BURMA EXPATRIATE VISITS XIAMEN (AMOY), CHINA
PareByokeSOURCE: FROM AN EMAIL.
A Burma expatriate visits Xiamen (Amoy). It is reportedly the second largest city in Fujian Province in China. Many Burma Chinese of Fukienese (Fujianese) descent hailed from around that area. In Burma, they are known as the “Let Shay” or “long sleeved.”
Here is a picture of a Burmese Restaurant/store in Xiamen, taken during the trip. This big city is just across Taiwan Island Province, separated by the Taiwan Straits.
From the picture, you can see the sign in Burmese, a picture of Shwedagon Pagoda, and a lady wearing a “htamein” inside. The shop must have been opened by Burma expatriates and naturally serves a Burma expatriate community and others.
In passing, among the well known “let shay’s” are:
Burma Army Doctor Colonel Min Sein,
Noted Surgeon and Professor Dr Maung Maung Taik,
Medical Professors Dr U Aye and Dr Khin Maung Win,
and Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT) Rectors U Yone Moe and U Min Wun (also a famous writer)…
As sons of Burma, they all have served the country and Myanmar people with distinction for many years.
Since this is a corner store and the picture is quite big, the other half of the picture must have been truncated (cut off). From the other half you can see the English letters “Myanmar Restaurant” and a street scene at night with pedestrians.
FOR BIGCAT AND OTHERS WHO COULDN’T SEE THE PICTURES IN “TIFF” FORMAT. HAVE ADDED PICS IN “JPEG” FORMAT.
9 comments
weiwei
November 28, 2010 at 9:08 am
ဗမာပြည်က တရုတ်အများစုက ဖုကျန့်က တရုတ်တွေ … အဲဒီထဲမှာ လက်တိုနဲ့ လက်ရှည်ဆိုပြီး ၂ မျိုးရှိတယ် … တရုတ်စာသင်တုန်းက ဆရာတစ်ယောက်ပြောဖူးတာတော့ … လက်ရှည်ဆိုတာ အကျီလက်ရှည်ဝတ်နိုင်ပြီး ပညာနဲ့ အလုပ်လုပ်နိုင်တဲ့လူမျိုးတဲ့ … လက်တိုဆိုတာက ခွန်အားနဲ့အလုပ်လုပ်ရတဲ့လူမျိုးတဲ့ … ဟုတ်မဟုတ်တော့မသိဘူး … သိတဲ့သူရှိရင် ပြေပြပါအုန်း …
နေ ဘုန်းလျံ
November 29, 2010 at 2:03 am
ဟုတ်တာပေါ့ လက် တိုဝတ်မှ အလုပ် အကြမ်း လုပ်ရတာလွယ်တာ
bigcat
November 29, 2010 at 2:44 am
ဘာပုံမှလည်း မတွေ့ပါလား ဒီအိပ်ချ်အယ်လ်ရဲ့ ကြော်ငြာတွေပဲရှိတယ်။ ကြည့်ရတာ ပဲပြုတ်က ဒီအိပ်အယ်မှာလုပ်တယ်နဲ့တူ၏။ ဘယ်တုန်းကသွားကြာတာလဲ။ ထင်ရှားတဲ့ စာရေးဆရာ ဦးမင်းဝဏ်ဆိုတာ သေသွားတဲ့ ဆရာကြီး မင်းသုဝဏ်ကို ပြောတာလား။ ကျုပ်တို့ကတော့ လက်တိုပဲဖြစ်ဖြစ် လက်ရှည်ပဲဖြစ်ဖြစ် ချောရင်လှရင် ကြိုက်တယ်ဗျို့။
PareByoke
November 30, 2010 at 9:56 am
Ma Wei
1. As far as I know, there are no published statistics which say for certain that most Burma Chinese forebears were from Fujian Province, China. Maybe true, may not be true.
2. However, it is incorrect to say that “let shay” and “let to” are descended from this “Fujian group.” The reason is: The ‘”let to’s” forbears were not from Fujian at all, but were from Guangdong, another province altogether. (The 16th Asian Games was recently held in Guangzhou city, the capital of Guangdong Province. This province is just across from Hong Kong).
3. What your teacher said was more or less true. However, the Wikipedia describes these general descriptions, “stereotyping,” more accurately as follows:
“The Hokkien and Cantonese comprise 45% of the ethnic Chinese population.[4] The Cantonese were originally dubbed “short sleeved jackets” because most migrants from Guangdong Province were artisans, wearing short-sleeve jackets, while most of the Hokkien were traders, wearing long-sleeved jackets.[5] These names remain in use today.” Link and more info below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Chinese
I have heard that most Burma Chinese settlers, whether let shay or let to, had to work hard as manual laborers before saving enough to become merchants or tea shop owners. Most don’t really wear long sleeves or short sleeves all the time to differentiate themselves. These are just general descriptions (stereotyping) by others, to easily differentiate the Fukienese (Fujianese) and the Cantonese (those from Guangdong aka Kwangtung).
Mr BigCat (Ko Kyaung Gyi)
The pictures are in “tiff” format. Probably, using another computer might work. I will edit and put up “jpeg” format for you. Maybe, you can see them in that format.
