Four days in Yangon

Yangon today reminds me of China in the early ’90s when the latter had just decided to open up to capitalism and the West.  Just 20 years ago the main form of transport for the average Beijing resident was a bicycle and the tallest buildings in Shanghai were the colonial structures along the Bund.  Then, one could look up and see a great deal of clear sky, walk around and peek into centuries-old streets and homes still populated by their original communities.  One could still immerse oneself in a type of living that was not frantic as we like it now in more developed places in Asia, but unhurried and far more in tune with a human being’s real needs-food, shelter, light company. Similarly, the urban landscape of Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar (once Burma) and still its largest city, is one I had never thought to see again, harking back, as it does, to an era I associate with the East India Company and the author of The Jungle Book. 

Development is coming to Yangon — you can tell by the rising levels of dust — but so far, newer and less interesting block buildings are still outnumbered by British colonial buildings, government, religious or residential, alternating between the refurbished and crumbling.  Driving around the city, one passes brick villas succumbing to the small forests that have overrun abandoned estates, towering bright red and white cathedrals, confections of perfectly turned out colonial era government buildings and squat, sturdy and still useful early twentieth century hospitals and schools.  Walking back to my hotel from a meeting by the river, I meandered through streets lined with colorful four-, even five-story high pre-war residential structures, their upper floors accessible only by narrow steep stairs, their pocked balustrades covered with drying clothes, ropes and potted plants. 

One evening I had dinner at a small restaurant, run by a street children foundation, located on the second floor of one of these buildings. I was the only one there and the young men in charge thoughtfully set my table on the small terrace overlooking the street.  As I chewed on my traditional Burmese tea leaf salad and wondered whether I would go into anaphylactic shock from the peanuts I was sure were in it, I gazed on the pretty toddler in a white dress trying to clamber onto or through the green stone balustrade bordering the terrace just opposite mine and the groups of people squatted down in low stools and tables at the yoghurt restaurant which had taken up much of the street below. 

The streets of downtown Yangon are arranged in a grid and seemed each to be devoted to one or other good or trade; one was dominated by graphic design shops, another to metal tools, still another was home to a wet market and another to a large structure filled with every kind of cloth — cloths for blankets, towels, or traditional longyis. The streets to the north of the city are more winding, taking one around cool, leafy suburbs of sprawling hotels, golf courses and palatial mansions which would not look out of place in Singapore.  The latter, bordered by high walls covered by rows of lethal-looking razor wire, reminded me that, as is true for most beautiful things, Yangon, for all its grace and charm, has much darker stories to tell.

It is in this area, close to the smaller of the city’s two lakes, that the Bogyoke Aung San Museum is located.  Once open only for three hours a year on Martyr’s Day, the white and black colonial-era villa was the last home of General Aung San, founder of the country’s modern army, author of its freedom from British colonial rule and father of its most famous dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi.  Built on top of a terraced hill, one which the general apparently farmed himself, the museum houses old photographs of the family, of the General himself, a strikingly handsome man with a resolute gaze in his 30s, and, idiosyncratically, a replica of the kind of simple meal he liked to eat and a small collection of his books, including a full list of them posted on a piece of paper tacked to the wall above the locked glass book shelf.  It made sense that the list was made up mostly by books on strategy and war.  At the bottom of the hill is a small green pond where, not long after the General’s assassination, his second son drowned.

 I have saved a description of the most awe-inspiring sight in Yangon for last, seeing as the sight of what Rudyard Kipling called “Burma’s greatest pagoda” blazing in the night was the thing I saw of Myanmar before my plane wheeled away for home.  The Shwedagon Pagoda is built on top of a hill and dominates the skyline of Yangon.  Guarded at one of its four gates by two colossal lions from which issued the longest murmuration I had ever seen, it can only be reached by a waterfall of of steep stairs (there are also now escalators).  At the end of the climb one finds oneself on a platform of white stone surrounded on all sides by hundreds of Buddhas, stupas and lesser pagodas, ranging from the dazzling and filigreed to the simple and elegant, throwing in a few garish ones for good measure.   And towering above everything, gilded in actual gold, its top encrusted with thousands of diamonds, including a 70-carat one, is that, as Kipling described it, “beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun,” that “golden dome (which) said ‘This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about.’”

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