"...family back home needs the money, so they come pick stones? The rule is, whatever we miners find belongs to us to sell. If someone finds a good stone and people just come take it, then nobody's ever going to work at that mine again. None of us will go back."
"This time our boss said every stone we found was excellent, possibly dragon-stone type, and the brothers were guarding them with their lives. Then the mine owner comes to snatch them away."
"So you all just walked out? Went to another mountain?"
"No, they're all inside..." At this, he suddenly caught himself, as if realizing he'd said too much, and started to run again. Uncle Harvey quickly blocked his path.
"Inside the mine?"
"Yes, and soldiers went in too! They're going to shoot people!"
"What!?" Uncle Harvey and I exclaimed in unison. How had things escalated this far?
"After they fought the mine owner's people, soldiers with guns showed up quickly, trying to force us to hand over the raw stones we'd found."
Uncle Harvey said, "Boss U wouldn't be short of that kind of money, would he?"
"I didn't want to die, so I gave mine to them."
"You're saying some people didn't give them up?"
"Of course there's no reason to give them up! We work ourselves to the bone, just hoping to pick up one good stone. Now that people are saying dragon-stone jadeite has come out of this mine, we're guarding our finds with our lives. And then they start shooting! I was so scared I dropped everything and ran."
"Where did the soldiers with guns take them?"
The young man pointed in a direction. "Further inside, there's a lake."
"Brother, you said you gave them your stone—did they let you go?"
"They didn't let me go either! I ran out on my own. You two should get out of here too! It's chaos in there, really dangerous! If you want to buy stones, I can take you there! I know the place—jadeite, the real deal, really beautiful..."
I thought he was right—it was dangerous. I turned to see what Uncle Harvey thought. But when I looked—good lord—Uncle Harvey was already sprinting toward the interior of the mine.
"You've got a death wish too!?" I shouted. "Uncle Harvey, they're shooting in there!"
Uncle Harvey ignored me and kept running deeper in.
I yelled again, "Uncle Harvey, is the damn money more important than your life!?"
This time Uncle Harvey stopped. He turned around and shouted back, "You're right—life is important!"
The words were barely out of his mouth before he started running again, hollering as he went: "But money is more important!"
---
I had no choice but to follow him. We carefully made our way down two levels of the terraced slope and rounded a bend where the ore-hauling trucks ran. Then we saw what the dark-skinned young man had called the "small lake"—it was the lowest point of the mine pit, where the excavation had struck water. It wasn't large enough for anyone to use for washing jadeite stones, so nobody had bothered with it.
But right now, this lake was far from quiet.
As we ran toward it, we saw over a hundred Yemuxi workers submerged in the water, only their heads visible above the surface. On the shore stood a large ring of soldiers—close to a hundred of them—dressed in gray uniforms and black boots, each carrying a semi-automatic rifle. The soldiers had formed a cordon that was tightening, pushing the Yemuxi deeper into the water. A few Yemuxi still on the shore were jumping into the lake one by one, like dumplings dropping into a pot.
Uncle Harvey and I took cover behind a large boulder about thirty meters from the water's edge and poked our heads out to observe.
Looking more carefully, I could see some Yemuxi were in direct confrontation with the soldiers. The workers shoved and pushed, trying to break out. The soldiers fired warning shots into the air, then beat and kicked the workers back into the encirclement. Gunshots echoed across the open mine like the sharp crack of the most powerful firecrackers, and the semi-automatic rifles produced rapid bursts of three or four shots—*rat-tat-tat*—that made my heart pound.
Thankfully, I hadn't yet seen anyone actually shot. But the clashes were escalating, and I had no idea when I'd see blood spilled.
Uncle Harvey saw the soldiers about to open fire on people and actually charged out, shouting, "Me ya bu!"—"Don't shoot!" in Burmese.
I was terrified. "Don't go!"
Too late. The fool was already out there. What if the soldiers shot him dead!?
Uncle Harvey shouted and jumped around, but he might as well have been invisible. The lakeside was pure chaos—nobody had ears for his words. The soldiers were outnumbered and desperate to maintain control. Dozens of semi-automatic rifles pointed at hundreds of people trapped in the water; their nerves were already on edge. Uncle Harvey, meanwhile, looked like some kind of boss or visitor—neither a Yemuxi nor a soldier—with his small frame and his manner more like a miniature Boss U. So the soldiers simply ignored him.
