126 Part II: Outsiders
which the various war-lords hoped to derive needed revenue for maintaining
their troops” (Wu Lien-teh 1959:492). Chinese warlords were not the only mil-
itary interests supporting themselves with opium in the last century. While
China fairly successfully halted opium cultivation after the 1949 revolution,
France was establishing an opium monopoly over poppy production in Laos
and cultivating a Hmong leader, Touby Lyfoung, as their opium broker. When
heroin addiction spread like a plague among American GIs during the Viet-
nam War, the demand was supplied by narcotics rings with excellent connec-
tions in the South Vietnamese government.
Ancient Indians knew Southeast Asia as suvarnabhumi, the “land of gold,”
but when Myanmar, Laos, and northern Thailand are called “The Golden Tri-
angle” it isn’t with precious metal in mind. The 1960s through the 1990s were
boom years in opium and heroin production in the Golden Triangle, when the
region was the world’s leading opium producer. However, the Thai government
made a great effort to stop opium production in Thailand, seeking alternative
cash crops for hill tribes like the Hmong. Coffee and rubber are more lucrative,
although they take three to seven years to yield a harvest. Food crops like cab-
bage, tomatoes, potatoes, ginger, and onions are easier to grow and quicker to
yield a crop but are not as lucrative as opium. Still, these efforts largely brought
an end to opium production in Thailand. By 2005, Thailand and Laos claimed
to be opium free, and Myanmar’s harvests had fallen by more than 50 percent.
However, opium is having a comeback in the new century. New UN
reports indicate Myanmar produced 893 tons of opium in 2013, 22 percent
more than in 2005, and Laos’s production increased by 50 percent (UNODC
2015). Only Afghanistan produces more. Most of this opium is processed into
heroin and goes to China, where addiction is again becoming a problem
among the new middle professional classes. (Heroin in the United States
mostly comes from Latin America and the drug cartels.)Fathers and Sons
Elsewhere in much of Asia, it is land that holds fathers and sons together in
kinship units. A family’s wealth, congealed in a single piece of earth, passed
from father to son, often for generations, uniting them in common cause, is
their means of survival and their defense against impoverishment. But the
Hmong do not own land in this sense. The claim a father has on his son is not
a piece of land to pass to him. Communities come and go, and sons could read-
ily strike out in search of their own new fields, and sometimes do. More gener-
ally, however, it is the case that fathers and sons work and live in close
proximity. If not land, then what binds them together?
The bond between father and son transcends death, and this is the organiz-
ing principle of social life. The father’s welfare in the afterlife depends on how
his sons bury him and attend to his needs through ancestor worship. His sons’
welfare in life depends on the father’s well-being in the afterlife, for he will be in
a position to send them good fortune or misfortune. A critical moment in this