BTW, I have posted many pictures on “Shanghai Expo,” Yi minority, Lisu minority, Tibetan minority, Macy Thanksgiving Parade 2010, etc. in “tiff” format. I wonder. Luckily, I always provide the source links from where the pictures came from.
No, I don’t work for DHL. Even though you may be just joking, you might need an answer, at least for some other viewers too. The DHL items are just advertisements. That’s probably how Word Press make money and so as to charge Mandalaygazette at a lower rate, than otherwise.
weiwei
November 30, 2010 at 10:07 am
Thank you for your kind explanation. Now I clearly know about lat-shay and lat-to.
As far as I know, most Burmese-Chinese are from Fujian and they said they are Lat-shay.
I can’t see your photos too.
PareByoke
November 30, 2010 at 10:08 am
Ko Kyaung Gyi
I almost forgot your other question. U Min Wun is Sayagyi Min Thu Win.
He is said to be the first Myanmar scholar to graduate from the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), located in Boston, in US East Coast.
I think he is alive and well in Los Angeles County, USA. He came to America at a much older age. I will try to find out his current situation from my friends.
You might get an answer in a couple of days. So, stay tuned.
kai
November 30, 2010 at 10:13 am
အင်း..
အယ်လ်အေမှာတော့ ..လက်တိုရော..လက်ရှည်ရော ..ဖွဲ ့ထားတဲ့ ..မြန်မာ-တရုတ်အသင်းတွေရှိတယ်..။
ကျုပ်တော့ ..လက်တိုအသင်းဖိတ်လည်း သွားစားတာပဲ..လက်ရှည်ဖိတ်လည်း သွားစားတာပဲ..။
တရုတ်စားသောက်ဆိုင်တွေမှာ … ပွဲလုပ်တော့ ..တရုတ်စာတွေချည်း စားကောင်းတာပဲ..။
လူတွေလည်း ..ကြည့်လိုက်တော့ ..တူတူချည်းပဲ..။ တော်တော်များများကတော့ ..လက်ရှည်တွေဝတ်ထားတာများပါတယ်..။ 🙂
တခုဝင်ဖြေပေးလိုက်မယ်နော..
ဦးမင်းဝဏ်က .. အာအိုင်တီမှာ မြို ့ပြပါမောက္ခလုပ်သွားတဲ့… ဆရာကြီးဦးမင်းဝဏ်ကိုပြောတာပါ..။
အယ်လ်အေမှာကျမ်းမာချမ်းသာစွာနဲ့.. ကောင်တီရဲ့လမ်းတံတားဌာနအလုပ်ကို ပင်စင်မယူသေးပဲ.အပြင်းပြေလုပ်နေသေးတယ်လို့သိရပါတယ်.။
တမိသားစုလုံး ..ဒီမှာမို ့..အေးဆေးပါပဲ..။
သူ့ကို မန္တလေးဂေဇက်က .. ထင်ရှားကျော်ကြားမြန်မာများကဏ္ဍထဲ..မေးမြန်းပြိး မှတ်တမ်းထား. .အင်တာဗျူးဖူးပါတယ်..။
သူက.. မြန်မာနက္ခတ်ဗေဒရဲ့ မတိကျမှုတွေကို .. နာဆာက ဒေတာတွေနဲ့ညှိပြီး ..တိကျအောင်လုပ်ပေးသွားသူ ပညာရှင်ကြီးပါပဲ..။
မြန်မာနက္ခတ်ရဲ့ မတိကျမှုတွေကြောင့် ..မြန်မာပြည်လွတ်လပ်ရေးရတဲ့ နာရီ။မိနစ်စက္ကန် ့တွက်ရာမှာ ..အလွဲအချော်တွေဖြစ်ခဲ့တယ်လို့..ပြောရင်.. စာဖတ်သူတွေ..ထခုန်ကြမလား..။ 🙂
weiwei
November 30, 2010 at 10:19 am
အဲဒါက ရာသီဥတုနဲ့လဲ ဆိုင်လိမ့်မယ် .. ကွမ်ကျိုးဘက်က ပူတယ် .. လက်ရှည်မဝတ်နိုင်ဘူး … ဖုကျန့်က အေးတယ် .. လက်ရှည်ဝတ်မှဖြစ်မယ် ..
ရန်ကုန်ရောက်ရင်တော့ အကုန်လက်တိုဖြစ်ကုန်တာပဲ … 🙂
PareByoke
December 1, 2010 at 3:46 am
Thanks to Ko Kai for sharing the Mandalay Gazette newspaper interview with U Min Wun. The part about Astrology and NASA is quite interesting.
Yes, he was a Civil Engineering Professor at RIT. Besides that, he was RIT Rector for quite some time.
In US, he works for the Road Transport Department. This department is not under Los Angeles County. It is at a higher State level, under the California State Government. This State department has jurisdiction for the whole of California freeways, roads, and bridges including those in L A County.
Mr Bigcat aka Ko Kyaung Gyi
I have good news for you. From reliable sources, Prof U Min Wun aka Min Thu Wun is still alive and well. He is still going strong, working for the California State (see above) even at age 78.
Surprised? Yes, In Burma, the mandatory retirement age is still 60. In US, you can work as long as you are willing to. No mandatory retirement age. (You are not forced to retire). US laws protect you from age discrimination.
You raised a question about the time the Xiamen picture was taken: It was taken only a few weeks ago.