Black and white photo of Olive Yang, a Burmese woman, wearing a soldier's uniform with her army. She stands front and center.
Not all people who make queer history do so for their contribution to bettering the world. Queerness and criminality have in fact gone hand in hand for centuries, whether because queer expression in any form was outright outlawed or simply because an individual’s queerness pushed them to struggle amongst the dregs of society. For the time and place in which she lived, Olive Yang’s gender expression and sexual attractions were criminal offenses, and while those were not the malfeasances for which she was ultimately imprisoned, they likely rendered Yang fraught with the idea of leading the life of a traditional Burmese woman. From a young age, the pressures of being a princess, wife and mother did not mesh with Yang’s inherent desires for other women or masculine presentation, which likely pushed Yang to escape and doggedly carve out a position of power for herself. In becoming a prominent and influential opium warlord, Yang was able to command the respect of and instill fear in her peers, and in doing so feel more at ease to live a life doing what she wanted and never looking back. Though she could be perceived as a villain, Yang is consequently still very much a queer pioneer, one who openly dressed and acted as the opposite gender and never shied away from pursuing public same-sex relationships, all within a country that to date still criminalizes all things LGBTQ-related.
Olive Yang was born Yang Jinxiu on June 24th, 1927 in the Shan States in British Burma, now present day Myanmar. She was one of eleven children born into the Yang clan, an ethnically Chinese family of hereditary rulers of what was, at the time, the semi-autonomous Shan State of Kokang. As a child, Yang attended Lashio’s Guardian Angels’ Convent School, where she began to go by her adoptive English name, Olive. According to relatives of hers, Olive would often bring a revolver in her school bag, frightening her fellow classmates.
Yang began playing with guns at the age of four, and her father at one point boasted, “Our second girl is so courageous that she is not afraid of crying when the gun goes off.” In addition to her affinity for weapons, Olive also at a young age began to defy gender norms via other means, wearing boys’ clothing and resisting the foot-binding tradition expected of young women in the region. According to relatives, she also frequently chased after and fell for her brothers’ female romantic interests.
As a daughter of the Kokang ruling family, Yang was expected to fulfill her traditional roles as a princess, wife, and mother. Concerned about their daughter, Yang’s parents goaded her into an arranged marriage to Twan Sao Wen, her younger cousin, in 1948. For the next two years, Yang lived with Twan and in 1951, gave birth to a son, Duan Jipu, as part of her expectation to produce an heir. Yang named her son after the American Jeeps she’d seen in the Chinese city of Kunming during WWII. According to relatives, Twan became afraid of Olive, who had allegedly once thrown a pot of urine at him during an attempt of his to consummate the marriage, and after the birth of their one and only child, the couple grew apart. While together, Yang did her best to avoid engaging in sexual relations with Twan, and reportedly once proclaimed: “I don’t like men. I don’t like my husband.”
While still pregnant with Duan Jipu, Yang had already made the decision to leave Twan and pursue a life among opium-trafficking bandits. She left her newborn with a wet nurse and fled into the jungle, where she rallied ethnic Kokang forces and organized a guerilla army of over a thousand soldiers who were fighting a war of independence from the Burmese government. This army of men that Yang commanded came to be called “Olive’s Boys.” Packing a pair of Belgian army pistols on her hips, Yang helped turn Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region into the world’s second-largest source of illicit opium by developing shipping routes and consolidating control of the opium trade throughout the 1950s.
To help finance their battles, Olive and her militia began to cultivate large amounts of the opium poppy, the biggest cash crop in the region. For a decade, Yang dominated the Kokang region’s opium trade, leading the Kokang Kakweye, or Kokang People’s Defence Forces, and by the age of twenty-five was already commanding hundreds of soldiers who were guarding caravans of raw opium across the Thai border. In doing so, Yang built out new trade routes in what would become the world’s most productive opium-growing region, supplying the raw ingredients to make heroin which would then be trafficked to Europe and the United States.
Yang proved to be an innovative kingpin when she became the first warlord to send opium by convoys of trucks instead of mules down to the Thai border. This transition was an industry game changer, and through continuous control of her militia, paired with her success in the illicit opium business as well as in gambling, Yang amassed a sizable fortune. Olive’s pursuit of a career as a militia leader and opium smuggler likely came in part out of a desperation to escape traditional gender roles. According to Yang’s niece, “It was a temptation she couldn’t resist.” Meanwhile, Yang’s son was left to be raised by other family members, and would grow up to become a teacher in Chiang Mai, Thailand, having little contact with his mother.
