Myanmar in the Fire of War: The Dignity of the Dollar, Trapped Youth, and the Underground Financial Market

Title: Myanmar Under Fire: The Dignity of the US Dollar, Trapped Youth, and the Underground Financial Market

Author: Joe Zhou

Source:

Reprinted from Mars Finance

During the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, I traveled to Myanmar for a two-week field investigation.

Passing through Yangon, Bagan, and Mandalay, I tried to uncover the true economic, financial, and social survival conditions of this country under the shadow of war. As the first part of my journey, this article will present what I saw as the real Myanmar.

Just in the first week in Yangon, the overwhelming flow of information far exceeded my expectations:

Children dropping out of school at age 9 to serve food, middle-aged men at risk of conscription at any moment, young people unable to obtain passports to leave, and foreigners here “buying wives” exploiting economic disparities…

Under the control of warlords, Yangon’s bars and KTVs still maintain a glamorous illusion; meanwhile, in many other cities in Myanmar, every night at 7 p.m., the streets fall silent as if a ghost town, with no one in sight.

This is a vast, folded system. War and corruption grow in the gaps, and soaring prices are pushing ordinary people’s lives to the edge.

Myanmar Folded

To understand this裂, we must first see the three layers of “folds” that exist in this country.

There are two Myanmars in this world: one filtered through internet censorship, and one in reality; one is the officially polished data Myanmar, and the other is the struggling Myanmar in the black market.

The first fold is the deep and unpredictable exchange rate gap. Upon arriving in Myanmar, I exchanged 2,500 RMB at a Chinese restaurant for 1.38 million kyat. The official rate claims 1:300, but the black market rate has already fallen to 1:550.

The country’s official exchange rate is virtually meaningless; the black market rate reflects the true market value.

The second fold is the dramatic salary disparity. A waiter serving food in Hong Kong earns about 18,000 RMB per month, in Shanghai about 8,000 RMB, but in Bagan, Myanmar, this figure suddenly drops to a suffocating 300 RMB.

Even within Myanmar, the urban-rural gap remains huge. An overseas Chinese who has lived in the city told me that waiters in big cities earn between 500 and 800 RMB per month—meaning even the highest-paid low-income group in Myanmar earns only about one-tenth of what their counterparts in Shanghai do.

The third fold involves the demonized online labels versus the simple reality. On Chinese internet, Myanmar is crudely reduced to “kidney selling” and online scams. But when you walk the streets of Yangon, Bagan, and Mandalay, you find most people still maintain extreme simplicity and peace. Northern Myanmar is indeed dangerous, filled with war and gray industries, but fundamentally, those crimes have nothing to do with the vast majority of ordinary Myanmar people—who are also the most helpless victims in this grand geopolitical and利益的绞肉机.

The Dignity of the US Dollar

This bottom-layer economic裂 and insecurity are most absurdly reflected in the currency.

Myanmar’s underground financial market operates under a strict rule: US dollars cannot be folded or damaged, and any bill with stains or tears is refused.

The common sense in economics that “a worn $10 bill still has value” is completely invalid here. Even a slight crease will cause vendors to ruthlessly reject the banknote. Every Myanmar person I’ve encountered handling dollars seems like a dealer inspecting a rare antique with a magnifying glass, holding their breath and carefully examining every corner and hidden line of the bill.

In stark contrast is the undignified local currency—kyat can be crumpled, stuffed into pockets, or even washed in water and still be spent; but the dollar must remain pristine. In locals’ subconscious, damaged US dollars are equivalent to worn-out gold, and must face a 10% to 20% discount.

This almost pathological “cleanliness obsession” vividly reflects the extreme fragility of Myanmar’s financial system. Long-term sanctions and complete financial isolation have caused the official and black market exchange rates to diverge sharply. In this country, where security is lost, the dignity of a green banknote is infinitely elevated—its respectability far surpasses that of a struggling, exhausted human being.

5 Bottles of Water Equal a Day’s Wage for an Adult

The collapse of monetary trust directly fuels runaway inflation. After years of conflict, Myanmar’s prices have become chaotic.

According to local Kosla, over the past decade, most goods in Myanmar have increased in price by about five times, while wages have only doubled. The cold facts are: in 2019, a JJ Express bus ticket cost 11,000 kyat; by 2026, it had risen to 50,000 kyat. A bottle of mineral water, once sold mainly to foreigners for 200 kyat, now costs between 800 and 1,000 kyat.

