The mythical myth | 2.06.05
Disabusing Richard Hermes’s obsequious treatment of former PM Anand Panyarachun’s FCC speech, I found one part so egregious as to merit a separate entry of debunking:
My favorite parts of Mr Anand’s appearance were when he was at his most esoteric — taking us back 400 years, for example, to an era when the prime minister was Greek and there were Malay, Burmese and Manadarin [sic] elements in the court. It wasn’t always like this, was Mr Anand’s message; the myth of an essential ”Thai-ness” which leaves no room for ethnic diversity is a relatively new one.
400-year-old history is esoteric? Well, perhaps to someone who apparently thinks “Mandarin” means Chinese. Mr. Hermes and his fellow historically-challenged journalists could learn a lesson from their equally ignorant and itinerant, but more youthful and resourceful alter egos: the backpackers. That is, when in doubt, reach for the Lonely Planet: [Thailand, 9th edition, p.19]
An exceptional episode unfolded in Ayuthaya when Constantine Phaulkon, a Greek, became a high official in Siam under King Narai from 1675 to 1688. He kept out the Dutch and the English but allowed the French to station 600 soldiers in the kingdom.
So a backpacker who’d bothered to read this (perhaps while waiting for her banana pancake at Café Joe) would hardly have been intrigued by Khun Anand’s evocation, knowing as she does the precise era (more like 330 years ago), the main characters involved (Phaulkon wasn’t exactly “prime minister”), and, most importantly, the ending:
Eventually the Thais, fearing a takeover, expelled the French and killed Phaulkon. (The word for a foreigner of European descent in modern Thai is fàràng, an abbreviated form of fàràngsèt, meaning ‘French’.) Siam sealed itself from the West for 150 years following this experience with the fàràng.
Thus ended the episode, which turned out to be a something of a century finale. Khun Anand and Mr. Hermes’s model foreign-born citizen was not only seen and feared as a foreigner in the supposedly enlightened era, but brutally executed (see “King Narai and the Falcon of Siam” for detail). It’s true that Phaulkon, being a Westerner and extraordinarily powerful, was something of a tragic exception, as other, non-Western court immigrants apparently carried on unscathed. But it’s not my fault that Khun Anand and Mr. Hermes chose to make their case by citing a prime counter-example to it. And don’t forget that Phaulkon’s exceptional affair brought all the Europeans down with it for one and a half century.
So, yes, “it wasn’t always like this”, “this” being the thankfully open and tolerant now. Just turn on the television and you’ll see how enamored Thai people are with luk kreung, whose looks range from the unusually attractive Thai to the very farang. Thailand’s most popular entertainer of all time is Thongchai “Bird” McIntyre. Christina Aguilar (of a Filipino father and a French mother) was a Thai pop sensation even before Christina Aguilera reached puberty. The McIntosh siblings Willy and Kathaleeya were considered the country’s best-looking male and female when I was in high school, and are probably still in the running now. Tata Young was the teen-pop idol of the 90s and is now aiming for international fame. Sirinya Burbridge represented Thailand in the Miss World pageant despite being the perfect prototype of a very farang luk kreung (admittedly there was a mini-contreversy, but it was inconsequential). And all this, mind you, is just a tiny sample of the multiracial celebrities I know, and my being a relative ignoramus, what I know is a sliver of what is out there.
Eurasians being the mainstream in Thailand’s show business, their glitter rubs off on other kinds of luk kreung, too. Morris K, fathered by an unknown African-American is having the last laugh after growing up being taunted (What do you expect? Kids are mean). Nathan Oman looks like a Thai guy next door, but makes a big deal of his half-Nepalese parentage. Exotic genes give you a certain cachet in the glamour industry, which is either leading or following the mood of the country at large. It’s a pity I don’t have any.
Or do I? My paternal grandparents immigrated from Teochew, China. My maternal grandparents were born in Thailand, but their parents before them all had Chinese-sounding names and I suspect at least one (perhaps up to three) were born in China (Teochew and Hokkien). What do we make of that? Not much, as it happens. I am Thai and I laugh at the characterization of Tiger Woods’ mother as “half-Chinese”, because by that standard, most urban Thais (especially in Bangkok) are at least half-Chinese. In the 90s when the luk kreung mania was just taking off, people would joke that they, too, were halfsies — half-Chinese.
