At the time of writing, I was in Penang, Malaysia. The itinerary was decided in a hurry, and the heritage hotels I had stayed in before were all fully booked, and I temporarily chose a decent chain of Westerner hotels. A coastal road in Penang inevitably gets stuck in traffic jams during rush hour, arriving at the hotel in Georgetown at 9pm local time. As soon as I got out of the car, I noticed passers-by taking pictures with red lanterns hanging on a porch in front of the hotel, and most of them were Malays and Indian faces. At that time, the mental activity was that Christmas and New Year's Day decorations were also abundant, but how to shoot such a high red lantern so that it could be in the same frame as people without causing people to deform? Just thinking about it, ** sounded, "Every street and alley, everyone's mouth .......""Instantly pull back to Singapore's Fairprice and Shengsong supermarket in January.
When I was studying there, from late November every year, shopping malls and supermarkets have been following **Christmas and New Year's songs, a few cycles**, and people can't help but stop in the dazzling gift area, although there may not even be anyone to give. As soon as New Year's Day passed, the country changed hands, and this song "Wishing you prosperity" and Andy Lau's version of "Congratulations to Fa Cai" began to dominate Singapore's supermarkets like a magic sound, even cold storage, a very "Westernized" supermarket, may occasionally be heard. In the large shopping malls in the downtown area, compared with the Christmas songs, the appearance rate of these two songs is much lower, probably too down-to-earth and not enough to be on the "elegant hall". As a result, Christmas, the most important traditional festival in the West, New Year's Day, which is celebrated almost collectively around the world, and the Spring Festival, which is the most important for the Chinese, have reached an inexplicable tacit understanding and harmony in the supermarkets of the equatorial city-states in the three months of the year-end and New Year each year, and the transition is free and smooth, so that Chinese students who are adrift in foreign countries have never felt forgotten by the world. A few years later, in January, as I stood outside the lobby of a 23-storey hotel in Penang, I could see a red lantern dotted next to a few non-Chinese doormen, a row of large decorations that beckoned fortune, and orange trees that spread all over the place, and Malay girls were happily taking pictures with these decorations, creating an indescribable sense of dislocation.
Photographed by the author in Penang in January 2023.
* Proceeded to "Congratulations Congratulations Congratulations", memories are interrupted and thoughts are restarted. I can't help but wonder if the "Chinese New Year" celebrated here is the same as the Spring Festival as we understand it. What is the meaning of the Spring Festival for people in these different places? If the Chinese are still the majority in Singapore, in Malaysia, especially in Penang, the Chinese still occupy a small half of the country. And what about Thailand? In the past few years in Thailand, I have felt that the celebration atmosphere of the Spring Festival is not strong, even if it does not consider the factors of attracting tourism resources and business cooperation, the Thai Chinese who have a high degree of integration with the local society have never left behind in the celebration of this festival. With a question, I consulted a young Thai scholar who is also doing research in Chinese, and is another author of this article. Based on his own experience, he linked the way and ritual of Chinese New Year celebration in Thailand, as well as the official attitude, to the identity of Chinese people in Thailand, and further discussed how Chinese spirituality is constructed in New Year's celebrations, hence this article.
New Year's timing, rituals and recognition in Thailand.
The New Year points to a time of meaningful change in all cultures and contexts – the removal of the old and the welcome of the new, as if this can take away all the bad luck and unhappiness of the previous year, and the new year is full of hope. Thailand is located in the Southeast Asian continent, where India and China meet, and has been greatly influenced by Western culture in modern times. In such a multicultural context, how to celebrate the New Year in Thailand has become a very interesting topic, and the Chinese in Thailand have their own experience. Chinese people living in Thailand celebrate the "New Year" three times a year – Western New Year (New Year's Day), Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) and Thai New Year (Songkran), each of which has its own importance.
The Western calendar is used in daily life in Thailand, and some festivals associated with it are also celebrated. In addition to New Year's Day, which is celebrated all over the country, Christmas is also a very popular festival, especially for young people. However, as in many other Asian countries, traditional calendars are used when it comes to ethnic and culturally specific holidays, especially the New Year, such as the Chinese New Year and the Songkran festival in Thailand. Of course, there are many festivals related to Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and that is related to the Buddhist calendar. Each festival is celebrated in a way that covers a range of background knowledge related to its national heritage and traditional culture, and this is especially true for the New Year. Because each person's understanding of the concept of time does not originate from objective existence, but is defined and endowed with meaning by the surrounding cultural environment. So for the Chinese born and raised in Thailand, how to celebrate the Spring Festival reflects the identity of the Thai-Chinese group and the dynamic changes of this identity, and can also reflect the relationship between the Chinese in Thailand and the Thai state.
