MORE THAN A SIDE SHOW FREAK

MORE THAN A SIDE SHOW FREAK

THE STORY OF MU KAUN

By- DANIEL WINE / Photographs by- YE MYAT TUN

In November of last year, the Discover Myanmar team researched and shared images of advertising from old Burma. Most of these brought on nostalgia; some were bittersweet, others hilariously entertaining. Perhaps it was because of the team’s trip to a Kayan Lahwi site in Kayah State two months before, but I kept scanning over a 1934 poster of a rather passive-looking woman with long neck coils advertising the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus.

A 1934 poster advertising Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus entertainer Mu Kaun, a Kayan Lahwi tribeswoman, labels her as a “Giraffe-Neck Woman” and “The Most Startling Discovery of the Century.”

It looked innocuous enough at first glance, but something rubbed me raw as I studied it. The woman’s neck length was exaggerated to cartoonish proportions. Touting that she was “the most startling discovery of the century,” the poster called her the “Giraffe-Neck Woman.”

“Discovery for whom?”

I muttered to myself. Using the word “discovery” to refer to an exotic culture that has existed for centuries is rather asinine, akin to Columbus “discovering” the Americas where there were already native civilizations long established. The word reinforced the existing sentiment that this “giraffe woman’s” culture had no significance before it was “discovered” by, and made available to, the western world. Such hype words were the norm when the poster was put to print but do not fly so well today.

Continuing on, the advert boasted that she was a “Royal Padaung,” going by the Shan term, which is considered pejorative by the Kayan Lahwi. What, I wondered, was a royal doing as a circus attraction? What was her title? “Princess Mu Kaun,” the post proclaimed— a princess they had objectified and likened to an animal.

Young girls in bright makeup sit still as statues outside of their grandmother’s store, leaving room for a tourist to pose beside them.

Again, I begged the question: Why was a royal princess from Burma performing for an American circus? Was this something she wanted? Did performing in a traveling circus fulfill some wish of hers to see to world? With whom did she socialize? Did she miss her native land? Did she ever return?

The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, based in Peru, Indiana, was a circus that traveled across the United States in the late 19th and early part of the 20th century. It seemed the circus was destined for misery. In 1913, 21 years before Mu Kaun made her American debut, the circus lost eight elephants, 21 lions and tigers, and eight performing horses in a massive flood.

Five years later, the circus was nearly wiped out somewhere near Hammond, Indiana, when a collision caused a fire that swept through the sleeping compartments of the circus train. That morning saw 86 deaths and 127 injured souls, some so badly burned that they could not be recognized. Business was business, and however callous, the show had to go on. Only two shows were cancelled, and the circus borrowed equipment and performers from competing shows to pay the bills.

The Discover Myanmar team visited a roadside Kayan Lahwi camp in September 2018. The camp was dominated by women; the village proper and the men were miles away, away from the public eye.

Around the time that Mu Kaun joined, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus had changed owners several times and was officially owned by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The performers were now stationed on 35 acres of land outside of Baldwin Park, California, where they rode out the winters parked alongside a railroad spur, waiting for spring, when they’d hit the road again.

In her book, The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top, Janet Davis reports that Mu Kaun was not alone. Two other Kayan Lahwi women, Mu Proa and Mu Ba, accompanied her to the US. They first performed for Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey in 1933, then moved on to join the Hagenbeck-Wallace show the next year. Their recruiters mentioned that the women all came from mountainous villages several hundred miles north of Mandalay. Mu Kaun and her companions agreed to travel to the United States after their families accepted gifts from the propitiating Ringling agents. Axes, canned fish, colorful fabrics, and silver rupees were proof enough of the agents’ credibility. The ladies were not royalty at all, just naïve village lasses.

Mu Kaun and her friends experienced the Great Depression, a time of extreme poverty and hardship in the United States. Yet, they seemed to fare quite well. In 1934, they posed for a picture with their brand-new Pontiac, stating that they planned to take it with them back home. They probably imagined themselves sitting pretty in that car — women of the world — returning to their village and making their old childhood friends drool with envy.

