Oh dear, it seems that I was tapping into a fading icon
because I gather the place has changed greatly during my lifetime. Whether the
flying fishes still play there I don’t know, but it isn’t the dawn that comes
up like thunder ‘outer China
crost the bay’ any more, it’s the Chinese. Great swathes of them have crossed
the border over the past few decades, rebuilding the city following several
devastating fires in the 1980s and revitalising the old place in the process. That’s
good in its way, I suppose, but the grandeur of pre-colonial days and the charm
of the colonial era have gone now. Judging by the picture I saw, modern Mandalay would look more at home in Texas.
You know, it does bother me that resurgent parts of the
world like East Asia so insist on aping the
west in their architectural developments. I mean, where do we westerners go
these days to escape the tyranny of sky scrapers and smartypants yuppie
condominiums? Bhutan?
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