Two books about the Shan territories of Myanmar in the space of three weeks is surprising, to say the least. Hot on the heels of Daniel Mason's excellent novel The Piano Tuner (reviewed March 2) comes this travel book. They are very different in subject and feeling. Whereas The Piano Tuner is everywhere thoughtful on the implications of empire, this book wastes no words, tends to sum up complex situations in a few witty phrases and is frequently comic in tone.
It was initially inspired by a desire to follow the footsteps of an eccentric British Victorian, Sir George Scott, who introduced soccer to the region. It quickly becomes something much more serious, however, as the author comes face to face with what he considers the genocide currently being perpetrated by the Myanmar junta on its minorities.
Andrew Marshall, who was for several years a journalist based in Hong Kong, tells how he visited Myanmar seven times posing as a tourist. He was, he says, followed and harassed by the country's security forces, and writes in an Author's Note "Well, gentlemen, you were right all along: I was a writer posing as a tourist, and this book is the result. I hope you like it."
They are certain not to. Marshall is resolutely opposed to the country's current rulers. He exposes their crimes on many a page, and refuses to use the new names they have given many places on the grounds that they are part of an anti-minority campaign. He similarly refuses to use the name "Myanmar."
Unfortunately this book fails to live up to its early promise. The anger that the author feels at the actions of the military is never in doubt, but the narrative too easily gets side-tracked into jokes and only mildly amusing anecdotes.
Marshall's style can be appreciated from the following. After recording that the British allowed the local Shan rulers to continue to raise taxes and dispense justice, while the natural resources of the area became the property of the British crown, he goes on: "It wasn't much of a deal: you get to keep your royal spittoon bearers, your umpteen wives and your ceremonial yak-hair whisk; we get all your teak, jade, gems and silver. But then that's colonialism for you. And the Shan saophas [princes], fatally enfeebled by centuries of in-fighting, had no strength left to argue."
This brand of history, in other words, is reader-friendly, to put it kindly.
The account of Marshall's own travels is equally easy on the eye, not to mention the mind.
He visits Maymyo, now a couple of hours drive from Mandalay, and Taunggyi, capital of the Shan State, both former British hill-stations. "There is no hill station in India where there is so much room," George Scott had enthused about Tuangyi, "not merely for house-building but for race-courses, polo-grounds and public gardens." Marshall found it dominated by Chinese businessmen, the source of most of the economic life in the otherwise stultified and stagnating modern Burma.
This is in essence a light-hearted book. But because the author encounters tales of brutal repression, he has no alternative than to be outraged, and to temper his inclination to make fun of things, at least for limited periods.
In the latter part of the book he travels to China's Yunnan province to visit villages of the head-hunting Wa on the China-Myanmar border. The Wa had, and retain, a reputation for savagery. An American missionary in Thailand had advised Marshall: "If I were you I'd pray a whole bunch before I went up there. But if you're not afraid to die, then give it a shot."
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