Each morning, in the Buddhist heartland of the country once known as Burma, dozens of monks clamber onto ramshackle buses and leave the stately, sprawling city of Mandalay.
The monks, their black-lacquer begging bowls swinging from their shoulders, head for a handful of dusty new settlements that ring Mandalay. Once there, they hop off the buses and begin the ancient practice of begging for food.
This peculiar reverse commute is dictated by shifting demographics: The Burmese who can be relied on to give food to the monks have been largely forced out of the center of Mandalay by rampant development.
Most of the building has been financed by developers from southwestern China. Garish concrete-and-glass hotels, shopping malls and houses surround the crenelated red-brick walls of the Mandalay Fort, which protected Burma's royal palace until it fell to British troops in 1885.
Thousands of Chinese merchants and traders have streamed into Mandalay since the late 1980s. New to Myanmar and numb to its religious traditions, they brush off the begging monks.
"The Chinese live in lavish houses," said one prominent dissident. "They make us feel like second-class citizens in our own town. That's why we dislike them."
China's brash presence in this former capital is only the most visible facet of the complex relationship between Myanmar and its hulking northern neighbor. While ethnic Chinese were historically less influential here than in Thailand or Vietnam, China has assumed a disproportionate role in postcolonial times because Myanmar has taken a course radically different from that of its neighbors.
Shunned by the West -- first through its own choice as it experimented with socialism and later for its remorseless crackdown on the democracy movement -- this isolated and impoverished country has turned to Beijing for military aid.
In recent years, the relationship has turned commercial. Myanmar is now the largest trading partner of Yunnan Province, just across its northern border. While China ranks only 15th in foreign direct investment in Myanmar, its leaders are eager to do more business.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) visited Myanmar earlier this month, signing agreements to increase investment and to cooperate on agriculture and oil production. It was the first visit by a Chinese leader since the military junta crushed a democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi in 1988.
Jiang gazed at treasures like the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the capital, and the Buddhist temples in Bagan. He also gave a rosy endorsement to the reviled junta, declaring that Myanmar "must be allowed to choose its own development path suited to its own conditions."
In Mandalay, city bosses welcomed Jiang with a red-and-white banner stretched across the main highway. On the streets, however, feelings toward the Chinese leader were no warmer than toward the Chinese developers.
"Of course, the government rounded up people to cheer," said a local tour guide. "But nobody else paid attention."Even Myanmar's generals are said to be ambivalent about their close ties to Beijing. Analysts say the tanks, warships and other military equipment that China sells to Myanmar tend to be shoddy and unreliable.
Nor can older leaders of the junta forget that China's government supported a Communist insurgency against the government here for decades. Beijing abandoned that policy in the late 1970s -- simultaneously opening its economy and cultivating ties with neighboring countries.
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