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What’s Going On In … Yangon, Burma
Once a sequestered city under military lock-and-key, Yangon has made some (small) liberties as the country opens to more foreign influence. Much of the bustling former capital feels like a time capsule, with weathered colonial-style buildings alongside rows of shophouses not much changed over the past four decades.
Band
Influenced by The Pixies and Joy Division, 80s-imprinted Side Effect sings about getting drunk and finding love, and as Burma’s unofficial capital unbolts its doors, the rock band is gaining international listeners. Check out their song “Film,” streaming above.
Movie
[vimeo 34016935]
Yangon-born Htun Zaw Win’s Ban That Scene! parodies the censorship of film in Burma. According to Win’s short film, government officials clip scenes of poverty, injustice, and romance, decrying any shot that paints the country as corrupt.
Author
In 2008, Saw Wai began serving a two-year prison term for writing “February the Fourteenth,” an acrostic poem with an embedded message denouncing Burma’s military leader at the time General Than Shwe. Released in 2010, Wai recently attended the Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Yangon, the country’s first celebration of silenced writers. Check out the festival’s page and read an unofficial translation of Wai’s protest poem below.
February the Fourteenth
Arensberg said:
Only once you have experienced deep pain
And madness
And like an adolescent
Thought the blurred photo of a model
Great art
Can you call it heartbreak.
Millions of people
Who know how to love
Please clap your gilded hands
And laugh out loud.
Neighborhood
Near Yangon University is Inya Lake Park, a spot favored by young couples looking to share a semi-private moment along the spidery inlets and erratic shoreline of the British-made lake. The surrounding area’s exclusivity (many of the country’s well-to-do own lakefront property) offers a break from the urban whir.
Restaurant
Tea in Burma is sweet and milky, and best enjoyed at hole-in-the-wall joints like Yatha Tea Shop, where you can pair a cup or two with a potato samosa, and savor a token of Yangon’s Indian population. Read more here on the origins of tea from its birthplace in Burma.
Politician
Founder of the Communist Party of Burma and father of National League for Democracy chairperson Aung San Suu Kyi, General Aung San was assassinated in 1947. Read The Irrawaddy’s coverage of the 2012 opening of the Aung San Museum here.
—Audrey McGlinchy