As it seems I'm not going to sleep much tonight, I thought I'd share a little of my own personal experience of Myanmar, and its people.
In 1996, I first met a man from Myanmar who was in China studying Chinese; he lived in Qingdao (where I was living at the time, also) for a year, and over the course of that year the two of us became very close friends. His English name was Sam (I could never master his actual name). When the year finished, he returned to Myanmar, and we kept in touch by email and phone.
In 2004, he sent me an announcement that he was getting married, and wanted to invite me to join him for the wedding in Yangon (also known as Rangoon). The combination of a close friend's wedding, and the opportunity to visit such a fascinating country, was too much to resist. I scheduled two weeks of holidays, and set off.
Understandably, Sam was rather preoccupied with wedding preparations, and although we spent quite a few evenings together (eating, drinking, and laughing), he could not accompany me during the daytime. So he introduced me to another of his friends, Kool (that was his actual name, and one that fit him perfectly), who served as my informal guide. In the two weeks that followed, Kool and I became inseparable friends.
Of course, we did the tourist thing, and visited many amazing sites -- if the current troubles ever settle down, I would very very highly recommend Myanmar as one of the top destinations for people to check out. But my best memories are of the evenings spent with my friends there. Kool and Sam are my two closest friends there, and the only ones I've continued to keep in touch with actively, but I met many other wonderful people during my time there. They were incredibly warm and friendly, and very open in discussing the problems in their country. Their pragmatism in the face of significant adversity never ceased to amaze me. They never complained, they never wished for more than they had, and in fact went to great lengths to express appreciation for what they did have. Yet every statement of contentment was qualified with the comment that, "Some day, it will change." And if you asked them what "change" meant, they'd refer back to the demonstrations of 1988 (at which almost every person I met in Myanmar lost a friend or family member). The Myanmar attitude became most evident in these discussions. None of them considered the protests of 1988 as "defeated" or "stopped"; only as "temporarily delayed" or "postponed", awaiting the right time.
I particularly remember one evening with Sam and Kool, sitting outside under the stars, half-wasted on local beer, and musing on life in the way that you do when you're drunk. We all shared stories about our childhoods, and were surprised to discover that we'd had quite amazingly similar experiences and upbringings. Kool was quite unique in Myanmar in that he was a complete atheist; Sam was more of an agnostic, having real doubts about Buddhism, but not ready to give up on it, either. Almost all the other people I met there were quite devout Buddhists.
Anyway, talk of the past led to talk about our futures. In my case, I was able to talk about long-term plans and goals; but for Sam and Kool, they could talk about their lives only up until the point that "the protests start again". After that point, their 'vision' of their own personal futures was entirely blank. Maybe they would win, and gain greater freedom; maybe they would lose, and see the military government continue its abuses; and maybe they'd be killed, and never know what happened. They entirely refused to speculate about their futures beyond that unspecified point in time; only to do the best they could until it happened.
Now that time has come -- and the next few weeks will determine, one way or another, what that future will be. And I'm sure that whatever risks they are facing, they are also somewhat relieved to finally be at this point, and have this question resolved, one way or the other.
Sam and his wife came to China for their honeymoon, so I was also privileged to act as their host/guide for part of the trip, and to get to know his wife better. Kool came to China for a week last year, and again I was delighted to show him around the country. During that trip, Kool told me that he expected things to come to a head within the next year...turns out, he was quite right.
It was Sam's wife that I talked to on the phone tonight; I have not yet been able to talk directly to either Sam or Kool, but she promised to do her best to get them to call me, if they have the opportunity.
Neither of these guys are "heroes" in the conventional sense. They are average joes from the working class, living normal lives, with no great aspirations of wealth or power. They're not terribly political, judging any government by its results, rather than by the political labels assigned to it. They never preached passionately about freedom, never proclaimed vehemently against their government. They're not guerrillas, or freedom fighters, or anything like that.
Yet now they are on the streets of Yangon, facing down armed soldiers, part of a human shield to protect priests of a religion that neither of them even particularly agrees with or believes in. And they are doing it, quite simply, because it is what they feel needs to be done. It is the right thing.
It is striking to me the difference between China and Myanmar in this regard. In China, any political movement has political leaders, and tons of slogans. It has people standing up and giving long speeches, stirring the people to action, calling for unity.
In Myanmar, they seem to have almost none of that. The Buddhist priests are not chanting slogans or preaching to the crowds; they simply march quietly. The regular citizens aren't joining because of the exhortations of charismatic leaders; they just do it because each one feels that now is the time for this to happen. The entire country, it seems, has simply been biding its time, waiting for this moment. Now it has come, and they respond not because it is something they should do, but because it is something that is meant to happen.
All part and parcel of the influence of Buddhist culture, I'm sure. I've had a number of debates with Kool and Sam about this (although neither of them is a devout Buddhist, and Kool renounces Buddhism entirely, they are both still very Buddhist in their views of life) in the past. I always argued that such a passive stance was harmful; that one of the reasons their government was able to hold power for so long was because they knew that the people would just accept it as a part of "fate" or "destiny". It was tremendously frustrating to me. Their response was that, if they had had my world view, the massacres in 1988 would have destroyed the hearts of the people of Myanmar, seeing their hopes and dreams irrevocably crushed (which is, in fact, very much what happened with many of the Chinese who participated in Tiananmen Square in 1989). Instead, they were able to accept it and move on, simply waiting until the right time for change arrived.
Those debates seem rather trivial in the face of the actual situation they are facing now. But I really, really hope that, in future, I can look forward to more, similar debates with them.
That's all for now...I'll get downright maudlin if I say much more. Just the random ruminations of a rather stressed mind, but hopefully it at least puts a more personal face on the issue for others reading this thread.
