Daily Reflections Day 2 /หนึ่ง/
The first thing on our research itinerary was a lecture at Chiang Mai University, done by one of the professors in the department of history and culture. We had a good night of shopping and bargaining in the Walking Market last night to initiate ourselves into this beautiful city, but it was time to get started on work. We arrived fresh-faced and bright-eyed at the Faulty of Fine Arts, eager to collect enough data to answer the questions we carefully crafted in our work plan and to support the thoughts we already had about Chiang Mai’s heritage. We would make such great progress today!
I have never liked History as a subject in school but I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture on Chiang Mai’s history. As I listened to the professor, I found myself focusing less on how this could help in our project, and more on how similar, yet different, Chiang Mai’s heritage is from the culture I’ve known all my life. It was no longer a lecture for the sake of filling up time in our itinerary, but a genuine sharing that sought to connect two groups of people from different places in the world.
The people of the Lanna kingdom (Chiang Mai’s former name) came from all over the neighbouring countries — China, Laos, Myanmar – just like how the first peoples of Singapore migrated from other Asian countries. Our government worked hard to create a collective identity to unify us, but this did not seem to be a prime concern for Chiang Mai. There were no major racial conflicts that led to the need for discriminatory laws; everyone in Chiang Mai was there on business and they treated everyone else kindly because of that. When we compare Singapore and Chiang Mai today, it’s interesting to see how two cities that have similar origins could end up so differently socially and economically. Of course, Singapore is much stronger economically, but it had to take proper legislation for us to treat one another with respect and kindness. Is it really that hard to accept others of a different background from yourself? Apparently not for Chiang Mai.
One of the things that struck me the most during the sharing was the role that gender played in Lanna society. They were a matriarchal society, so women held a higher social status compared to men. The youngest girl had the greatest power in the household. This is the complete opposite of Chinese beliefs, which accord the eldest son the highest authority in the family. Females were also expected to mind matters about money and business, while males were relegated to the arts, which were considered frivolous acts. In fact, the old Thai word for market translates directly to “lady-buyers/sellers”. The notion that the marketplace is the place for females is ingrained in them even in their language.
What a difference from what I, as a Chinese, have been brought up to think! The sharp contrast in beliefs really opened my mind to how different cultures can be, and it reminded me of how different people are.
After the lecture ended, my excitement over what I just learned slowly turned into anxiety because I realized that what the professor had shared about Chiang Mai’s heritage was nothing like what we expected at all. The looks on my group mates’ faces reflected panic as well. We expected answers about food, architecture and music; we did not consider the ethnicity and origin of the people at all. That night, what was supposed to be a 15-minute talk about resetting the direction of our research turned into a two-hour-long debate over what to focus our project on. Everyone threw out ideas from different corners of the hotel room and we would get excited for a while. But somehow, somewhere, things would get stuck and we had to reject the idea. We would then resume various positions of deep pondering while curled up with a pillow or cushion. This cycle went on until we finally decided on a combination of two previously rejected ideas. It wasn’t the happiest night, but it was the most memorable for me. I remember the frustration of not being able to resolve the problem and the dismay at our negligence in the first place (the core meaning of heritage is one’s origin—how could we have overlooked that during our initial planning??). We also realized how hard it was to clearly isolate separate elements of their heritage. The people saw their own heritage as a collective representation of their identity, a marriage of all the things that make them who they are, instead of pinpointing a specific aspect of their heritage and saying “yes, this is the thing that encapsulates who I am.”
In retrospect, we took the issue of cultural preservation too lightly in our initial plans for this research trip. We assumed that there would be prominent aspects of Chiang Mai’s heritage that the people would want to protect. But when I think about my own heritage, I am unable to pinpoint any one thing that can be called the most important part of my heritage. The fact that I am Chinese, that I am Singaporean, that a significant part of my childhood was spent in the rural parts of Malaysia where my parents grew up, that I am who I am today because of the unique sequence of experiences that only I have gone through, all mean a lot to me. Heritage is a complex enough issue for one person, how much more complicated would it be for an entire community of people?
Yet, I am thankful for these problems that surfaced because it allowed us to grow as researchers. After all, what would a research project be if there weren’t any unexpected results? We wouldn’t have had to come all the way to Chiang Mai if we could have anticipated everything from the CresPion Cultural Room. Besides, this was the first challenge that we overcame together as the Heritage Preservation group. I felt that we bonded over tearing our hair out in the hotel room that night, and the frustration that we shared only helped to deepen our friendship over the next few days. (Of course, the cheap beer helped too.) The slight detour on the first day actually helped us to get an even clearer direction of the focus of our research, so I am thankful for that.