Friday, October 23, 2020

Look what I found, illustrated life of Buddha by U Ba Kyi


When we were growing up, we had a print copy of this, which we kept under our shrine shelf.

And I just found out U Ba Kyi also went to Univ of Pennsylvania, School of Arts and Science, in Philadelphia, and he may have been selected for that scholarship by my father U Kaung.   In the 1950s, a number of Burmese studied in the USA or UK. 

And then in 1962, after my father had passed away already, Gen. Ne Win stage his coup and stopped all scholarships to West, except for medical doctors.

My husband's boss used to say, "Well, why doesn't he have a barefoot doctor cut into him then?"

I also went to U Penn in 1982 on a Fulbright.  6 of us in a country of 60m were selected after a battery of tests, bc Ne Win's daughter failed her entrance exams for med school in London.

For a while, Wikipedia listed her as "dictator gynaecologist."

That's all amazing.

kmk

10-23-2020



 

 

Burmese riddle verses from The Atlantic 1958

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1958/02/some-burmese-riddle-verses/640460/