MONG LA, Myanmar — The smuggling route into this rebel-run
jungle outpost just over the Chinese border begins on the back of a
motorcycle that takes passengers through steeply terraced rubber
plantations, and skirts the official crossing before ending at an
outdoor market where bedraggled prostitutes mingle with Chinese
tourists haggling over tiger claws, bear paws and desiccated
squares of elephant skin.
At $14 each way, the 20-minute ride is a relative bargain,
although the price does not include payoffs to teenage Burmese
insurgents at impromptu checkpoints along the way.
Tucked into the verdant forests of Myanmar’s eastern Shan
State, Mong La is better known here by its Chinese name,
Xiaomengla, in part because the vast majority of its residents are
Chinese, as are most of the illegal day-trippers, drug mules,
Christian missionaries and comely young croupiers who work in the
city’s 20 casinos, most of which are Chinese-owned.
Mong La has a hilltop Buddhist temple and a picturesque
colonial church, but vice and self-indulgence, not sightseeing, are
the city’s main draws. “There’s not much to do here but gamble and
eat wild animals,” one Chinese matron said with a jaded sigh.
Mong La runs on Beijing time, 90 minutes ahead of the rest
of Myanmar, also known as Burma. Cellphone service and electricity
are provided by China. The renminbi of China, not the Burmese kyat,
is the only currency accepted at the city’s roulette tables,
storefront brothels and Sichuan-style restaurants.
As Myanmar embraces democracy after decades of military
dictatorship, Mong La, the domain of a former Communist rebel
turned warlord-entrepreneur, is a glaring reminder of the
challenges the Burmese government faces in taming the patchwork of
rebel-held territories along its northern frontier.
Sai Leun, the warlord who runs what is officially known as
Special Region No. 4, employs several thousand armed men who, for
the moment, peacefully coexist with Burmese troops and the ethnic
Wa militia that controls a neighboring piece of territory.
Despite its longstanding economic and historic ties to the
region, China has a conflicted relationship with Mong La. A decade
ago, alarmed by the legion of officials gambling away stolen public
money, Chinese soldiers poured across the border to shut down the
casinos. In response, Sai Leun simply orchestrated the construction
of new gambling parlors 10 miles farther south of the border on a
virgin tract of jungle.
In 2012, when China severed cellphone service to the area
in an effort to choke off Internet gambling, casino owners brought
in satellite dishes to maintain the flow of money from those who
prefer to bet from the comfort of Shanghai, Guangzhou and other
Chinese cities.
Analysts say the Chinese are reluctant to pull the plug
entirely — something it could easily do by blocking cross-border
traffic or by cutting off the electrical supply flowing south from
adjacent Yunnan Province.
“If we banned tourism entirely, it would harm more than
just the casinos and hit a lot of businesses that support the local
economy,” said Zhu Zhenming, an expert on China-Myanmar relations
at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.
Officially, at least, Beijing tries to limit access to the
city by requiring its citizens to obtain special permits; outside
each casino, large red signs remind Chinese citizens that they are
forbidden to enter.
In reality, Mandarin speakers fill nearly every seat at
the baccarat tables and electronic slot machines. Few bother
applying for a pass and instead sneak in, via motorbike or by
climbing through large holes conveniently located on the border
fence.
Mong La thrives by appealing to humanity’s more base
desires. Hotel rooms are littered with palm cards hawking “newly
arrived virgins,” “mother-daughter combos” and “sassy 16-year-olds
with large breasts,” and hotel televisions broadcast
round-the-clock Japanese pornography, along with Chinese historical
dramas and South Korean soap operas. Crystal meth is widely
available, as are handguns, stolen cars and a Noah’s Ark of
endangered wildlife — owls, bamboo rats and tortoises — displayed
in cages outside restaurants.
The city’s anything-goes ethos has turned Mong La into a
magnet for wildlife traffickers eager to satisfy the medicinal and
culinary cravings of its Chinese clientele. Stores openly sell
Tibetan antelope heads, cloud leopard pelts and wild tiger limbs —
items banned in China. At the live animal market, caged monkeys and
pangolins, scaly anteaters whose meat is highly prized in southern
China, await slaughter.
Vincent Nijman, a zoologist at Oxford Brookes University
in England, said Mong La has become one of Asia’s largest markets
for endangered wildlife. In recent years, he has cataloged about 40
rare and threatened species at the market, among them a hairy-nosed
otter — an animal that until recently had been believed to have
been extinct.
During his most recent visit in January, Dr. Nijman and a
colleague from the conservation group Traffic counted 49 whole
elephant tusks and 3,300 pieces of ivory for sale. “There’s
absolutely no attempt to hide anything,” he said. “The scale of the
trade is shocking.”
At night, Mong La resembles a neon spaceship that
crash-landed in the jungle. But the potholed streets are thick with
desperation. “I came here a rich man, and now I have nothing,” said
a 43-year-old cabdriver, a former businessman from Chongqing, who
said he gambled away nearly 700,000 renminbi, or about $115,000,
more than a decade ago. The driver, who gave only his surname,
Zhang, said he longed to be with his family but could not leave
until he earned enough money to regain his pride. “I won’t let my
family come here, because this is no place for children,” he said
before turning his attention back to the poker game on his
cellphone.
Having borrowed money from loan sharks, some residents are
trapped as they await money from relatives. Others are outlaws who
have found refuge in a lawless land. Liu Qiao, 40, a blustery man,
said he lost $1.6 million that belonged to his mining company in a
gambling spree in Macau and fled here from China, in 2009.
Fearing arrest if he returns home, he found work as a
so-called casino agent, escorting wealthy gamblers to casinos and
arranging cash advances through a company that gives him a small
cut of each loan. Asked what happens to those who cannot repay
their debts, Mr. Liu smiled uncomfortably. “You don’t leave until
you pay,” he said.
With many of his Chinese customers spending the Lunar New
Year holiday at home with family, Mr. Liu was eager to accompany a
group of Western visitors he mistook for high rollers. After a
bone-rattling drive along the unfinished road that connects the
city center to the gambling district, he showed off the Casino
Lisboa, a Thai-themed gambling hall presided over by a large
Buddha, and the Royal Casino, its brightly lit facade dressed in
fluted columns and Roman centurions.
Inside, the mood was quietly tense as chain-smoking
gamblers hovered over their chips, making bets as high as $33,000.
Sharing the tables were scores of young men and women with
headsets. Their job: to play the hands of remote Chinese bettors
who followed the action through live video feeds.
Over dinner, Mr. Liu lamented that his gambling addiction
had destroyed his family and the mining company, started with
friends, that has since gone belly up. “I’ve lost all face,” he
said.
But his mood brightened as he took one more stroll through
the casino floor. He paused at a roulette table, threw down a
100-renminbi note bearing the face of Mao Zedong and waited. When
the ball dropped, he picked up 200 renminbi from the table and
walked out into the night, a smile on his face.
