The Five-Day Bazaar

Originally published in The Guardian Newspaper of Burma, 1970s

THE FIVE-DAY BAZAAR as a system operates most conspicuously in the Shan State, though other regions reaching down to Central Burma have their own five-day meets.

The Shan bazaars, within a radius of 10 to 25 miles or so, are held on successive days in different centers to give most scope for commerce.

Some of these bazaars, in villages especially, are the true fifth day occasions. You drive past them on four out of the five days and see nothing but rows of open sheds, which stand or lean in the ranged and desolated silence of a big square. On the fifth day, long before you reach this village, you are impeded by people, livestock, carts, and buses which have set out since the pre-dawn hours. You arrive, and what was yesterday's sorry emptiness is now a great concourse, lively with the hum and bustle of a fair. In a town like Taunggyi at the other extreme, there is an adequate bazaar every day. If you see it on the four intervening days you can hardly believe that the five-day system still operates. Then comes the fifth day. The market swells; produce, people, carts and buses, color, flavor, noise and congestion all multiplied make it unmistakably the Bazaar Day.

Though Taunggyi is the largest Shan State town, its bazaar is nouveau riche, its origin comparatively recent, its associations the least romantic in a system reaching back to the most evocative traditions. Taunggyi was set up only at the turn of the century by the British who wanted a cold-climate administrative capital The principal bazaar towns in the Shan State centuries preceding, however were the “state capitals”.

These states, ranging from huge (Kengtung 12,400 square miles) to minuscule (Kyone 24 square miles) are of course no longer distance entities. Their capitals, usually sited in the upland valleys with most rice potential to ensure control, held bazaars on the same day. Subsidiary centers, situated at road junctions or in other valleys with good crops and pastures, held bazaars on the successive days between. All these centers continue to function, with new bazaars added in modern times.

Now, for example, the day following Taunggyi Bazaar Day sees the Bazaar Day at Taungni, 19 miles to the north. It is a small village but lies in a wide plain with a variety of crops and enough pastures. Next day you will find the Bazaar at Shwenyaung, 11 miles down the hill. This is, like Taunggyi, a modern town, born of the railhead there. Next come Bazaars at Hopong, 11 miles to east, and at Yawnghwe 18 miles to south. These were both “sate capitals”, and their Bazaar Days coincide. The day following, there is Bazaar at Heho, westwards across another range, in a productive plain and at road crossing. The fifth day it is Taunggyi's turn again.

The fascinating feature of the system is that each old center has kept to the same bazaar day throughout centuries probably. If a full moon or sabbath, or as in current usage, a public holiday, falls on Bazaar Day and makes inoperative, the bazaar is held a day earlier. However, six days are then counted to the next meet. So an immediate correction is made and the original five-day count is unfailingly restored.

The origins of the system are not recorded anywhere. But is is natural to assume it came from regions bordering China. For one thing, Marco Polo mentioned meeting such a Bazaar, with villagers coming down all the hillsides to it, possibly near the Bhamo area about 700 years ago.

The sense behind the system is easy to see. Anyone can count on his fingers and reckon when Bazaar Day should come again. Also, the time interval is just right. Our hill regions have diversified agriculture, small holdings, and people of an independent spirit which cannot be dragged or enticed to work for another man. The yield from their small gardens is right for gathering once every five days. Generally it is of the right quantity to carry on one's back to market. The supplies bought with its proceeds will last well for about five days. Best of all, the gala day of rest from fieldwork and of outing for profit and pleasure comes once every five days --- that much oftener than the larger world's week.

Offices and authority keep to that week, but all in our regions who are free, like cultivators, carpenters, cheroot rollers, construction women and other piece or daily wagers, or housewives --- all these are thoroughly Bazaar Day oriented. Their days are easily counted by the accepted names 1-day-past-bazaar; 2-days-past-bazaar; 3-days-past-bazaar; bazaar-eve; and Bazaar-Day. Bazaar-eve is the day you pay off daily wages They will resume only one 1-day-past bazaar.

As for housewives, it is nothing that they can each day buy their food requirements with calm and convenience. They have a compulsion to get in the crush of people each Bazaar Day, fearing to miss something fresh or rare. Sow they will not fix meetings, doctors' visits or luncheon hospitality on that day. They leave themselves free to inch their way to slightly cheaper purchases, or when forcibly wedged to a halt, exchange news with friends they never see except in such immobility.

The types of people who make up this crowd and who give a shape and system to these bazaars differ greatly. Perhaps the most attractive people among the different elements in a five-day bazaar are the villagers who come into town and who use the same bazaar throughout their lives. They use it with a forthright completeness, and a self-sufficiency which expresses their life-style.

They are of different ethnic groups according to region. Around Taunggyi, for example, most of them are Pa-Os, distinguishable at once by their dress, which they do not forsake as long as black cloth is available.

From villages as far distant as a dozen miles they come with produce. A detailed account would reveal how they always find something to bring, right through the year, much or little, from gardens, fields, hedgerows and woods. They walk, come by cart, or in jeeps which high school drop-outs operate cheaply by cramming people inside, tying baskets outside and running back and forth at top speed.