Mu Ba, Mu Kaun, and Mu Proa learning how to apply show make-up upon landing in New York in 1933.

A report in The Straits Times (Singapore) regarding a resolution passed by the Burmese Women’s League.

Mu Kaun and her fellow tribeswomen had performed beside such names as lion tamer Clyde Beatty and rope twirler Irene Mann. However, they didn’t get much opportunity to speak to their colleagues. In an interview that Janet Davis conducted in 1994, Irene, who worked with them in 1933, recalled, ‘‘You didn’t get to know them . . . [they didn’t talk] . . .. That’s a pretty awful thing, to bring them all the way over and put them through that. After all, they are human beings.’’

Even with the social exclusion they endured, western life did seem to change them. They were pictured wearing lace-up shoes, playing cards, and learning how to apply show make-up upon landing in New York in 1933.

In 1935, the women made it to London and joined the Bertram Mills Circus. Photographs from the time show them out and about in society, visiting tourist locations and chatting up police officers. That same year, Mu Proa gave birth in a British hospital.

In 1936, they were joined by another Kayan Lahwi family. One of them, Mu Tha, was the paternal great aunt of Pascal Khoo Thwe, who wrote Land of Green Ghosts. The year she arrived, Mu Tha was pictured celebrating her 21st birthday in Folksstone, England. In his memoir, Pascal Khoo Thwe details how she was a fantastic storyteller and that at the time of his youth, her coils were 14 inches high.

Photographs by- YE MYAT TUN

Their arrival to England caused a great deal of excitement and publicity, which reached all the way back to Burma. Their fame in the west as Burmese wonders was met with resentment at home. The Burmese Women’s League took great umbrage at the way the Kayan Lahwi women were advertised. The issue was not that they were compared to animals or draped in thin fabrics exposing their skin, but that they were labeled “Burmese.” This, to the Burmese Women’s League, “lowered the prestige of Burmese women.” For the high-ranking ladies of Burma, the insult was magnified because Burma was on the cusp of constitutional changes, the socialites striving to be viewed as modern and cultured.

In his memoir, Pascal Khoo Thwe detailed how the women returned home from their British adventure with paper money, tales of tea-time rituals and complaints of the lack of rice wine. Years later, Khoo Thwe would travel to England himself. There, he was invited to view an art gallery housed in a seaside cottage. Among the many pieces, the young man saw a bronze bust of Wu Klai, one of his relatives who had traveled to England decades before him.

The Kayan Lahwi women and children are no strangers to tourism. Elders in brightly colored garments weave dainty shawls for display, their wares behind them on tables and hanging from the roofs of their shacks.

Though these ladies happily returned to tell stories to their posterity, many Kayan Lahwi like them are still being employed as side-show entertainment today. In Thailand, they are considered lucrative refugees. Women are encouraged to continue the practice of wearing their coils for the same reason Mu Kaun and her friends were: tourists happily pay big bucks to witness a “giraffe woman” firsthand.

In the village in Kayah State that the Discover Myanmar team visited in September last year, the women and children were no strangers to tourism. Elders wove shawls for display, their wares behind them on tables and hanging from the roofs of their shacks. Young girls, heavily clad in western make-up and elaborate thanakha, sat still as statues in the storefronts, a perfect photo op. Two sisters stationed at one stall sang songs and danced, attracting customers to their mother’s merchandise.

“Where,” we wondered, “are the men?” We were told that the village proper was a way off, and that the settlement my lot was visiting was simply a roadside market for local and foreign tourists. It is the same as in the 1930s, yet different. This time, the tourists gawking at the towering necks adorned with brass coils are often the women’s own countrymen, no longer indignant and wishing to separate themselves as more cultured, but fascinated and proud, getting a last view of a fading part of their own history.

Photographs by- YE MYAT TUN

DISCOVER MYANMAR MAGAZINE · JANUARY-MARCH 2019