ASIA PACIFIC SPECIAL : Traveler’s Journal: Myanmar : Gilt Trip : For those needing a karma boost, Burma’s gold leaf pounders make offerings for Buddha

Down an alley lined with weathered teak shacks, we follow the rhythmic “Poo, puck! Poo, puck!” of metal mallets striking leather. My friends and I are well off the tourist path, somewhere southwest of Mandalay Hill, down toward the venerated Mahamuni Pagoda. Even Thon, our Burmese guide and van driver, had to ask half a dozen times for directions to the gold pounders.

All over Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) Buddha statues gleam with gold leaf. Especially revered images often look like immense gold nuggets, with Buddha completely unrecognizable under a centuries-thick mantle of pure gold.

Buddhists buy gold leaf from temple attendants and place it onto a Buddha image as a way of gaining “merit”--a means of correcting one’s karma (the concept of cause and effect that transcends individual lifetimes). Gold pressed onto the temple statues symbolizes generosity (“The Buddha likes gold,” we are told) and merits not only the giver but the community.

In Myanmar, the temples themselves often shine with gold. The Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), about 330 feet high, is said to be seven inches thick in places with gold and gold leaf. After each monsoon season the surface is regilded to replace the gold washed away. The Burmese have been doing this for centuries, and for centuries the gold pounders have supplied all that precious glitter in the same way they do today.

Travelers can face a moral dilemma visiting these ancient scenes. Myanmar is run by a military junta. Many nations have downgraded relations with it following the killing of student protesters in 1988 and the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1990 Nobel Peace laureate. (Suu Kyi was released July 10 after six years under house arrest, a move some observers have suggested is an attempt to improve the junta’s image and boost tourism.)

“Poo, puck! Poo, puck!” Three men sitting on a bench outside the tiny gold leaf shop look surprised when we walk up the alley. Thon tells them we have only come to watch, and soon our presence is accepted with good Burmese humor.

We lean against the doorway. Inside the small, stifling room, two men swing their mallets while a third rests. The tropical breeze cannot reach this far down the alley, and only rippling heat passes through the teak lattice windows.

The front half of the packed earth floor is covered by a bamboo mat. A fourth man sits there surrounded by a tally book, small safe, chisel, cutters and a gold scale. He wears a white shirt and, like the pounders, the traditional Burmese longyi --a single wrap of cotton cloth tucked in at the waist.

The gold pounders are shirtless, their lean muscles glisten with sweat. They stand barefoot astride stone anvils angled deep into the dirt floor. With the concentration of an archer drawing his bow, each man slowly lifts his mallet overhead and lets it fall. The iron mallets strike thick leather packets braced on the worn stones. The rhythm is slow and steady, every stroke evenly matched.

The third pounder, sitting on his anvil, flips the pages of a thick leather packet. Between the pages flicker leaves of gold, each about the size of a silver dollar and already much thinner than foil.

Near his bare feet is a clay bowl of water with a half-submerged coconut shell cup. There’s a stone and a small hole in the cup, which is sinking slowly. A coconut cup clock. It’s a fascinating glimpse back in time. The steamy shop might be a museum diorama entitled: “Gold pounders. Mandalay. Circa 18th Century.”

The shell sinks and a helper resets the water timer. “The coconut sinks in exactly three minutes,” the voice behind me volunteers in perfect English. Sai Wanna is one of the men sitting on the bench in the alley.

“There are exactly 120 strokes to those three minutes. After each coconut the men rest one or two minutes, and then continue. After three coconut cups they turn the gold-leaf packet over. Eighteen coconuts make one pounding hour.”

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Wanna says it takes five such mind-numbing hours to flatten a chip of gold--weighing a little over a hundredth of a gram--into leaf.

“The gold is placed between two pieces of bamboo paper, one waxed and the other not,” says Wanna. “There are 1,500 pages to a leather packet, holding 750 chips of gold. That makes 12 grams altogether.”

I try to keep up with all this, wondering if his math is correct. Meanwhile, the men pound away. Wanna says the shop sells the gold leaf for about $12.50 for a packet of 10 pages. Later, we visit the Mahamuni Pagoda (also called the Payagyi Pagoda), the most revered site in Mandalay. The famous image within sits 12 feet, 7 inches high and is said to be the exact likeness of the Buddha. Legend tells of Saka, “King of Gods,” sculpting the Buddha while he sat in meditation. The statue was brought to this site in the 18th Century. Temple attendants do a brisk business selling packets of gold leaf outside.

My friend, Maria, and I buy two packets of five sheets for about $10. Maria, more Buddhist than I, presses her leaves of gold onto a massive dimpled knee.

I slip mine into my vest pocket for safekeeping. That’s 450 coconut cups of labor--54,000 strokes.