Olive Yang

Olive Yang (; also known as Yang Kyin Hsiu, nicknamed Miss Hairy Legs) was a prominent opium warlord and the sister of Sao Edward Yang Kyein Tsai, the saopha (chief) of Kokang, a state in post-independent Burma from 1949 to 1959.

Biography Olive Yang was born during the late British Raj on 24 June 1927 in northern Shan States in British Burma. She received an education at Lashio's Guardian Angel's Convent School. According to her relatives, she defied gender norms at a young age, resisting foot-binding

At the age of 19, she organized ethnic Kokang forces, nicknamed the Olive's Boys, an army of over a thousand soldiers and consolidated control of opium trade routes from the highlands to lowlands. She dominated Kokang's opium trade from the end of World War II to the early 1960s. In the 1950s, after the Nationalist defeat and their subsequent expulsion from mainland China, she partnered with the Kuomintang to establish opium trade routes along the Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia).

Her parents arranged a marriage to Twan Sao Wen, the son of Tamaing's chieftain. Her parents had died before her marriage in 1948. From 1948 to 1950, she stayed with Twan and had a son, Duan Jipu (段吉卜), She was a prominent figure in opium trafficking and gold trading. Yang and the Kokang Kakweye succeeded in 1953, but then collaborated with the Kuomintang in trafficking opium to Thailand throughout the 1950s; the Kuomintang continued to use these opium routes for decades. She was arrested in 1962, along with her brother Jimmy, a member of parliament in Yangon, by Burmese authorities, to remove them from power and place Kokang territory under Burmese administration. She was imprisoned at Insein Prison and released in 1968. Although she is widely thought to be bisexual, her apparent interest in men may be a false assumption based on Burmese society's understanding of gender non-conformity at the time and her marriage. After her release, she reportedly spent her final years as a nun. She died after a short coma in Muse just outside Kokang, unable to return to Kokang in 2017.