迷失在金三角密林里的中国孤军

choi

Amy Qin, 迷失在金三角密林里的中国孤军. 纽约时报中文网, Jan 15, 2015
cn.nytimes.com/asia-pacific/20150115/c15thailand/


, which is translated from

Amy Qin, In Remote Thai Villages, Legacy of China’s Lost Army Endures. New York Times, Jan 15, 2015.

Quote:

(a) "The Liangs 杨, like some 200 other families here, are the veterans or descendants of what is known as China’s Lost Army * * * As most Nationalist soldiers fled east to Taiwan in the face of Communist advances, the Kuomintang’s 93rd Division 93师 retreated west from the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan into Myanmar, then known as Burma. * * * with the help of Taiwan and the United States, [they] continued to stage forays into China.

(b) "In the 1960s and ’70s * * * They later struck a deal with the Thai government allowing them to stay in the northern Thai borderlands in exchange for help fighting the Thai Communists.

"In the mid-1980s, with the Communist threat essentially extinguished, the Kuomintang soldiers agreed to put down their arms and take up farming. In exchange, the Thai government began to grant them and their families Thai citizenship.

"Today, 64 of these so-called Kuomintang villages, including Ban Rak Thai — or Mae Aw, as locals call it — remain in northern Thailand, according to statistics published by the Taiwan government last year.

(c) "the older generation in Ban Rak Thai [] still speak of the past in terms of the traditional minguo calendar 使用民国纪年

choi

Note:
(a) Ban Rak Thai. Wikivoyage, undated.
en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Ban_Rak_Thai
(b) The last sentence of quotation 1 uses the present tense, which surprises me. In Taiwan there was little mention of the Lost Army. 泰緬孤軍
zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/泰緬孤軍

(c) "Mr Huang [Jiada 黄加达] was inspired to build the museum after seeing the impressive Kuomintang history museum in Santikhiri, in Chiang Rai Province, the country’s most prominent Kuomintang village."
(i) Mae Salong
en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Mae_Salong
(officially called Santikhiri; "They were at first supported by Taiwan and the USA [which proves the present tense in (b) is simply wrong]")
(ii) Santikhiri
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santikhiri

does not help, but a handful of photos in the Wiki page are worth viewing.
(iii) Chiang Rai Province (capital: City of Chiang Rai) is bound on the west by Chiang Mai province.
(iv) Chiang Mai
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Mai
(capital of Chiang Mai Province; Chiang Mai means "new city" and was so-named because it became the new capital of the Lanna kingdom when it was founded in 1296, succeeding Chiang Rai, the former capital founded in 1262)
(v) Mark Ord, Geographical names in Thailand. Travelfish.org, Dec 30, 2011
www.travelfish.org/blogs/thailan ... -names-in-thailand/
(“Firstly, and obviously… Chiang itself. This is the North Thai, or Lanna, spelling of an old Tai word meaning town or city. We say Tai rather than Thai as it’s common to several of the dialects of the wider Tai language family as well as Northern Thai itself. * * * Mai means new so Chiang Mai is of course New City, as it was founded later than Chiang Rai, the earlier capital of King Mengrai”)
(vi) Meaning of “Rai” or “rai”?  It is NOT in the Thai English dictionary.
(A) History of Chiang Rai. HotelTravel.com, undated
www.hoteltravel.com/thailand/chiang_rai/history-of-chiang-rai.htm
("Lanna means 'land of a million rice fields,' a title fitting this rich and rural agricultural region. The Lanna Kingdom's founding father was King Meng Rai * * * Legend has it that he followed his elephant as it wandered off the path, ultimately leading him to the place where he founded his capital city, Chiang Rai. While Chiang Rai's capital status was fleeting (King Mengrai later founded Chiang Mai, which assumed capital status soon after), Chiang Rai remained the king's favourite city. Today a monument to him stands in central Chiang Rai [photo]")
(B) Lanna
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanna
(a kingdom centered in present-day northern Thailand [colored purpe in the map of "1300 CE"]; 1292-1775; In 1262, Mangrai moved the capital from Ngoenyang to the newly founded Chiang Rai – naming the city after himself)

(d) "Liang Zhongxia 杨中夏 [--84, a former Kuomintang commander, among the 93rd Division’s last surviving veterans--] * * * After more than a half of a century in exile, he was reluctant to go home. * * * Too much time had passed, he said, and he quoted a verse from an ancient Chinese poem: 'My arms have outgrown my sleeves 手长衣袖短，无面见江东.'"
(i) All translations in this posting are from cn.nytimes.com, except ()(B) at the bottom.
(ii) Though I have not heard of it before, nytimes.com correctly translates into 手长衣袖短, but the second half 无面见江东 is a bunk.
(A) 手长衣袖短: "比喻心有余而力不足。 如： '我虽然很想帮你， 但手长衣袖短， 也只好作罢！ '”
bkrs.info/slovo.php?ch=%E6%89%8B%E9%95%BF%E8%A1%A3%E8%A2%96%E7%9F%AD
(B) The earliest record I can locate is

第二回 跳跎子请洒钱公子 庄相儿会混世虫儿. In 邹必显, 飞跎全传. 1817 (publication year)
www.my285.com/gdwx/xs/yyi/ftqz/02.htm
("富家郎也把那跎子一看，只见他：* * * 两只不出手，指头都是短的，叫做手掌儿，看不见手背儿，又叫做：手长衣袖短，难见故乡人")

My interpretation is looked too ugly, shabby--thus 难见故乡人.