A visit to the small but vibrant village of Yandabo, with some 350 houses, gives visitors a rare glimpse into a village slowly entering the modern world while still maintaining a traditional way of life as a major producer of traditional clay pots. In Yandabo, if you're not fishing or farming, you're most certainly throwing, decorating, firing, or otherwise engaged in the making of the traditional terracotta pots, formed from riverbank clay, that Burmese villagers have been using for centuries. The pottery works is central to Yandabo village life, and you'll notice everyone from tots to old-timers participating in some aspect of their making. One woman peddles the wheel while another shapes the pot before sending them off to be decorated and dried in a pile of straw and ash before being fired at 1200 degrees for three days, emerging a brilliant red.
Yandabo entered the history books back in 1826 as the spot where Burma's leaders signed a brutal peace treaty with the British, ending the First Anglo-Burmese War and ushering in nearly 125 years of colonial rule.
