The Fatal Strain Read online

  Archaeologists around Southeast Asia have repeatedly uncovered relics portraying the pastime. Bronze artifacts discovered in Thailand’s Kanchanaburi province near the Burmese border depict cockfighting from 1,700 years ago. The sport also appears on the sculpted walls of the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia, one of the grandest finds of modern times. Along the exterior of Angkor’s twelfth-century Bayon Temple, a three-tiered mountain of stone that rises at the heart of the complex, are extensive bas reliefs depicting the everyday life of the Khmer people nearly a millennium ago. Among the images of women peddling fish and giving birth, and of men hunting, kickboxing, and playing chess, is a scene of cockfighting that would be instantly recognizable anywhere in Southeast Asia today.

  In Thailand, cockfighting assumed a special place in the national culture during the reign of King Naresuan, an accomplished military strategist and avid breeder of the late sixteenth century. When Naresuan was a still a boy, the armies of Burma overran the Thai kingdom of Ayuthaya and took him prisoner. They carried the nine-year-old prince off to Burma as a royal hostage to ensure the fealty of his father, the king, but allowed Naresuan to take his favorite rooster. In captivity, he pitted the bird against those of the Burmese prince and, as Thais tell the tale, vanquished them all. “Not only can this cock champion a money bet,” Naresuan told his jailers, “it can also fight for kingdoms.” The Burmese returned him to the vassal state of Ayuthaya at age sixteen in a prisoner exchange. During the following years, Naresuan became a renowned warrior, campaigning to drive the Burmese occupiers from Thai lands and declaring the restoration of the Ayuthaya dynasty. The Burmese dubbed him the Black Prince. On his father’s death in 1590, Naresuan acceded to the throne and reigned for fifteen years, extending the Thai domain to unprecedented frontiers. He adorned his palace gates with images of the cock. Monuments to the king still depict him surrounded by his roosters. The fighting cock became a symbol of national resistance. Even today, one of the most sought-after breeds is the Gai Leung Hang Khao, a fierce black-feathered bird with gold around its throat like a necklace and a long white tail; a cock that traces its ancestry back to the one Naresuan had carried into exile.

  After Naresuan, the sport took a firm hold on the Thai imagination. The woven bamboo baskets of fighting cocks became ubiquitous in the front yards of peasant villages across the country. And it remains a pastime for the elite, with the most coveted breeds selling for $10,000 or more and up to $250,000 in bets changing hands at top matches. Thai celebrities and entertainment moguls have rallied to the cause of cockfighting as the tradition came under fire from public health specialists. The country’s most prominent devotee and outspoken partisan is a long-haired pop icon named Yuenyong Opakul, the godfather of Thai country rock ’n’ roll. Yuenyong rose to the top of the charts penning edgy songs about social injustice and performing them as the singer and lead guitar player of his band, Carabao. He cashed in on his fame as the spokesman for a Thai beer company and then launched his own brand of energy drink, called Carabao Dang, which quickly claimed a significant share of the market. Then, after bird flu erupted in Thailand in late 2003, Yuenyong emerged as vigorous defender of cockfighting, clashing with the government over its demand that roosters in infected areas be culled, defying a ban on vaccinating the birds against the virus by immunizing his own. (Thai officials worried that any poultry vaccination could undercut the confidence of foreign markets in Thailand’s massive chicken exports.) Ever the rebel, Yuenyong included the song “Vaccine for Life” in his CD Big Mouth 5: Bird Flu, which reportedly sold at least a hundred thousand copies.

  Today Thai magazines devoted to cockfighting proliferate. Dog eared copies are a common sight in farmyards and the front seats of pickups. For a few more dollars, glossy books with colorful plates detail the attributes and ancestry of different breeds, including some that trace their bloodlines even further back than Naresuan. The black-tailed Gai Pradu Hang Dam, for instance, is descended from birds raised by King Ram Khamheng of the Sukhothai dynasty, who six hundred years ago extended the Thai kingdom as far as modern-day Laos and Burma.

