Day 1 (4th Jan)

Chiang Mai turned out to be quite different from what I have expected. The morning lecture at CMU was a very informative and completely changed my impression of Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai has a very distinctive Northern Thai culture of its own. In fact it seems to me that the locals are very keen to distinguish themselves from the “Bangkok culture”. The lecturer explained that the cultural difference is partly due to the difference in ethnic composition, a factor we did not consider in our work plan for the research on heritage preservation.

Throughout the day as we interacted with more professors and students, it became blatant that ethnicity is a core element of Chiang Mai’s culture and heritage. We started feeling uncertain about the research focus of the two subgroups, which was split into perceptions of tangible and intangible heritage. The locals’ perceptions of their culture and heritage are holistic. Tangible and intangible heritage are too intertwined for us to discuss meaningfully about one while omitting the other. Also, we would fail to preserve the integrity of the perspectives provided by the locals should we filter certain opinions out. That night, our group gathered to brainstorm a solution back at the hotel. After an hour of heated discussion, we finally reached a consensus: one group will gather the perspectives from locals, the other group from non-locals. Non-locals, especially tourists, have a huge spending powers, and their preferences would play a significant role in making heritage preservation decisions. Therefore, the gap between the perspectives highlights the challenges of heritage preservation in Chiang Mai.