A British clipper ship hauls bales of opium to emaciated Chinese addicts as sailors belt out rollicking sea shanties. ”What a wonderful world,” croons Louis Armstrong among stark images of movie stars, musicians and other celebrities cut down by drugs in the prime of life.
These multi-media tableaux form part of a harrowing, yet ultimately moving museum set in the very heart of the so-called Golden Triangle, origin of more than half the world’s heroin and a haven for traffickers.
Although yet to officially open, what may well be the country’s finest museum is already attracting thousands of school children along with Thai and foreign tourists to this Mekong River village where the frontiers of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos converge.
The 400-million baht ($10-million) steel and concrete Hall of Opium, somewhat incongruous in its setting of lush, mist-streaked forests, hopes to also become a leading international center for research into opiates and a weapon against a veritable drug invasion of Thailand.
”The hope is that with insight, youth, the group most at risk today, will stay away from drugs. We hope a visit to the Hall of Opium will imbue them with the determination to fight against drugs,” says Paveena Viriyaprapaikit, the project’s director.
Visitors enter through a 137-metre-long tunnel, its dim lighting, eerie music and bas-reliefs of wraith-like figures evoking both suffering and easing of pain, as well as the Triangle’s danger and mystery.
The exhibits, spread over 5 600 square metres, end with a Hall of Reflection, a sunlit room of Zen-like simplicity inscribed with sayings in praise of moderation and humanity’s striving for good. ”Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall,” reads one from the Chinese philosopher Confucius.
In between, the story of opium and its derivatives morphine and heroin is told in vivid set-pieces, video films, photographs and written commentary.
The cargo hold of an 18th century British ship carrying opium, an early 20th century opium den in Thailand and scenes from the Opium Wars in China are carefully reconstructed. More recent times furnish exhibits of how smugglers stuff drugs into teddy bears, soak shirts in heroin or swallow condoms packed with narcotics.
Exhibits depict the Golden Triangle’s warlords, corruption and bloodshed, but American researcher Charles Mehl says the displays also make clear that narcotics came to the region relatively recently and are not inextricably linked to the impoverished hilltribes that grow the ravishing opium poppy.
The first written mention of opium, the museum’s historical section notes, is found in Sumerian texts going back 5 000 years.
The Egyptians indulged in it for pleasure and some ancient Romans used toxic doses to poison their enemies. The moguls of India fed it to their war elephants to calm them down in battle.
Before anesthesia and aspirin, produced in 1900, opium and morphine relieved the physical agonies and minor pains of millions, even though the drugs were sometimes misused. A 19th century American advertisement praises an opium-based ”Mrs. Winslow’s soothing syrup for children teething” while makers of a morphine mixture advised wives to keep wayward husbands at home by stirring it into their coffee.
”We tried to present a fair picture of opium, both its advantages for humans and its dangers. That was difficult. Usually it’s so demonized,” said Mehl, who led a team of prominent Thai academics. Only some 10% of the material gathered in nine years of research was put into the exhibits, he said.
Perhaps most searing is a long, narrowing passage representing the descent from initial euphoria of drug users to great suffering and blasted talent. Photographs of rock king Elvis Presley, comedian Lenny Bruce, soccer star Diego Maradona and others who fell prey to drugs hang in a Gallery of Victims.
”Any musician who says he is playing better on tea, the needle, or when he is juiced, is a plain straight liar,” reads a quote under the photo of jazz great Charlie Parker, dead at 35 from heroin abuse.
”Cocaine isn’t habit forming. I should know — I’ve been using it for years,” Hollywood actress Tallulah Bankhead once quipped as her career plummeted.
In one display, visitors are drawn to the exquisitely beautiful face of Ju Jia smiling from a wall. As Armstrong sings about the joys of living, the haunting face suddenly appears again, a caption noting that the budding Chinese actress died from a drug overdose at 28.
Credited with inspiring such exhibits was Princess Srinagarindra, much-revered mother of Thailand’s King Bhumpibol Adulyadej, who died in 1995 after years devoted to helping the hilltribes in northern Thailand. The museum was set up and is run by a foundation started by the princess.
In the Thai hills of the Triangle, opium growing is largely history. About the most exciting thing visitors to this village will encounter is having their photographs taken with cute ethnic Thai girls in hilltribe dresses beneath a touristy gateway arch to the Triangle.
But in Laos and especially in Myanmar, also known as Burma, a huge drug business persists amid the region’s lawlessness and poverty. Methamphetamies and traditional drugs have made their way across the borders and penetrated every segment of Thai society including schools.
This year, some 100 000 students will have passed through the museum, which plans to expand its education program.
Mehl says he hopes that by the time they leave the museum, both Thais and foreigners will be better able to evaluate the risk of narcotics and make the right choices.
”In the Hall of Reflection,” he says, ”people may realise that there’s hope, that you can change things, but it takes time.” – Sapa-AP