  The Burmese have never accepted Thai claims of superiority, whether in politics or cockfighting. If Thai cocks are famed for their aggressiveness, then the Burmese retort that theirs are smarter and more stylistic. Many Thais in fact do not contest that. Like Thailand, Burma has traditionally been a major exporter of gamecocks to other Asian countries.

  But passion for the pastime spread across the region centuries before these exports. In Indonesia, cockfighting has a long history on the main island of Java and the Hindu outpost of Bali. Despite Bali’s mystical reputation as an oasis of transcendental peace, the island’s villagers have long preferred spending their afternoons betting on blood sport than joining tourists to watch dance performances of the Ramayana epic. Remarkably, the Balinese have assimilated this sanguinary diversion into their spirituality, making the neighborhood temple a prime venue for cockfights. When officials in Bali tried to combat gambling by suggesting that cockfights should be limited to major festival days, villagers balked. “We believe that to purify our sacred temple, you should have cockfighting regularly,” a Balinese matron named Made Narti told me when I spent an afternoon in her village. “The blood splattered by the cock will protect the temple and protect the whole village. If you go without cockfighting for a long time, our god Dewa gets unhappy. The bricks will fall out and the temple walls will collapse.”

  If fighting cocks are bred for valor, strength, and stamina, then Phapart Thieuviharn was bred to be a breeder. His grandfather had emigrated as a young man from China to northern Thailand at a time when thousands of other Chinese were making a similar migration to the lands of economic promise in Southeast Asia. He settled in the pleasant farming province of Phayao just outside the infamous Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Laos, and Burma all come together in a remote, hilly region that for years produced much of the world’s opium. He found a piece of land in a valley nestled between high mountains, built a traditional wood home on stilts, and began raising chickens. His prize possessions were about ten cocks he bred beneath the house. He fed them on scraps from the family table.

  Phapart’s father substantially expanded the family’s landholdings but always found time away from farming to pursue the family passion, raising cocks and training to become a cockfighting referee in local arenas. Later, around 1970, he bought a parcel of land in the province and built his own.

  Phapart, who was forty-seven when I first met him at an empty fish restaurant beside the province’s scenic Kwan Phayao Lake, said fighting cocks were a part of his life from birth. “Even before I can remember, I was already caring for them,” he told me. When he was seven or eight, he would refuse to get a haircut unless he could take his favorite rooster with him to the barber. As a teenager, he rose hours before school to train his cocks and then pitted them against those of his teacher.

  “When you raise fighting cocks, you see them from the moment you open your eyes in the morning. You can recognize the way each one coos,” Phapart explained, pushing up the sleeves of his green work shirt and chomping on an ever-present piece of gum. He had recently recovered from heart surgery, and though he was fit and vigorous, cigarettes were no longer an option. “We give them more love than we would a baby. You see, you and your children can talk in the same language. They can tell you what they want. But fighting cocks can’t. So you have to be even more attentive and give them even more care.”

  Over the years, his flock grew and grew. He raised dozens of cocks at his home in Phayao town and kept hundreds more at a family farm near Thailand’s northern capital, Chiang Mai. Many of these cocks were bred as an investment and sold for a small fortune. Proven winners went for up to $2,500. Others he retained and personally groomed as champions. Their framed portraits now adorn Phapart’s house. But none was more accomplished and lucrative than a beautiful bird named Lucky, who retired undefeated after twelve matches. A picture of Phapart
embracing the champ occupies a place of honor in his living room.

  “It wasn’t about the money,” Phapart stressed. “It’s not like other gambling, like at a casino. It was about social status. It was about my pride as a winner.”

  Not long after Lucky called it quits, tragedy struck. In late 2003, bird flu erupted across Thailand, ravaging the country’s poultry and outracing the government’s ability to contain it. The epidemic reached Chiang Mai and within days had sickened the roosters at the family’s farm. Birds bred for fierce character turned listless. “We saw the symptoms. We just killed them all,” he recounted, too pained to say much more. He never notified the government, just slaughtered six hundred roosters himself and burned their bodies. The economic loss was staggering, at least $150,000, and the emotional loss was worse. For good measure, he gave away ten other cocks he was grooming beneath a metal awning behind his house, fearing they might be next to catch the bug.

