High in the hills of Myanmar’s Chin state, Shwe Mana plays a gentle song on a bamboo flute using only her nostrils — one of the last of her tribe to preserve this ancient skill. A dark, intricate web of tattoos covers her face, harking back to a time, it is said, when women disfigured themselves to dampen the lust of lowland marauders.
Her university-educated daughter, resting a hand gently on the 53-year-old’s shoulder, makes it clear she will not be getting similar tattoos in what she calls, “this Internet age.” Her illiterate mother, like many from the Chin ethnic group, explains that the outside world has imparted a new sense of what is beautiful.
“My daughter thought it would be too painful and she would not look pretty,” said Mana, whose house hugs a 1,370m ridgeline in the pleasant town of Kampalet. “Sometimes I also feel that the tattoos don’t make me pretty —but just sometimes.”
Their story is becoming a common one in a country not long ago described as a place where time stood still. Tribal ways — dress, festivals, even languages — passed down countless generations are vanishing in the course of one as the long-isolated country opens its doors wider to the outside world.
The end of military rule three years ago and the launch of economic and political reforms are accelerating change. That is bringing opportunity and hope for a long impoverished country, but also increasing pressure on tradition in one of the most ethnically diverse nations, which is home to more than 140 groups and numerous sub-groupings, from sea-roaming gypsies in the south to a tribe of pygmies living in the shadows of the Himalayas.
Across Myanmar, where ethnic minorities make up about one-third of the 60 million people and inhabit half the country, barely a village remains that is still cocooned in the past.
For example, take Kyar Do in southern Chin state, which is inhabited by the Maun sub-tribe. Reached by a precarious trail plunging down a 1,500m deep valley and often cut off during the monsoon rains, the community acquired three inexpensive Chinese-made motorcycles last year and a mobile phone, now owned by the chief. Three television sets, powered by solar panels, allow the 500 villagers to keep up with the latest doings of soccer squads Manchester United and Real Madrid.
“The world they are in contact with is in constant change and they want to be part of it,” said F.K. Lehman, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois and one of the few anthropologists to have conducted fieldwork among the Chin.
“The change among the ethnic groups is very rapid and striking and it will accelerate,” Lehman added.
Wedged between northeast India and the heartland of the Burmans, the majority ethnic group in Myanmar, Chin state is home to six Chin tribes and 69 sub-tribes. It is a stunningly beautiful, rugged region rising to the 3,100m Mount Victoria. However, it is plagued by periodic famines, threadbare infrastructure and an insurgency, now at least temporarily halted, aimed at greater autonomy from the central government.
Driven by poverty and politics, a Chin diaspora — there are some 20,000 in Malaysia alone — has created economic disparities as relatives send money home to once generally egalitarian communities. The family of Yen Htan recently built a new house in Kyar Do thanks to a son working in Malaysia who sends home about US$2,000 a year, a princely sum given the US$2-a-day income of most other families. Brightly painted and tiled, the house is built of wood, in contrast to the traditional bamboo and thatch.
There is also a generational disconnect. Older people are mostly illiterate, while the young attend a village primary school, and a few of them go on to higher education in the district capital, Mindat.
With previous restrictions on foreigners traveling to Chin state now mostly lifted, a trickle of tourists make the heart-pounding trek to Kyar Do. Some offer candy and medicine, or donations to rebuild a bridge demolished by floods. Others try to buy heirloom jewelry — expressions of pride, status and artistry — from households. Some of the tattooed, bejeweled women expect cash for photographs.
“Our village must be developed, and some tourists come to help,” villager Phey Htan said, attributing some economic betterment to the replacement of a half-century-long military rule by a government elected in 2010.
“Tourism is proof that our village is developing,” she said.
British colonials, who seized the Chin Hills in 1896, and US missionaries were earlier agents of change. The indigenous groups were able to meld some of their animist religion with Christianity, and the missionaries strengthened Chin identity by creating the first Chin written alphabet in addition to other unifying measures.
“The English and missionaries offered a connection to a larger, interesting world which did not depend on the Burmans, who had always been rather unkind to them,” Lehman said.
Kyar Do, like other Chin villages, seems to have feet planted in both animism and Christianity, in the past and the present. Down the slope from a Christian church, the ashes of the deceased lie beneath clusters of flat, table-like stones, according to ancient custom.
Phey Htan, an avowed Baptist, proudly presents his tattooed wives — two of them.
“Tattooing is good. It’s our tradition. I would like to see it continue. I am very proud to be a Maun,” he said, reflecting a deeply rooted sense of identity, despite changes in what anthropologists call showcase culture: dress, ornaments, dances and other visible elements. One wall of his house is decorated with the skulls of “mithuns,” domesticated forest oxen sacrificed to ensure bountiful harvests in a five-day ceremony also involving the slaughter of chickens, pigs and goats, and plenty of liquor. Such traditions are challenged by continuing efforts to assimilate the minorities into the Burman mainstream.
Lian Sakhong, a Chin activist and anthropologist, fled Myanmar after the brutal 1988 military suppression of a pro-democracy movement. Upon returning home in 2001 from asylum in Sweden, he noticed changes. Buddhist pagodas stood on hilltops where there were once only Christian churches. Students were pressured to convert to Buddhism, the religion of most Burmans, at special, well-endowed schools run under the government’s Border Area Development Program.
His generation studied in Chin languages through primary school, but now children can do so only at Sunday school. Christianity, which once so transformed Chin society, is now saving it, said Lian Sakhong, also the son of a tribal chief.
“Chin identity and Christianity are fully blended,” he says. “We have only one institution which is not controlled by the government: our church. When you sing a hymn and read the Bible in Chin on Sunday, and you know that others across the state are doing the same, it makes for a kind of community, a unifying force.”
However, as in other ethnic areas, languages are disappearing as once isolated valleys are connected by roads and modern communication. In his grandfather’s time, everyone in a cluster of 27 villages where Lian Sakhong grew up spoke Zophei, a distinct dialect of the Laimi tribe. Today, it is spoken in four or five villages while the rest use only the primary Laimi language. Long-running insurgencies and political struggles by the Chin and other ethnic groups for greater autonomy also forged a sense of identity. Now, most have agreed to cease-fires that could lead to peace.
“Strong identity is being kept alive by the armed resistance. It’s become an identity-keeping force,” Sakhong said. “I tell my friends: ‘If there is peace, we have to find other ways to protect our language, our essential culture.’”
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, people have been asking if Taiwan is the next Ukraine. At a G7 meeting of national leaders in January, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that Taiwan “could be the next Ukraine” if Chinese aggression is not checked. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that if Russia is not defeated, then “today, it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it can be Taiwan.” China does not like this rhetoric. Its diplomats ask people to stop saying “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.” However, the rhetoric and stated ambition of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Taiwan shows strong parallels with