Burma Diary
reconsiderations on
the China- Burma border

by Matthew Sinclair-Day
copyright 1994-1997
all rights reserved.

The last report submitted as a Grinnell-
Nanjing Fellow to Grinnell College, this
report describes my adventures on the
Chinese-Burmese border during the
summer of 1994.

Third Report

Hong Kong
22 July 1994

        RAIN. I have taken up station at
my hotel room's desk, and while
patiently weathering out the tropical
depression which has been battering
Hong Kong for a couple days now, have begun my final report. This is my
fourth time to the Crown Colony in
the last year and half, and I never fail
to feel the excitement of one of the
world's most modern and dynamic
cities. Even so, I feel no great longing
to join the thousands who walk up and
down Nathan Road in search of
expensive electronic wares and
jewelry. I arrived by boat, down the
Pearl River from Canton, embarking in
the evening to arrive at 7:00 the
following morning. That was three
days ago, the weather then was clear
and calm, and the boat ride was quiet
and easy, a fitting way to end a year in
China. This time in Hong Kong I
simply want to relax.

        I had planned my exit from
China with scrupulous detail, but very
little of it actually unfolded as I had
wanted. Often this can be quite good,
but in this case it wasn't, for I never
even made it to Burma. I had even
anticipated that once out of "China," in
Hong Kong, impressions and
reflections would easily come to mind,
that this report would write itself, that
I could come to some profound closure
to a year of teaching and studying. I
find myself, unfortunately, unable to
articulate my feelings and ideas. I can
say only I am tired, worn down by six
weeks of travel which was intended to
take me down the Burma Road into the
heart of Mandalay. But matters out of
my control barred me from entering
that obscure Asian country, and I
instead found myself on the Chinese-
Burmese border forced to reconsider
my entire trip.

        I was in Ruili, a trading post on
the Chinese-Burmese border, which a
British fellow had aptly described to
me as the "Tijuana" of China, where
Burmese and Chinese meet on equal
footing. Walking down the main street

on our first day there, a Burmese
gentleman, 55'sh, came up to us and in
perfect English struck up a
conversation. He was from an old
British hill station outside of
Mandalay, to where the Raj would
retreat in face of the blazing sun's heat,
and was educated by Christian
missionaries. He was a handsome man
who had a very warm smile. He had
gold-capped teeth and black, tar-black
teeth, a dazzling mixture of wealth and
decay. He wore a beautiful yet simply
adorned blue plaid longyi  and,
standing there, politely asked us
questions and extended invitations to
visit his family in Mandalay. But when
we told him of our intentions to cross
the border here, as he had done, he
frowned. No, you can't. You must fly
to Rangoon. He was all so grave in the
way he said it, as if there were forces at
work in the jungle, forces unknown to
us. He was a trader and often made the
trip from Mandalay, which the
Burmese call the "New York" of
Burma. The Burmese think
of Rangoon as the "Washington
D.C." of Burma, where deals are
brokered and politics can live out
its mendacious existence, while
businessmen in the financial capital,

Mandalay, cautiously go about their
business. As if their business has
nothing to do with politics. And
politics has nothing to do with their
business.

        For two days I tried to enter
Burma by simply walking across the
border. At Border Control the Burmese
army came running after us and
scrutinized our passports. For a half an
hour we went back and forth, the
guard apologizing for not allowing us
to pass and me reassuring him it was
OK to let us pass. ("Why don't you
return to Kunming and fly to
Rangoon?" "Chinese planes always
crash." He smiled.) Just as he seemed to
reconsider and allow us to cross ("Are
you a spy?" No, I'm only a student.
"Good, hmmm, okay . . . "), his superior
officer pulled up in his car, looked at
me and my American companion,
glanced at our passports and shook his
head. And so with one foot in Burma, I
was told to take a couple steps
backwards. "Go back to Ruili," he said.
"Go back to China."

        Thirty minutes from Ruili by
taxi (Toyota pickup truck), in a city

called Wanding, which lies right on the
border, I nearly launched out at the
Chinese officer in charge of the border,
but decided to launch into English
instead and, breaking the cardinal rule
of diplomacy and civility, raise my
voice and yell at him in a language he
did not speak. His subordinates
laughed with embarrassment, he
looked away, and I nearly stormed
across the border in spite of him, but
my companion stopped me from
making such a rash and stupid move.
For while the Burmese control Ruili's
border, the Chinese control Wanding's.
It's a curious relationship. And non-
Chinese, non-Burmese, non-Asian
people are not welcome to witness it.
Even from the limited view afforded
from the Chinese side, however, clearly
both are enjoying the profits from each
other's resources. From Burma, truck
after bloody truck crosses the border to
deliver its valuable cargo, Burma's
precious teak wood. To where it goes, I
don't know, but I've seen stockpiles of
it, and our bus passed so many of the
trucks agonizing their way up the
narrow and windy Burma Road. I just
hope it's not wasted on door jams and
joists or milled into billions of

toothpicks for export to Americans
who want to pick their teeth.

