Shan Culture - Social Life

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A Written Thread : How Exiles Keep the Shan Language Alive

Wall Street Journal - OCTOBER 10, 2008
By SIMON MONTLAKE
Ban Piang Luang, Thailand

As the afternoon sun drains from the sky, a teacher slowly circles her outdoor classroom. Eighteen youthful heads -- boys' crisply shaven, girls' neatly bobbed -- bend over rough-hewed wooden desks, copying a curly script from a dog-eared textbook into their exercise books. The teacher nods approvingly and crosses to the blackboard to write more script for the students to copy when they've finished the book exercise.

A Shan student at the Ban Piang Luang school on a Friday, when the children wear traditional costumes.

At dusk, the hour-long class wraps up, and most of the students drift away, back to their modest homes in this hardscrabble town on the Myanmar border. Song Muang, a solemn 15-year-old in a fading black T-shirt, has nowhere to go: He lives in the Sweet Home Orphanage, which hosts the after-school language lesson. His parents are alive, but they work on a flower farm near Chiang Mai, a four-hour drive away. So he stays at the orphanage and attends a Thai public school.

Shan women produce traditional textiles for sale.

Song Muang, like all his classmates, is an ethnic Shan, a member of an exile community that fled political persecution and economic stagnation in neighboring Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The curly alphabet in his exercise book, also called Shan, is a written thread that connects him with millions of his people living in Myanmar and around the world. To Shan nationalists who chafe under Myanmar's harsh military rule, it's a cultural symbol of resilience and defiance.

Song Muang has a simple explanation for why he persists with his daily literacy classes. "It's our language," he says.

The Shan people -- four to five million in Myanmar, perhaps 500,000 now in Thailand, plus populations in Laos and China -- aren't physically distinctive from the northern Thai. Like the Thais, they practice Theravada Buddhism. Centuries ago they built splendid monasteries and palaces of teak and brick, but those are largely in ruins or torn down. And now written Shan is being suffocated by the dominant Thai and Burmese alphabets.

Shan kings once ruled a quarter of what is now Myanmar, but today, like other ethnic minorities in the country, the Shan are taught in Burmese. Few books are published in Shan script, and those few are bound by censorship that screens out sensitive topics.

But in the freer political climate of Thailand, a flurry of efforts is under way to preserve and update Shan language and culture. Educators in refugee camps have produced textbooks in Shan on subjects from math to history. A new generation of exiles, spurred by homesickness and nationalism, is keeping alive ancient traditions with tools as modern as text messages and karaoke video discs.

Song Muang, a 15-year-old Shan student.

Their work makes its way across the border to Myanmar. And the traffic is two-way. "The Shan in Burma don't have their own TV or newspapers and don't have many books published. But they have popular music," says Amporn Jirattikorn, a Thai academic who just completed her Ph.D. dissertation on Shan culture at the University of Texas.

So, for example, there's a flourishing trade in karaoke video CDs. Political songs and videos produced in Thailand and in border areas controlled by the rebel Shan State Army circulate in Myanmar, where they are sold covertly, while romantic ballads recorded by popular recording stars at home are eagerly lapped up by homesick Shan in Thailand.

(The Shan subtitles make them a tool for literacy, says Jane Ferguson, a lecturer in Southeast Asian studies at the Australian National University in Canberra; migrant children who learn Thai at school and speak Shan at home quickly pick up the script as they sing along to the familiar words.)

The result of this flow is a fusion culture that "mixes and matches elements across the region" -- Thai, Thai Shan and Burmese Shan -- says Nicholas Farrelly, a doctoral student in international development studies at Oxford University. "With more money, relative freedom, and a strong sense of persistent injustice, many Shan are keen to preserve and revive their traditions."

Shan culture is also in the spotlight in the U.K., which gave asylum in the 1960s to an earlier wave of exiled Shan royal elites. The University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies last year offered the first-ever class in Shan culture, and held an inaugural international conference on Shan Buddhism and Culture. A Shan Buddhist scholar who graduated from Oxford University has founded a Shan monastery in the city of Oxford.