New Year's Day and Thai New Year (Songkran) have always been public holidays in Thailand, and Chinese New Year, although it also appears in the calendar, has never been an official holiday, unlike Malaysia and Singapore. The only exception was in 2021, when the first day of the Lunar New Year was officially included as a public holiday in Thailand. It was the second year of the pandemic, global exchanges were almost at a standstill, there were few overseas tourists, and Thailand's tourism industry was hit hard. In order to revitalize the economy and comfort the people, Thailand** has introduced several policies to encourage domestic tourism. In addition to subsidizing individual tourists, many more holidays have also been opened. As a result, the Spring Festival of that year will become an official holiday, and it seems that it has nothing to do with whose New Year it is. Therefore, for many years, if the Chinese in Thailand want to celebrate the Spring Festival, they must first ask for leave from the school or place of work for personal affairs, of course, the teacher or the unit leader will never be embarrassed, because there has been a tacit understanding accumulated over the years. Many businesses run by Chinese nationals in Thailand will take a short vacation before and after the Chinese New Year, and of course the number of companies doing so is decreasing year by year as the younger generation takes over.
When the Thai author of this article was young, he and some Thai Chinese children had to take special leave to go back to their hometown to worship their ancestors during the Spring Festival every year, and slowly, there was a subtle estrangement between him and the classmates who attended classes normally at that time, and this kind of public holiday arrangement was the legacy of Thailand's early assimilation policy. Thailand** changed the name of the country from Siam to Thailand in 1939, and the Kingdom of Siam was used for a short time after the end of World War II, but it was officially renamed the Kingdom of Thailand in 1949, and it has been used to this day. From the name change, it can be seen that Thailand** has been committed to the establishment of the concept of "Thai nation" since the beginning of the twentieth century, no matter what your past is, whether it is a Muslim, a Chinese, or a local Thai (tai), from then on it can only be "thai". All Chinese need to switch to Thai surnames and use Thai names, which at first was just persuasion, and by the time of the Cold War it became coercive. If it is not changed, it cannot even be awarded a degree. And the ethnicity column on the ID card can only be written "thai". The Spring Festival, with its strong Chinese cultural characteristics, could not be classified as a public holiday in the historical context of the time, and the common celebration would potentially strengthen the identity of Chinese and Chinese people with their own traditional culture, and may hinder the process of their Thai assimilation. Therefore, the dilution of the Spring Festival in Thailand since the middle of the last century is inevitable and inevitable.
For many years, the Chinese in Thailand have been celebrating the Spring Festival in their own way, just like the Thai author said in this article, students take their own leave, and businesses are closed, which has gradually formed a customary way of celebration within the Chinese community. Interestingly, their celebrations are not the same as they are celebrated in China today. For Chinese in Thailand, the Chinese New Year consists of three important days: payment day, worship day and tr**el day. The first is payment day, and Chinese people in Thailand often choose to go out shopping on the 29th day of the lunar month, mainly to buy items dedicated to ancestors and gods. In China, families also buy New Year's goods during the lunar month, but most of them prepare food and a small amount of decorations and firecrackers for the whole family reunion. The worship day is held on Chinese New Year's Eve, and in the early morning of the day, the whole family places the items purchased the day before on the table and shrine to worship the ancestors and gods respectively. This seems to echo the mainstream of Chinese in Thailand from the Chaoshan region, and the domestic and coastal parts continue the tradition of large-scale family worship activities during the Spring Festival, and the family ancestral hall is relatively well preserved or newly renovated, and other areas may have the custom of welcoming the gods (ancestors) and Chinese New Year's Eve, but most of them are carried out in small families. For me, who grew up in the north, Chinese New Year's Eve seems to be the reunion of several generations, gathering together to prepare the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, especially the whole family making dumplings waiting for the New Year, which is completely unrelated to godliness. The first day of the Lunar New Year is the travel day of Chinese people in Thailand, and this day is partly the same as the current customs in China, that is, it is important not to work but to rest, otherwise it will show the work of the whole year in the future. However, most Chinese people in Thailand will choose to travel with their families, which is diametrically opposed to the traditional Chinese custom of "not going out on the first day of the new year". The Thai author of this article explains that this is influenced by Western cultural trends in the sixties and seventies, and he has to travel during a vacation. However, regardless of the evolution of the celebration, Chinese New Year has been a family day for Chinese people in Thailand for many years, in a sense promoting the transmission of Chinese cultural knowledge and traditions among this group from generation to generation.
