THE IMAGE of CHIANG Mal: the MAKING of a BEAUTIFUL CITY
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Ronald D. Renard THE IMAGE OF CHIANG MAl: THE MAKING OF A BEAUTIFUL CITY Chiang Mai conjures up images of pretty girls, by the Asia Training Centre on Ageing and flowers, pleasing customs, striking scenery, and Care International in Thailand and sponsored gracious manners. Thais from elsewhere in the by the Australian International Development country popularly contend that the local language Assistance Bureau, could avoid such pre spoken in Chiang Mai is more melodious than conceptions. At its 1995 workshop, a handout the national Thai language. To many in Thailand, entitled, "Useful Information About Chiang Chiang Mai is all things good about Thai culture, Mai", told "Many lowland Thais regard the city the epitome of the Thai way oflife. as being a national Shangrila thanks to So pervasively has Chiang Mai been extolled beautiful women, distinctive festivals ...". [Asia that persons around the world envision the city Training Centre 1995, p. 6] in the same way. Even such a presumably Such views contrast markedly with those of unromanticizable observer as the American the nineteenth century, when Bangkok Thai Presbyterian missionary, Margaretta Wells, disdained Chiang Mai. To the people of the begins her 1963 guidebook to Chiang Mai with capital, Chiang Mii was a place of homely the statement that the city was "an altogether women who smoked heavily, chewed betel to enchanting place". [1963 p. 1] Later guidebooks excess, and ate so muchpa ha (fermented fish) were even more eloquent. One written in 1989 that they fouled the air. Moreover, these women evoked visions of Shangrila. of high odor were, if the description in old central Thai classics like Khun Chang Khun northern Thailand retains a charm that is hard to Phaen of Chiang Mai's lady, Nang Soi Fa, can express in words and indeed must be experienced be believed, were none too intelligent. Confident first hand before one can understand the enthusiasm in this belief, some Bangkok parents of old that the region engenders to its visitors. Is it the lulled children to bed with airs mocking cool hazy air of sunny winter days or the happy simpleminded Chiang Mai women. countenance of its graceful people or perhaps that Despite these preconceptions, relations special feeling that places of an old an enduring between central Thai men and Chiang Mai culture empart upon the landscapes that make it women existed. Some northern women, even such a special place? [Tettoni 1989, p. 9] those of high rank, married men from in and around Bangkok. These had started at least as No less a forum than the Workshop on early as the 1770s when the sister of Kawila "AIDS Impact on Ageing Society" organized married one of King Taksin's commanders sent Journal ofthe Siam Society 87 .I & 2 ( 1999) 88 Ronald D. Renard to help wrest Chiang Mai from the hold of such as photography, and some from Bangkok Burmese overlords. [Penth 1992, p. 46] so that she came to understand different cultures Nevertheless, the image of northern women while in the palace. [Nongyao 1990, pp. 47-49] remained negative at the end of the nineteenth Through this learning and subsequent adap century as the treatment accorded Princess Dara tations made by her, she helped overcome the in the Bangkok palace attests. condescension with which many people in Some early Western travellers to Chiang Bangkok viewed Chiang Mai. Mai held similarly negative attitudes. Daniel Also helping to reverse the preconceptions McGilvary, a Presbyterian missionary and of Chiang Mai were the many influences among the first group of Americans to come to encountered by Thai leadership at the time. King Chiang Mai, found the place dirty, "demon" Chulalongkorn, for example, travelled through ridden, and governed by arbitrary and often out Asia and then later to Europe where he unjust rulers". [McGilvay 1912] learned much about the rest of the world. He and One daughter of Chiang Mai's ruler Prince members of his entourages helped popularize Inthawichayanon, born to Princess Thipkeson in much that was new to Thailand, some of which 1873, was named Dara Ratsami. After receiving were to change the image of Chiang Mai. an education in northern Thai and Siamese Thai, He studied practical items, such as the she accompanied her father to Bangkok in 1886 telegraph, telephone, and railroads, as well as where he paid obeisance to King Chulalongkorn. cultural artifacts such as regional and Western On meeting the King, she was invited, at the musical instruments, themes from Western stories young age offifteen, to become one ofhis wives. and operas, new foods, law codes, and commercial Quite a few of his wives were daughters of practices. These often blended with Thai ways to important regional leaders and heads oftributary create new cultural mixes and modified traditions. states