Tigers Out, People In—The Second Founding of Chiang Mai

                                                                by Jim Goodman

Kawila's army on the march, Wat Srisupahn

       Originally founded in 1296, for over two and a half centuries Chiang Mai was the capital of the independent Kingdom of Lanna.  At its peak, Lanna ruled over most of northern Thailand and its authority extended into northeast Burma and Xishuangbanna in Yunnan, China.   But by the mid-16^th century the state had fallen into decline and Chiang Mai fell to Burmese armies from Pegu in 1558.  Lanna became a semi-autonomous vassal state of Burma for over a century, then was incorporated into the Burmese Kingdom as a province and ruled directly by Burmese governors. 

       At the pinnacle of its power, in 1767 Burma conquered and destroyed Ayutthaya, the capital of its hereditary rival Siam.  Down but not out, the Siamese recovered under King Taksin and began a long struggle to expel the Burmese from the land.  Some places, like Lampang, 100 km south of Chiang Mai, had already reclaimed their independence from Burma and in an alliance with Taksin’s forces, in 1774 drove the Burmese garrison out of Chiang Mai. 

ruins of the wall and bastion on the nw corner

       Peace didn’t last long, though, for the Burmese launched a nearly successful counter-attack two years later.  Not feeling strong enough yet to withstand another attack, the defenders abandoned the city and removed what was left of its local population to Lampang.  With most of its fortifications, palaces and temples heavily damaged by years of conflict, Chiang Mai became a ghost city, its ruins the haunt of tigers and wild elephants from the forest just to its west.

       In 1782 the Chakri Dynasty took power in Siam and moved the capital to Bangkok.  King Rama I, who had been one of the commanders who expelled the Burmese from Chiang Mai, appointed his ally Prince Kawila of Lampang as King of the re-established state of Lanna.  It would not be fully independent, as in the past, but as a vassal state of Siam, yet would still recoup its former glory.  And so would Chiang Mai, its capital once again.

       The problem was that there were not enough people around to be able to do this.  Decades of war had devastated northern Thailand and all the cities north of Lampang were empty.  Persuading people to leave their forest retreats and return to rebuild didn’t seem to work.  So for the next several years Kawila’s armies embarked on what were called missions of ‘collecting vegetables for baskets and collecting people for the cities.’ 

guardian lions onrth of the city

       Mostly these expeditions went north, to Kengtung in northeast Burma and over into Xishuangbanna.  Their objective was to capture people to repopulate Chiang Mai and other cities.  This was not something unprecedented.  For centuries states in the region had been doing the same thing to each other.  The winners abducted people from the losers’ territories and brought them back to live within their own countries.  They waged war for resources and people were prime resources, especially crafts workers.

       Finally, in 1791, fifteen years after the tigers took over Chiang Mai, Kawila began his reconstruction program.  He had the original moats renovated, rebuilt the brick walls and city gates, restored the most important temples, constructed new palaces and eradicated the wild animal presence.  Reviving old Lanna customs, he reinstalled the sacred city pillar and later built shrines for protective animal spirits at two locations north of the city.  One was a pair of white elephant statues and the other a pair of white lions.  Then he began moving people into the city starting with the former residents who had been shifted to Lampang.  They were Tai Yuan people, from the majority ethnic population in the north.  And for some time only Tai Yuan people were permitted to live within the walled old city.

rounding up theTai Khoen

the chedi at Wat Ku Tao

       The Tai Khoen from Kengtung and the Tai Lu from Xishuangbanna were settled in Haiya, the area south of the old city that used to be inhabited by the Tai Yuan commoners, when only the royal family, high-ranking nobles and monks lived within the walled area.  Both the Tai Khoen and the Tai Lu are culturally close to the Tai Yuan.  Their dialects are very similar.  They use the same alphabet, follow the same monastic orders and their former ruling families were related.  They apparently didn’t have any trouble fitting in to the Tai Yuan polity.

Chakravartin Buddha at Wat Ku Tao

Shan girls at Wat Ku Tao

       In 1796, five hundred years after its original birth, with enough people on hand now to cheer his procession, Kawila had himself crowned as king in resurrected Chiang Mai.  With a further nod to tradition, he and his entourage entered the old city by the northern gate, the same route taken by Mengrai, Lanna’s first King, and all of his successors.  Security was still a priority, though, for the Burmese were still a threat.  Kawila had an earthen wall built around the southern and eastern suburbs and this helped stop a final Burmese attack in 1802.  Shortly after this, Kawila expelled the Burmese from their last stronghold in Chiang Saen and from then on northern Thailand lived in peace.

music at the Wat Ku Tao festival

Wat Papao

       With this victory, followed by more ‘collecting people’ among the Tai Yong and Shan, Kawila assured the revival of the Lanna state and the prestige of Chiang Mai.  But just as it was not quite the Lanna state of old, it was not the same kind of Chiang Mai this incarnation.  In the past, Chiang Mai had some resident foreign traders and diplomats, but now it had entire neighborhoods settled by outsiders.  From now on it could no longer be identified as a Tai Yuan city.

