Katha, on the Irrawaddy River in northern Myanmar, is best known as the inspiration for "Burmese Days," a fictional critique of British colonialism by the English novelist George Orwell. A century after Orwell worked in Katha as a colonial police officer, however, the remote town's future may depend on its links to a newer (and older) foreign power -- China.
Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, spent five years in Myanmar, then known as Burma, returning to England in 1927 after a final posting to Katha, which he called Kyauktada. Later novels such as "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" are more famous, but it is "Burmese Days," published in 1934, that has become a seminal text for students of colonialism in both Western and Asian universities.