"As long as our culture and language are strong, we don't have to worry" about the politics in Myanmar, says Khuensai Jaiyen, a former rebel soldier who is now editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News, a news service in Chiang Mai.

The Shan trace their roots to southern China's Yunnan province, but by the 10th century they had migrated to parts of what are now Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. There they formed a loose grouping of royal states that forged political, faith and ethnic bonds with nearby kingdoms. "Shan" is a Burmese corruption of Siam, the original name for Thailand. Shan call themselves "Tai," the root of the word "Thailand."

In the 1880s, the British began to bring the Shan states under colonial rule, but left intact the mosaic of principalities. The powers of the princes -- called saophas, or "lords of the sky" -- paralleled those of the maharajahs in colonial India. After the Union of Burma gained independence in 1948, the Shan and three other ethnic groups were given the right to secede within 10 years. But when Shan nationalists pressed to exercise the guarantee they were rebuffed; a series of revolts by the Shan and other ethnic groups and a military coup in 1962 buried this promise of self-rule.

For decades, Shan laborers have crossed into Thailand for seasonal work. Others here are permanent residents going back generations. Arrivals started to soar in 1996, as Myanmar's army began evicting villagers in Shan State -- one of the country's administrative provinces -- and seizing the land. Over 300,000 Shan were forced to flee, and many later sought refuge in border camps run by the Shan State Army. Shan activists estimate that as many as 500,000 Shan now live in Thailand; those who fled Myanmar are considered economic migrants, making them ineligible for political asylum.

Though they use different scripts, spoken Shan is similar to the northern Thai dialect. In Thailand, which relies on cheap imported labor from its neighbors, that gives Shan people an advantage. "Employers want them because they speak better Thai than other Burmese," says Ms. Amporn, the University of Texas Ph.D. candidate.

Chana Jantawong, a Thai teacher at Ban Piang Luang school who formed a club that promotes Shan culture.

Young Shan working and studying in Chiang Mai, the northern Thai city that has become the unofficial capital of the Shan diaspora, quickly assume the fashion and lifestyle of modern Thailand. They can get a head start while still in Myanmar from imported pirated copies of Thai soap operas, dubbed into Shan.

Under the surface, though, is a strong attachment to Shan tradition, culture and identity, says Ms. Ferguson, the Australian lecturer, whose Ph.D. dissertation -- "Rocking In Shanland" -- examined the diaspora culture. "There are many Shan people who are very proud of their Shan culture," she says. "They will wear the traditional costumes at religious events and dedicate time and energy to becoming literate in Shan."

To learn to read and write, Shan children in Myanmar usually go to Buddhist temples. In Shan State communities determined to keep up literacy, there are also informal summer classes, some run by monks -- though authorities sometimes close them down.

Temples are male-only, so girls have fewer opportunities to learn privately, which activists say can leave them vulnerable later to exploitation by human traffickers and other labor abuses. Migrant children, both boys and girls are often turned away from Thai state schools. So in recent years, the Shan Women's Action Network has provided classes for around 2,000 children living in border camps -- filling a gap and also pushing Shan literacy. The subjects include not only basic literacy but also math, history, science and geography, depending on the availability of teachers.

"We know there's a big gap to fill for these kids," says Hseng Noung, a founder of the network, which is based in Chiang Mai. The group also supports after-school classes like the one held at Sweet Home Orphanage.

Educators in the informal border schools have had to write and produce their own textbooks in Thailand. The only such books available in Myanmar are tattered copies from the 1960s that end at grade five. Activists say that if political restrictions in Myanmar eventually are eased, these books from Thailand could be used to revive vernacular education in Shan State.

That is, if they can agree on which vernacular to use. Shan has three main dialects and there are variations in writing the script. The decades-long divide between Thai Shan and those back in Myanmar has spawned differences in usage, particularly for modern terminology. Shan in Thailand often borrow words from Thai or English, while their counterparts in Myanmar are more likely to be influenced by Burmese or Chinese.

