Word: pagodas
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...even as Burmese friends piled up caveats as high as the spires of the tallest pagoda, I could sense an awakening political consciousness that excited them. One young man, in a remote town I will not name lest I get him in trouble, confided that he and his friends had organized a study group to debate the merits of electoral politics. (One of the participants also runs a free class called "The Secrets of Gmail: a Pre-Advanced Course.") In northern Burma, where minorities recall that ethnic-based parties came in second and third in the 1990 polls - the army...
...Guangxi province provided the raw material, and it was simply left to the city fathers to bathe the more obvious attractions in neon by night, to sculpt Elephant Hill slightly so it really does look like a pachyderm dipping its trunk in the river, and to add a pagoda or two to the more prominent hilltops and lakes. Millions of visitors - principally domestic groups - head to the city and its surrounds every year, dutifully tramping from one designated site to another, cruising downstream to Yangshuo past Fairy Maiden Peak, Wave Stone View and Chicken Cage Hill, filling up suitcases with...
Despite the considerable landscaping effort at Naypyidaw's Natural Herbal Park and Water Fountain Garden, no people loll in these public green spaces. I see none of the country's omnipresent Buddhist monks in the new capital, even at the local pagoda. The instigators of last year's democracy protests, which soldiers broke up with gunfire, presumably aren't welcome in a city dedicated to a surreal sense of order...
...city's only potential tourist attraction is a replica of Rangoon's famous Shwedagon pagoda. It's still under construction. At the building site, child laborers--some appearing no older than 6--lug piles of rocks on woven stretchers. Burma's junta has long been considered one of the world's worst human-rights abusers. But the generals don't have to see these tiny laborers build a golden temple for their Abode of Kings. That's because the top brass is bunkered in another, faraway part of the city, an isolation that could help explain the junta's underwhelming...
...city's only attempt at a tourist attraction is a replica of Rangoon's famous Shwedagon pagoda. The Naypyidaw version, though, remains unfinished. At the building site, groups of child laborers - some appearing no older than six - lug heavy rocks on woven stretchers and swing pickaxes into the hard earth. Burma's junta has long been considered one of the world's worst human-rights abusers. But the country's generals don't have to see these tiny laborers build a golden temple for their Abode of Kings. That's because the generals are bunkered in another, faraway part...