by Jim Goodman
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| site of the former Watgate river port |
When King Mengrai of the state
of Lanna conquered the ancient Kingdom of Haripunchai in the late 13th
century, he decided it was time to move his capital from Fang to somewhere
closer to the center of his expanded realm. Rather then move into Haripunchai (today’s Lamphun), he
opted to make that old city Lanna’s spiritual center and instead build a new
one at Wiang Kum Kam, about 25 km north.
Unfortunately, located beside the Ping River, the site was prone to
regular flooding.
Fed up with this situation, in
1296 he laid the foundations for Chiang Mai, literally “New City”, a few
kilometers north and several hundred meters west of the Ping River, beyond the
reach of any flood. Besides the
moats and walls around the city, eventually another wall went up between the
eastern side of the city and the river, extending all the way around to the
neighborhoods outside the moats to the southwest. Most of the capital’s commoners lived inside this wall.
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| the vihatn of Wat Ketdaram |
Some lived along the river,
though, for it was Lanna’s prime communication link. The main port was on the east bank, opposite what is now
Warorot market, in what became the district of Watgate. Except for the small community involved
with river trade, most of the area was agricultural and the farms didn’t extend
very far from the river.
Nevertheless, in 1428 the royal government sponsored the construction of
a temple close to the port, Wat Ketkaram, to service the spiritual needs of the
inhabitants. For over four
centuries it was the only religious building east of the Ping River.
In the late 18th century,
after two centuries of rule over Lanna, Burmese authority began to
collapse. Sporadic revolts broke
out at various places in the north.
Because they were uncoordinated, the Burmese suppressed them and in some
cases retaliated by expelling people from the cities that revolted, such as the
entire population of Chiang Mai.
King Kawila of Lampang, allied with the Kingdom of Siam, expelled the
Burmese from their Chiang Mai garrison in 1774 and then went on to chase them
out of the rest of Lanna over the next several years.
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| rainbow strikes the chedi at Wat Ketkaram |
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| Chedi Chula Manee at Loy Krathong |
Rama I of the new Rattanakosin
Dynasty appointed Kawila King of Lanna in 1782, but the city was deserted and
the campaign against the Burmese far from finished. Only in 1796, five hundred years after Mengrai founded the
city, Kawila finally settled in the capital. He had spent the previous few years going around to persuade
scattered ex-residents to move back, now that it was again safe.
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| Sala Bitr, the former Chinese school |
Slowly but surely Chiang Mai’s
population grew and commerce and agriculture returned to normal. Watgate port became active again, a
business community settled in around it, augmented in the 19th
century by Chinese immigrants, who sponsored a major renovation and expansion
of Wat Ketkaram. The renovated
Chedi Chula Mani, said to house a hair of the Buddha, is the oldest original
building in the compound, whole the rest are 19th and 20th
century constructions.
The viharn (assembly hall) is a beautiful example of the Rattanakosin
style, with its multi-layered roof of orange tiles and golden trimmings. The color red dominates the interior,
with tall columns supporting the roofs, a gilded seated Buddha at the far end
and a painting of a standing Buddha flanking one of the columns.
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| the 'dogs' of Wat Ketkaram |
Near the chedi stands a small, elegant open shrine to a standing Buddha,
while next to it is the larger ubosot
(ordination hall), with the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac sculpted around
the exterior walls. Flanking the
doors are high-relief vertical descending tigers, a feature copied on the doors
of the abbot’s residence on the other side of the chedi.
Behind the shrine stands Sala
Bitr, built of dark teakwood and embellished with gold on the door panels and
shutters. The attractive two-story
building was originally a school for Chinese but is now empty. A much larger modern school in the
eastern part of the compound has replaced it.
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| dog sculptures next to the chedi |
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| viharn interior |
The very clean and tidy
compound has one other unique feature—its dogs, not the real animals but
statues of them. The chedi was built in the Year of the
Dog. Thus dogs are honored here with
statues of various breeds, including ones not native to Thailand.
