As China continues to have problems with its own internal ethnic tensions, some of those it faces in Burma are richly ironic, but the entire situation is becoming more complex and fraught by the day.

- Michael Sainsbury, “For China, Burma is thorny territory”, The Australian, 8 September 2009.  This old New Mandala picture provides some context for the headline.

Two are dead and twelve missing (presumed dead) due to a landslide caused by monsoonal weather at the Xiaowan dam on the Mekong in Yunnan. Thanks to a reader for passing this on.

In November 2007, Roger Casas sent in a report on the dedication of a new central temple outside of Jing Hong in Sipsongpanna.  Roger introduced this temple and its dedication as something of a compromise between the desires of the local government to develop its “tourist industrial complex” and the desires of the local Sangha to expand its educational capacity (and also one suspects to have a big showy temple not unlike their colleagues in larger cities in China).  The funding for this temple, as Roger reported, came from a Liaoning real estate company, who in return would be given the opportunity to run the temple for at least five decades.  I was in Jing Hong in mid-June of this year, and thought that some New Mandala readers might be interested in a brief follow-up report over how this compromise might be working out. 

To be succinct, not very well, at least not from the point of view of the monks or the local Dai-lue population. 

I visited this temple during its construction and at the dedication as well, and most of the people that I talked with in 2007 were filled with a great deal of excitement over its construction.  Dai folks that I met on the street, particularly during the festivities surrounding its dedication, commented to me that this would be “their” temple (it is sometimes referred to as wat long meuang lue).  Yet even at this point there was some trepidation over the temple’s future. 

A huge number of people attended the second day of the dedication (as Roger reported) to both make merit and see the completed temple.  Almost all the Dai that I talked to that day reported that they had come to see the temple because they were certain that once the celebrations were over they would have to pay admission to enter the temple.  This was curious, I thought, because in the contract signed by the local Buddhist Association with the “donor” (ie the Liaoning real estate company), it was specified very clearly that the Dai and other local Buddhists such as the Bulang would not have to pay to enter the temple.  I understand that this part of the deal been upheld, but only just barely.  Apparently folks claiming to be Dai-lue are often required to produce their national identity cards (which lists their nationality) in order to receive free admission.  Most of them don’t carry these cards with them and so getting in has become something of a chore for the local Dai population.

It’s perhaps for this reason that on the days that I visited the temple, it was essentially empty of all but Chinese tourists. 

While the wat is not quite the “Dai Disneyland” that Grant Evans referred to in 2001 (a phenomenon one can see in various minority parks around the city), it is not far off.  It is a place filled with ersatz Dai-ness.  Tourguides of various ethnicities dressed in “traditional” Dai clothing take Chinese tourists around, explaining the complexities of “Hinayana” Buddhism both in its Buddha images and its notions of making merit.  These tourists can buy candles for making merit or coins for putting in the bowls of the stone “arahants” who line the mountain behind the viharn which leads to the 40 meter walking Buddha image (still under construction) from other men and women marked as Dai solely by their clothing.  The grounds are filled with the sound of monks chanting in Pali at all times of day, provided by speakers hidden behind bushes around the complex. 

Perhaps the greatest (and most offensive) moment of this faux Dainess is in the viharn where young Han men dressed in formal Dai outfits help the tourguides show the Han tourists how to pay respect to the image like Dai people do and then lead them to the stand where they can buy Buddhist trinkets.  (I was unable to take a picture of this little operation because every time I pulled out my camera, a security guard would come over and tell me to put it away).  I was told by some of the monks in the Buddhist Association that for a while the company running the operation was dressing young men up as monks in order to have them bless the tourists! 

Indeed, I was told by a friend who is also a Dai tourguide that the Dai people don’t consider it to be a Dai temple. 

So what are we to make of what is happening at the temple and the fact that portions of the local Dai-lue population do not consider this to be legitimately “their” temple?  It is, I think, too early to declare this temple a lost cause for the Dai-lue people of Sipsongpanna.  Chinese armies in the late imperial period would occupy Jing Hong for as much as several decades before getting chased out by malaria; it is only fifty years that the temple will be run by Chinese firms.  It is also possible that the Sangha will be able to reassert more authority over the place.  The monks of Sipsongpanna after all have been relatively adept over the years at fostering productive relations with the local government.  Nonetheless, only time will tell if the deal to get this temple built was made with the devil or not.

Thomas Borchet is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Vermont

I am delighted to announce the publication of Tai Lands and Thailand: Community and State in Southeast Asia. It has been published by National University of Singapore Press,  NIAS Press, and University of Hawaii Press. The book is the result of research collaboration that has been going here at the Australian National University over the past six or so years. It features chapters by myself, Craig Reynolds, Nicholas Farrelly, Holly High, Sarinda Singh, Warren Mayes and Antonella Diana (all of whom have made previous contributions to New Mandala).  Here are the opening paragraphs from the first chapter, “Modern Tai Community”.

