And so as Bogyoke Aung San and other ethnic leaders inked the crucial agreement that promised to bring peace and federalism to Burma, U Tun Shwe was doing nothing except loitering on a Panglong street corner.
“The saopha told the head of the village, ‘We’ll have a meeting here.’ So just a few people went to watch. Most people just got on with farming. They weren’t so interested or didn’t understand.”
“I was a teenager. I knew I just wanted to walk around the streets. My big brother saw them, but he wasn’t that interested either. We never talked about it at the time,” said U Tun Shwe, now a spritely 88-year-old.
At the time, he recalls, the town was a fraction of its current size and surrounded by jungle. (Courtesy of mmtimes.com)
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