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| the Attaqwa Mosque |
With peace and prosperity continuing, Watgate continued
to expand. Besides the Chinese
coming up from Bangkok, the district attracted Muslim Chinese (Hui) in the1870s
after the suppression of the Muslim Revolt in Yunnan. They also established themselves in Warorot, but a large
community settled a few blocks east of the river. They built the Attaqwa Mosque, which eventually included a
school with teachers trained in Cairo and Saudi Arabia. Today the school has 150 students and
the language of instruction is Arabic.
Around the same time Watgate
witnessed the arrival of Western missionaries. They built the first church in 1868 near the river at the southeast
corner of the district. The most
prominent were Dr. Daniel and Sophie McGilvary, austere and dedicated, who
believed Buddhism was superstitious idolatry and local people needed a true
religion like Christianity to save them from the Devil.
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| Muslim girls passing through Wat Ketkaram |
Local people felt
Buddhism was quite good enough for them and so conversion was slow. After several years McGilvary could
count only eight converts and two of them were killed for it. The missionary then had to turn his attention
to efforts to get the Court in Siam to issue a decree that no one was to be
harmed because of conversion. That
success protected his new Christians but did not speed up the conversion rate.
The next step was to set up
schools. Chiang Mai didn’t have
schools then. All education was in
the monasteries and only for boys.
In 1878 the McGilvary couple opened the Phra Racha Chaiya Girls School,
named after the young daughter of Chiang Mai’s King Inthawichayanon. This princess later grew up with
the name Dara Rasami and today is revered and remembered as the most famous
lady in late Lanna history. The
school eventually changed its name to Dara Academy and now has both girl and
boy students.
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| the Christian School Chapel, Chiang Mai's oldest church |
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| the church at Prince Royal's College |
Dara Rasami’s youth coincided
with a time of great political anxiety in the country. France had begun taking over Indochina
and Great Britain had already subjugated much of Burma. In 1883 a rumor spread that Queen
Victoria wished to adopt Dara Radami.
Having just been through problems with British logging interests in the
north, the rumor alarmed the Siamese Court. They viewed it as a possible first step toward seizing Lanna.
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| April flowers on Rattanakosin Road |
King Rama V dispatched a
delegate to Chiang Mai to propose a royal marriage. In 1886, the year Britain annexed northern Burma, Dara
Rasami left her home to live in the royal palace in Bangkok as one of the king’s
consorts. She and her entourage
continued to dress in Lanna style, with very long hair tied in a bun at the top
of the head and sarongs with Lanna designs. Other Court ladies looked down on them, considered them Lao
foreigners. These ladies wore
their hair shorter and preferred different kind of sarongs, a style they believed
was more ‘civilized’.
In late1889 she bore the king
a daughter, who unfortunately died in early 1892. The distraught mother destroyed all photos and portraits of
the girl. Princess Dara bore no
more children but remained in Bangkok until 1908, when she made a visit to
Chiang Mai. Lampang and Lamphun to visit her relatives. On her arrival in April she was greeted
by royal and military officials, soldiers and commoners from all over
Lanna. Likewise, upon her return to
Bangkok in November, the King and Court, government officials and Bangkok
residents welcomed her back with a flotilla of a hundred royal boats.
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| Princess Dara Rasami in Chiang Mai |
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| Siri Guru Singh Sabha, Sikh temple on Charoenrat Road |
In 1910 Rama V died. Four years later Princess Dara asked
his successor Rama Vi for permission to return permanently to Chiang Mai. She remained active in her royal duties
and patronage projects until she died in 1933.
Much had changed since
Princess Dara first moved to Bangkok.
In 1887 the missionaries opened another school in Watgate—the Chiang Mai
Boys School. This institution
would educate Thai boys in subjects they did not study at the monasteries, like
science, mathematics and, naturally, Protestant Christian theology. It was successful and won royal favor
such that in 1906, expanding into new buildings, Crown Prince Maha Vajiravudh,
later Rama VI, came up from Bangkok to lay the cornerstone. Thereafter its name was Prince Royal’s
College.
