Back to a Burmese Prison by Choice
An Addict on the Jade Trail to China
The Life and Times of an Addict in Myanmar
ut government works in strange ways in Myanmar: Many decisions are made on an ad hoc basis, and developers are looking for cheap insider deals as the economy goes through a rough transition. There is no legal framework for protection of the buildings, and no discussion of how to protect the people who have been living in hallways, towers and hidden back rooms.
The trust hopes to change that with a master plan that would sort out legal ownership, designate renovation projects and deal with traffic and sanitation by the end of 2015, said Mr. Thant Myint-U, the grandson of the former United Nations secretary general, U Thant, and a historian who has written books on Myanmar.
At the heart of the plan will be the idea that downtown Yangon should retain its vibrancy rather than become another sanitized zone that appeals to well-to-do tourists impressed by expensive hotels and tony cafes, Mr. Thant Myint-U said. To preserve a sense of authenticity, he said, there will be efforts to keep residents in some of the buildings, perhaps with subsidized rents, and to limit the number of big, impersonal international hotels that attract foreign visitors but are off-limits to most locals.
The distinctive charm of the teetering colonial-era buildings lies in the street life around them: the bookstalls along Pansodan Street with paperbacks laid out on the sidewalk and vendors overseeing their wares from little plastic stools; the makeshift food booths selling small snakes in screw-top jars, watermelons the size of several footballs, bright orange papayas and emerald green limes.
In the Balthazar Building, the decrepit lobby serves as the kitchen for Daw Than Hla, a 63-year-old widow.
In the early evening, as the office workers head home, she lights a brazier in an alcove beside the elevator and tosses sliced onions in oil, the aromas adding a decidedly domestic touch to the crumbling marble and iron décor as she prepares dinner.
"I've lived here for 40 years," she said, pointing to small rooms where her daughter, son and grandchild sleep. "My husband worked in the fisheries department and when he died they allowed me to stay."
In one of the cubicles on the third floor, Aung Ning Tun, a lawyer, said he would be reluctant to leave, even if offered modern office space elsewhere. "It's very hot in the building, and it badly needs renovation, but it is very convenient to the courts," he said.
In the parts of the city outside the historic zone, the skyline has changed little, though life has become more hectic after decades of somnolence under the military dictatorship. Migrants from the countryside squeeze into crowded apartments; hundreds of thousands more cars, a product of the growing economy, create some of the worst gridlock in Southeast Asia. Some historic buildings have been demolished, including the grandiose 1895 government house resplendent with turrets and gables, and the house where the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, lived in the late 1920s.
Mr. Neruda served briefly as his country's consul in Rangoon, an unpaid posting that left him poor but led to a passionate love affair with a Burmese muse he called Josie Bliss. He wrote a poem during his stay, "Rangoon 1927," that includes these lines:
Supreme light that opened over my hair
a world at its zenith, it entered my eyes
and ran through my veins
into every corner of my body,
until granting me the sovereignty
of an excessive, exiled love.
http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/racing-to-save-myanmars-colonial-past/
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