These villagers reckon to spend up to seven hours on the bazaar day visit. If they have a lot of produce they dispose the bulk of it wholesale on arrival. The rest they retail as they sit on a bit of ground for a few hours.

They sit silent and stolid. This is their usual demeanor. There is no hope of bargaining with such a closed and simple front. Take it or leave it --- and you usually take it because the produce is fresh, and you enjoy buying direct from the grower. The scale they use is in itself a mark of their aloofness. Not two balancing pans, but a stick with one end bigger than the other. On the thin light end are three or four hooks at intervals to denote quarters, half and one viss. The pan of stuff is hooked on to the required hook and the stick held up by a central handle. Other scales may be checked for short weight, but not these.

Past noon they pack up. They walk around, eat a full meal, buy needs such as rice, salt fish, kerosene, knives and bags. If a festival is in the offing they buy black cloth and have it made up by tailors perched on some of the booths. To this they add a bright and expensive towel for a turban. Before 3 pm. they have finished and are off home with a basket filed again.

The antithesis of these worthy folk are another most attractive group. They are professional bazaar women who follow the circuit, going on successive days to a different bazaar within a radius of about 25 miles. They are usually Burmese plains-women.

About 20 years ago, in driving all over the Shan State to the furthest borders, we never failed, even in remote bazaars, to find an Indian merchant, whether turbaned Sikh or smooth Marwari, moving by bus speaking fluent Shan.

It is wonderful to think that someday Burmese women may be as ubiquitous. They do not yet go so far, as theirs is not a relentless pursuit of money. They follow their traditional enjoyment in buying and selling, and have so far discovered only the bazaars in the periphery of the Shan plateau proper. To these places they have brought the fun, verve and nimble wits that spring up naturally in them.

Ma Khin Su, my relative who came with me to the Shan State 25 years ago, is now 60, but she is still on the circuit. To stop would make her feel old and ill. She gets fish and shrimp products from her native Thaton, the best quality. A helper nephew, or she herself when in need of a jaunt, rides 30 hours by train each way to bring it up. Then to each bazaar in turn for four days. On the fifth day she stays home, picks over produce, sorts it, regrades it, packs consignments and meets the train for fresh lots.

At each bazaar, in the intervals of selling, she goes round and buys what is cheapest there for sending to Thaton to pay for new stuff. Split peas and sunflower seeds at Taungni, asters, gerberas and tomatoes at Shwenyaung, potatoes, cabbages, chrysanthemums and coffee at Heho.

Her joy in this life is typical of Burmese women, but most are tied to home and husbands. You see some of these waiting at bazaar gates each Bazaar Day for the villagers. They swoop on the produce, having borrowed money which they must return at day's end with interest,. With armfuls of stuff they rush to the the best places in the aisles, to sit all that day and the next if needed. They are quite different from the Pa-O sellers. They laugh, chat, give you sales talk, let you bargain, got to latrines, wander round to eat and to visit while a neighbor looks after sales awhile.

Above these ground sellers are the stall-holders. In village meets they may be circuit followers with a paid-for section of the sheds. In town, they are there daily with dried foods. Burmese, Indians, Shans and Chinese, men and women. The muted colors of former times which gave such stalls a quiet glow with dark brown of tamarind, ocher of turmeric, pink skins of onion, red of dried chilly, the glisten of vermicelli and salt, the old of oil and the rich gray of shrimp pastes are now interspersed with flashy markings of ajinomoto packets, milk tins and carbolic soap wrappers.

There are food shops of course, but the specialties of these Shan bazaars are distinctive. Meats and fish pickled with rice and providing a meal packet. Kneaded fish rice. Bean curds in many forms. Mustard pickles, soybean cakes, and rice noodles at their best.

There are hawkers of everything. And buyers who create more movement than in normal bazaars because only the hordes of town wives are the normal buyers. The rest are buyers who are also sellers. Besides all the likable groups mentioned above there are the big brokers who come to snatch up sunflower seeds, corn, wheat, peanuts, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages. They are usually on the rim of the market, dealing with more affluent villagers who arrive by carts and buses.

Most village bazaar centers have mills near the market square. Some, like Taungni and Hopong, have great open spaces adjacent. Carts draw up here. The farmer dumps his paddy to be milled while he makes his round. Others bring cattle for sale. It is draft cattle; because beef animals are never happily sold as this is a hole-and-corner affair. With cart oxen everyone can gather round to inspect and advise.

These cart and cart men give a crowning touch to bazaar day. It is then a really a country fair with oxen munching under the great flame of the forest trees and the whole ground filled up. Yet by 4 pm, nothing of this remains. The carts have gone. The bazaar people have left, buses carrying those who do not walk. Nothing remains but the sheds once again, though there is debris, and dogs who leave after they have scavenged this debris.

Except for one lone figure which still moves in the fading light. The richest woman in the village, a Chinese, goes round picking up the manure from the carts' camping. It will be dried, pulverized and sold later for a sum not despised by her entrepreneur husband.