Saturday, September 21, 2013

The Irrawaddy Magazine

The Irrawaddy Magazine

A Visit to Rangoon’s House of Memories

Posted: 21 Sep 2013 12:14 AM PDT

A more than 100-year-old wooden villa, the House of Memories is a restaurant and a living museum. Click on the box below to see more photos. (Jpaing / The Irrawaddy)

RANGOON — "Kyi, I would like to have boiled garden peas and Nan Pya if possible," Gen Aung San wrote in a short note to his wife Daw Khin Kyi in the early 1940s.

Nan Pya, Indian-style baked flat bread, served with a boiled garden pea salad is a typical, popular Burmese breakfast, and the note became well-known as it showed that the famous general loved the same food as any ordinary Burmese person.

A copy of the note by Aung San—Burma's independence hero and father of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi—graces the walls of the House of Memories, a restaurant located in the historic Nath Villa on No 290, U Wisara Road.

The more than 100-year-old building, which is listed as national heritage, was at one time Aung San's office. The restaurant still has an item on its menu called "Bogyoke's rice," a rice plate served with portions of fried chicken, fish, meat balls and egg. The venue also offers a variety of other dishes of Burmese traditional food, and Thai, Chinese and Western cuisine.

The large, colonial-style wooden villa is much more than a restaurant, however. The remarkably well-preserved house, which still retains most of the original antique furniture, is also a museum that commemorates key historical events in Burmese history that occurred here.

It was the family home of the late Dina Nath, chairman of the Indian Independence Army for Burma and his wife Caroline Nath. An upstairs room in the house was Aung San's first office when the Burmese Independence Army (BIA) was headquartered here from 1941 onwards.

The late Dina Nath helped organize secret meetings between Aung San and various Burmese and Indian leaders at his house during the independence struggle for Burma and India, both of which were under the British Raj at the time.

Prominent Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose was one of the leaders who stayed at the Nath family home when he visited Rangoon to hold clandestine talks with Aung San.

Dina Nath's grandson, Richie Nath, says on the House of Memories website that the building stood empty for some time and he considered renting it out. But then he decided to turn it into a restaurant and living museum as "This building is the legacy of our grandparents."

Walking through the house is like taking a trip to another era. Antique wooden chairs, desks and old type writer fill the rooms. Original copies of Aun San's speeches along with numerous historical black and white photos cover the walls. Many pictures show Dina Nath with a range of Indian and Burmese independence leaders such Aung San, Prime Minister U Nu and Jawaharlal Nehru.

The post A Visit to Rangoon's House of Memories appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

‘Rangoon Will Become a Megacity’

Posted: 20 Sep 2013 11:54 PM PDT

Yeminnaing

Toe Aung, deputy head of the Yangon City Development Committee's Department of City Planning and Land Administration, stands in front of a map of Rangoon at City Hall. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)

RANGOON — Rangoon is Burma's biggest city—it's commercial and financial capital—but until just two years ago, it did not have an urban planning department. Toe Aung, a former army major, decided to set one up in 2011, the year reformist President Thein Sein came to power, and is now working to create a roadmap for future infrastructure projects in the city of 5 million people.

He says Rangoon, which was the country's administrative capital until 2005, is set to become a megacity in the future, with its population expected to reach 10 million by 2040. Before that, however, it will need to contend with problems such as frequent power cuts, gridlocked traffic and a shortage of housing and office space, while also considering the importance of conservation—especially of heritage buildings and century-old colonial architecture.

Toe Aung leads the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC)'s Department of City Planning and Land Administration, which is collaborating with other organizations—including the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)—to plan for the city's development. In this interview, he explains what he is doing to preserve green places, waterfronts and historic buildings.

Question: What is YCDC's vision for Rangoon?

Answer: According to the "Strategic Urban Development Plan of Greater Yangon" Plan, we have four visions for Rangoon. First, our city has to become an international hub. The second is to be a comfortable city for residents. Third, we need a city with good infrastructure. The last one is a city of good governance. These are our plans through 2040, as the city population will likely grow to 10 million people and Rangoon will become a megacity with that population. That's why we have targeted 2040 as a deadline to solve required housing projects and infrastructure development, which will be needed at that time.

Q: YCDC has been working on zoning regulations. Can you tell me more about that?