        Thirty minutes later, back in
Ruili, my traveling companion raised
his hands in surrender, announced his
immediate departure from China,
shook my hands, and boarded an
airplane for home (via Kunming and
Hong Kong). It's funny how things
work that way, how people can
suddenly change their minds and
feelings about something which had
been their idea in the first place. So, I
spent another day in Ruili as I waited
for the next bus to leave. In the
meantime a group of Burmese youths
had approached me. Friendly and
curious, they guided me to their
apartment, a clean and well-ventilated
room, where we exchanged names,
ages, and the regular formalities. "We
have many friends in the U.S.," the one
with the best English began. He was
Muslim, ethnic Indian, a grandson of
grandparents who taking advantage of
colonial policy uprooted themselves in
one colony and settled in another. He
introduced himself as Ali. Then we got
down to business. Ali pulled out pieces
of beautiful jade bracelets, carefully

tied to red silk covered card board
which folded three times to protect the
jade inside. "I was a refugee, but now I
am a trader," he said. One hole, 500
yuan.  He knew I couldn't afford it.
Next he produced from somewhere a
piece of folded paper, the size one
might use for a gram of heroin. This
was after all the Golden Triangle. I was
a bit nervous. Ali unwrapped it
carefully. Inside were dazzling
crystals, red rubies, cut and polished
to sparkle even in the low, smoky light.
It was allso easy. For $50 a stone.

        We talked and at some point I
produced my guidebook for Burma, a
thin paperback on whose cover was a
color photograph of Pagan, the ancient
city of temple ruins, sole remaining
artifacts of a once glorious and
powerful kingdom. Ali took it from my
hands and began to read the text,
flipping indiscriminately from page to
page. Then he came across a page on
which was a picture of Aung San Suu
Kyi, the leader of Burma's National
League for Democracy who is
currently serving her sixth year of
house arrest in her Rangoon home.
"Aung San Suu Kyi," he whispered.

The words electrified the room.
Immediately people who had been
standing there, disinterested and half
asleep, were gathered around the two
of us. They wanted to see a picture of a
woman who led her party to win over
80% of the vote in the 1990 general
election and whose integrity people
everywhere respect. "She's so smart,
she speaks five languages. Her
husband is Michael Aris, he's a
professor at Oxford University, and
they have two children. And her father
was Aung San . . . " And so it came, a
factual biography of a woman who
morally and spiritually united these
people with her uncompromising
adherence to personal integrity and
truth.

        As things turned out , Ali took a
strong fancy to the book, simply
because of Aung San Suu Kyi's
photograph. I tried to explain that it
was a mere travelers guide. But he
wouldn't listen. And in the end, the
man who tried to sell me expensive
jade and rubies instead bought my
book for the price of a cold bottle of
beer.

        Even now, in a comfortable
Hong Kong hotel room, far from Ruili,
this story often comes to my mind.
Here was an example of people, poor
but whose "basic needs" had been
fulfilled. Or had they? Are food, shelter
and health the only basic needs? Does
providing these alone constitute
securing what we call "human rights"?
The Chinese government thinks so.
And what about these youths' reaction
to Aung San Suu Kyi, a political
prisoner, demonized by her own
government. Is economic freedom
political freedom? Is economic freedom
necessary for political democracy? Are
economic development and free
markets necessarily going to secure or
attain political freedom? These and
other questions constantly ran through
my head all year.

        During the months leading up
to President Clinton's decision to
renew MFN and delink it from human
rights issues, I vacillated between
extreme positions. On one hand I
understood the realities of American
and Chinese relations, especially
business ones. I was well versed in the
particulars of modern Chinese history,

and I had just finished reading David
Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest ,
in which the roots of our problems in
Vietnam were traced back to our China
policy. I knew engagement, not
isolation, was essential. And yet, I
couldn't help to feel a twinge of
cynicism, that our policy was shaped
largely by the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce in Shanghai, vocal
proponents of free trade and delinking
"political" issues from "economic" ones.
Back and forth I went. I would visit a
sick Chinese friend in the hospital,
witness the appalling conditions and
the harsh ways patients were treated,
leave the hospital remembering what
one person had said to me once,
"People come to hospitals to die," not
sure if it were true, but bloody well
sure that "China has no human rights."
Angry, I would return home, read the
editorial from the latest issue of The Far
Eastern Economic Review  and find
myself convinced, or wanting to be
convinced, that if we just allowed trade
and the market to free the "creative
energies" of the people, all these
horrible things would go away, maybe
not soon, but nonetheless go away they
eventually will.

        I don't make public policy and I
still do not know what the right answer
is. But I do remember something the
Hopkins Center doctor [in Nanjing]
said to me. She has many complaints
about the Chinese medical system,
especially its lack of patient rights. You
have to be steadfast, she said, prepared
to defend your integrity, even as a
"guest" in a foreign land.