       This trend continued for the next century as other Lanna cities revived and the north became more integrated with the rest of Thailand.  The last of the people-collecting missions ended with the captured Tai Yong of northeast Burma, removed to resettle Lamphun, 30 km south.  Afterwards it was a normal immigration process, though communities settled in certain exclusive areas.  The Tai Yai, or Shan, moved into the area north of the old city and in the early 20^th century Chinese settled along the Ping River, where today they dominate the big riverside markets.

lacquer ware at Wat Nantharam

       Though they have long been an integral part of Northern Thai society, many of these ‘outsiders’ have kept up their own distinct customs.  The Chinese have their Mahayana Buddhist temples and stage elaborate New Year celebrations in the riverside Warorot Market.  The Shans took over maintenance of Wat Chiang Yeun, the only temple undamaged by the Burmese wars, and erected two of their own.

       Wat Ku Tao, about two km north of the old city, is distinguished by its unusual old chedi, shaped like a stack of begging bowls.  It was built in the late 16^th century during the Burmese occupation and holds the ashes of the first Burmese prince appointed to the throne of Lanna.  The two-story viharn, or main worship hall, is new and in the Thai style.  The large, seated Buddha in the upper floor hall wears a crown, regal garments and ornaments, a style known as the Chakravartin—Universal Ruler.  It symbolizes a period when the Buddhist Dharma will prevail all over the world.

Wat Nantharam

       At the beginning of the Buddhist retreat season the local Shan hold a festival in the compound.  Dressed in their best traditional clothing, they throng the compound from mid-morning.  Festivals are market venues as well, so some set up stalls to sell temple offerings, jewelry, clothing, fruits, drinks and snacks.  Others light incense sticks and place flowers at the shrines and inside the viharn, paste gold leaf wafers onto Buddha images and, more and more often every year, use their cell phones and selfie-sticks to record their devotional exercises.

       The activities are both religious and secular.  Inside the ground level hall devotees listen to monks’ sermons and beneath one of the compound’s leafy big trees sit while monks recite passages from scriptures.  In another area an impromptu music session takes place, with flutes, gongs and a long ‘elephant-leg’ drum. 

      The other main Shan temple is Wat Papao, across the moat on the other side of the northeast corner of the old city.  With its triple-roofed entrance gate, bell-like chedi and multi-tiered viharn, it follows the Shan style in northeast Burma.  It’s also more of a Shan cultural center, for the signs are in the Shan language and script and stalls in the compound sell Shan specialties like cheroots. 

Wat Srisuphan--the Silver Temple

       The biggest Shan festival, Por Sang Long, takes place here late March or early April.  It is a rite of passage for boys 7-14, who dress like princes in gorgeous clothes and jewelry to symbolize the life of the Buddha before he left his royal palace to seek Enlightenment.  After three days of music, dancing, games and a colorful procession, the boys exchange their fancy garments for monastic robes and enroll in the monastery as novices for a few months.

       As for the earlier settlers from Burma, the Tai Khoen forcibly resettled in Haiya, their neighborhood became an important part of the city’s crafts tradition, particularly lacquer ware and silver.  Workshops in the lanes around Wat Nantharam produced bowls, vases, platters, trays and containers of all shapes and sizes, lacquered in red, gold and black.  The lustrous surface finish is so durable that antique lacquer ware, like that on display in the Wat Natharam museum, looks like it was just made yesterday.

craftsman at work,Wat Srisuphan

       Wat Nantharam is also famous as a traditional medicine center.  It is one of several temples serving the Haiya neighborhoods.  But the most important, the cultural hub of Haiya, is Wat Srisuphan, just off Wualai Road, the street that runs diagonally through the district.  Shops selling silver jewelry and other silver items dominate Wualai and craftsmen work at little stalls in the adjoining lanes.

