BURMA/SHANS

[moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

SHANS/BURMA

Three decades of change 
The World & I; Washington; Apr 1999; E Paul Durrenberger; Nicola Tannenbaum; 

Volume: 
                        14
Issue: 
                        4
Start Page: 
                        192
ISSN: 
                        08879346

Washington Times Corporation Apr 1999

[Headnote]
The Shan Villages of Northwestern Thailand 

The Shan tribal people live in the hills of northwestern Thailand, near the
Burmese border. Over the
past 150 years or so they have carved out small irrigation systems to water
rice fields leveled in the
narrow valleys. Since their arrival -from Burmathe area has changed from a
backwater to a
traditional rice-farming community to a contemporary tourist destination
Paved roads, electricity,
and television have revolutionized the economics and culture of the Shan
villages. Nevertheless
women still transplant rice seedlings by hand and men still plow
fields-though now with tractors
instead of water buffalo. Men and women continue to harvest, thresh, and
winnow rice by hand. But
now they carry the crop home in pickup trucks rather than oxcarts. 

This article reflects upon the process of change over the ! last thirty
years, as observed in
independent fieldwork studies conducted by these authors and described by
Shan people
interviewed at the time. Paul Durrenberger first went to the region in 1967
and returned in the mid
1970s. Nicola Tannenbaum conducted her studies in the late 1970s, mid 1980s,
and most recently
in 1998. Living among Shan villagers in an effort to understand everyday
life, both authors came to
accept the conditions of the time as normal. We both studied and wrote about
household
economics, ritual, and religion from this vantage. Over the years that we
have watched development
in the area, the means of making a living have changed. Roads have provided
new opportunities,
and government policies have eliminated previous ones. Big changes also came
from the influence of
the world outside the villages. This article hopes to offer a glimpse into
the changing world of the
Shan. Remote communities In 1967, access to the region was gained via DC-3s
that landed
bumpily in a grass field at Mae Hong Son near the River Pai. The road and
bridges built by the
Japanese during the Second World War had fallen into disrepair. While
oxcarts and elephants
forded the river, pedestrians crossed by a fragile bamboo suspension bridge. 


Across the river, in the hinterland, were villages such as Mawk Tsam Pe,
where Durrenberger spent
the summer of 1967 and Tannenbaum lived from 1984 to 1985. Farther toward
the Burma border
were smaller villages such as Thongmakhsan. Here Durrenberger did
ethnographic fieldwork in
1975-76 and Tannenbaum in 1979-1980 and later. Tannenbaum also revisited the
area in the
summer of 1998 to talk to people about the changes. 

In the 1960s, when Durrenberger first walked into Mawk Tsam Pe, the village
consisted of about
120 houses. Narrow, tree-shaded lanes ran between fenced house compounds.
Posts raised these
homes some six or seven feet off the ground. Dried broad-leaf shingles
covered the roofs, and a
simple wall separated sleeping quarters from open living areas. The major
item of living room
furniture was a small, round table on which food or refreshments would be
served to the people
sitting on the floor. 

People worked on verandas and in spaces under the houses. Two other domestic
structures were
important: a platform for storing the year's supply of rice (usually in one
or two tall, round baskets)
and a separate structure where people could squat around a charcoal or wood
fire to cook rice and
accompanying sauces. 

During the day, people set out from their homes to attend to the season's
agricultural tasks, collect
mushrooms or bamboo shoots from the forest, or gather leaves for new
shingles needed to reroof a
house. In irrigated fields, people would eat lunch and drink tea in small
elevated huts while their
buffalo rested in the shade. At night in the villages, people gathered to
talk on verandas and lend a
hand with weaving baskets or hats, making shingles, or taking care of other
domestic chores. A few
people had battery-operated radios, but these were not common until a decade
later. Open-flame
kerosene lamps provided light. The only machine sound was the chugging of a
gasoline rice mill
owned by a schoolteacher. For a small fee, women could save themselves the
trouble of dehusking
the rice in a foot-powered rice pounder. Conversation could quickly be
turned to changes the
villagers had observed in their lives. In the 1960s and even the 1970s,
older villagers still
remembered the days of the last Shan prince (around the turn of the
century), before Thai national
administration reached the area. 

"About fifty years ago, fields were owned by the whole village," said one
older villager in Mawk
Tsam Pe in 1967. "Each year they decided who would make which field. If
someone moved, they
withdrew because the field didn't belong to you. If a new person came, he
got that field. 

"Then the government made a register of land with the name of the owner. Now
we can't go back
to common land. The one who worked the field became the owner and had to pay
tax. During the
time of the last prince, when he became an official, they changed the
system. No one had dry fields.
Those were times with better yields and less work." By this time village
children were learning to
read and write Thai in government-sponsored village schools. But in the
fields and at home,

everyone spoke Shan. Only those who had studied in temples could read Shan
(which has a very
different alphabet). Also about this time, official land registration began,
even though most people
did not have title to their land. 

