About book Under The Dragon: Travels In A Betrayed Land (1998)
I have looked at some of the other reviews and been puzzled by the struggle people have with this book. What the book is NOT about is finding a basket. The basket is merely a symbolic tool whether or not they were actually looking for one. What is the basket in this book? It is a weaving of people and a lost history which is being searched for. They go from region to region, always looking for this lost craft and use the whole country to weave their own understanding of Burma, a basket that contains. Along the way, the stories are held together by interlocking common humanity and pain. Furthermore, the writing is incredibly sensitive and evocative. I think one has to want to understand more about Burma/Myanmar to enjoy this book, but I can say that having been there recently, this helped me understand a lot about the overwhelming kindness of the people, their honest hospitality, and perseverance. I was able to understand more about why currency is such an issue for them because it is entrusting stability to outsiders where it had been lacking internally and betrayed so bitterly. The tourist bears a lot of responsibility when traveling to Myanmar now whether he or she realizes it, and this book shows why. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for a place which still does not have Starbucks, MacDonalds, or ATMs in smaller towns. At the time this was written, Burma was still under a more oppressive fist, and Aung San Suu Kyi is no longer under arrest as she basically was then. So, things are changing. Hotels are still springing up because there aren't enough in some areas, driving the room cost up compared to the standard one might expect in other places. But this book shows a time when it was still almost impossible to get into certain parts of the country without special permission - which is still true to a certain extent. Some areas, quite frankly, are still dangerous, but I doubt one would have the kind of adventure the author had to get where he and his wife were going.Read this book for its artistry and for its pathos. Throughout the reading, I could feel the spaces and the five senses. There is beauty and discomfort. Everywhere there is betrayal of some kind, but there is love, hope, loss, and acceptance. For anyone about to travel to Myanmar or even been there already, I recommend this book more than George Orwell because this will give a stronger understanding of the present we find the country coping with, but one has to read past the superficial story for the heart of Myanmar people.
Although I expected to read a travalogue, perhaps the publicity following the book's association with William Dalrymple set the expectation too high for this book to meet. While it is no doubt a well written description of the travel in Burma, the reason for the journey just does not come across as credible at all. There are a lot of things one could look for in Burma, but of all things a basket! It would have done the author a great deal of good and spared the readers a ton of misery if only Rory MacLean had read Roy Moxham's The Great Hedge of India.
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MacLean's travelogue focuses on the contrasts between the brutality of the Burmese regime and the generosity of the people unfortunate enough to live under it. It's a sobering book, especially as it was written before the series of recent liberalizations (and the creation of a nominal republic) in the country. That's reason for some hope, but the book leaves you wary too -- MacLean writes about a prior period of strategically slackened government control, used to identify and subsequently purge dissidents. Tourism, the drug trade and an increasingly tight Chinese partnership all provided funds to prop up the military junta - hopefully civilian rule will provide better opportunities for a group of people that, as the book makes clear, are certainly deserving.
—Dan