       Wat Srisuphan was built in 1501, when Lanna was still a strong, independent kingdom.  At the time, it was one of the eight holiest temples surrounding the center of Chiang Mai.  Hardly anything remains of the original structures, though, for it has been renovated many times since.  During the Second World War, when Thailand was temporarily allied with Japan, the Japanese Army used the temple compound as a military base, with soldiers quartered just outside the walls.  Consequently, it suffered from a rare Allied bombing raid.  One of the bombs blew up the main worship hall--the viharn.

monk in the workshop, Wat Srisuphan

     After the war the local people gradually restored the buildings, added more, upgraded the decorations, installed new statues and in recent decades turned the compound into a showcase for the Haiya silver crafts community.  From 2005 workers began covering the exterior walls of the ubosot (ordination hall) with sculpted metal plates depicting a great variety of figures and scenes.  The work was completed only a couple years ago and Wat Srisuphan now is famously known as the Silver Temple.

       The plates are only silver in color though, for they are made from aluminum.  Yet the work, carried out in the compound’s own workshop, is truly impressive, both for its skill and for some of its unusual themes.   On each side of the entrance stairs are mythological scenes of devatas (Buddhist angels) flying over churning oceans.  On the back wall is a scene of the Buddha, in gold, preaching to an assembly of devotees.  On the side walls are vignettes of daily life, like riding ox carts, building houses, carrying water and so on.

       Such scenes are also commonly portrayed in the interior wall murals of many temple buildings in the city.  Unique to the Silver Temple are the panels depicting the Haiya community’s history, with Kawila’s army on the march and his mounted soldiers rounding up people in Kengtung.  Also unique are decorative plaques that have nothing to do with religion, like the emblems of the ASEAN nations, pictures of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, capital cities of the modern world, famous buildings like Stonehenge, the Hagia Sophia Mosque, the catacombs of Alexandria, the Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing, etc. and cartoon characters like Spiderman.

Alexandria catacombs, Hagia Sophia Mosque

       The identifying captions beneath these plaques are all in English, another indication of the temple’s new reach out to the tourist crowds.  Next to the ubosot is a small museum honoring the community’s top silver and lacquer ware specialists, with biographies and samples of their work.  The workshop next to the viharn is still active every day and the temple offers tourists classes in silver craftwork.  It also has a ‘Monk Chat’ program for visitors to talk with English-speaking monks about Buddhism or learn about meditation.

       The moats, bastions, restored old temples and city gates, what passes for the main tourist attractions in Chiang Mai, are the visible legacy of Kawila’s reconstruction.  More important was the demographic change he introduced, the precedent he set for adding to the local population people from far beyond Chiang Mai,  As a result, the culture of Chiang Mai today is richer than it ever was, even in Lanna’s Golden Age.

village life, a panel on the Silver Temple

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At the End of the Burma Road: the Dai of Dehong

                                                     by Jim Goodman

Welcome to Dehong

       A few months after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 the Japanese Army had succeeded in occupying eastern China, forced the Nationalist government to relocate to Chongqing and began blockading all goods shipments to western China.  The government response was to quickly begin building a new road over the ancient Southwest Silk Road from Kunming to Burma, then still a British colony, to facilitate the supply of essentials and war equipment.  Hundreds of conscripted laborers lost their lives to landslides and accidents as the route crossed many mountains and rivers on its way to the terminus at the newly established border town of Wanding, in sw Dehong prefecture.

       So long as the British held Burma, every day a mass of vehicles coming up from Bhamo and Lashio crossed the bridge into Wanding bringing tons of supplies.  After the Japanese conquered northern Burma they closed the entry points into Yunnan and the Allied supply efforts shifted to delivery by air.  Traffic on the Burma Road didn’t reach the level of the first few years of its existence until the 1990s.  And it was still a two-lane, cobblestone road hosting every kind of local traffic—private cars, public buses, big, slow logging trucks, tractor-trailers and pony carts.    

Mangshi's mascots

       A new four-lane super highway opened in the 21^st century that ran roughly along the same route, but tunneled through the mountains instead, reducing the travel time from Kunming by over half.  Wanding was still a border crossing, but the highway stretched all the way to Ruili, a city that became a more important border post as trade with Myanmar dramatically increased.  But for non-business travelers just coming for a look at Dehong, the usual first stop is Luxi, the prefecture capital and largest city.

       Luxi is the Chinese name for the city and it means ‘west of the Nu (River).’  People in this part of Yunnan pronounce an initial n as l, which is why it is Luxi and not Nuxi.  The Dai name for it is Mangshi.   The modern city of Luxi was built on the western side of Mangshi, historically an important Dai administrative center, with authority over the plains and hills to the north and south.  The northern and eastern quarters of the city are still Dai neighborhoods and all the temples and pagodas lie east of the main business avenue.

