A City Up for Grabs
If Myanmar was for decades the black hole in the heart of Asia — a frozen nation in the middle of the most dynamic region on earth — the Secretariat Building is the black hole in the heart of Yangon. The walk there leads through a manic section of the historic downtown, a New World-style grid laid out by the British colonialists in a bid to impose Western order. In this stretch of the city, virtually every storefront is occupied, many with shiny new establishments like Tokyo Donut, a local chain that trades on Dunkin’s graphic design and Tokyo’s urban cool. But the real action is out on the sidewalks. Hawkers selling newspapers and mobile phones — commodities that were tightly restricted by the junta until just recently — share space with food stands offering pan-Asian fusion cuisine, a reflection of the city’s cosmopolitan roots. One popular snack is a fried wonton stuffed with lentils and potatoes, essentially a spring roll crossbred with a samosa. At dusk, an impromptu night market breaks out, as fishmongers sell the day’s catch from woven wicker baskets filled with fast-melting ice. Down the block, young foodies (and stray animals) congregate around the barbeque stalls where, for a few dollars, they can pick out a dinner, ranging from simple tofu cubes on a stick to a spice-rubbed whole fish. They dig in at tiny plastic tables set out in reclaimed parking spaces.
But on the superblock where the Secretariat Building sits, all the action stops. Back during the height of the junta’s power, the Ministers’ Office was so heavily guarded that people were afraid to walk alongside the building on the street. “Then, one day, it was suddenly vacant,” recalled François Tainturier, a French architect who has lived in Yangon for over a decade. On New Years Day, 2006, the junta announced that it had moved the capital to the newly-built city of Naypyitaw in the center of the country. Even the civil servants who worked in Yangon were unaware that a new capital was under construction; they were simply told to pack up their offices and move north. To this day, no hawker dares set up shop on the sidewalk abutting the building.
The Secretariat is now ready for a new life, but as with so many other Yangon institutions, its rebirth is contentious. In 2011, the building was privatized, but the auction was open only to bidders with government connections. The new owner is the daughter of a former minister of industry. A scheme by foreign investors to convert the building into a hotel so outraged locals that the government stepped in to stop it. Current plans call for a cultural center or museum — it was here that armed paramilitaries assassinated independence leader Aung San and six cabinet ministers in 1947 — but many are skeptical. “Maybe one section will be a cultural center or a museum with an entrance fee,” Tainturier predicted, but “they’ll lease out the [rest] and make money.” We spoke in the lobby of an upscale hotel that was, like just about everything else in Yangon, undergoing renovations.