Olive Yang


Olive Yang was a prominent opium warlord and the sister of Sao Edward Yang Kyein Tsai, the saopha of Kokang, a state in post-independent Burma from 1949 to 1959.

Biography

Olive Yang was born on 24 June 1927 in northern Shan States, British Burma. She received an education at Lashio's Guardian Angel's Convent School. At the age of 19, she organized ethnic Kokang forces, nicknamed the Olive's Boys, an army of over a thousand soldiers and consolidated control of opium trade routes from the highlands to lowlands. She dominated Kokang's opium trade from the end of World War II to the early 1960s. In the 1950s, after the Nationalist defeat and their subsequent expulsion from mainland China, she partnered with the Kuomintang to establish opium trade routes along the Golden Triangle.
From 1948 to 1950, she was married to Twan Sao Wen, the son of Tamaing's chieftain, and had a son, Duan Jipu, in 1950. Her son is a teacher in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
From the 1950s to the mid-1960s, she was the commander of the Kokang Kakweye. She was a prominent figure in opium trafficking and gold trading. She was arrested in 1962, along with her brother Jimmy, a member of parliament in Yangon, by Burmese authorities, to remove them from power and place Kokang territory under Burmese administration. She was imprisoned at Insein Prison and released in 1968.
Yang was known to be a bisexual woman who carried on affairs with film actresses and singers, including Wah Wah Win Shwe. In the late 1980s, she was recruited by Khin Nyunt to help broker ceasefires in Burma with ethnic rebel groups.
After her release, she reportedly spent her final years as a nun. In 2003, after a period of chronic illness, she returned to Kokang, where she lived until her death at the age of 90.