By Mehm Sahai
The annual Mon traditional ox-cart pageant in Kamarmo Village, Chaungzon Township, on Bilu Island—once one of the island’s most celebrated cultural events—is now facing the threat of disappearance, as the number of participating carts has declined dramatically this year.
Held every year as part of the Kamarmo Village pagoda festival, this year’s event—the 51st Mon Traditional Ox-Cart Beauty Contest, conducted on April 22nd (the 7th waxing day of Kason)—saw only three ox-carts enter the competition.
The contest began in 1975 and reached its golden jubilee in 2025. Although seven carts took part last year, this year’s number fell by more than half, underscoring growing concern over the survival of the tradition.
Speaking at the award ceremony, Kamarmo Village administrator Naing Phay Win said the decline is largely the result of changing lifestyles in the community and the dwindling number of oxen and carts available in the region.
“There are very few oxen and carts left even in Kamarmo Village now. We had to rent them from other villages. We continue to organize this traditional ox-cart cultural contest only because we do not want our heritage to disappear,” he said.
To secure entries for this year’s competition, Kamarmo residents reportedly had to hire ox-carts from Kalwi and Daung U villages.
The winners were announced as follows:
Cart No. 2 — First Prize (1,330,000 kyats)
Cart No. 1 — Second Prize (1,130,000 kyats)
Cart No. 3 — Third Prize (934,000 kyats)
A visiting cart from Tawka Na Village was also awarded a special prize of 100,000 kyats.
As part of the contest tradition, participating carts departed from a designated gathering point and first traveled to the Win Leh Su Taung Pyi Pagoda in the southern section of Kamarmo Village for worship. They then proceeded ceremonially into the central festival grounds, where judges stationed along the route assessed each cart in detail.
Kamarmo’s ox-cart pageant is widely regarded as one of the most prominent and enduring events among the well-known “64 Village Pagoda Festivals” held across Chaungzon Township from the eve of Thingyan through the tenth day of the Myanmar New Year.
During this year’s prize-giving ceremony, village elders formally passed organizational responsibilities to youth groups, while younger residents pledged to continue safeguarding the event for future generations.
For centuries, the Mon people have been deeply rooted in agriculture. Oxen and buffaloes were not only essential working animals in the fields but also trusted companions in rural life, carefully raised and highly valued by farming families.
On Bilu Island, it was once customary for villagers to travel to pagoda festivals by ox-cart, turning religious celebrations into lively processions of decorated carts. In almost every village festival, long lines of ox-carts carrying pilgrims would fill the roads by late afternoon, and beauty contests featuring these elaborately prepared carts became a cherished part of the festivities.
That landscape began to change after the 1990s, when mechanized farming gradually replaced animal-drawn cultivation. As tractors and modern machinery spread, ox-carts steadily disappeared from everyday use.
Today, many old cartwheels have ended up as fence posts, while some surviving carts remain only as decorative displays near pagodas. Along with them, the ox-cart beauty contests once common across many villages have also faded away.
At present, Kamarmo Village in northern Bilu Island stands as perhaps the last community still preserving this costly and labor-intensive tradition, striving to ensure that an important symbol of Mon rural heritage does not vanish completely.
