Burmese Days 23: On the Road to Mandalay

BY THE old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay! "
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay ?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

(Rudyard Kipling, first published in Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses, the first series, 1892)

Well, the river boats don't do any chunkin' any more; instead of paddlewheels, they are powered by smelly Chinese-made diesel engines connected to propellers. And the waterfront is bustling! Oddly, there are very few real docks. The boats tie up to the mudbanks and set up wooden walkways.

My fellow travelers left on a tour of Mandalay Hill and the palace, but I decided to walk around on my own. My enduring impression is that Mandalay is a busy place! People, bicycles, scooters, and cars are everywhere. The bustle and activity remind me of Guatemala City or San Jose. Hundreds of shops sell just about every type of hand-made craft as well as inexpensive commercial products. It looks like many of the factory products come from China. The second photograph above is a pharmacy (I think).

The mannequins are European ladies. I saw the same trend in Nepal, where fashions were displayed on European rather than local forms.

26th Street at dusk is bustling. The street grid and numbering convention is a remnant of the colonial era, which lasted from 1885-1948.

The movie rental store was active. As of 2014, internet was still spotty, so most people rented movies, similar to our old Block Buster stores in USA.

We saw a few internet stores, which also served as business centers (make copies, etc.). As of 2014, I did not know if Burmese citizens had open access to internet or if it was restricted.

Buddhist art and figures are a big seller, especially in the Mahamuni Paya (stupa). I wrote about the marble-carving street in an earlier post.

Scooters are everywhere, unfortunately, belching acrid exhaust fumes. A local gent told me that three years before (meaning prior to 2011), motorbikes were very expensive for Burmese to afford. But as of 2014, cheap ones were imported in mass from China, and a used one was about $500. In Rangoon, the country's main city, the military government prohibited scooters, but the prohibition did not apply to the rest of the country.

The moat surrounding the former royal palace grounds has promenades and trees. I saw plenty of these exercise machines, in active use.

Photograph of the Mandalay Moat from the British Library, with caption:

Photograph of the west city wall and the moat at Mandalay in Burma, from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections: Burma Circle, 1903-07. The photograph was taken in 1903 by an unknown photographer under the direction of Taw Sein Ko, the Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of Burma at the time. Mandalay was Burma’s last great royal capital and was founded in 1857 by Mindon Min (reigned 1853-78), Burma’s penultimate king, in fulfilment of a Buddhist prophecy that a religious centre would be built at the foot of Mandalay Hill. In 1861 the court was transferred there from the previous capital of Amarapura. However the glory of Mandalay was shortlived as it was annexed by the British Empire in 1886 after the Third Anglo-Burmese war, renamed Fort Dufferin and a military cantonment was built inside the walls. The original city was built as a fortress in the form of a perfect square with the Nandaw or Royal Palace at the centre. Its walls faced the cardinal directions and were each nearly two kilometres (1.2 miles) long, surrounded by a 70 metre-wide moat on all four sides. There were twelve city gates, the main gate being the central gate in the east wall, which led to the Great Hall of Audience in the palace, and five bridges spanning the moat. The walls were surmounted at intervals with tiered wooden spires known as pyatthats. This is a view looking along the moat, with lotus plants in the foreground, a bridge in the distance and the city wall at right.

My photographs were taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera, with most frames using the 27mm f/2.8 Fuji lens. This is an excellent choice for street photography because it is small and inconspicuous. I processed some of the files with PhotoNinja software.

Note: for previous articles about Burma, please type "Burma" in the search box.

Burmese Days 22: The World's Largest Pile of Bricks, Mingun

King Bodawpaya was definitely an ambitious chap. He wanted to build the largest stupa the world had ever seen. He chose a site on the west bank of the Irrawaddy River, now known as Mingun (Burmese: မင်းကွန်းမြို့; ), about 10 km northwest of the modern city of Mandalay. Bodawpaya began his monumental Mingun Pahtodawgyi in 1790 but never completed it because an astrologer claimed that, once the temple was finished, the king would die. 

