It is not far from Mae Salong, where a Chinese community lives. After losing the civil war in 1949, some of Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers escaped from Yunnan and eventually settled in the hills around Mae Salong in northern Thailand. For many years they made their living from the Golden Triangle’s opium and heroin trade, before switching—under pressure and support from Thailand and Taiwan—to growing high-mountain tea with Taiwanese plants and methods, so that today the area is known more for Taiwanese-style oolong than for drugs.