North by Northwest Part 1: The Tea Soldiers

So I went to Me Sai again. As you’ll remember from a previous post, Mei Sai is in the Northwest of Thailand, located on the border of Burma. My grandparents on my host mom’s side live there, so I was excited to see them again.

Friday morning, we loaded up the car and were off. Car rides have become a really enjoyable activity for me here. It’s a pretty low-pressure situation, since there isn’t a huge need to try and communicate, which can be pretty tough with my limited Thai. Even though I’m not using my Thai that much, it still feels culturally immersive because Thailand has an underdeveloped highway system, so I’m always passing through villages and towns along the way. There are just countless snapshots of Thai people going about their business as you pass.

Road trips with Thai people are also great because they go like this:

1. Load up the car with snacks, water, and fruit

2. Stop along the way to buy fresh fruit from the side of the road

3. Munch on the fruit while taking in all of the mountains around you

Just a great way of going about it.

One of the places we stopped along the way was Mae Salong. Mae Salong was founded in the late 1950’s by the “Lost 93^rd Division”, soldiers from the Republic of China who refused to surrender to the Communist party. While Gen-Kai Shek and the other armies from the Republic of China had fled to Taiwan, the 93^rd division stayed fighting until the fall of the capital of Kunming in the Yunan province. Fighting their way out of the Yunan province in southern China, the soldiers passed through Burma until arriving in Mae Salong. Hoping to settle down in the fertile mountain land, the soldiers requested the right to stay there from the Thai government. Political asylum was offered, but at a price. The soldiers, who had spent years fighting the Communists and had narrowly escaped by trekking through jungles and mountains, were called on to face the Red Menace one last time. While central and southern Thailand remained loyal to the West, the rural communities in the north, particularly among the economically depressed people of the hill tribes had begun a campaign of violence, inspired by Mao’s success in China.

Throughout the 1960’s and 70’s, a series of battles were fought between the 93^rd division and Thai communists. The museum didn’t give a number for the entire conflict, but based on what they said about the individual battles, I guess that over these years some 200 hundred Chinese soldiers perished and about three times as many Communists.

The local communists annihilated, Mae Salong settled into a peaceful community known for its quality tea. Tea remains the backbone of Mae Salong’s economy, as well as a growing agro-tourism movement. Largely ethnically Chinese, the population is quite religiously diverse for Thailand, dived between Buddhists, Dao, and a large Muslim population as well. Walking around it almost feels more like being in China than Thailand, with the trademark paper lanterns lining the streets of teashops and noodle counters. You see Taiwanese flags displayed, and many signs are written in both Chinese and Thai. There are scholarships for the students to study in Taiwan, and the two historical monuments in town (the tomb of General Tuan Shi-wen, leader of the “Lost Divison”, and a history museum of Mae Salong) are of Chinese architecture.

While there I visited both of these monuments, had a good Chinese dinner, and drank a great deal of tea. I can’t call myself an expert in any way, but the stuff tasted outstanding. Mae Salong is close to the Golden Triangle, which has a pretty notorious history for growing opium. As the drug trade has been closed by measures both aggressive and indirect (see previous entry on the Golden Triangle), tea has become the new cash crop. The ideal conditions for growing tea and heroin are remarkably similar, and much of what were previously drug farms have switched to making the drink. Maybe not as profitable of an investment, but surely a safer one.

A fun anecdote that happened in Mae Salong; while walking through the streets after dark, my host parents and I stopped to watch a couple of cram classes. They were set up in these rooms (more like sheds, really) with a whiteboard, maybe thirty desks, and the entire back of the classroom was open air. In one of the classrooms the students were being taught about words that rhymed in English (Rock, Clock, Lock, and so on). The teacher had written had miswritten a “c”, and was teaching the students to pronounce “soak” like “sock”. Normally I would let such blunders continue for fear of intruding, but as I have been made an unofficial middle/high school teacher here in Thailand, I felt I had no choice but to intervene. Apologizing for the interruption in my best Thai, I corrected the board and helped the students with their pronunciation. I stuck around to banter with the teacher and kids in English and Thai for a couple minutes before leaving. I think the kids thought the incident was mostly hilarious, but if their English improved even just a little bit, than I’ve done my duty.

You can visit the tomb of General Tuan Shi-wen just outside of Mae Salong. It’s a peaceful resting place for the founder of the community. The room with the tomb is open, simple, and clean. From it the General has a full view of the town he built. If you see it now, you would not know the great cost this pleasant and humble place demanded. The Tea Soldiers were driven from their home, forced into a fight they thought they had escaped, and struggled to hold onto their culture in new surroundings, all in the hopes of a better future. Mae Salong is a testament to hope, the strength of humans, and what it means to have a home.