During the last two weeks of December 1998, I flew as one of my annual solo getaway to what would be an unknown territory to me: French Guiana.
At one of my village visits around that tiny colony of 2,000 or so Hmong, I came upon one man who used to be a Chaofa himself.
So, my source is first-hand knowledge from someone who has witnessed and been one of the group members himself.
The name is a label given to the group of rebel fighters and their non-rebel family members who were just hiding from Communist persecution back in the 70s. Who gave it to them? The Lao Communist government.
Chao is Lao for lord or king. Fa is Lao for sky, he said.
So labeled because the group had a disappearing act after each storming attack on the Commie soldiers or territories.
"We line up in different spots around a mountain or some times a gulley," he said. "When the Communist soldiers came marching on a trail, we planned our attacks: finger pointing to everyone with 'you shoot the first one, you shoot the second one, you shoot the third, I shoot the fourth and on and on.' That way, they wouldn't know exactly where all of us are. They'll hear bullets coming from all places."
Over several years of such attacks, the Commies began to feel this was the force of the sky that would come down unpredictably like lightning. They couldn't come into contact with any human person of the group. During their discussions on how to take down the group, they could only refer to them as the "Chaofa" or "Chao Fa." Hence, the name.