A: Zoning regulations are necessary for sustainable development in the city, including integrated and uniform zoning policies to preserve green places, waterfronts as well as historic buildings. These days we have many investment proposals from home and abroad. Even though the government is willing to approve them, we can't say 'yes' to all proposals without a zoning plan. If we do, there will be projects that fail to meet land-use requirements. If we allow high-rises recklessly, as we did in the past, there will be problems with electricity, water and sewage. Not all areas in downtown can have high-rises. Look at the tower close to Sule Pagoda—it dominates the pagoda and looks very inappropriate. To ensure something like this does not happen again, we need a zoning plan.

Another problem in the downtown area is heritage buildings. They are scattered and sandwiched between residential areas. If we allow high-rises beside them, they will be dominated and their distinctiveness will be lost. On the other hand, we can't firmly say 'no' when a high-rise proposal comes up, because so far we have no zoning regulations to limit the height of a building. If we say developers shouldn't build that high, they will ask, 'Why shouldn't I?' And we have no exact answer.

We hear a lot of complaints these days from developers that do not get approval for high-rise buildings. We tell them we are taking time to consider their proposals because we don't want to make mistakes that we made in the past.

Q: Do you mean YCDC is no longer permitting high-rise buildings now?

A: No, I don't. We are negotiating very hard with developers. For example, if they want a 32-story building, we say, 'No, please make it 20 stories or something.' If we have regulations, we can say, 'Take it or leave it.' So far we have needed to negotiate and work on a case-by-case basis.

Q: When will the zoning regulation come into effect?

A: The draft zoning plan may be finished at the end of this month. It covers more than half of the whole Rangoon—we prioritized the areas where developers are most interested. We are also focusing now on zoning guideline in those areas. We will get approval from experts for a draft of zoning guidelines by the end of this month, and we will submit it to the Rangoon divisional government for approval. If we have the guidelines, we can use them. We will make them pubic.

Q: Apart from YCDC, which other organizations are involved in drafting zoning regulations?

A: We founded the Yangon City Comprehensive Land Use, Zoning and Urban Design Review Working Committee together with experts from the YCDC, the Ministry of Construction's Department of Human Settlements and Housing Development, the Yangon Heritage Trust, Mandalay Technological University, the Association of Myanmar Architects and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The working committee is just two months old, but we have discussed and planned the draft for one year.

Q: How can the zoning plan help protect heritage buildings, especially in the downtown area?

A: We have designated seven heritage zones downtown. We will control the height of buildings there if possible. Generally speaking, we surely won't allow any new buildings that would dominate heritage buildings. We have to put urban design into consideration, too. A high-rise right next to a heritage building would be unacceptable because it would dominate the old building and ruin the urban landscape. In the downtown area, there might be a limit on height. It might be different from area to area, and that's still under discussion. We also need to calculate the feasible height [for buildings] in heritage zones. For example, the [acceptable] height might be different for a building close to City Hall than it would be for a farther building. It's very complicated and takes a lot of time.

Q: There are some ongoing high-rise projects in the downtown area. Under what criteria did you approve them?

A: The projects were mostly passed when we were discussing having a zoning plan. It was our weakness, because we did not have zoning regulations in time. The president, U Thein Sein, encouraged us to develop solid zoning regulations. He supports YHT, too. But he is torn between conservation of heritage buildings and welcoming investors. If we don't allow modern development, our Rangoon will become a museum of old buildings. So we need to allow them, but only in the right places.

The post 'Rangoon Will Become a Megacity' appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Thailand’s Insect Farms Creating a Buzz

Posted: 20 Sep 2013 11:31 PM PDT

A laborer from Thailand displays a bunch of fried locusts. (Photo: Reuters / Amir Cohen)

BAAN NON CHEUK, Thailand — Paddy and pigs had been the stilts on which Mali Nonthing built her life in this village in Khon Kaen, a northeastern province of Thailand. Farming them had provided steady, twin sources of income for decades. Now, only one remains: the verdant, iconic Asian staple crop glistening under the late afternoon sun behind her Thai-style home.

The elevated strip of land where pigs were reared has given way to the new livestock that the 52-year-old is breeding: crickets. Under a sprawling corrugated shed, held up by wooden and cement poles, are 50 pens for two species of the insect being farmed. The cricket pens, knee-high and rectangular, cover an area as large as basketball court. In them, the black and brownish arthropods in the hundreds crawl over layers of cardboard egg cartons.

"The crickets are better than the pigs," admits Mali of the switch she made from the four-legged livestock two years ago. "We can sell the mature crickets every four weeks, unlike the pigs that we could only sell every five or six months. And even then we were never sure of a profit."