  Phapart eventually restocked. He drove me over to his house to see his new flock. There were eight birds, still too young to fight but promising. They had good bloodlines, strong builds, and character. “I can tell they’ll do well,” he said with pride. He drew one of the roosters from its wire-mesh cage and cradled it in his arms. It was a handsome, frisky creature with a red head and black feathers tinged with brown.

  “I love them, and I’m looking for more,” he said. But he continued, “If the disease comes back again, I will do it again and cull them again.”

  He returned the bird to its cage and sat down on the edge of the practice ring he had built in his backyard. So far, the young cocks were healthy, he said. A government veterinarian had recently examined them and declared them free of bird flu. But Phapart quipped that he did not need some bureaucrat to tell him that.

  “I know my birds. I check them every morning,” he said, irritation flashing in his eyes. “You have a very close relationship with your fighting cocks, and the closer you are, the more confident you are about their health. You know their condition.” Emphasizing each word somewhat defensively, he added, “That is why I am not afraid.”

  “The villagers around here and their fighting cocks communicate heart to heart,” Phapart told me as we set off in his Isuzu 4x4 for a breeder’s tour of Phayao town. “They share the same spirit and the same daily life.” He had volunteered to give me a crash course on the care and conditioning of gamecocks. It would also be a chance for him to dispense advice to some of the townspeople who were planning to enter their birds at a few of the more competitive arenas. Phapart estimated that at least two-thirds of the local families raised fighting cocks. “Cockfighting connects people in the same community,” he continued. “We’re a farming country, and after we work hard in the fields, this is how we like to relax.”

  We drove though a leafy neighborhood and pulled up in front of a farmhouse set well back from the road. The front yard had been converted to a training camp. The air was heavy with the tart smell of poultry and the crowing of roosters. Two dozen metal cages were arrayed around the grounds.

  In a makeshift ring fashioned from concrete block and plastic tarp, a hired trainer was teaching a young prospect how to feint and dart. The man, a dour fifty-six-year-old named Decha with a black shirt and green cargo pants coated with dander, had wrapped his bare right hand beneath the chest of an old, retired rooster, palming it like a basketball and rocking it back and forth toward the young cock. Decha lunged forward with the old bird and then jumped back. He thrust it in and pulled it out, then swung it from side to side. The young cock followed the moving target intensely, ducking and dodging, pecking and kicking. Decha looped the old bird over and behind his student, and the young prospect spun around furiously, feverishly trying to land a blow.

  Decha had wrapped strips of black sponge around the spurs on the young cock’s claws, both to keep them from cracking during practice and to protect the old rooster. But blood was still drawn, including the trainer’s. His hands and arms were scarred and swollen from the errant attacks of his pupils.

  When the exercise finished, Decha released a second young cock into the twenty-foot ring and let the two prospects spar for about five minutes. They puffed out the plumage around their necks and repeatedly pounced at each other in a whoosh of feathers and fluff.

  “Train harder,” Phapart counseled Decha. “They’re not really strong enough.”

  Phapart explained that roosters must be exercised every day. They should be drilled on walking to build their leg muscles and drilled separately on kicking. At least once a month, he continued, they should be pitted against other cocks in full-length practice bouts, their beaks covered with little sacks much like boxers sparring with headgear. The birds would require three months of intensive training before they were ready for the arena.

  Our next stop was the Khun Dej Camp on the edge of town, a sprawling training facility that Phapart billed as a “gymnasium” but was really more of a boarding school for would-be contenders. In a long shed toward the rear of the property were ample quarters fashioned from wood and screen for promising candidates, with smaller cages for breeding hens. The owner, Sitthidej Sanrin, a solidly built forty-nine-year-old with a high forehead, thick mustache, and disarming smile, had been in the business for twenty-five years, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as a breeder and trainer. Many of the roosters were his own, but some belonged to clients who had entrusted him with the rearing and seasoning of their pricey investments.

