Third Day. Saturday, 10 April 2016

Wu Zixu (died BC 484), the “first ancestor” from my paternal grandfather’s side (Photo:cultural-

A mill does not run with the water that is past.

Louis L’Amour, (1915-1985) The Walking Drum

The most famous of all the Wu-s (伍) was General Wu Zixu aka Wu Yun, who was a confederate of Sun Zi who wrote The Art of War , more than 2,500 years ago They have a shrine for him at Suzhou, Jiangsu province. All Wu branches consider him as their “First Ancestor.”

On my paternal grandmother’s side is Hso Khan Fa (1291-1364) of Zelan, whose suzerainty was said to have stretched from Dali in the northeast to Assam in the northwest, and almost all of today’s Burma/Myanmar, except maybe Chin, according to J.G. Scott.

“The sad thing,” I tell my relatives, “is that the glory of the past do not carry us forward. We learn from it, and from it we choose the path to follow. But we have to walk it by ourselves, not depending on the glory of our ancestors to do  it for us,”  quoting Louis L’Amour (another one!): A ship does not sail with yesterday’s wind.

The Shans also have a saying for this:

“Only a tiger can succeed a tiger, that passes a way.”

We have a roaring party in the afternoon at Hotel Royal Taunggyi, and another at the Mawk Zarm Hawm restaurant in the evening.

My generation, about 20 of us in all,  were quite close to each other. But for most of the third and fourth, it is the first introduction to each other. I hope what we have done yesterday and today sets a precedent for the future.