over whom the Bangkok government This openness to different practices provided wanted to maintain control. Having a daughter Princess Dara the chance to introduce some among the wives was seen as an effective way of aspects of Chiang Mai culture in the capital. controlling her home state. From this time on One example was the Thaiization of miang into until 1911 when the king died, Prince Dara lived Miang Lao, in which cabbage was substituted in Bangkok as one his wives. for tea leaves, which were hard to find in Initially she stayed in the Grand Palace but Bangkok. Miang then diversified into new forms later the king had the Suan Farang Kangsai such as miang pla tu, made with mackerel and Palace built for her (close to present-day miang kung (shrimp miang) until most Thais Chitralada Palace). She served as a proponent have forgotten the Chiang Mai connection of northern Thai customs by always wearing [Liulalong Bunnag 1989] northern style dresses and costumes and These few changes were insufficient to speaking the Chiang Mai language. She had reverse, the condescension given to things northern foods served continually and chewed northern by the Bangkok elite. When Crown miang (fermented tea) as the finale to most Prince Vajiravudh (the future King Rama VI) meals. Such practices were resented by many in made a tour of the north in Chiang Mai in 1906, Bangkok's royal circles who denigrated her he suggested that the Lao had to be "tamed" affection for this and other northern specialties (juk hai chuang) in order to become good such as pa ha as well as her propensity for citizens "agreeable to the Thai" in the new Thai smoking tobacco. As a result, her palace came nation (chat Thae). Except for some references to be known somewhat derisively as "Tamnak to flowers, however, he had nothing to say about Chao Lao" (The Palace of the Lao Princess). anything beautiful in Chiang Mai. But she did take interest in the ways of Bangkok. She invited the noted blind musician, The Bangkok Recension of Chiang Mai Choi Suntharawathin, to teach her and her palace History staff central Thai music She collected musical instruments from the north and central Thailand. Attitudes such as these came to be incorporated She pursued other interests, some from overseas in new histories of Thailand being written as Journal ofthe Siam Society 87.1 & 2 (1999) Beautiful Chiang Mai 89 Bangkok took over Chiang Mai. Such writings to the telling of it in the Chiang Mai Chronicle came to replace accounts of the north written by which extols the efforts of Kawila. the people ofLan Na. Later central Thai accounts of Lan Na, Chiang Mai has a literary heritage of however, downplay the importance of Kawila hundreds if I).Ot thousands of texts. From a so and his associates. Prince Damrong Raja called Golden Era in the fifteenth century when nubhap's Thai Rop Phama, (Thai Wars with major historical and Buddhist texts were written, Burma), [Bangkok 1971] which details over 44 LanNa literature ebbed following the takeover wars from 1538 until1854. Regarding the period in 1558 by King Bayinnaung of Burma. of time from 1771 until 1791 when Burmese Although a brief revival occurred in the early overlords of Chiang Mai were expelled to be nineteenth century, when some new writing replaced by those from Bangkok, Damrong occurred, including an updating of the major barely mentions Kawila and the other northern version of the Chiang Mai Chronicle around leaders. Instead, Damrong credits Chaophraya 1827, literature in Lan Na was in decline. Chakri (later King Rama I), for directing the Individual pockets of literary creativity have campaign. persisted but the inspiration to write major Later accounts carried even fewer references historical accounts was lost. No major history to the city, its founding in 1296 by King Mang of Chiang Mai was to be written by a northern Rai, the flourishing of Buddhism and literature Thai for over a century and a half. under later kings in the sixteenth century, or the Into this void stepped central Thai authors. kingdom's centuries-long and often successful Among the first was Chaem Bunnag, member struggles with Ayutthaya, Lao, and Burman of a powerful family of Bangkok nobility, with kingdoms. When mentioned at all, Chiang Mai the title Phraya Prachakitkorachak. Born in 1864, is discussed as one of the tributary states of a member of several expeditions to the north in Ayutthaya or the site where Ayutthayan kings, 1880s and 1890s, he had a modem education such as Naresuan, travelled to defend the and became interested in Chiang Mai history. kingdom. He and others of his generation were proud of When he took the throne in 1910, King the growing Thai kingdom expanding even in Vajiravudh felt that establishing schools would the face of Western imperialism. Their reports, bring the northern Thai into the formative Thai poems, and songs became important deter nation.