May Shin Dies

MAY SHIN

OBITUARY
May Shin Dies

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By MIN LWIN Thursday, September 4, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May Shin, a well-known Burmese singer and actress, who was popular as far back as the British colonial period, died at 11:30 on Wednesday night in Mandalay. She was at 91.




“May Shin suffered from no disease, she died simply from old age,” said Zaw Myint, an owner of the Mandalay-based Yee Myint Film Company, who had helped look after her since 1980.


May Shin 1917-2008
May Shin was born on March 10, 1917, in Mandalay. The daughter of businessman Khin Lay and Daw Pwa Yon, she began a career in the arts soon after passing seventh grade.

When she was 18 years old, May Shin joined Rangoon A1 Film Company as an aspiring actress. She was soon highly acclaimed for her soft gentle singing voice.

May Shin’s first movie was called Phu Sar Shin (“Be My Lover”), but she became known in 1938 when she starred in Burma’s first film with soundtrack, Myar Nat Maung (“Cupid”).

As a radio presenter at the Burmese Broadcasting Service in the 1950s, she actively supported U Nu’s government against the left-wing campaign by appealing to armed insurgents to surrender.

In 1958, she was awarded the title Wunna Kyaw Htin, the highest honor given to an artist by the Burmese government in that time.

In 1962, at the age of 45, May Shin gave up acting and singing and withdrew from public life. She became devoutly Buddhist and practiced dhamma until the day she died.

In 2004, purged Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt visited her in Mandalay shortly before he was arrested.

In her old age, the venerated actress and singer spent most of her time in Buddhist contemplation at her residence in Mandalay.

Win Win Myint (aka Nandaw Shay), author of May Shin’s biography, Pan Pwint Ye Yin Khon Than (“The Heartbeat of a Flower”), said that she never married and that she loved to uphold Burmese traditional culture and religion.

“She was stubborn with her family and she passed every milestone in her life that she ever set herself,” he told The Irrawaddy on Thursday.

A funeral service for May Shin is to be held at Kyarnikan cemetery in Mandalay on Friday.