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| =old buildings on Charoenrat Road |
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| display in the Watgate Museum |
In 1888 missionaries opened
McCormick Hospital on Kaew Nawarat Road, between Prince Royal’s and Dara
Academy. By establishing the first
public health care center, with all the latest modern medicines and treatments,
as well as the first formal schools, the missionaries certainly raised their
prestige. Though the great
majority of Buddhists clung to their religion, conversions did grow. Today Chiang Mai province has the
largest number of ethnic Thai Christians in the country.
Meanwhile another foreign
religious community immigrated to Chiang Mai and took up residence in
Watgate—Sikhs from British India.
The first arrived in 1905, a cloth merchant who later persuaded many
others to join him. They also got
involved in the cloth business, and still are, and in 1907 set up a gurudwara (Sikh temple) on Charoenrat
Road along the Ping River—Siri Guru Singh Sabha, a large white block building
with a golden dome on the roof.
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| the British Council, built in 1952 |
The Watgate port was still
active, but not for long. When
Princess Dara made her 1908 trip she went by train to Nakhon Sawan and by boat
from there to Chiang Mai. The
journey took two months and nine days.
In the early 1920s workers completed a railroad and highway from Bangkok
to Chiang Mai, reducing travel time either direction to just over a day. River commerce was over. But Watgate had already outgrown its
port.
The district included all the
neighborhoods on either side of the three roads—Charoen Muang, Kaew Nawarat and
Rattanakosin--that ran east of the three main bridges spanning the Ping
River. The new train station stood
near the end of Charoen Muang and the northern bus terminal lies near the end
of Kaew Nawarat. The river port
was dismantled and farms behind the eastern riverbank largely disappeared,
replaced by residential neighborhoods.
For a look at the artifacts,
crafts, photos and items of everyday use in this period one should visit Wat
Ketkaram’s Museum, established around a century ago. Many Lannna temples have museums, but this is the
largest. Furnishings, images,
manuscripts and decorations from the original temple are on display, but the
collection also includes a host of objects representing the secular life of the
times. These include baskets,
musical instruments, leather cases, old typewriters, radios and phonographs,
hunting and fishing gear, wooden animal head trophies, looms, thread winders,
classic sarongs and festival rocket launchers.
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| a modern traditional style house in Watgate |
As the century progressed Watgate
retained its importance to Chiang Mai’s educational program. Dara Academy and Prince Royal’s College
expanded into new buildings and today have a few thousand students. Payap University, another
Christian-sponsored institution, opened a campus opposite McCormick
Hospital. Facing Rattanakosin
Road, in the rear of the campus, is the McGilvary Institute for religious
studies. Chiang Mai’s first church
still stands, now called Chiang Mai Christian School Chapel, next to a Bible
Study Institute.
Besides the
Christian schools, Watgate also has some language learning institutes. The first was the British Council, on
Bamrungrat Road, constructed in 1952, whose activities today are basically restricted
to teaching English. Besides
English academies, there is also a center nearby for foreigners to learn Thai.
From the late 90s tourism to
Thailand accelerated and affected developments in Watgate. New restaurants and nightclubs lined
the riverbank between Charoen Muang and Kaew Nawarat. Many of the fine old wooden houses were converted into
hotels and art galleries. The
quiet end of Rattanakosin features several buffet grills, though customers are
mostly Thai.
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| NcGilvary Academy, Payap University |
In fact, for all the foreigner
presence in Watgate, the district’s residents are still predominantly
Thai. Several Buddhist temples
have been built the last few decades, plus a crematorium at the end of
Rattanakosin. Typical of suburban
Thai life is the warren of lanes behind this road. Some of the houses are quite fancy, old or new, others very
modest. The residents include
white-collar professionals and ordinary workers and traders, some of whom
transport their goods in side carts attached to their motorbikes. Shops on the
lanes cater to the neighborhood’s needs, including convenience stores, legal
offices, realtors, beauty salons, food stores and small restaurants.
Bars, karaoke clubs and snack
and grill stands are just around the corner, opening in late afternoon. People also gather at the tables in
front of the small essentials shops to have a ‘sundowner’ beer or whisky. It’s a quiet and convivial scene, far
from city congestion and one of the delights of being a resident of Watgate.
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| Watgate riverside in May |
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