Chapter 57 Chapter 5 Meeting an Old Man on the Streets of Yangon

Yangon is the original capital and largest city of the Union of Myanmar. It is located in the most fertile Irrawaddy River Delta in Myanmar. It is a beautiful coastal city with tropical scenery. The city is surrounded by water on three sides. good name.The plane landed at Mingaradang Airport, and it was already four o'clock in the afternoon when it arrived.Li Jiahu's branch in Myanmar chartered a bus to take us to the hotel in the city. The airport is 20 kilometers away from the urban area. When I got in the car, I realized that the former capital of Myanmar is just like a second-tier city in China. There are many old cars driving on the road. It looks like it was pulled out of a waste collection station. It makes people have a sense of time travel, as if returning to the feeling of decades ago.According to someone's introduction, these cars are all antique cars from Japan and South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, and some are even older, dating back to World War II.I was ashamed to hear it, it was really hard for them to run on the road.

Compared with second-tier cities in China, as the largest city in Myanmar, Yangon is not considered prosperous, with old and low-rise buildings. It is more like a big park along the way, full of plants, flowers and pagodas.This is a city that combines modern civilization with history and culture, and it is also a leisurely and beautiful city. You can often see monks with bare left shoulders and red cassocks walking barefoot on the street, and young women with "Tenaka" on their faces. , wrapped in a tube skirt and chasing a child, the shirtless man showing his lean body, smiling happily.

There was a cooing sound in the sky, and pigeons were flying. Looking out from the car window, the most you can see are countless gold-plated or white stone pagodas, dotted between buildings or jungles. Boss Gu told us that Burmese believe in Theravada Buddhism, no matter who it is, building a pagoda is the greatest good result.The biggest wish of people in life is to build a pagoda dedicated to Buddha.So at the most time, there were 13,000 pagodas standing on the entire Bagan plain.As time goes by, there are still more than 5,000 ancient pagodas, ancient temples and ruins. Myanmar is rated as one of the least developed countries, but people here have faith, so they don't feel how terrible poverty is.

However, from the perspective of us outsiders, we can't help feeling a strong sense of pride in the motherland behind us.And this kind of pride is something that I didn't have when I was in China. There are more than 20 people in our party. In addition to me, Zamao Xiaodao, my uncle, Boss Gu, Qin Li, Li Jiahu, Xue Rui, Xu Ming, there are also some Hong Kong jewelers, bodyguards, private secretaries and other accompanying personnel.When we arrived at the hotels in the urban area, there was not much difference, but we could feel the strong ethnic customs.The bus coming from the airport didn't smell very good, and I felt a little dizzy, let alone other pampered and wealthy businessmen.It's just that due to the blockade by the West, it is difficult for Myanmar to import cars, so in many cases, there is nowhere to spend the money.

When we arrived at the hotel, I shared a room with Zamao Xiaodao, and my uncle shared a room. After we took a shower and took a short rest, Qin Li knocked on the door and told us to go downstairs for dinner.Dinner was eaten at a nearby high-end restaurant, and the participants were people we knew, but the other businessmen who came with us had their own activities.Li Jiahu's family business has a small trading company in Yangon, which is actually just an office, mainly collecting jade prices and related transactions, so a manager named Guo Jiabin is here to take care of the itinerary. It is said to be a high-end restaurant, but the decoration is not as good as my restaurant. The main business here is Burmese style. The dishes served are relatively oily and taste a little salty, but the rice is very fragrant, and the fish cooked in curry tastes very good. Yes, the cold dishes are very refreshing, and the Burmese seem to be very fond of fried foods. This table has four fried foods: fried corn, fried onions, fried bananas, fried gourds, and fried shrimps, but these are wrapped in flour and Fried with spices, the aroma is overflowing, and it smells very good.Boss Gu pointed to the rice in front of us, and said with a smile that Burmese people like to eat, so the dishes they cook are salty, sour and spicy, just like the pickles we make in the mainland, so they are easy to eat, so you should eat more rice. Do as the Romans do.

We nodded and said that it seems that the lives of the Burmese people are really unhappy, and they all depend on eating pickles. However, I ate four bowls of rice that night, it was really delicious. A circle of people gathered around the dinner table and talked about the trade fair that will be held tomorrow. Li Jiahu explained to us that the public offering in 2008 has already been held, but judging from the data released so far, the situation is not optimistic, because the trade fair The policy of the military government behind was changing, and the export restrictions on the top-grade jade became more and more strict, which caused dissatisfaction among a large number of mainland and Hong Kong businessmen. Trade fair merchants and capital are showing a decreasing trend.