During this time, Yang also aligned herself with the remnants of the Chinese Nationalist troops who had been defeated by Mao’s Communists but were continuing to fight from various havens in Burma. Known as the Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party, the group in secret had backing and support from the CIA, due to their shared interest in stopping the spread of communism. Via this complex partnership, Yang found herself involved in Operation Paper, which, greenlit by President Harry Truman, included an agreement that the U.S. would airlift weapons to Southeast Asia via CIA-owned planes, essentially arming Yang’s men and the remnant Kuomintang troops. In doing so, the CIA became knowingly involved in the narcotics business, indirectly facilitating and overseeing the forces engaged in vastly expanding opiate production. Meanwhile, the resulting drug proceeds earned by Yang and her men would in turn supplement the CIA's efforts to develop its own Asian proxy armies, essentially financing U.S. operations in the region via opium sales.
Operation Paper was short lived and ultimately failed in its primary objections, though it left lasting consequences in cultivating the Golden Triangle region’s industrial drug complex. In due time, the Burmese government surmised that CIA-supplied arms were making their way into Yang’s hands, and in 1953 filed a complaint about the matter at the UN General Assembly. Shortly thereafter, Yang and her deputy, Lo Hsing Han, were intercepted by Burmese authorities while traveling by car from the Thai border. Captured, Yang spent the next five years in prison in Mandalay, charged with illegally aiding Chinese Nationalist soldiers to cross the border into Burma. This would be the first of several imprisonments for Yang in her lifetime. During her first imprisonment, however, Yang remained a prominent name and figurehead in opium trafficking, and her influence remained strong throughout the decade thanks to the continuous backing of the Kuomintang.
In 1959, Yang’s brother Edward, along with dozens of others, abdicated their positions as hereditary rulers in the Shan state. Recently freed, Yang took control of her brother’s former army and became the de facto ruler of the territory in his place. Olive became the second largest drug dealer in the world, and during this era of peak power, Yang publicly entered into several relationships with women. First there was Louisa Benson Craig, a mixed Burmese-Jewish beauty queen who was Myanmar’s first ever entry in the Miss Universe contest. Under the influence of Olive, Louisa would ultimately abandon her modeling career to become a freedom fighter in her own right. Craig moved on when she became involved in the Karen National Liberation Army, the military branch of the Karen National Union that was campaigning for the self-determination of the Karen people of Myanmar.
Another woman Yang courted was the well-known Burmese movie actress, Wah Wah Win Shwe, considered one of the most commercially successful actresses in the Myanmar entertainment industry. Yang lavished her with gifts, and may have even kidnapped Shwe, moving her into a property on her estate and going so far as to add Shwe’s name to the deed of her house in Yangon. Though Yang’s family considered them a couple, in 2015 Shwe denied the affair in an interview, despite the fact that she was still living in a house on Yang’s former property at the time.
Yang and Shwe’s “arrangement” came to an end when in 1963 Yang was again arrested, along with her brother Jimmy, who was a member of parliament in Yangon. They were captured by Burmese authorities under the order of General Ne Win, who had recently seized power in Burma and wanted to reposition the Kokang territory under Burmese control. This time, Yang was imprisoned at Insein, a notoriously infamous prison, where she would remain for six years. There, Yang was purportedly tortured, sexually abused, and thrown in and out of solitary confinement. Now into her forties, Yang was released in 1968 a changed woman.
The years following Yang’s release are sparsely documented, as Yang opted to live the second half of her life in relative obscurity. Varying degrees of accounts speculate how Yang spent her time. Some mention that Yang joined a convent and became a nun, while others state she opened and ran a restaurant. Further possibilities include that Yang’s brother had her committed to an asylum, or that Yang simply settled down in a mansion in the center of Yangon, or possibly spent yet another stretch of time in prison. Meanwhile, during this period and over the next twenty years, the Kokang region fell under the control of the Communist Party of Burma. Yang herself didn’t quite resurface until 1989, when she was well into her sixties and living as a retired warlord, though still a respected and revered figure in the region.