This book provides a new approach to the study of community in the Tai world of mainland Southeast Asia.

Much of the current ethnographic work in the Tai world is constrained by a conceptual framework that associates community with tradition, locality and subsistence economy. This traditional community is commonly portrayed as being undermined by the modern forces of state incorporation, market penetration, globalisation and population mobility.

In this volume, we take a very diff erent view. We challenge the widely held view that community is a traditional social form that is undermined by modernity. Using case studies from Thailand, Laos, Burma and China, we explore the active creation of ‘modern community’ in contexts of economic and political transformation.  Our aim is to liberate community from its stereotypical association with traditional village solidarity and to demonstrate that communal sentiments of belonging retain their salience in the modern world of occupational mobility, globalised consumerism and national development.

Our focus is on the Tai world, made up of the various peoples who speak Tai languages. The largest groups are the Thai of Thailand, the Lao of Laos, the Shan of Burma and the Dai of southern China. Of course, each of these categories is problematic; they are all the modern products of historical circumstance rather than being natural or self-evident ethnic groups. There are certainly linguistic and cultural similarities that justify the shared label ‘Tai’ but this must be treated as a preliminary delineation of a field of interest without rushing to assumptions about a common identity or a sense of shared history. Indeed, our primary goal is to critically examine contemporary notions of belonging in this Tai world.

Here is the table of contents.

Tai Lands and Thailand is part of the Asian Studies Association of Australia Southeast Asia Series. Special thanks to the staff at NUS Press for a great job on producing a very attractive volume!

From high above, this little corner of the Sino-Burmese border is unremarkable.

However a few nudges of the zoom function and we are right up close on Jie Gao, the peculiar little piece of Chinese commercial life on the “wrong” side of the river.  It is, of course, where one of the major border gates between China and Burma lies.  Right up close and personal with the border checkpoints between the two countries it is possible to see border life very clearly.  It looks like this shot was taken on a busy day.  Just off to the side of the Chinese checkpoint is the Dai-Jingpo Cultural Park that featured in this series of New Mandala posts.

Images from along the border show, in pretty stark contrast, how much the two sides of the border differ in the shape and size of their buildings.  Downtown Ruili has been largely polished up these days and its many stately buildings are visible from high above.

Unfortunately most of the rural terrain around Ruili and Muse (particularly in highland areas) is currently serviced by much poorer resolution imagery.  I assume that, at some stage, this will change and other rural areas of interest in China and Burma (not to mention Thailand, Laos and elsewhere) will be available in the crisper resolution.  Right now it is not, unfortunately, possible to pick out all of the other checkpoints and informal crossings that proliferate along the Sino-Burmese border.

If you have your own coordinates of interest from this intriguing corner of China and Burma please post a comment.  And if you are simply keen to learn more about this part of the world this article offers a punchy overview.

So, with that in mind…here comes the googly (or “curveball”, if you will). 

In my experience it can sometimes be worth knowing where to look for Yunnanese food in Beijing.  If you ever expect to need the flavours of the south-west in China’s capital then this lively restaurant review may give you some ideas.  It doesn’t even sound like the food is that good but it is, all the same, quite a handy review.  And it might encourage me to seek out the South Silk Road restaurant next time I’m that far north.  Have any readers ever been?

As Puer tea becomes popular around China, ordinary consumers have learnt to distinguish two issues when they bargain in the teashops: ‘where is it made?’, referring to the origin of the basic tea material; and ‘how old is it?’, since Puer tea is known as ‘the older the better’.

Now a third issue is becoming important: ‘where is it stored?’. This added issue is due to people’s recent realization that the quality of Puer tea is not only determined by the raw material and the processing technique; neither is it true that an older tea is definitely better than a younger one; but quality also largely depends on what post-fermentation temperature and humidity the tea experiences during storage.

In the tea markets of Kunming, I’ve seen a teashop that specialises in Puer tea that has been stored in Hong Kong. Such Puer tea is called gang cang cha, literally meaning ‘tea out of a Hong Kong storehouse.’ The owner told me this was due to the special demand by some clients who appreciate the taste of Puer tea stored in Hong Kong rather than in Yunnan. He said that the humid and hot climate in Hong Kong could speed up the post fermentation of Puer tea, much quicker than being stored in drier place such as Kunming.  Yunnan, no doubt, is the production place for Puer tea, but in the eyes of the big consumers in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Guangdong, Yunnan is no good for storage, and some of them even say that the Yunnanese don’t know how to properly store and consume Puer tea.

A big tea storehouse called tian xia cha cang (tea storehouse for the world), was established in Yuanjiang, Yunnan, in 2006. Yuanjiang is located in the moist and hot area of Honghe (Red River) valley, in southeast Yunnan. And it is said that one year’s storage here would be equal to three years of storage in Kunming. I visited it in June last year. All the teas were stored in the warehouse under controlled temperature and humidity (picture above). There I saw a compressed Puer tea in the shape of a pillar, whose color had turned dark red, really like shu cha, artificial fermented tea, although later I found it was actually sheng cha, naturally fermented tea (picture below). The label said it was produced in 2001 and been stored in Yuanjiang since 2003. I was shocked because I’d never seen such fast change on Puer sheng cha with the same age in Kunming.