*It is a ritual to worship ancestors at the home of the Thai author during the Spring Festival in 2023.
Chinese Sex from the Celebration of the New Year The Construction of Chinese Sex in Chinese People in Thailand.
It is worth mentioning that because Chinese sex in Thailand Chinese sex is not advocated by Thailand**, so for a long time, Thailand** has played almost no role in the celebration of the Spring Festival. Therefore, during the Spring Festival, although many cultural activities can be seen on the streets, they are often celebrated spontaneously by Chinese and Chinese in Thailand, and occasionally ** organizations that mainly sell cultural products (such as the Tourism Authority of Thailand) issue initiatives with the purpose of promoting tourism and creating business opportunities. For example, in Thailand, in the community with a large concentration of Chinese and Chinese in Thailand, the celebration of the Spring Festival is still a large-scale public event with considerable influence. Famous examples are Yaowarat in Bangkok, where Chinatown is located, and Pak Nam Pho in Nakhon Sawan Province, which was the first place where the early Chinese came to Siam, so there is still a large Chinese community. In recent years, the scale of the celebrations has even become grander. On the one hand, these areas play an important role in tourism, with Bangkok's Chinatown attracting tourists from all over the world, including China, and Samut Prakan, which is favored by Chinese people in Thailand and even neighboring countries, so the celebrations held in both places are often very fanfare. On the other hand, the relations between the two countries are becoming more and more harmonious, which is also a way for people-to-people exchanges to show goodwill. Even Princess Sirindhorn of Thailand, who is quite good at Chinese, has been going to Chinatown to meet Chinese people during the Spring Festival since the 80s of the last century. At that time, the Cold War was coming to an end, the threat of Chinese and Chinese was getting smaller and smaller, and the assimilation process seemed to be very smooth in Thailand. As a result, the princess, who is already very close to the people, came to Chinatown on the most important festival of Chinese culture, affirming the great contribution of Chinese people to Thai society, especially economic development.
However, for Thai-Chinese, especially the younger generation, the significance and impact of this celebration is debatable. Most of the younger generation of Chinese Thai Americans no longer use Chinese, and the small fraction of them who can speak Chinese only learn Mandarin in school, which is completely different from the Teochew dialect used by their grandparents and parents. Therefore, the younger generation participates in the celebration of the Spring Festival, on the one hand, to learn and understand Chinese culture through rituals, and more importantly, to experience the imagined Chinese nature (imagined Chineseness). However, as mentioned earlier, these ceremonies and activities, whether held at home or in the community, are not the same as those celebrated in China today. But it cannot be denied that being Chinese Chinese in Thailand is different from the current Chinese and the Chinese diaspora of their ancestors, they have their own identity and cultural identity, and the Chinese New Year is one of the few New Year's in their cognition. In addition to the Chinese New Year, New Year's Day in the West and Songkran in Thailand are both official public holidays with rich cultural and Buddhist activities. Driven by Thailand, the influence of these two New Year's Eve on the Chinese in Thailand, who grew up in a multicultural society, should not be underestimated.
Therefore, for the Chinese in Thailand, the importance of the Chinese New Year is undoubted. But it is not enough for them to understand the rituals and significance of the Chinese New Year celebrations in traditional culture, but not to pay attention to the relationship between the Chinese New Year and the rest of Thai society. Because Chinese New Year, like the other two mainstream New Year in Thai society, is a cultural space, it has constructed part of the meaning of being Chinese in Thai society. At the same time, this meaning is dynamic and closely related to other cultural spaces in Thai society, so that Chinese Chinese is constantly being modified and defined in Thai-Chinese society with historical changes. How the celebration of the Spring Festival in Thailand has gradually changed from the only New Year of Chinese Americans to "one", and how it has changed from a low-key family behavior to a large-scale public event with the change of environment, all of which are closely related to the society in which they live. Just like the classic Chinese New Year songs circulating in Singaporean supermarkets at the beginning of this article and the overwhelming Chinese New Year decorations in front of Western-style hotels in Penang, Chinese Americans in overseas diverse societies interpret the understanding and celebration of the Spring Festival in different ways. Maybe it no longer conforms to the current Chinese customs, and maybe there are elements of magic reform that make people occasionally surprised, but they all continue and write their own Chinese character through the celebration ceremony of the Spring Festival in their respective tolerant or narrow cultural spaces, which should be the charm of traditional festivals. This Chinese New Year, take a good walk around Chiang Mai's Chinatown and Ben Tau Kong Temple to see how the Chinese in Chiang Mai who came earlier celebrate the Spring Festival. This, about again, will be a different story.
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