Yang came back into the spotlight in ‘89 when she and her former deputy, Lo Hsing Han, were recruited by the Burmese government’s chief of intelligence, Khin Nyunt, to help broker a ceasefire amongst ethnic rebel groups fighting at the time across Burma. Using her local connections, Yang successfully negotiated an impactful peace agreement that would go on to last up until 2009.
Yang spent her later years living quietly under the care of her stepson and his militiamen in a compound in the town of Muse. After a period of chronic illnesses, including a stroke in 2015, Yang used a wheelchair full-time, though continued to chain smoke and mentioned that she was happy to be living amongst respectful soldiers. During these later years, Yang was reportedly shown a photograph of Ms. Win Shwe by an interviewer, to which she smirked devilishly and said “That whole property was mine.” In 2017, Yang briefly entered into a coma as a result of a second stroke, before passing away at the age of ninety on July 13th, 2017. Her tomb was built with the aid of one of her former soldiers, and stands near Muse, just outside of Kokang.
Considering the time period during which Olive Yang lived, combined with the geographic region and traditionally conservative society in which she found herself, it is difficult to exactly label or even fully conceptualize Olive Yang’s sexuality or gender identity. Born female, sources around her deemed her to be either bisexual or a lesbian, given her noted sexual proclivities towards other women and her affairs with the likes of Wah Wah Win Shwe and Louisa Benson Craig. Reports at the time also depict Yang as living, acting and dressing openly in a masculine fashion, describing her as having a men’s haircut with graying temples, wearing men’s jackets with men’s shirts underneath, and constantly smoking a cigarette at any given time. Given her ‘unfeminine’ presentation, intelligence reports and letters dispatched at the time of Yang’s rule describe her as ‘manly-hearted’, and early on Yang came to acquire the nickname “Miss Hairy Legs.” Later in life, Yang notably requested to be called “Uncle Olive” by all those around her.
What is truly remarkable is that Yang seemingly made no attempt to conform or sweep under the rug who she was and how she wanted to live. Though she may not have had the terminology, Yang lived openly as queer from an early age, and comfortably acted upon it as soon as she seized power and felt secure enough to do so. In a roughly translated quote, Yang makes a comment about herself: “I like[d] to use knives and guns since I was a child, but I haven’t read books and [have] no culture. Am I so important?” Given the brazen choices she made and unabashed life she lived, one would argue that no matter what side of history she fell on, Olive Yang was indeed, important.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
EST Media. “The Second Biggest Drug Dealer in The World - Queen of the Golden Triangle.” Youtube, 2021, December 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w--gvecMeEM
Jun, Lai, ed. “The Queen of Poisons, Miss Yang Er, Who Quietly Retired.” Yangcheng Evening News, 2009, April 3. https://web.archive.org/web/20090702055616/http://www.bjjdzx.org/5/2009-04-03/24902.htm
Lintner, Bertil. “Kokang: The Backstory.” The Irrawaddy, 2015, March 9. https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/kokang-the-backstory.html
Lintner, Bertil. “The Golden Triangle Opium Trade: An Overview.” Asia Pacific Media Services, 2000, March. http://www.asiapacificms.com/papers/pdf/gt_opium_trade.pdf
Paluch, Gabrielle. “The Female Warlord Who Had C.I.A. Connections and Opium Routes.” The New York Times, 2017, July 21. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/world/asia/burmese-warlord-olive-yang.html
Paluch, Gabrielle. “The Royal-Turned-Warlord and Opium Pioneer of the Golden Triangle Dies at 90.” The World, 2017, July 18. https://theworld.org/stories/2017-07-18/royal-turned-warlord-and-opium-pioneer-golden-triangle-dies-90
Smith, Harrison. “Olive Yang, Cross-dressing warlord and Burmese opium trafficker, dies at 90.” The Washington Post, 2017, July 24. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/olive-yang-cross-dressing-warlord-and-burmese-opium-trafficker-dies-at-90/2017/07/24/97a829c6-6fc7-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html
Teacup Media. “Olive Yang | Ep. 292 | The China History Podcast.” Youtube, 2022, January 26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5ZpHSJSuOQ
“The First Female Drug Lord in the Golden Triangle, the Leader of the Drug King Luo Xinghan, the Legend of the Double-gun Hua Mulan and the Second Miss Yang.” N.D. https://inf.news/en/history/647f505756173008e4e7c6777f81fb79.html