Anti-Chinese tide
Many Overseas Chinese were left with no choice but to leave Myanmar to continue their educations in Chinese-language institutions elsewhere.
Zhao Liping, the current chairman of the Myanmar Overseas Chinese Association, graduated from the Yangon CKS Middle School. In 1964, not long after the military seized power, as the atmosphere in Myanmar grew increasingly strained, she came to Taiwan to study. Because at that time Overseas Chinese in Myanmar only had Foreign Residence Certificates and were not allowed to become full citizens, once she left she could not go back, and had to fend for herself in Taiwan while suffering the pangs of homesickness.
“I was actually relatively lucky, because eventually my parents and brothers applied to immigrate to Taiwan. But a lot of my classmates could not go back to Myanmar and see their families again until the mid-1980s, when the military government relaxed the rules,” says Zhao.
Finally, in 1967, Myanmar’s Chinese schools, already suffering under the restrictions imposed by the regime, suffered another blow, one that nearly suffocated them entirely.
In that year, Mao Zedong launched the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” and this development had a major impact even in Myanmar, and especially in Yangon, where the Chinese community was more leftist. Crowds of Chinese students, ignoring a government ban, carried busts of Mao onto campuses, touching a raw nerve in the military regime. On June 26, anti-Chinese riots broke out in Yangon. Mobs indiscriminately attacked anyone with lighter-than-average skin and wearing pants (native Burmese wore sarongs), causing countless deaths and injuries. With their personnel and property under threat, all of Yangon’s Chinese schools closed their doors.
The June 26 Anti-Chinese Incident was the darkest moment in the history of Chinese in Myanmar, and the anti-Chinese wave continued for many months thereafter. Many Chinese migrated once again, with an estimated 100,000 coming to Taiwan at that time. Most settled in what is now Zhonghe District of New Taipei City, or in Taoyuan County. More than 20,000 others relocated to Macao, while others scattered to mainland China, Hong Kong, Australia, and the US.
Those who remained behind in Myanmar adopted a low profile. The Overseas Chinese in Yangon in particular, who found themselves at the center of the storm, deliberately acted “Burmese” and obscured their Chinese identity in an attempt to protect themselves. They stopped speaking Chinese, stopped reading Chinese books, changed to local-style names, took to wearing sarongs, and in every way deepened their assimilation into local society.
Yet despite this harsh environment, the spark of Chinese education was never fully extinguished. In southern Myanmar many never-say-die elderly teachers taught Chinese privately at home. The faculty at CKS Middle School split up, with several dedicated teachers setting up operations that were separate but all used the name “Chiang Kai-shek Middle School Supplementary School.” They were determined to somehow keep alive the name and tradition of their institution.
In the north, far from the political epicenter, Chinese schools continued to operate by pretending to be religious schools or minority peoples’ schools (for Han Chinese living in the Kokang or Wa regions, recognized as minority areas by the Myanmar government). They nominally taught the Buddhist or Confucian classics, or pretended to be for native speakers of minority tongues, but in reality they remained Chinese schools.
The Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission of the ROC government continually provided support to these schools in the form of teaching materials and by offering ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar the chance to come to Taiwan for university. As a result local people in Upper Myanmar have been loyal ROC supporters, and Myanmar has been one of the top five source countries for Overseas Chinese students in Taiwan. In 2011, there were 543 ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar attending college in Taiwan.
Renaissance of Chinese education
The Ne Win regime collapsed in 1988, and the new government adopted more moderate policies. The revival of Chinese education was further aided by the improvement in relations between mainland China and Myanmar and the rapid increase in border trade. The need for Chinese speakers increased, and Chinese education emerged from its torpor. In northern Myanmar the number and size of Chinese schools increased.
Yangon’s Chinese schools also emerged from “hibernation” in the 1990s, and numerous Chinese-language institutions were founded. Most have had close links with mainland China and their teachers have been trained in or by mainland China, so they have used simplified Chinese characters.
Meanwhile, a group of elderly graduates from CKS started raising funds to found Cheng Yu. Given their long-established relationship with Taiwan, it emerged as the only Chinese school in all of Yangon to use Taiwan teaching materials with traditional complex characters.
U Maung Hla says frankly that mainland China has in recent years been very active in promoting Chinese education in other countries, and Taiwan needs to do more in this respect.
For example, Cheng Yu has to send someone to Taiwan to buy the teaching materials that they currently use (published by Nani Publishing), which they then photocopy for the students. Mainland China has already approached the school several times and offered to provide textbooks free of charge, and they even donated 20 computers and assigned student-teachers to help with classes. “The amount of help we get from Taiwan is, in comparison, rather small,” says U Maung Hla.
Fortunately, there are still people from Taiwan who feel passionate about this issue and have stepped forward to offer their help. For example, Chih Shengyuan, the retired principal of Yingge Middle School in New Taipei City, through an introduction from the Myanmar Overseas Chinese Association, went to Yangon in August 2012 to head up Cheng Yu.
Christopher Ho, an Overseas Chinese from Myanmar who studied in Taiwan and is currently an agent in Myanmar for the TECO Group, when asked his opinion about the division among Chinese schools abroad between those that use simplified and those that use traditional characters, says that people like him who have used Taiwan textbooks as children and later studied in Taiwan will always have a special place in their hearts for Taiwan. Even after returning home they will be interested in what happens to Taiwan, and will give what help they can. They are the most valuable assets Taiwan could have abroad.
Having emerged from their own dark age and entered an era of pluralization and growth, Myanmar’s Chinese schools are embracing the new situation there. The Chinese language and script are at the core of Chinese ethnic identity, and if they can be kept alive, future generations of Chinese, no matter where they live, will never forget their roots.