After shouting "Me ya bu" to no avail, Uncle Harvey actually started grabbing soldiers by the arm! Watching from behind the boulder, I was sweating bullets for him. What if someone just shot him? But Uncle Harvey wasn't shot—the soldier he grabbed, seeing him make physical contact, pivoted and slammed his shoulder into Uncle Harvey, who lost his balance and fell. Just as Uncle Harvey was halfway to his feet, the soldier kicked him square in the rear!
A small splash—Uncle Harvey tumbled into the lake. I thought, *this is bad*, but figured I'd stay behind the rock and observe. But after Uncle Harvey fell in, instead of popping his head above the surface like the other Burmese workers, the splashing only grew more frantic. Could it be that this guy couldn't swim!?
Another moment passed—still no face. My mind went blank. I couldn't think anymore! I gritted my teeth and dashed out from behind the boulder.
I ran toward the water. Sure enough, soldiers spotted someone else charging in and swiveled their guns toward me. My stomach dropped, but I didn't stop. I raised both hands high and shouted everything I could think of: "Chinese! De yu bi! De yu qin! De yu sa ga! Chinese! Don't shoot!" (*De yu* was the Burmese word for Chinese.) In the panic, I threw out every language and every phrase that might possibly work.
The Burmese soldier I'd been shouting at looked confused. He glanced at the soldier beside him, who glanced back—but his rifle stayed pointed at me. *It's working,* I thought. I kept my hands raised, slowed my pace, and waded into the water to haul out the struggling Uncle Harvey. He was thrashing about; the lake water was already murky, and his flailing made it feel even more perilous than calm water. I desperately shouted "Help! Help!" and reached for him—and then felt a sharp pain in my backside, followed by a sickening lurch of weightlessness, and muddy water flooded my nose. I'd been kicked in too.
The cold shock of the water brought clarity, but the terror of having been kicked compounded by swallowing a mouthful of water. I forced myself to calm down and tried to paddle upward. After a few strokes I discovered, to my surprise, that the water wasn't deep at all. I could stand with the water only reaching my shoulders.
I looked around and spotted Uncle Harvey nearby—looked like he'd been struggling to his limit. I rushed over, hauled him upright, and shouted, "It's okay! Don't panic! You can stand!"
I pulled him up, and he got his feet under him, coming back to his senses with a violent fit of coughing. There we stood, soaking in the lake water with our heads above the surface, packed in among the Yemuxi.
"This water could drown you!?" I snapped at him.
"Cough—oh—cough, cough—Zach, I love you so much," Uncle Harvey sputtered. He'd clearly taken in a lot of water.
"Please don't. You love me, I love being alive. What the hell are we going to do now?"
Though he was terrified of water, Uncle Harvey didn't seem the least bit cowed by the Burmese soldiers' guns. He kept shouting toward the shore.
He grabbed my long hair and held it up. "Look at him! We're not Burmese! Chinese!"
The soldiers had no particular desire to make things harder for us, but they also didn't let us leave. They just stood on the shore with their guns pointed at the people in the water.
The cold water made me look at the soldiers' rifles with fresh eyes. The guns were old, worn, with muzzles that looked cold and black. I knew that getting shot wasn't like in war hero movies—you can't take multiple hits and deliver a closing monologue before being rushed to a hospital. At this range, a rifle shot to the shoulder would, at best, cost you an entire arm. A shot to the chest would leave an exit wound the size of an apple. The fear of death in the water became viscerally real. Looking up from the water at the soldiers on the shore was even more oppressive—we were fish on a cutting board, bull's-eyes at the business end of those rifles.
I felt a warm current in the water near my abdomen. I looked at Uncle Harvey. He looked back at me and shook his head slowly. We both looked at the Burmese people around us. This was bad. I did not want to die like this.
At that moment, a Hummer came flying across the open ground, kicking up a huge plume of dust. The soldier in charge seemed to recognize the vehicle—he stepped back and aside, and the other soldiers created a passageway. The vehicle drove right to the water's edge and stopped.
The door opened, and out came a fat black foot in a white sandal. The person who stepped out was none other than Boss U.
"Mingalaba, Boss U!" Uncle Harvey, still ignoring the guns pointed at him, struggled to the shore and shouted at Boss U.