Page 71 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

Downtown Yangon Yangon and around 69
crowded, especially on its Mahabandoola Road side, usually rammed with crazed 1
bargain-hunters and stuffed with huge quantities of cheap clothes piled up on the
quaint wooden stalls (most of which appear to date back to colonial times, with an
unusual design resembling large, two-storey cupboards). The eastern building is only
fractionally less chock-a-block, although things become a little calmer as you head
north, and the market acquires a distinctly Indian flavour as you approach Anawrahta
Road and the Sri Kali temple, with shops full of sacks of spices, pulses, dried herbs,
and mysterious bits of culinary and medicinal herb and root.

Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue
26th St • Mon–Sat 9.30am–2.30pm • Free
The self-effacing Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue is easily missed in one of downtown
Yangon’s busiest districts. The synagogue was constructed between 1893 and 1896
to replace an earlier building of 1854 and served colonial Rangoon’s thriving
community of Sephardic Jews from Baghdad and India (such as the Sofaer brothers;
see p.63). Before World War II the city was home to as many as 2500 Jews,
although most left either during the wartime Japanese occupation or later,
following Ne Win’s military coup of 1962. The synagogue lost its last rabbi in 1969;
Yangon’s current Jewish population now numbers fewer than twenty and much of
the synagogue congregation comes from overseas visitors. The interior is one of
Yangon’s most beautifully preserved period pieces, with a gold-railed bimah (the
platform from which the Torah is read) flanked by a pair of menorah lamps, a finely
decorated ceiling and high arches supporting a pair of wooden balconies – for
women – on either side.

Chinatown

Yangon’s bustling Chinatown (roughly the area south of Anawrahta Road between
Shwedagon Pagoda Road and Lanmadaw Street) is the major home for the city’s
Chinese-descended inhabitants, and one of the liveliest and most enjoyable parts
of downtown.
Guanyin Gumiao Temple
Mahabandoola Rd • Free • Daily 24hr
At the heart of Chinatown, the imposing Guanyin Gumiao Temple (aka the Guangdong
Guanyin Temple) is dedicated to Guanyin (the Chinese version of Avalokitesvara, the
Bodhisattva of compassion), attracting a mainly Cantonese crowd. The original temple
was built in 1823, and destroyed by a fire in 1855 before rising back up out of the
ashes in 1864. The tiled interior is less impressive than the Kheng Hock Keong
(see below), but still a fine sight, with red tables laden with incense pots, flower vases,
and assorted fairy-lit shrines.
Kheng Hock Keong Temple
• Strand Rd, between 18th and Sinn O Dan sts • Free • Daily 24hr
The flamboyant Kheng Hock Keong Chinese temple (“Temple in Celebration of
Good Fortune”) is the city’s largest and most impressive – a wooden temple was first
erected here in 1861, replaced by the current brick structure in 1903. Standing close
to the waterfront and docks, the temple is dedicated to the sea goddess Mazu and
maintained by the local Hokkien clan association, attracting mainly Hokkien and
Hakka worshippers. The central altar enshrines an image of Mazu within an intricate
riot of gold decoration, flanked on her left by Guan Gong, god of war, and on her right
by Bao Sheng Da Di, god of medicine.

054-097_Myanmar_B2_Ch1.indd 69 30/06/17 2:20 pm