Bodawpaya's stupa followed in a tradition practiced by Burmese kings for centuries. The plain of Bagan, south of Mandalay, is covered with literally hundreds of stupas. Each king wanted to outdo his predecessor. These were religious structures, but, as you all know, a monumental temple's real purpose is for the ruler to a. demonstrate his power to his enemies (real or imagined); b. show the political opponents who is on top (this is the real threat); and c. keep the peasants and underlings awed and groveling.

Freshly fried dry-fish cakes.

The ride across the Irrawaddy is very pleasant. Mingun is a popular with both Burmese school groups and foreign visitors. Vendors sell snacks and souvenirs.

To generate the appropriate awe to visitors alighting at the riverbank, Bodawpaya built two grand lions. Unfortunately, the lions collapsed in the big earthquake of 1839. To get an idea of their scale, this marble ball is one of the eyeballs!

Walk to the base of the unfinished stupa and start a circumnavigation, and you realize what a staggering pile of bricks this thing is. The sides are 73 m (240 ft) long, and construction abruptly ended when the pile reached a height of 49 m (160 ft). If completed, it would have reached to 150 m, making this the largest stupa in the world.

The workmanship was spectacular. Bricks were shaped as needed for specific decorative locations.

The drain pipes were crocodile snouts.

As I wrote above, King Bodawpaya never finished his project. He used thousands of slaves and prisoners of war in the effort. Our Burmese guide said the surrounding villages were tithed to supply bricks and laborers every year. The need to fire millions of bricks caused massive deforestation, and the loss of manpower from the villages caused poverty and discontent. Possibly the use of an astrologer was a convenient way to convince Bodawpaya to give up his project. Bodawpaya died in 1819, and on March 23, 1839, a strong earthquake caused huge cracks to open in the structure. The photograph above shows one of the entrances on the west side of the pile.

The walkway to the top may or may not be open. The sign says no, but the railing is shiny and new.

The Mingun bell in 1873 (photographer unknown)

Approx. 1880.

Bodawpaya's excesses did not end with his stupa. He also wanted the largest bell in the world. Casting started in 1808 and ended in 1810. It was cast on the east side of the river and moved using barges. A canal was built for the barges, then dammed off and elevated via levees to float the bell into position.

The bell weighs 90,718 kg (199,999 pounds) and was for two centuries the largest uncracked bell in the world (the Kremlin bell is larger, but has a crack and cannot be rung). The 1839 earthquake knocked the Mingun Bell off its supports. Technicians from the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company (the British company than ran boats in the Irrawaddy River) hoisted the bell onto a new support frame in March of 1896. If you look at the photograph above, you can see a massive iron pillar with square-head bolts, an example of heavy-duty Victorian construction.

The blog, Burmese Silver,  has a detailed description, including historical photographs, of how the bell was cast (click the link).

Amazing architecture just does not end in this place. This is the Hsinbyume Pagoda (or the Myatheindan Pagoda), built in 1816 to honor Princess Hsinbyume, who died in childbirth. This is very different from the norm in Burmese pagoda architecture. The concentric rows represent the seven mountain ranges going up to Mount Meru.

Photographs taken with Panasonic G3 and Fujifilm X-E1 digital cameras, with some RAW files processed with PhotoNinja software on a Mac computer.

For previous articles on Burma, please type the word "Burma" in the search box.

Burmese Days 16: Mandalay's Marble-carving Street

Mandalay is famed for its artists and, especially, for stone carvers. Near the western entrance of the Mahamuni Paya is a lane called Kyauk Sit Tan (near 85th Street) which is lined with shops where workers trim, carve, polish, and finish marble. Most of the statues are variations of Buddha.

I was told that the stone carvers come from a limited number of families, who have dominated this skill for generations. Young men and women learn from their elders. The amount of skill can be seen in the progress of carving a statue. The newer or less-skilled workers carve the gross features of a statue and work on the clothing. Then the artists carve the faces. (The two photographs above are from Kodak Tri-X film exposed in a Leica M2 camera).