       The city is the capital of a Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, though, and so ethnic motifs influence the new city as well.  Many new buildings have Dai-style peaked roofs and Youyilu, the lane running from the main business street to the government guest house, features shop houses in individual Dai style, in various pastel colors.  The guest house itself is in a tasteful Dai style, in a quiet park near the Mangshi River. At the northern entrance to the city, on a tall, red pyramidal pedestal stand the golden sculptures of the Dai mascot peacocks.  One is crouching, the other raising its elongated neck into the sky; an unusual depiction for Dehong.

Mangshi's Dai quarters

       To publicize the multi-ethnic character of Dehong, the city removed its central market and built a park that features large stone statues of the men and women of the nationalities that reside in Dehong:  Dai, Jingpo, Achang, De’ang, Lisu and Han.  In the city’s southwest quarter is the Nationalities Park, with a garden, small zoo, a set of Jingpo painted Munao poles and a Dai village exhibition.  A few traditional Dai bamboo and thatch houses stand around a small pagoda and well and a staff of young men and women periodically practice or perform dances here.

shops on Youyilu

       Like their counterparts across the Myanmar border, the Dai in Dehong are Theravada Buddhists.  The oldest Buddhist monument in the city is Shubaota, the Tree-Wrapped Pagoda, in the compound of the No.1 Primary School in the southwest part of the old town.  Built in the mid-17^th century, one of Dehong’s trees took root on the pagoda itself and over the centuries part of its trunk crawled over the surface of the monument, today almost completely covering it.

       Mangshi’s three historic temples lie northeast of Shubaota.  Puti Temple, on Guangnanlu, built in the late 17^th century, is a red, wooden, wide, elevated structure with roofs of corrugated iron.  The entrance is circular, a feature common in Dehong temples.  Putisi is the most popular temple for local Dai Buddhists.  But just 150 meters down a side road the three-story, wooden Wu-in Temple, nearly as old, with tiled roofs, sits in a more attractive setting.  Towering tees flank the temple and an enshrined well lies in one corner of the large courtyard.  Within the temple the main image is of a crowned Buddha, in the style of a chakravartin (Universal Ruler).

dance rehearsal in Nationalities Park

the Tree-Wrapped Pagoda

       The third old temple in the vicinity is Foguangsi--Light of the Buddha Temple.  Erected in the 19^th century, it looks a bit different, in a style closer to Han temples, with ornately carved struts and roof awnings.  This temple seems to attract Han devotees more than Dai, which is even truer of the new Guan Yin Temple in the city center, built recently at the turn of the century.

Puyi Temple

       The Dai in Dehong call themselves Dai Luang, or Dai Yai in their own language, the same appellation applied to their ethnic cousins in Myanmar and northwest Thailand.  To outsiders they are also known as Dai Neua and Dai Mao and more recently as Chinese Shans, closely related to the Shans across the border in Myanmar. They had an independent set of small states until the Ming Dynasty, becoming officially part of China in the 15^th century, though remaining relatively autonomous under their own saopha rulers until the inauguration of New China in 1949.

       Dai sub-groups also live in other parts of Yunnan and those in the southern parts of Lincang and Pu’er Prefectures also call themselves Dai Neua, except in Menglian, home of the Dai Lem, and in Xishuangbanna, another Dai Autonomous Prefecture, who are mostly the Dai Lu, also Theravada Buddhist.  But the Dai dialects in Banna and Dehong are quite different, such that except for small talk, they are mutually unintelligible.  In fact, even the alphabets are different.

        Dehong Dai villages lie near streams, averaging 40-50 houses and one temple compound, with clumps of bamboo on their edges, but also magnificent peepul, banyan and other long-limbed shade trees.  Villagers take their rest breaks beneath their spreading branches.  Their houses sit on the ground and are made of drab-brown brick with tile roofs, sometimes enclosed by a walled compound.  Auxiliary buildings, and even the main houses of the less affluent, have walls of plaited bamboo and tin or thatched roofs.

Wu-in Temple

       Wells are housed in consecrated shrines, as in other Buddhist Dai areas, and the women carry water in buckets suspended at each end of a pole.  They use the same method to convey crops from the fields or goods from the markets, with woven baskets of split bamboo instead of buckets.

