"The Shore Beyond Good and Evil" is a book about a little-known region called Wa. "The name 'Wa' is not indicated on maps," writes author Hideyuki Takano. "Yet, despite its anonymity, perhaps no other place on earth wields such an effect over the world." Just what is so influential about this 10,360 sq. km, semiautonomous territory in eastern Myanmar (Burma), bordering China? The answer is simple: The cool, dry climate of Wa State is ideal for the cultivation of a particularly valuable plant called papaver somniferum, better known as opium poppy, which is refined and smuggled around the globe as the lethally addictive drug heroin. Located in the heart of the Golden Triangle, Wa State is responsible for an astounding 40 percent of the world's opium.
Fed up with reading journalistic "bird's-eye views" of Wa State, Takano wants to go and see for himself what life is like in the opium-producing capital of the world. He decides to live in a traditional Wa village and chronicle one cycle of an opium crop, from the sowing of the seed to the poppy harvest. But getting into Wa State is no easy feat. The nearly impenetrable mountain region is controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA), and the Wa people have long had a reputation for savagery. The Wa were formerly headhunters living in villages approached by "skull avenues" lined with the severed heads of their victims. The British colonial administration put an end to headhunting in the last century, but the region is still a frighteningly lawless land. Luckily, Takano is no stranger to hard travel; he has searched for the yeti in remotest China and trekked through the most inaccessible parts of the African Congo. After negotiations with the UWSA, he rides into Wa State in a truck sitting on "a mountain of metal cans filled with [live] ammunition." Takano's journey into the unknown is told with arresting images. Describing a night spent in a Wa army base that was lit by the feeble glow of a single naked light bulb, he writes, "I felt this tiny light . . . was under threat from the vast darkness of the inner Wa State."
Takano goes by the Wa name Ai Lao (literally, Eldest Brother Storyteller) and, with admirable zeal, throws himself into the hardscrabble routine of Wa village life. He joins in the back-breaking work in the poppy fields each day and downs the local hooch each night. Surprisingly, smoking opium is prohibited in Wa State; though, as Takao learns, this is not always rigorously enforced. Village healers use opium as a curative, and when Takano starts smoking to heal his aches and pains he soon finds himself hooked. The sometimes humorous tales of his attempts to secretly smoke opium in the heart of the world's biggest opium farm make entertaining reading. Less fun for Takano is the incredible lethargy he suffers when he has to quit: "I felt as if each cell in my body was being rammed down by an intense gravity." When Takano first saw opium, however, he was unimpressed: "So this smelly, muddy dumpling had invaded the hearts and minds of people, put the world's police on alert and even triggered murders and wars. It didn't seem to make sense."