Stone-carving is dusty and hazardous. Many of the workers eventually get silicosis. I saw that few were wearing respirators or eye protection. Look at the young man in the third photograph - he is coated in rock powder. The Irrawaddy newspaper wrote about the health risks to the stone carvers and the need to relocate the operations to a site further away from the city.

The final polishing and smoothing is done by ladies, working with water and fine grit or polishing cloths. It is hard work.

Finally, the finished product is shipped to the buyer, who may be a wealthy individual, monastery, government office, or foreign customer. Many of the finest statues go to Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States. The Buddha in the photograph above was so heavy, five men had trouble maneuvering it to a truck.

The marble comes from Sagyin Mountain, about 32 miles north of Mandalay. The rock has been quarried for centuries. Five mountains in the area produce white marble, but they are being rapidly depleted by modern, industrial-scale mining. Last November, some of my Burmese friends told me there was a lot of objection to the sale of marble to Chinese companies. The fishermen above were trying to convince Irrawaddy dolphins to drive fish into their nets; part of the Sagyin Mountain is in the background.

Three photographs were taken with Tri-X film on a Leica M2 camera, with film developed in Kodak HC-110 developer. The digital files are from a FujiFilm X-E1 camera, processed with PhotoNinja software.

Burmese Days 15: Up the Irrawaddy

In the previous post, I posted some photographs from the Mandalay waterfront. Let's take a short boat trip upriver.

These long, thin, teak boats carry cargo, passengers, and animals, anything to earn a kyat. The ones set up for tourists are pretty comfortable.

You can be active and watch the unfolding scenery or snooze the day away. The diesel engine is noisy, but they do not run it at night. The boat's cook will prepare breakfast, but we brought our own coffee and filters.

Some of the commercial steamers (diesels) are pretty impressive - heavily laden with barrels and merchandise.

For the night, we pulled up to  a sand bank/sand island. These islands look rather barren, but families graze their cattle and set up residence during the low-water months. In some areas, they till the rich alluvial soil and grow crops. I wonder how they claim an area to farm? We fell asleep to the tinkle of a bell and aroma of cow dung.

Some of the local fishermen fish in cooperation with the now-endangered Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris). The fishermen stand up in their boats and slap the water with their oars. The dolphins have been trained to know that this is fishing time. They herd fish into the nets and benefit from the bycatch that tumbles out or is discarded when the nets are pulled in. The day we watched the procedure, the dolphins were not very enthusiastic. The main threat to dolphin populations is habitat loss and accidents with nets. The dolphin populations in Indonesia and the Mekong River are almost extinct. These fishermen have a tough life. I gave a package of peanuts to the lady (the second photograph), and she ate them eagerly. She was hungry.

On another boat trip, we stopped on another sand island where some local families had been farming. It is hard work, and summer heat must be stifling. The high water is in July, August, and September, when the monsoon delivers tremendous rainfall to the jungles of central Burma and southern Himalaya. Melting of snow and glaciers in northern Burma adds to the volume. I could not find any recent hydrographs (a plot of flow rate (discharge) versus time at a specific location on the river). Possibly the Burmese government does not have a stream-gauging program, although the design of the controversial dams further north must have been based on some sort of data.

Finally, we saw some riverbank erosion control work near a village. I could not tell what the wood frames were intended to do, and the rock riprap was too small. They should have requested help from the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory via a request through the State Department. A coworker told me that on some rivers and canals, sticks or frames like this are used for mussel production. Eventually, the mussels grow so thick that they form a type of living shore protection (and can be harvested as food). This concept here in USA is known as Engineering with Nature (EWN). Possibly Irrawaddy flood control activities are tied up with the politics of the Myitsone Dam. The dam would be the first to span the Irrawaddy and have high social and environmental impacts. The Irrawaddy is one of the few remaining great rivers on earth without dams, with fish migration possible from ocean to headwaters. Activists have (hopefully permanently) suspended the dam project.

Three photographs were taken on Tri-X film using a Leica M2 camera; the rest were digital files reprocessed into black and white with PhotoNinja software.