The Lady--Myanmar IV

We spent most of March 5, 2012, attending other people's celebrations.   Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's Nobel Peace Prize winner, was under house arrest for twenty years.  She was released a few months ago and, by chance, was campaigning for Parliament in Mandalay, the day we were there.  We followed the joyful entourage of "The Lady" (the name her followers give her) from a Buddhist monastery, which she visited, to the banks of the Ayerwaddy River, where she gave a speech.  We also happened upon the ordination ceremony for a young monk, and we were invited to join the family at their private celebration.  Later in the day, we met the same family at the local Buddhist temple, where they were finishing the ordination rites.

Mandalay is the historic heart of Myanmar.  For centuries, the kings who ruled Myanmar lived in Mandalay and the royal towns surrounding it.  In 1885, King Thibaw, the last Myanmar king, surrendered to the British in Mandalay, and the British then ruled the country from Rangoon (Yangon).  As we drove into Mandalay, our guide, John, pointed out one of the old British homes, still intact 64 years after independence from Britain.

As we headed for our first site, a Buddhist monastery, John noticed an ordination ceremony in progress in the neighborhood.  We were welcomed into the hall, which had been decorated with a gilded entryway.  A young boy was being ordained as a novitiate monk and a young girl was having her ears pierced.  Ear piercing is celebrated as "coming of age" for girls in the same way that becoming a novitiate monk is for boys.  The children's family was dressed in silks and satins, with matching outfits for each group of relatives (ex. all aunts dressed alike).  "Usually, they rent the clothes," John said, "and friends or several families may have ordinations at the same time."  The girl in pink had her ears pierced and the boy in green became a novitiate monk.  We ate some chile nuts, posed with the happy family members, listened to some Asian rock music which preceded the ceremony, thanked our hosts for their kindness, and then left for the monastery.

As we reached the road, it was full of people.  "Maybe the Lady is here today," John said.  The government didn't let the newspapers publish Suu Kyi's campaign schedule, but John knew she had been in Mandalay yesterday.  He soon confirmed that the Lady was visiting the monastery we were heading towards.  We parked our car and fell in with the hordes, on foot, surging towards the monastery.  They waved orange flags and wore orange clothes, the color of the NDL, National Democracy League, the Lady's political party.  The Lady soon appeared, in her campaign truck, and we snapped pictures from within 10 feet of her.

We returned to our car and drove to the monastery, where the monks were just rolling up their campaign banner.  There was no separation between Church and state on this issue--the monks were clearly supporting the Lady. Our guidebook mentioned that this monastery has long been noted for the politically forthright views of its monks.

We watched as the monks lined up for lunch.  In Myanmar, most young men become monks for at least a few months, but they are free to stay or go as they wish.  While in the monastery, they live humbly, including begging for their food.  Myanmar families frequently donate breakfasts and lunches to the monks, as "good works."  We watched the monks eat their meal, including the very young 7 and 8-year-olds, dressed in white.  Some of those very young boys did not have parents who could take care of them, and others were sent to the monastery for a few weeks as spiritual training.  We visited the outdoors kitchen, where volunteers were already slicing and cooking catfish for tomorrow's meals.  It took 10 huge bags of rice for one lunch for the monks.

John heard that, because the government had refused to let the Lady speak in a hall in Mandalay, she would give a speech on the beach of the Ayerwaddy River.  We drove to the beach, saw the Lady across the river with her followers, and arrived just as she was finishing her speech, with her words blared out through loudspeakers for the tens of thousands of followers who had gathered.  We hung close to the campaign trucks and, again, the Lady passed within ten feet of us.  We surged back to our car with the Lady's many followers, and we followed her campaign truck for a ways.  The Lady's campaign was successful; NDL won 43 out of the 45 seats up for election on April 2, 2012.

We next visited the Mahamuni Paya, a temple which is a very popular place of pilgrimage.  At every major temple, there are shops busily selling religious statues, flowers, incense, and other pilgrimage items.  There is also a window for pilgrims to buy extremely thin lawyers of gold leaf to apply to the gold statues in the temples. 

At Mahamuni Paya, only men are allowed to approach the 13-foot statue of Buddha, which has had so much gold applied that it is impossible to see the Buddha's features.  Women wait in an anti-chamber.  We met the young boy and girl of this morning, parading with their families through the temple.  "They are repeating the story of the Buddha," John said, "who walked around the countryside before entering the monastery as a monk."

A reporter from Reuters met David on the porch of the temple and asked if she could interview us about the Lady's visit and about whether the Western world should lift economic sanctions against Myanmar.  It was fun to be celebrities for a moment.  The interviewer said she is making a video about Myanmar which Reuters may sell to CNN.

Our next stop was the Gold-Pounders District, where we visited a shop which applied gold leaf to lacquer, and which also pounded gold thin for selling at temples.  First, the gold was run through a machine to get it as thin as possible.  Then, bits of gold were placed between sheets of paper and a man physically beat it for five hours to get it even thinner. We calculated that, even at $2000 per ounce, the shop was making $1000 profit per ounce. 

We visited the Shwenandaw Kyaung, the teak monastery-temple originally built as the royal apartment of King Mindon, who died inside it in 1878, just a few years before his son, King Thibaw, surrendered to the British.  It is the only building left from the Burmese palace, which was destroyed by bombs during World War II.  All the gold has worn off, but the beauty of the wood carving still remains.

We also visited the "World's Biggest Book," or Kuthodaw Paya.  729 marble slabs, inscribed with words from the Tripitaka, or Buddhist holy book, are each housed in their own small pagoda.  When King Mindon convened the 5th Buddhist Synod to read the book, it took 2400 monks six months, reading non-stop, to finish it.

We visited the temple on Mandalay Hill to watch the sunset.  Rudyard Kipling, who visited Rangoon, but not Mandalay, described how "In Mandalay, where the flying fishes play, the dawn comes up like thunder over China, cross the bay."  When we asked John where Mandalay Bay is, he said, "Las Vegas."  Mandalay has a river, but no bay, and China is several hundred miles north. 

We finished the day with dinner at our hotel, accompanied by a musician playing a Burmese stringed instrument.