With neither a viable road nor bridge, it was not worthwhile to produce
bulky crops such as garlic
or soybeans for sale. To get the cash they needed to buy clothing, kerosene,
and other goods they
could not produce, people grew sesame in hill fields. Ib get the rice they
needed to eat, people grew
two annual harvests in the irrigated fields, supplemented, if necessary,
with highland dry-rice fields.
"More and more people grow dry rice, as there are fewer wet fields per
person," commented the
headman of the village in Mawk Tsam Pe in 1967. "Someday there won't be
enough land here. If
the government is good to us-and lets us cut the jungle where the forest
is-we can make more dry
fields and there will be no problem." 

"Last year I grew a lot of garlic," said a retired schoolteacher. "But no
buyers came here from
Chiang Mai because of bad roads. One year, all the villagers tried to grow
garlic, but the price
dropped. They had to store it a long time, and it became bad. The price
stayed down and the garlic
spoiled, so they had to throw it away. If the roads improve and corn prices
go up, I will grow corn.
They export it to Japan." Bustling with traffic By the mid 1970s, cattle
trucks and pickups were
carrying people and produce to and from the countryside. The roar of engines
would interrupt the
reveries of dogs sleeping in Mae Hong Son's street. A paved airfield runway
ran the length of town,
and a cement post office and two cement hotels jutted into the skyline above
the Buddhist temples.
Traffic along the new road provisioned a number of wholesale warehouses with
consumer
goods-nylon underwear, plastic containers, sewing machines, rubber thong
sandals, and
cookies-many of which made their way over the border to be sold in Burma. 

There was now a bridge across the River Pai, and timber companies had cut
roads to most of the
villages in order to extract teak. Japanese pickup trucks, outfitted with
benches, plied the roads,
ferrying people and supplies back and forth. During the rains, these dirt
roads could become mires
that would intimidate even the most intrepid of drivers. The bridge, the
roads, the trucks, and their
drivers revolutionized the agricultural system. Buyers came to villages to
obtain soybeans and garlic,
making the crops economically viable. People without irrigated fields-or
even with insufficient
fields-still made hill rice fields or worked for people with irrigated
fields, but relatives and neighbors
allowed them to make rent-free gardens on their land. 

A person could earn a year's supply of rice by plowing and preparing a
landowner's fields for rice
planting, or could rent a field-and water buffalo to prepare it-for
two-fifths of the crop. Some
continued to produce sesame in highland fields. More cash was circulating,
and people were buying
more goods. Hardly a day went by without the sound of a taxi-truck churning
its way along the

muddy road or raising a cloud of dust in the dry season. "Until three years
ago this village didn't
have enough rice to eat," said an older woman in Thongmakhsan in 1976. "Only
a few people had
enough to eat. Then there was no road; people had to carry rice on their
shoulders from other
villages. If you borrowed rice, you repaid two baskets for every basket you
borrowed. People in
other villages with many irrigated fields got very rich." 

The trade with Burma accelerated. Goods could now reach more distant markets
on the new
roads. Trucks could pick up cattle traders and bring them in from Burma.
Horse caravans carrying
temple carvings, antiques, and jade could use Thai villages as a terminus.
The lure of quick money in
this trade tempted some from their rice fields. Some made fortunes but
others failed, at the cost of
their means of livelihood. 

The road was important, and the village headman of Thongmakhsan was intent
to see it repaired
every year in December on the occasion of the king of Thailand's birthday.
This strained his relations
with villagers-as this was a peak time for harvesting rice-but helped his
standing with government
officials from Mae Hong Son. Officials now drove through the hinterland on
inspection tours to
ensure that the villagers were working as ordered. 

The following dialogue, recorded in a village meeting in Thongmakhsan in
1976, captures some of
the situation. The village headman was trying to persuade the villagers to
cooperate: "Don't say you
can't," he argued. "It is the king's birthday. You can't say there is no
time to do it; you can't say you
can't do it. You have to do it because it is the king's birthday." 

"Ah, it is difficult," a villager shrugged. 

"Take the tools and do it," the headman insisted. 

"Make a nylon road so we don't have to repair it each year," another
villager protested. 

"The headman thinks officers may check, and he wants people to be working if
they come," warned
the schoolteacher. 

"Yes. Tomorrow, officers from town will check," the headman nodded in eager
agreement. 

Growth of a cash economy Since the mid 1980s Mae Hong Son has been promoted
as a tourist
attraction. During the filming of Air America it boomed with guesthouses,
tourist shops, car
dealerships, large stores, a karaoke bar, a 7-11, and national bank branches
with ATMs. Thai now
prevails as the language of the market and the streets, supplanting Shan.
With increased national
approval of ethnic diversity, government buildings, signs, lampposts, and
even telephone booths
sport Shan decorative motifs. Two-story wooden houses with asbestos roofing
tiles and
cement-block bungalows have replaced Shan-style houses even in the villages. 

