Royal-turned-warlord and opium pioneer of the Golden Triangle: Olive Yang dies aged 90

By Gabrielle Paluch 

 

Olive, aged 88, at her family’s home in Muse in 2015. Photo: Gabrielle Paluch

 

Olive Yang, the crossdressing royal-turned-warlord, whose CIA-supplied army consolidated opium trade routes in the Golden Triangle in the 1950s, had tabloid-fodder romances, and later in life served as a government peace broker with Kokang rebels, died on Thursday. She was 90.

 

She died after a brief coma in Muse, a city on the border with China, in the care of a relative who confirmed her death by phone. She spent her twilight years there, unable to return to her birthplace in the embattled semi-autonomous ethnic rebel territory in northeastern Myanmar, known as Kokang.

 

Born Yang Kyin Hsiu in 1927, in British Burma, the boyish daughter to the hereditary royal ruler of the Shan state of Kokang, she fled her ancestral home when it was burned by invading Japanese troops in the Burmese theater of World War II. She was forced into an arranged marriage with her younger cousin; by her wedding day, her mother had died and her father was bedridden. She was expected to produce an heir for her husband, who himself was the chieftain of a smaller neighboring clan in Shan State.

 

In one version of the story, Olive threw a urine pot at her husband in a fit of rage when he tried to consummate their marriage.

 

Full story: https://coconuts.co/yangon/features/royal-turned-warlord-opium-pioneer-golden-triangle-olive-yang-dies-aged-90/

 

-- © Copyright Coconuts Yangon 2017-07-21

I once visited that area many years ago.   Very much like the wild west.  

88 and enjoying a smoke....kudos lady, well played.

 

Wow  this old woman looked like she was pretty tough. Smoked and made it to 90.

amazing!

Geezer

 

"CIA supplied army" - well, well, well.

 

CIA - Crime Investments for America?