The establishment of Yuanjiang tea storehouse aims to show that Yunnan is not only good at Puer tea production, but also good at Puer tea storage, a form of post-production. All the Puer tea being stored here will be sold later with added value from storage.

Timothy Hamlin of the Stimson Center has written this update on commercial navigation on the upper-Mekong.  It seems that the environmentally dubious project of blasting the Mekong rapids between southern China and northern Thailand is now all but complete, making the way for a greater influx of Chinese boats into the northern Thai Mekong port of Chiang Saen.

If any New Mandala readers have had a chance to observe these developments first hand, we would be very happy to post a report!

The topic of Mekong navigation brings me back to one of my favourite topics – not sufficiency economy or coyote dancing, I’m afraid, but garlic. Timothy Hamlin’s report repeats the common claim about the impact of the import of Chinese garlic on Thai producers:

Thai farmers have already felt the impact of cheap garlic arriving from Yunnan, and they will continue to feel pressure until the markets equalize.

In previous posts (here and here) I expressed some scepticism about the view that imports from China are the sole, or even primary, driver of garlic prices in Thailand. The garlic price in Thailand certainly did drop in 2004 (the first full year of the agricultural trade agreement with China) but it recovered after that, to reach record levels in 2007. This year it has fallen again, for reasons that are not clear.

While researching this issue I came across this news clipping in my data-base.

Garlic growers yesterday laid siege to Chiang Mai city hall and set up a road block in Mae Hong Son to demand government action over the low price of their produce. They want the government to guarantee them a price of 17-20 baht per kilogramme of garlic – the current market price is five or six baht a kilo. In Chiang Mai, more than 1,500 growers, who began their rally yesterday, laid siege to the city hall while negotiations between their representatives and Deputy Commerce Minister Chalermphol Sanitwongchai took place. Mr Chalermphol flew to Chiang Mai yesterday to meet the protesters. Those attending the meeting included Chiang Mai MP Kingkarn na Chiang Mai and protester representatives led by Theera Jiaboonyok. Demonstrators burned effigies of Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, Agriculture Minister Chucheep Harnsawat and Commerce Minister Narongchai Akrasanee yesterday afternoon. They also threatened to set fire to the city hall if their demands were not met. Officials were prevented from entering city hall to work. Protesters had come from Mae Taeng, Fang and Chiang Dao districts of Chiang Mai, as well as from Lamphun and Mae Hong Son provinces. They blame the low price of garlic on illegally imported garlic from neighbouring countries, especially Burma. In Bangkok, Interior Minister Sanoh Thienthong vowed to take tough action against the protesters if they damaged government property. He said the government reached an agreement with garlic growers on Tuesday which would see the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives paying 14 baht per kilogramme for 80 percent of their garlic produce. In Mae Hong Son, around 1,500 garlic growers in Pai district blocked Highway 1095 between Pai and Chiang Mai. The want the government to guarantee a garlic price of 20 baht per kilo. About 30 police officers were at the scene.

As readers will have noticed, this is not a recent report. It is from the Bangkok Post on 24 April 1997, well before the trade agreement with China.

The more things change …

A scientific team, consisting of members of the Gibbon Conservation Alliance based at Zurich University and the Kunming Institute of Zoology, as well as staff members of the Nangunhe National Nature Reserve, carried out a survey in all Chinese forests reported to support white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) during the last 20 years.

The species was last observed in 1988 in the Nangunhe Nature Reserve in south-western Yunnan province, and their loud, melodious calls were last heard in 1992. After two weeks of field work, the 14 member Swiss-Chinese team realized: As a result of continued forest destruction, fragmentation and deterioration, as well as hunting, this gibbon species is no longer part of the Chinese fauna.

- Extracted from “White-handed gibbons extinct in China”, Innovations Report, 19 May 2008. 

This report got me thinking. 

Too often on New Mandala I’m sure we fail to account for some of the very important, and compelling, research done outside the social sciences and humanities in the broad area of Asia that we deal with.  This is unfortunate.  Serious research in all the sciences – but particularly in medicine, ecology, zoology, geology, meteorology, hydrology, agronomy and related areas – is of genuine interest to many New Mandala readers.  The recent and wide-ranging discussion of Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia is an excellent example of the way that open discussion of specialist fields allows everyone to learn something.

So, if there are scientists (of whatever stripe) who work in mainland Southeast Asia who would like to bring some of their research to a wider audience please don’t hesitate to get in touch.  We are always on the look out for guest contributions and there is no reason why we can’t incorporate scientific perspectives.