Mandalay

Mandalay is Myanmar's second-largest city, on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River about 631 kilometers north of Yangon, with a population of 1,726,889 at the 2014 census. Founded in 1857 by King Mindon to fulfill a Buddhist prophecy, it was the last royal capital of the Konbaung dynasty before the British annexed it in 1885, and it suffered heavy destruction during the Japanese occupation in World War Two, when about three-fifths of its houses were destroyed and 2,000 civilians killed in April 1942. Since the 1980s, large-scale immigration from China's Yunnan province has reshaped the city; Chinese immigrants now make up an estimated forty to fifty percent of the population and control much of its commerce, including retail, hotels, restaurants and the gem trade, making Mandalay the economic hub of Upper Myanmar.