Prices have quadrupled or quintupled, but labor has become increasingly cheap. In Bagan, a typical adult waiter’s daily wage was 2,500 kyat ten years ago; now it’s 5,000 kyat (less than 10 RMB). Kosla confirms this is common for most restaurant waiters in Bagan. Veraswami, a restaurant owner in Yangon, also revealed a brutal bottom line: the average monthly salary for ordinary Myanmar people is usually only 200 to 300 RMB.

Only physically demanding work and jobs in big cities can offer a little more breathing room. Near Mandalay’s famous pagodas, a construction worker working under the blazing sun told me his daily wage is 30,000 kyat (less than 60 RMB).

Ordinary people’s incomes are firmly stuck in place. In Myanmar, locals generally cannot afford bottled water. Just five bottles of the most common mineral water can instantly wipe out a day’s hard-earned wages.

Child Labor in Myanmar: The “Working Class”

As the meager wages of adults are drained by inflation, the heavy burden of survival inevitably falls on the next generation.

In Bagan, Kosla calmly recalled his childhood. To survive, he started working in a restaurant at age 9. From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., earning only 500 kyat a day. It wasn’t until he was 16 that his wages finally increased to 2,500 kyat.

This is not just Kosla’s personal story but a stark reflection of the country’s heartbreaking reality.

From Yangon and Bagan to the northern city of Mandalay, “early maturity” is the most common sight on the streets.

On Yangon’s busy roads, a 15-year-old boy holds a four- or five-year-old sibling, begging through car windows amid exhaust fumes and danger;

In Bagan, children under 10 work in restaurant kitchens, serving water with practiced ease, while near ancient pagodas, groups of teenagers rely on taking photos of tourists for small change; outside Mandalay’s temples, around 10-year-olds help their parents tend incense and offerings.

Time here seems to stand still. Decades have passed, but whether in remote rural areas or core urban centers, little has changed. Childhood is a luxury in this country. Young children are thrown into the brutal survival game early, and this remains Myanmar’s most heavy and intractable daily reality.

Myanmar’s Youth: An Unredeemable Generation

When these prematurely mature children grow up, they face another inescapable prison. For ordinary young Myanmar people, leaving is an extremely costly redemption.

First and foremost are economic shackles. Meager wages are like a dead pool, and merely coping with soaring living costs exhausts all their strength, making “saving to go abroad” an unattainable luxury.

The iron fist of power further cuts off legitimate escape routes. “If you are over 80, you can leave Myanmar freely; but if you are between 18 and 60, the state will never let you go,” a Yangon boss, Veraswami, told me. The government strictly controls youth outbound travel, and passports have become a mere paper illusion.

When normal channels are completely blocked, perverse “escape routes” begin to emerge in the shadows.

“Now many people come to Myanmar specifically to ‘buy wives,’” Veraswami said with a bitter smile, sharing a recent case: to help a foreign man’s Myanmar wife leave smoothly, he spent 3,000 RMB on various connections and fees. For foreigners, 3,000 RMB might be just a regular plane ticket; but for ordinary Myanmar people, it’s an entire life of 15 months of hard work, eating nothing and working tirelessly.

Even risking their lives to work illegally, the reality remains bleak. A Myanmar monk told me many young people try to cross into Thailand by water smuggling. But as border conflicts intensify, Thailand not only refuses Myanmar refugees but also begins strict crackdowns on illegal Myanmar workers.

No way out, no way back. The border here is no longer a dashed line on a map but a chasm built by absolute power and extreme poverty.

Final Words

The camera lingers on a quiet boy gazing out the train window.

He is a microcosm of millions of ordinary boys in Myanmar. Time relentlessly pushes him forward, making him grow into a teenager, then a man, and ultimately, inevitably, into someone like my guide Kosla.

I once asked this ordinary Myanmar man: “Are you happy?” Kosla didn’t answer immediately. When I asked again, he simply deflected: “We are busy with daily life, we don’t have time to think about happiness.”

Much later, on a dusty roadside, he finally answered the question fully for the third time:

“I might die tomorrow. They can arrest me to join the army at any moment, send me to fight across the river. After 7 p.m., if a man is on the streets of Bagan, he’s likely to be thrown into prison and then sent to the battlefield without reason. I’ve been working since I was 9, but the rate of wage increase can never keep up with inflation.”

“A lifetime. No happiness,” he said.