THE PEOPLE & CULTURE
ETHNIC MAKEUP
is more mixing of Muslim folk beliefs into the regional culture thanks to
the geographic proximity to Malaysia and the historic Muslim population.
If you were to redraw Thailand’s borders according to ethnicity and
culture, northern Thailand would be united with parts of southern China
and northern Myanmar. The traditional homeland of the Tai people was
believed to be the Yunnan region of China. There are also many sub-
groups, including the Shan (an ethnic cousin to the Thais who settled in
the highlands of Burma) and the Tai Lü (who settled in Nan and Chiang
Rai province as well as the Vietnam highlands).
People of Chinese ancestry – second- or third-generation Hakka, Teo-
chew, Hainanese or Cantonese – make up 14% of the population. Bang-
kok and the nearby coastal areas have a large population of immigrants
from China who came for economic opportunities in the early to mid-
20th century. In northern Thailand there is also a substantial number
of Hui-Chinese Muslims who emigrated from Yunnan in the late 19th
century.
China and Thailand have long been linked through trade, migration
and cultural commonalities. Many families have intermarried with Thais
and have interwoven traditional Chinese customs into the predominant
Thai culture. Historically wealthy Chinese introduced their daughters to
the royal court as consorts, developing royal connections and adding a
Chinese bloodline that extends to the current king. The mercantile cen-
tres of most Thai towns are run by Thai-Chinese families and many places
in the country celebrate Chinese festivals such as the annual Vegetarian
Festival.
The second-largest ethnic minority are the Malays (4.6%), most of
whom reside in the provinces of the Deep South. The remaining minor-
ity groups include smaller percentages of non-Thai-speaking people such
as the Vietnamese, Khmer, Mon, Semang (Sakai), Moken (chow lair, also
spelt chao leh; people of the sea, or ‘sea gypsies’), Htin, Mabri, KhamuMany NGOs in
Chiang Mai and
Chiang Rai work
with hill-tribe
communities to
provide educa-
tion, health care
and advocacy
efforts. The
Mirror Foundation
(http://themirror
foundation.org/
cms/) and As-
sociation for Akha
Education (www.
akhathai.org) are
two long-running
NGOs that accept
volunteers.A MODERN PERSPECTIVE ON THE HILL TRIBESHill tribes tend to have among the lowest standards of living in Thailand. Although it
could be tempting to correlate this quality of life with traditional lifestyles, their situation
is compounded, in most cases, by not having Thai citizenship. Without the latter, they
don’t have the right to own land, educate their children, earn a minimum wage or access
health care. In the last decades some members of hill-tribe groups have been issued
Thai identifi cation cards, which enable them to access national programs (in theory,
though, extra ‘fees’ might prevent families from being able to aff ord public schooling and
health care). Other hill-tribe families have received residency certifi cates that restrict
travel outside of an assigned district, in turn limiting access to job opportunities associ-
ated with a mobile modern society.
Furthermore, the Thai government has pursued a 30-year policy of hill-tribe reloca-
tion, often moving villages from fertile agricultural land to infertile land, in turn removing
the tribes from a viable subsistence system in which tribal customs were intact to a
market system in which they can’t adequately compete and in which tribal ways have
been fractured.
In the past decade, the expansion of tourism into the mountainous regions of the
north presents a complicating factor to the independence of hill-tribe villages. City
speculators will buy land from hill-tribe farmers for fairly nominal sums only to be
resold, usually to resorts, for much higher costs if the documentation of ownership can
be procured. (In many cases the hill-tribe farmer doesn’t own the land rights and has
very little bargaining power when approached by outsiders.) The displaced farmer and
his family might then migrate to the city, losing their connection to their rural and tribal
lifestyle with few resources to succeed in the lowland society.