Similar switches in the livestock trade echo in Maha Sarakham, a province south of Khon Kaen. There, Duangjai Ploykanha sings the praises of crickets over cattle, which the 43-year-old and her husband had reared for years. Under two large sheds where bulls and cows were once tethered are 30 cement pens where the crickets are raised.

"They are easier to take care of and the quality can be controlled," remarked Duangjai as she made her way between the pens, feeding the insects with chicken feed. "We have money to pay for our daughter's university education in Bangkok."

Duangjai's village, in fact, offers a glimpse of the pace at which the "six-legged livestock," as the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) described them, has chewed its way into an animal economy that was once dominated by pigs and cattle. Over 200 of the 600 families living there now farm crickets. Some of them are full-timers; others part-timers, such as the local government officials, teachers and small shop owners who have cricket pens in their tree-covered yards.

They are among the 20,000 registered cricket farms, containing more than 220,000 rearing pens, in Isaan, as the rural rice bowl of northeast Thailand is also known. That figure, according to the FAO, is a result of a trend that began in the mid-1990s. Its genesis was the introduction of new skills and technology to farm insects on a commercial scale. Till then, the custom had been the local habit of searching for crickets in the trees and shrubs to be savoured as part of the rural dietary mix.

And Isaan's insect economy does have the wind behind its wings. Annual production of the six-legged livestock has reached over 7,500 tons during the last six years, states the FAO. Annual income from the edible insect trade now touches nearly US$30 million.

While crickets are the most farmed and traded, other insects are lending weight to this alternative livestock sector. They include giant water bugs, grasshoppers, bamboo caterpillars, weaver ants, palm weevil larvae and silkworm pupae. "It is creating a lot of jobs and has become a growing multi-million dollar industry," says Patrick Durst, regional forestry officer at the FAO and co-author of a recent FAO study, "Six-legged livestock: edible insect farming, collecting and marketing in Thailand."

The report affirmed that Thailand's dominance in Southeast Asia is not limited to farming insects. The growing demand in this kingdom also steers a lucrative import market and cross-border trade. Nearly 270 tons of silkworm pupae are imported annually from China and some 800 tons of other edible insects are transported across the border from Cambodia, Burma and Laos, according to the FAO study. "The economic value of imported insects is estimated at around 40 million Thai baht [US$1.24 million] per year."

Imported grasshoppers from Cambodia are typical of this stock. Bags of them are piled on a low wooden bench at a wholesale agriculture market in Kalasin, a province east of Khon Kaen. Selling them is Kaew Aramsri, who brings her livestock, including the yellowish silkworm pupae and weaver ants, three times a week from the Thai-Cambodian border. They are transported in a truck fitted with cold storage. Her buyers are largely local street-food vendors. The grasshoppers go for 250 baht per kilo.

This food chain has now spread beyond its traditional Isaan settings, contends a Thai academic who has presided over the niche carved by the arthropods. "In the past, the tradition of eating insects occurred mainly in northern and northeastern regions of the country," says Yupa Hanboonsong, a co-author of the FAO report and specialist in entomology at Khon Kaen University, the largest campus in the region. "Nowadays the practice has increased in popularity and has expanded nationwide."

A major supermarket chain offers testimony to such eating habits on the shelves of its frozen foods section. In some Bangkok stores, frozen packets of bamboo worms and grasshoppers are sold. Some have pre-cooked meals of bamboo caterpillars ready to be microwaved.

The post Thailand's Insect Farms Creating a Buzz appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

Burma Business Roundup (September 21)

Posted: 20 Sep 2013 10:30 PM PDT

Japan's Nissan to Assemble Cars, Trucks at new Burma Factory

Major Japanese vehicle maker Nissan Motor Company is to open a factory in Burma to produce cars and small trucks, Toyko business newspaper Nikkei reported.

Nissan plans to partner with Tan Chong Motor Holdings of Malaysia and an as yet unnamed Burmese firm to build a small plant which will "produce several thousand small passenger cars and pick-up trucks a year," said Nikkei.

The vehicles will be assembled from parts built in other Nissan factories in the region, including Thailand, it said.

The location of the factory and details of the investment were due to be announced during a visit to Burma by Nissan's chief executive Carlos Ghosn.

It will be the second production start-up by a Japanese vehicle manufacturer. Earlier this year, the Suzuki Motor Corporation announced the re-opening of its Rangoon factory to build pickup trucks. The Suzuki factory, which has been closed since 2010, is initially producing 100 vehicles a month.

