ASIA / PACIFIC
December 19, 2016
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Myanmar town wants the secret out: George Orwell slept here
HISTORIC HOUSE. Amateur George Orwell
scholar Nyo Ko Naing, center, leaves the house of
the former British commissioner in Katha with the
caretaker, right, and Kyal Ni, a member of the local
office of the National League for Democracy, in Katha,
Myanmar. Many of the places depicted in George
Orwell’s novel Burmese Days remain standing in a
sleepy Myanmar town, nearly 90 years after he left it.
Residents of Katha are now working to make the most
of that heritage, including renovating a historic house
into a museum. (AP Photo/Aung Naing Soe)
By Joe Freeman and Aung Naing Soe
The Associated Press
ATHA, Myanmar — In the 1990s,
Nyo Ko Naing noticed that the
handful of foreign tourists who
made it to his remote hometown were
carrying their own maps and looked like
they were searching for something. Some-
one, it turns out, by the name of George
Orwell.
Katha was Eric Blair’s last posting in
the Imperial Police before he sailed back to
England in 1927, adopted the nom de
plume Orwell, and launched a writing
career that would produce powerful novels
and commentary. Seven years after
leaving the sleepy town on the Irrawaddy
River, he immortalized it as the setting of
his first novel, the vehemently anti-
colonial Burmese Days, though he called it
not Katha but “Kyauktada.”
The British Club, where much of the
novel’s scheming, fighting, drinking, and
sweating takes place, still stands, as do
other sites mentioned, including a tennis
court, a pagoda, and a prison. A house
believed to have been Orwell’s home in
Katha remains in use.
Nyo Ko Naing, a graphic designer and
cartoonist, didn’t know much about Bur-
mese Days at first, but soon grasped how
important it was to the future of the town.
He has since become the town’s preser-
vationist, in-house historian, amateur
Orwell scholar, and literary tour guide,
keen to market Katha as a tourist
destination. He’s helping renovate the
19th-century house of the former British
commissioner for use as a museum that is
expected to open next year.
“It is not easy to get attention from the
world,” the 45-year-old said in a recent
interview. “So it’s like Katha won the
lottery.”
Orwell-related tourism has grown in
Myanmar, also known as Burma, since a
half-century of military rule ended in
2011, though numbers remain small. Nyo
Ko Naing estimates Katha sees 300 to 400
such visitors per month.
In 2012, he founded the Katha Heritage
Trust and mounted a campaign through
the media to save the commissioner’s
house from a local businessman who
wanted to turn the property into a skating
K
rink.
The first floor is now full of archival
photos, including one of Orwell as a young
policeman, and several portraits of the
writer painted recently by local artists.
“We’re collecting materials for the
museum right now, such as photos, data,
and other heritage of Katha. And we’re
also renovating that house by maintaining
its own original style. That’s why it takes
time,” he said.
“Now we have spent 4 million kyats
($3,000) and some tourists have donated,”
he added. “We will renovate more when-
ever we get money.”
The museum will also focus on Katha’s
history, with information about nearby
battles during World War II and other
aspects of the area deemed significant.
Nyo Ko Naing hopes Orwell will be a
magnet for foreign tourists who will linger
for other attractions, such as Katha’s
traditional elephant camps, which the
government is exploring turning into eco-
tourism destinations amid a wide-ranging
ban on logging.
A 12-hour train ride from Mandalay,
Katha is a small, idyllic town in the
Sagaing region. The atmosphere is as
tranquil as the flowing Irrawaddy. As the
sun sets, visitors and families stroll along
the promenade as mountains darken in
the distance.
In the past five years, Myanmar has
been rapidly modernizing, and Katha is no
exception. There are shiny new bank
branches and new hotels. Mobile phone
shops proliferate. Many colonial buildings
have been left alone, giving the place a
timeless feel, though many structures are
dilapidated.
Both the tennis court and the prison are
still in use. The British Club is now a local
business cooperative.
The Hotel Katha, which opened last
year, has seized on the Orwell connection.
Built to resemble a red-brick colonial
home, it offers brochures at the front desk
with maps guiding visitors to key sites
from the novel. Guests can read copies of
Burmese Days and Orwell’s essays in the
lobby or dine at the Kyauktada Café &
Restaurant. Meeting rooms are named
“Flory,” ‘‘Elizabeth,” and “Macgregor,”
after three of the book’s characters.
“I want visitors to feel like they are in the
book,” said the owner, Bran Aung, in a
phone interview. “I want to add more
about Orwell. I am still collecting.”
Best known for 1984 and Animal Farm,
Orwell is also admired for his condemna-
tion of colonialism in Burmese Days,
depicting the British denizens of
Kyauktada largely as racist exploiters. Yet
the novel was more widely read and
celebrated abroad than in Burma.
Censorship was lifted in 2012. A year
later, Maung Myint Kywe won the govern-
ment’s most prestigious literary award for
his Burmese translation of Burmese Days.
“He told me that his translation had
been sleeping in the hands of the publisher
for more than 30 years,” Thurein Win, who
has translated Orwell’s essays, wrote in an
e-mail interview. Maung Myint Kywe died
in 2014.
Orwell wrote darkly about British and
Burmese alike. “Some Burmese don’t like
him for his provocative words, but others
love his writing,” Thurein Win said.
Nyo Ko Naing’s most impressive
Orwellian work may be tracking down the
author’s house, which he had previously
confused with the commissioner’s. He used
a colonial-era map to pinpoint the
residence as a two-story teak home on the
main road, not far from the Katha Hotel.
In a twist that might amuse Orwell, it is
still occupied by a police officer.
“My colleagues said that the house you
are going to stay in belongs to the English
writer George Orwell,” said police chief
Myint Aung, who was recently transferred
to Katha. He didn’t know anything about
the writer, but he is embracing the former
resident.
Although the home isn’t officially open
to tourists, he lets curious visitors poke
around, and he has allowed the trust to
hang a banner on the porch explaining
some basic history.
“The town of George Orwell is lovely as
well as interesting,” the sign says.
q
U.N. says dairy a potential ally
in Asian nutrition challenges
Continued from page 2
As a result, the report says, the dairy
industry is a potential “engine of pover-
ty-alleviating growth” — so long as things
remain egalitarian.
“Policymakers need to ensure that the
region’s small-holder dairy farmers — the
largest segment of dairy producers — can
have fair access to, and compete in, the
marketplace,” Kadiresan said.
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