LUANG PRABANG, Laos - Chinese are coming to Laos for several reasons. Some are here on business. Some are on vacation. Others know people already living here. Yo-Yo is all three.
Yo-Yo is a 22-year-old female from Dali, a city in China's Yunnan Province. She just finished her university degree from Yunnan University, one of the best schools in Southern China. Now she works for a daily newspaper in Kunming, the provincal capital. Her English is quite good, probably helped by her college's high number of foreign language students. She's attractive, intelligent, in short, everything you'd expect from a member of China's young, globalized generation.
But I ran into Yo-Yo doing a pretty menial job, mixing fruit shakes at Sakura Restaurant in Vang Vieng, Laos' riverside backpacker hangout. She's here for a couple weeks on a working vacation, assisting her parents, aunt and sister, who own the restaurant.
I'm not sure why it's called Sakura (Japanese for "cherry tree") but it's been running for three years now and is a find among dozens of cookie-cutter restaurants. There are both tables and Thai style pillows to lounge on. At the nightly happy hour there's a free Lao Whiskey shot for anyone who has been tubing that day (everyone) and another free drink to anyone who brings their iPod. This brings in a fresh mix of music, and ensuring that people are stuck listening to the three Jack Johnson records an American hippy left behind a couple years back. I ate here twice, and there were a good number of costumers each time.
The streets of Vang Vieng haven't changed since my last visit, but the stores on them have. There's a better selection of goods, more crackers and fruit juices, more screwdrivers and playing cards. And the people selling are increasingly Chinese from Hunan or Yunnan Province, attracted by a sleepy local commerce that hasn't woken up from three decades of state-planned markets.
These people arrive not speaking Lao, and a good number don't speak English, either. Like centuries of Chinese migrants before them, they travel abroad to bring the products of their native land at a reasonable price.
China needs Laos. Thanks to the French, who successfully added this part of Thailand to French Indochina in the late nineteenth century, China and Thailand have no land border. Therefore all trade must go through either Burma or Laos. The Chinese are funding highway construction in Burma, but the route is longer, more mountainous, and passes through unstable territory in the hands of Karen rebels. Going through Laos is a more attractive option, and the Chinese are pouring millions of dollars to upgrade the roads.
I can see the improvements. The road from Vientiane to Vang Vieng now takes an hour less than it did a year ago. The sharp mountainous turns south of Luang Prabang have a few less potholes.
The Chinese are also building a separate infrastructure to support this new trade. A trade magazine I picked up here in Luang Prabang had many advertisements in Chinese. In Vientiane a new hotel promises Chinese television, Chinese restaurants, Chinese speaking staff and a karaoke room stocked with Chinese tunes. In Luang Prabang there's the "China-Lao Restaurant," "A Taste of China," and the "Luang Prabang China Restaurant." These aren't for Western or local tourists, a couple don't even have English or Lao menus.
I appreciate what the Chines have done here. There's now a direct sleeper bus that runs from Vientiane to Kunming, in China, that will shave two days off the journey. We're planning to hop on here in Luang Prabang and use it to cross the border, riding the Chinese Tide back to the Motherland.