       Men dress like the Han, but are often shirtless in the fields.  Many tattoo their arms and chests.  In former times they completely tattooed their thighs as well.  Women wear the Dai sarong, usually black, with a long-sleeved, pale-colored, side-fastened jacket.  On special occasions they don a jacket of gold silk.  Girls and single women wear their hair loose, but married women tie their hair in a topknot and wrap it in a black silk, tubular turban or one of terry cloth in pastel colors.  Younger women may wear brighter colors and, like their counterparts across the border, apply thanaka powder, made from the soft outer bark of the tree of the same name, to their faces as a sunscreen and skin conditioner.  Some young women wear it all the time, streaking the edges of it at the cheekbones, giving a feline accent to their facial appearance.

Chakravartin Buddha

married Dai women

       The Dai are skillful farmers, blessed with good fertility, reliant and abundant rainfall every year.  They easily obtain two crops a year from their fields, in some places three, thanks to irrigation canals running alongside the fields.  The rice from the Zhefang area, about 40 km southwest, has a national reputation and used to be part of the tribute sent to the imperial court in Beijing.  The pineapples are the best tasting and most nutritious in the province.  Dai cuisine is similar to that in Banna, with the various dishes prepared in the restaurants in the morning and, when appropriate, reheated before being served.  Baked and sour foods are popular, spiced with chili, coriander, lemon grass, etc.

young Dai women in Mangshi

      Dehong was one of the first areas in Yunnan open to foreigners, but rarely received any, as most tourists preferred Dali and Lijiang and anyway, the road to Dehong was a long and rough ride in the 90s.  It seemed only people so fascinated with Yunnan that they wanted to see all of it, like myself, bothered to take the trouble.  In the trips I made there towards the end of the decade and beyond I never saw another foreigner.  I’m sure others came at other times and probably enjoyed it just as much, for Mangshi people seemed well prepared to make the foreign visitor’s stay a very pleasant one.

       Everyone everywhere was polite, smiling when greeting me, whether in a shop or a park.  At the Nationalities Park I arrived during a dance rehearsal and one of the staff members rushed a chair for me to sit and served me a cup of hot tea to enjoy while I observed the action.  When U visited temples the monks insisted I share tea and cigarettes.  If a ritual happened to take place when I was there, the devotees invited me to join them for a vegetarian picnic afterwards.  When I ate in Dai restaurants the owners brought me samples of other dishes than what I ordered, just to try.  Inevitably, of course, I wound up asking for a plate of one of these samples, either then or at the next meal.

traditional-style Dai village house

       Dehong Dai have tenaciously clung to their ethnic identity, even after government-sponsored Han immigration into the area in the 1950s, the depredations of the Cultural Revolution and the influence of rapid modernization in recent decades.  The preference among the women for traditional clothing, among all Dai for Dai-style cuisine, the maintenance of old customs and respectful social intercourse, the use of the Dai language at home and in the markets, as well as the continuation of religious practices all reflect this.

       The temples are most active on the 8^th, 15^th and 23^rd days of the lunar month and especially at the annual festivals.  These include the Water-Sprinkling Festival in mid-April and activities associated with the opening and conclusion of the three-month Buddhist retreat season during the monsoon.  At any time of the year they may also be the venue for a poi, a local festival occurring at the dedication of a new image or the renovation of a temple.  In the past local rich patrons sponsored such events, partly for religion, partly for prestige.  Nowadays they are generally village communal affairs, everyone tithed for the costs.

ritual to the Land Spirit at Mukang village

       Buddhism came to Dehong only in the 17^th century.  Some of the original animist beliefs are inevitably still part of local religious mentality.  This became apparent to me on a visit to Mukang, a Dai village 9 km north of Mangshi.  I arrived on a Buddhist holy day and peered through the round entrance while the congregation, divided by sex, recited sutras and kowtowed to the Buddha image.  Afterwards the women moved to the courtyard, carrying little bottles of water and rice liquor, crouched in ranks with their backs to the temple, and prayed while periodically pouring libations of water and rice liquor onto the ground to honor the Land Spirit.

       Dai culture in Dehong did not remain impervious to Han influence.  Weddings nowadays, with the bridal headdress, red candles and procession, are hardly distinguishable from Han weddings.  The Dai bury their dead, unlike most Buddhist Dai, who cremate the body.  Unlike other Dai, they have an opera tradition, too, like the Han, but though the singing style is similar, the Dai version eschews the elaborate make-up and the costumes are classic Dai style.  Yet in most other aspects the Dai continue to follow the cultural norms established centuries ago.  This includes mutual respect between the sexes, abstention from loud, boisterous, rude or impolite behavior and, good news for travelers, a warm and hospitable reception for guests.

rural landscape outside Mangshi

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