipped private army of several thousand men retained its arms. Additionally, he was given several business concessions—the tacit permission for the opium trade being the most lucrative. As the billboard commemorates, it was Khin Nyunt himself who flew in to seal the pact with a shady handshake. Soon new refineries in his area went into operation. By the early-1990s Lin headed one of the most powerful drug syndicates in northern Burma with an output of one to two thousand kilograms of pure heroin annually. For years he was high on the hitlist of the US State Department. Meanwhile, Mong La boomed. Casinos, nightclubs and hotels were built with opium revenues and investments from Chinese business partners. After mounting international criticism and pressure from China—where drug addiction and HIV/AIDS in Yunnan had increased at an alarming rate—a UN-sponsored drug eradication program started. Lin was promoted as a respected figure who sat at state ceremonies and featured as "a leader of national races". Mong La was declared an "opium-free zone" in 1997. Poppy fields are no longer to be seen along the road to Mong La or in the vicinity of town. They may be gone from the area, but many foreign drug experts believe that Lin is still involved in the trade, especially in the amphetamine business closer to the Thai border. The man who generated a fortune from this all rarely appears in public. The 53-year-old leader reportedly suffered a stroke over a year ago and spends most of his time inside a modern bungalow on a hill overlooking the border with China. Two young soldiers guard the entrance. In the yard behind them a white limousine without a license plate number looks grotesquely out of place. The guards break their tongues while attempting to pronounce the name "Rolls Royce". As part of the anti-drugs campaign an opium museum opened in 1997. The reddish-pink building resembles a pagoda. The museum boasts of over a million visitors since its inauguration, but today there are more staff than visitors inside. "Let us join hands in the fight against drug menace [sic] to all mankind," reads a welcome sign. In the room downstairs, five elderly Chinese stare in astonishment at the tableau of two deadly pale youngsters with long hair, black hats and jeans shooting up. The next scene of the rehabilitation display shows one dying on the floor with a syringe in his arm while the other is being handcuffed and led away by the police. Via a spotless hospital he then reenters society, dressed in a white shirt and a green longyi. The underlying political message of his happy ending may get lost on the Chinese public—the clothes and the small badge identify him as a member of the Union Solidarity and Development Association, or USDA, a civilian front organization with compulsory membership for government officials that also often serves as a rent-a-crowd to boost support for the regime. A large collection of black-and-white pictures display small planes spraying poppy fields and Burmese officers staring at piles of burning heroin. Though Lin was a wanted man in the US, photos from the mid-1990s show several American congressmen joining him in inspecting drug eradication activities. At the tenth anniversary of the ceasefire accord, Lin was bestowed with "The Medal for Excellent Performance in the Social Field" by the SPDC. One of his aides gives a less successful account of the alternative economic developments in Mong La. He seems genuinely disappointed when he looks at one of the major projects, a sugarcane factory just outside town. The machinery, worth US $3.6 million, lies idle. "There is no market for the sugar, because China does not want it. Soon we may have to take out the machinery," he says. Other areas also indicate all is not so well in Mong La. Some Akha women rummage through a smelly garbage dump. In a field further down the road sit dozens of Wa and Akha orphans in a dilapidated study room. Some pages of their books are so worn out that the words can hardly be read. Mong La’s nightly glamour also seems to have faded away. In the harsh daylight the faces of the karaoke girls look tired as they hang out their laundry. A lonely transvestite in a miniskirt stumbles by on impossible high heels. In an empty restaurant a bored staff plays mah jong. Nearby, four dancers in silk nightgowns have just woken up. They have been performing in a nightclub for club for six months with another two to go before they return home to Kazakhstan. "Mong La is an awful place. We never go anywhere," says a girl with platinum-dyed hair. Her face is pale from the lack of daylight. She sighs. "Believe me we are here only for the money." As the morning passes by the town comes to life again. Buses and minivans cross the border from China. In the front seat, tour guides with microphones talk to passengers sporting baseball caps. Pandemonium breaks out as they run to make it in time for the Thai transvestite show, one of the town’s most popular attractions. Burmese visitors have different reasons to be enthusiastic about Mong La. "We are more free here," says a young jade cutter from Rangoon who frequents the town for business. "There is no Burmese army and very few MI. We can say things we would not dare to say elsewhere." "Mong La is a developed place," nods his companion. He is impressed with the international mobile phone connections. Rooms filled with computers offer another service that is highly restricted in the rest of Burma: Internet. But most of the clients are glued to militant computer games and the place makes as much noise as a shooting range. A few girls who explore the electronic highway break out into giggles as they visit a dating site. Mong La is not the only place where money is spent on public relations for the anti-drugs campaign. All along the road back to the border town of Tachilek efforts have been stepped up as well. "The fight against drug menace [sic] is a national concern," says a freshly painted billboard. Another new sign cryptically reads, "Cigar [sic] can start drug abuse." The passengers in the car have other matters to be concerned about. As the driver maneuvers past a depressing number of army and immigration checkpoints they swap stories about the blatant extortion on the way. Soon the car becomes a mobile conspiracy. "They asked for my money," confides a young Shan girl after she was pushed around by immigration officers. "I had to buy that from the army for 500 kyat," says the driver as others unfold his new calendar. He smiles wearily and says, "We are back in Burma." Joan Williams is a writer who recently visited Mong La.