To be honest, the current trade fair has become a money laundering tool for certain forces to a certain extent. This time, the fair is not held on a large scale, and not many merchants have received news or invitations, but they are all capable. There will also be a group of people from Shantou and Fujian, as well as Japan and Europe. Some people will come, but only one or two hundred people at most.This time the organizer should produce some high-quality products to recover the declining transaction volume year by year.You know, the current jade industry is almost a pillar industry in Myanmar.

After dinner, Boss Gu, Li Jiahu and others were going back to discuss the trade fair tomorrow. They asked us if we wanted to have a look around Yangon, and we could ask the branch to send us a car, a driver, and an interpreter.We refused and said that we would go out and have a look and experience the customs and customs of Yangon.After dinner, we parted ways and walked around the commercial street, accompanied by Xu Ming, Xue Rui, and an interpreter from the Lijiahu school. Xue Rui had been to Myanmar with her father Li Jiahu before, and was hit by a glass drop. However, because of that experience, Xuerui is still a competent tour guide in Myanmar.In fact, according to the shrewdness of an old fox like Li Jiahu, he naturally knows the changes in his daughter, so many times, his control over his daughter is not as strict as before. Even if he returns to the dangerous place of Myanmar, he actually agrees.

Because he already understood that his daughter, after all, had grown up and had her own thoughts and ideas, so he let her go. Li Jiahu is a smart father. Tree-lined, green trees and colorful flowers everywhere, in this exotic street, the summer night wind blows away from us, this wind is sticky and uncomfortable.Xue Rui walked beside me, introducing us to Myanmar's customs, customs, economy and political situation, pointing to some strange things from time to time, asking us to pay attention, not like a girl who is nearly blind in both eyes. Looking at these local people wearing bright or dark national costumes around me, I always feel a little unreal in my heart-is this a foreign country?This is Myanmar?This is Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar?Well, I really feel that it is not as prosperous as the second-tier cities in mainland China.

Xu Ming walked and talked with us, but Xue Rui was not very willing to talk to this uncle. After a while, Xu Ming and Zamao Xiaodao fell behind, muttering.Xue Rui bought a lot of handicrafts on the street, including local ethnic clothes, straw hats and accessories, and then I carried them for her.Five gentlemen (the translator is also a man) shopping with such a little girl is actually not an enjoyable thing, and we also want to go to the fair to see the terrain, and we don’t even have the mood to continue walking. After all, we are not here to travel, and under the rule of the military government, Myanmar's tourism industry is far inferior to that of its neighbor Thailand.

We have only one purpose, which is the rough stone that is said to contain the unicorn fetus. Seeing that we were not interested, Xue Rui asked if he didn't like this place, or why don't we go to the Shwedagon Pagoda tomorrow?The tower is more than 110 meters high, with more than 70 tons of gold painted on the surface. It is said that eight hairs of Buddha Sakyamuni are enshrined inside.How about it, do you want to take a look?Hey, Brother Lu Zuo, why did you stop?Xue Rui patted my arm and asked me strangely. My eyes were glued to the profile of a man in the crowd ahead of me. This is a very handsome young man with slightly curly hair, and his side face is as three-dimensional and firm as the sculpture of a Renaissance master.He was wearing a summer suit, all in black, with the typical melancholy of male protagonists in shoujo manga, and he looked extraordinarily lonely and out of place in this bustling street.Then he turned his face away, stared at me quietly, and smiled. This kind of smile is not the smile between old friends who have been reunited for a long time, but with a condescending look down. His eyes were like iced mineral water, so cool. Miscellaneous Mao Xiaodao followed up from behind, and when he saw this annoying kid, he clenched his fists and said, shit, why is it this kid? Yes, this guy is indeed our old acquaintance, the Japanese kid Katowaraji who stole weeds in the Jiangcheng Botanical Garden.This "bright and sad" guy, on the surface, looks harmless to humans and animals except for being a bit cool, but I have seen his fierce performance in the botanical garden at that time, killing people without blinking his eyes, And the behavior afterwards was really arrogant, like a special citizen.Then we had a fight in a private club. At that time, I was not very good at fighting. I relied on brute force. Miscellaneous Mao Xiaodao immediately found me back, and beat up this stinky guy. There is enmity between us, and this enmity cannot be reconciled. Of course, it was also from that time that Lao Xiao and I started a true and unreserved friendship. We looked at each other, and then Katoharaji walked up to me step by step, nodded his head, and said, Mr. Lu, long time no see. Unexpectedly, we met again on the streets of Yangon.