Not too long ago, Myammar rocked the world with news and images of pro-democracy protests and bloody crackdown of saffron-robed monks in what was dubbed the saffron revolution. In a blog that I went to, I read that at least 400 saffron-robed monks, walking in rows of two and three and cheered on by thousands were locked out of Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda. Talking about being locked out, there are Chinese there that are locked out of the world. Besides immigrant Chinese, Mymmar has its own indigenous Chinese minority. Kokangese are Chinese, living in Kokang on the Burmese side of the border with China. Kokang was a part of China for centuries. It was in fact the only Burmese Chinese feudal state in Myanmar founded by the Yang dynasty, a Chinese military house that fled with the Ming Dynasty to Yunnan Province in the mid-1600s and later migrated to the Shan States in eastern Burma. The Anglo-Chinese Treaty of 1897 had incorporated it into part of British Burma. Hence, I said, locked out!
Capital of Kokang, LaoKai
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