Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
ernment office to have the paperwork recorded and stamped. He
then collected the driver so that they might make their way to Ruili
posthaste.
T HE ROAD TO M YANMAR is lined with Beheading Trees, so called
because the more you cut them down, the faster and thicker they
grow back. So it’s been with rebels from various periods of China’s
history. Once they take root, you can’t eradicate them completely.
Between the Beheading Trees were Eight Treasure Trees, whose
pendulous leaves were large enough to cover the body of a child. And
there were plenty of reckless children along the road who might soon
need a death shroud. Three boys who appeared to be five or six
danced atop the ten-foot-high loads of hay on the backs of mini–
tractor trailers, their parents seated up front, seemingly uncon­
cerned. To my friends in the bus, however, the children looked as if
they were about to suffer brain damage. Mercifully, the boys ap­
peared to have remarkable reflexes. They tumbled onto their bot­
toms, laughing gleefully, then stood back up on their stubby legs to
prepare for the next tumble.
“Oh my God!” Wendy cried while continuing to snap pictures of
each near disaster.
“I can’t look,” Bennie moaned.
“There should be a law,” Marlena said.
Heidi stared ahead at the road for large ruts that would jostle the
children to their deaths. Finally, the tractor trailer turned down a
small lane and continued, the carefree children receding from my
friends’ view. The closer the bus drew to the border, the more color­
ful the world became. Burmese women walked about in flowery-
colored skirts, their heads with turbanlike wrappings on top of
which they balanced baskets of goods destined for the open market.
On their cheeks, they had painted yellow patterns with a paste made
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