  When we drove up, Sitthidej was seated on the edge of a practice ring, clad in a red tank top and gray shorts. His legs were scratched and smeared with bird droppings, his feet bare. He had placed two roosters in the pit, an older one still inside a metal cage and a young prospect loose outside. The latter, an exquisite bird with yellow and white feathers around its neck, was circling the cage, stalking, and then lunging, trying to peck through the bars. The caged veteran watched warily, spinning on his claws, parrying the attacks. For half an hour this dance continued, the young cock exercising his leg muscles. He had already fought twice in the arena and won. A third bout in Chiang Rai was imminent.

  Sitthidej lifted the lid of the cage, letting out the old bird, and the two roosters sparred for a few minutes.

  “Your cock will do well in Chiang Rai,” Phapart told his friend. “Over there, most of the cocks are very aggressive and like to fight up close. But yours likes to hang back and then kick. It’s a good style.”

  Clearly pleased with this endorsement, Sitthidej scooped the young rooster from the ring and placed him in his lap. Then he reached over and grabbed a soft, moist towel, warmed it on a hot plate, and began to scrub the bird feather by feather, rubbing the muscles in the shoulders, back, and stomach. He gingerly held the rooster’s red neck between his thumb and forefinger and leaned back, surveying his condition, and then resumed. It was bath, massage, and sauna rolled into one, and Sitthidej continued meticulously for twenty minutes.

  As part of the strict regimen, Sitthidej served the rooster a lunch of champions: the grilled meat of a local mountain river fish called kang, a lean, brawny creature so tough that the villagers of northern Thailand claimed it can survive out of water for an hour. The meat was minced and mixed with honey and herbs, including garlic, pepper, and lemon grass, and then rolled into marble-size pellets. “This is our secret formula,” Phapart offered. “It goes back generations. It makes them strong.” Sitthidej nimbly slipped the food with his fingertips into the cock’s mouth.

  After a dessert of chopped banana, Sitthidej walked over to a wooden cupboard to grab the vitamins. The shelves were crammed with little bottles and containers, protein supplements, and various antibiotics. One jar contained yellow paste made from a local root, soaked and ground, used for special massages. Another contained facial cream to prevent skin disease and heal wounds. A third contained a red paste to be applied to the face before matches to toughen the skin. Beside it was a glass jar stuffed with replacement beaks and claws in cas
e the bird’s own cracked or snapped off. Beside that were a needle and thread to stitch wounds closed and eyes open.

  Sitthidej returned the rooster to his cage and moved it into the tropical sunlight. It was time for the bird’s daily sunbath before he would retire to his quarters. Phapart teased his friend that there was no music to serenade the bird, recalling that other trainers played Thai country songs while the roosters lounged in the sun. “In truth, the music is for the owners more than for the cocks,” Phapart admitted. He smiled and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “But it makes the birds happy too. Sometimes they even try to sing along.”

  Komsan Fakhorm, an eighteen-year-old from the eastern province of Prachinburi, loved his fighting cocks, as Thai men had for generations. He would clear their throats by sucking out the blood, mucus, and spit from their beaks with his mouth. He would sometimes sleep with his favorite roosters.

  On the final day of August 2004, the young cock breeder fell sick. He had a fever, a nasty cough, and difficulty breathing. Though Thai officials later faulted his family for waiting too long to get him medical care, by September 4, he had been admitted to the hospital. Three days later, he was dead.

  There was no doubt this was bird flu. Thai health officials reported that thirty of Komsan’s hundred roosters had died in previous weeks. But this was the first confirmed human case of the virus in Thailand for months and a jarring setback to Thai efforts at containing the disease. After a series of false starts and premature declarations of victory, senior Thai officials finally had seemed justified when they announced that summer they had turned the corner and quashed the epidemic.