Uncle Olive, the Opium Queen of Kokang

Myanmar Musings

Gabrielle Palluch, author of The Opium Queen: The Untold Story of the Rebel Who Ruled the Golden Triangle, published by Rowman & Littlefield, joins the show to discuss the remarkable life of Olive Yang. Born in the Kokang region in the 1920s, Uncle Olive was an enigmatic and influential figure in the history of her ancestral region: brother and sister to royalty, potential CIA collaborator, maybe drug smuggler, almost-definitely arms trader, cattle dealer and sponsor of celebrity film stars... She lived quite a life, and Gabrielle has dedicated over 200 pages to trying to sort out the fact from the fiction.