The absurdity of the idea of Thai-Chinese luk kreung, even more than the adoration of Eurasian ones, indicates the openness of the Thai society. Some of Thailand’s most prestigious old-money last names were started by Chinese immigrants or their descendents, a fact most Thais probably don’t even realize. Sarasin (สารสิน once dubbed the Thai Kennedy), Bhirombhakdi (ภิรมย์ภักดี, of the Singha beer fame) Karnasut (กรรณสูต, of Ital-Thai), Krairurk (ไกรฤกษ์), na Ranong (ณ ระนอง), and na Songkhla (ณ สงขลา) are but a few examples. And while the Chinese origins of Banking clans such as the Sophonpanichs and the Lamsams are well known, no one can dismiss them as interloping parvenus. The headline “The sparkles of foreign-born Chinese in the new Thai Government” (“泰國新政府的華裔光芒”, March 27) in Hong Kong-based newsweekly Yazhou Zhoukan is so ridiculous because Thai people, unlike perhaps Malaysians or Indonesians, really don’t think in those terms. And even if we were to start now, haven’t these “Chinese” always sparkled?
And it’s not just the Chinese. Khun Anand Panyarachun, aka “Rattanakosin patrician”, himself is of Mon ancestry. The Nana family, the eponym of legendary Soi Nana, was originally from India. The Bunnag lineage, perhaps Thailand’s oldest and most extensive, whose members include King Mongkut’s regent and the current ambassador to the US, originated from a Shiite Persian. (Shaikh Ahámad is the one who actually came to Thailand.) Ammar Siamwalla, the second most cited non-politician critic of Thaksin after Thirayuth Boonmi (and a much more cerebral one), comes from an Indian Muslim background. Wan Muhammad Nor Matha, a former interior minister in the Thaksin cabinet, is clearly a Muslim, but what ethnicity is he? Thai? Chinese? Malay? Gypsy? Who cares? These people are all Thai.
What Mr. Hermes calls “the myth of the essential Thai-ness”, therefore, is itself a myth — a straw man created and destroyed in order to impress flesh and blood fools. Thai-ness is acquired easily and naturally enough, within a generation or two, or faster if you possess extraordinary skills like Shaikh Ahámad and Tiger Woods. Sometimes all you have to do is to stay within the borders and have the Thai-ness forced upon you willy-nilly. That’s how Isaan (Northeast) subsets emerged within the “Thai” supersets of people and language.
One can debate the pros and cons and the moralities of that approach to building a modern nation state, but to accuse the Thais of the counterproductive opposite — creating a myth to exclude ethnic groups (and foment balkanization?) — is ludicrous. It is true, as I mentioned before, that many insensitive young Thais use the word Loa as the Thai equivalent of “cheesy”, but it’s also true that they grew up knowing the people and the language of Thailand’s Northeast as Isaan. So one might even argue they are condescending to the foreign neighbors as opposed to their Isaan brothers and sisters (more likely, though, they’re just thoughtless kids). Students do pray in public schools, but non-Buddhists don’t participate and the teachers hammer into everybody the mantra that “every religion teaches people to be good”. I don’t know any slangs or jokes about Muslims or Malays.
Unrest in the Deep South therefore isn’t caused by the rejection of ethnic Malays by the rest of Thailand, but rather the other way round. It is the separatists who cling to rigid notions of Thai-ness (or Siamese-ness) and Malay-ness (or Pattani-ness). If they haven’t been Thaificated after 200 years of Thai rule over Pattani, why should they be now? Since 9/11, the Thai media crowd (again, either leading or following the country at large) bend over backwards to do what they think will please Muslims. Besides acting out their deep-rooted anti-Americanism, which is almost too easy, they try to insert token Muslims into everything from daily news to Carabao daeng patriotic ads. Much of this strikes me as disingenuous, as many are simply using their newfound sympathies for Muslims as a pretext to bash America and the government (wasn’t it only yesterday that these people were always invoking “Thailand is a land Buddhism” as a catch-all argument?). But nothing I’ve seen so far is quite as fake as Khun Anand’s patronizing and counterfactual preaching to the choir.
01:28 ▪ politics
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