Signs in Thai-proclaiming the town to be a law-abiding community-welcome
travelers on the paved
road into Thongmakhsan. Some field huts have tin roofs, and there is a
cement irrigation canal. Shan
refugees from Burma occupy the few old-style Shan houses. Electricity came
in 1990. Most people
have fluorescent lights, while the better off have electric fans, rice
cookers, refrigerators, and TVs.

A fairly reliable water system allows people to attach bathrooms with
toilets and bathing places to
their houses. Kitchens are in separate rooms, often with their own roofs. 

People still grow soybeans and garlic as cash crops and rice to eat. But in
the 1990s the
government began to enforce laws against unauthorized hill fields.
Households that could not
produce enough in their na (irrigated fields) had to find other ways to get
rice. Mechanization added
to their difficulty. Landowners bought "walking tractors" (used to plow and
sow na) and prepared
their own land. They also hired out their machines to prepare other people's
fields, thus depriving
those without land of a significant opportunity to earn rice. 

Farming requires cash to purchase, fuel, maintain, and repair tractors;
fertilizers and insecticides are
also deemed necessary. Like farmers elsewhere in Thailand, Shan villagers
finance their crops with
production loans from a governmentsponsored cooperative. People with land
are likely to plant it all
in garlic or soybeans during the cold season and no longer allow fellow
villagers to make gardens
there for free. "We borrow money to hire labor to plant, to buy inputs, and
repay the loan when we
sell garlic," said one farmer in Thongmakhsan in 1998. "We make three garlic
gardens, one to pay
the cost of labor, one to pay the cost of herbicides and fertilizers, and
the third for money for the
house. And then we borrow money again to plant rice. This is what we do:
borrow and repay,
borrow and repay." 

More irrigated fields are available for renting because many young adults do
not want to farm and
go to work in Chiang Mai or Bangkok. Some people now pay half the rice crop
to rent a rice field
they can also use for cash crops. People from households that formerly
relied on hill fields now do
wage labor, and there has been an influx of Shan refugees from Burma looking
for work. 

"Without the refugees we would not be able to work the way we do. We
wouldn't have enough
labor. Kids nowadays don't want to be farmers," commented one man in his
SOs. He had worked
hard to create fields, but his son has rejected farming in favor of truck
driving. 

aI finished school at sixth grade," said a woman in her 30s, "and started to
do farmwork. [Her father
wouldn't allow her to continue her education.] By the time I was 14, I was
doing regular work I
could count on for exchange labor. In the past, once you were able to work,
you started working.
Now kids don't want to do farmwork; my older daughter certainly doesn't." 

The school in Thongmakhsan closed in 1995 because there were too few
children. To keep from
fragmenting their holdings among many descendants, couples are eager users
of birth control. Those
who could afford the transportation costs have been sending their children
to school in Mae Hong
Son since the early 1980s. Now it is the only source of education, and
parents need cash for
transportation, school supplies, uniforms, and pocket money. In the schools,
children learn Thai
ways. Villagers take this as a sign that they have entered the sophisticated
Thai society that they see

on their TV screens at home. 

Mixed blessings People's views of the changes since Durrenberger's first
visits are mixed. One
optimistic grandmother said: "Food, the road, houses are very different.
There's been considerable
progress since Paul was here. 

`The ways people make a living have really progressed. Now people use
tractors; in Paul's time
they used water buffalo. And the road wasn't good. Now there are no water
buffalo or cattle. There
isn't much to worry about now. The road is good, there are cars, and you
don't need to worry
about food." 

Her daughter was much less sanguine: `The past and present are different.
There isn't enough to eat
now, and you have to buy food. 

"When Paul was here, I was just a kid. Now I have a kid, and things are
different. With the child, I
have to stay home, and when she gets bigger I will have to look for money to
send her to school.
Now I work, and it isn't so great; you don't get enough. Growing rice is
hard. This year we are
already buying rice. 

"When I was a kid, I didn't think about money. Now I have to because of my
household and child.
Now money concerns are not the same as in the past. There are a lot of
expenses. But things like
festivals, customs, beliefs, they're the same as in the past. Same as when I
was a kid. Our beliefs
and practices are the same, but the economy has changed." 

"Now, we really live in comfortable times," said a great-grandfather. 

"It is more comfortable, physically, but much more worrisome," commented a
welloff farmer.
"Production loans, having to make money to repay debts, and finding money
because stuff is more
expensive. 

"In the past, if you had 140-150 baht, everything was fine; you had enough
money. Now with
tractors you need to buy fuel, make repairs, and so on. In the past there
were fish in the irrigated
fields, and it was easy to collect vegetables. Now both are scarce." His
wife concluded our
conversation with a traditional saying: "ork isn't finished and there isn't
enough to eat. 

"In the past, you would work and do OK. You would have enough," she
shrugged. "But now. . . sH
@