Several other major international vehicle manufacturers have announced plans to enter the Burma market, where demand for cars especially has mushroomed since 2011.

Mazda Motor Corporation said this week it will start selling new vehicles soon in Burma; the US's Ford Motor Company opened its first showroom in Burma in April; and General Motors is planning to follow suit.

Between October 2011 and April 24, more than 160,000 cars, mostly second-hand Japanese vehicles, have been imported, the Ministry of Commerce has said. The figures suggest a more than 50 percent increase in the total number of cars in Burma since October 2011.

China Seeks Contracts to Build Roads, Bridges and Improve Ports

Chinese companies are keen to win contracts to help develop Burma's transport infrastructure, Beijing's ambassador Yang Houlan said.

"The Chinese government attached importance to Sino-Myanmar cooperation in the transport sector, supporting the strength of Chinese enterprises to actively participate in port development, dredging and road and bridge construction," the official news agency Xinhua quoted Yang saying.

He made the proposal when he attended an official handover in Rangoon harbour of 19 dredgers and supporting vessels supplied by the state-owned China National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corporation, also known as CATIC Beijing.

The dredging equipment was supplied with the assistance of a preferential loan provided by the Chinese government, said Xinhua.

Foreign Firms Invited to Bid for 2nd Business District Project in Rangoon

Rangoon's City Development Committee is looking for foreign companies to help develop a new business center in Myangon Township.

The so-called Secondary Central Business District is meant to include offices, shops, a hotels, cinemas, theaters, and an exhibition and conference center, said a government notice announcing the project.

The site available for development is 36,500 acres, said the committee notice. Tenders are invited from foreign or domestic companies alone or in joint venture partnerships.

It said financial and technical bids for the contract must be submitted by December 2 along with a bid security in the form of a bank guarantee valued US$1 million.

EU Hears Allegations of Abuse of Burmese Workers at Thai Factory

Questions have been asked in the European Parliament about the treatment of Burmese workers in Thailand.

The questions were raised by British parliamentary deputy David Martin after charges of criminal defamation and damage were brought in a Bangkok court against Burma-based British human rights campaigner Andy Hall by the fruit juice processing company Natural Fruit.

Hall had earlier made a film, commissioned by a Finland NGO, documenting alleged abuse of hundreds of Burmese workers at Natural Fruit factory.

Hall said the factory employed illegal immigrants including Burmese children, paid wages below the Thai national minimum, made unjustified financial charges and confiscated workers' passports tantamount to debt bondage.

Natural Fruit denies all the allegations.

Hall's film was commissioned by Finnwatch concerned about imports into Finland of unethical produce.

In a September 18 video now on YouTube, Finnwatch executive director Sonja Vartiala said: "The legal process [in Thailand] is a farce. Natural Fruit is suspected of serious human rights violations. It's the company's managers and not Andy Hall who should be facing the threat of a trial".

She called for the EU to pressure Thailand to properly enforce labor rights for all workers.

Swiss Nestle to Open a Factory in Burma, State Agency says

Giant processed foods company Nestle has established a subsidiary in Burma and will soon build a production factory in the country, according to the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA).

Nestle Myanmar was formed on September 16, said DICA quoted by Eleven Media.

The Switzerland-based giant produces such internationally renowned brands as Nescafe instant coffee, Kit Kat chocolate biscuit, and Maggi soups and sauces.

The firm also produces baby foods, numerous snack products, and breakfast cereals, but it's not clear yet which will be produced in Burma.

DICA also said South Korean industrial conglomerate SK Group has entered the Burma market by setting up a construction industry subsidiary, SK Group Construction Myanmar.

US, Indian Oil Firms to Explore Bangladesh Seas adjacent to Burma

The Bangladesh government is to award three offshore blocks in the Bay of Bengal this month to ConocoPhillips of the US and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Dhaka newspapers said.

The two firms were the only bidders for the blocks which were among 12 offered by the government in December of 2012. No bids for the other nine blocks were received.

The two firms secured a concession allowing them to sell up to 50% of any production to third parties without reference to the state oil and gas firm Petrobangla, said The Star newspaper.

ConocoPhillips will get block 7, while ONGC will take blocks 4 and 9, the paper said.

ONGC is a partner in the development of Burma's Shwe gas field in the Bay of Bengal, where the two neighbors had a naval confrontation in 2008 before their joint sea border was finalised following UN arbitration.

The post Burma Business Roundup (September 21) appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.
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