"The Shan don't have an education or language department anymore, but there are lots of (informal) language preservation societies everywhere. They promote the language in their own way. That makes it a bit difficult sometimes," says the Shan news agency's Mr. Khuensai, whose Web site, www.shanland. org, has run an online debate aimed at finding common linguistic ground. None has emerged.

Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News, a news service in Chiang Mai.

Literacy opens the door to reading Shan folk stories and poems, as well as antique texts written on palm and mulberry leaves -- or brand-new texts written on cellphones. A few years ago, says Ms. Amporn, some Shan migrants living in Thailand drew the curly script on their phones and sent the resulting message to friends, sparking a minicraze. Popular picture messages include pro-independence slogans, pop lyrics and love lines.

Zai Awn, an exile who runs a Shan community radio station in Chiang Mai, learned to write at a monastery before moving here. An aspiring writer, he now practices by penning love letters, drawing on a rich tradition of ballads and poems. "When I want to court a lady, I try to use Shan," he says.

The plight of the Shan, and their stateless migrant status, evokes sympathy and even a touch of nostalgia among Thais. Some see them as a throwback to simpler precolonial times of rural tranquility and open borders between Thailand and its neighbors, says Mr. Farrelly, the doctoral student at Oxford. In 2002, popular Thai rocker Ad Carabao recorded a Shan-themed album called "Don't Cry: The Story of the Dispossessed. "

Tourism officials in Chiang Mai have begun promoting Shan cultural festivals to domestic and international visitors, who are encouraged to visit Shan temples like Pa Pao, a 19th-century stone structure, during Shan New Year festivities and an annual initiation ceremony for novices.

Handmade Shan textiles of silk brocade, usually designs once worn by kings, are now fashionable among Thai temple-goers, says Susan Conway, a research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies and author of the book "The Shan: Culture, Arts and Crafts." They take copies of her book to tailors and say, Make a copy of this, she explains, and wear the results to the Shan festivals in northern Thailand.

Such Shan textiles are much less likely to be seen on the Shan migrants themselves, says Ms. Conway, whose next book will examine Shan rituals and astrology. "They have no money," she sighs. "They can't wear the beautiful clothes that northern Thais wear."

For all their ethnic kinship, most Thais know little about Shan State and the overlapping identities of their Shan cousins. While Myanmar may treat them harshly, its military rulers consider Shan State to be an integral part of the nation, and as a result Shan culture has a deeper hold on the imagination there.

"If you ask an average Burmese person on the streets of Rangoon about the Shan, he or she will likely be able to name some Shan foods, a Shan popular singer and even say a phrase or two in the Shan language," says Ms. Ferguson. An average Thai living in Bangkok "would not be able to do the same."

Shan are far more visible in border communities like Ban Piang Luang. At the government school that Song Muang attends, 70% of the 1,133 students are Shan. The school has 27 teachers, so an average of 42 students for each one; that's more than double the recommended number, says deputy headmaster Somsak Boonloan. Often underfunded, such border schools struggle to recruit Thai teachers on salaries of around $200 a month.

On a recent afternoon, though, Shan culture was alive and kicking on the school's sun-baked basketball court. For Song Muang, it was definitely kicking as he stomped around the court as the back end of a white fluffy animal costume, a mythical yak-deer called a kinaree in Thai, or kinkala in Shan, whose restless motion is similar to a Chinese lion dance. A din of drums, gongs and cymbals urged on the dancers, as a devilish imp trailed the lumbering creature around the court.

Chana Jantawong, 31, beamed at his young protégés demonstrating their skills for visitors. Three years ago, he started an after-school club for local crafts and culture, converting a school storeroom into a prop room for handmade costumes, masks and lanterns. Some Thai teachers see Ban Piang Luang as a hardship posting, but Mr. Chana -- an ethnic Thai with a floppy fringe of hair, wearing a deep-blue "peasant" shirt and brown slip-on shoes -- is enthusiastic about the challenge of preserving his country's minority cultures.

A trickle of donations from teachers and income from festival performances keeps the club going. Mr. Chana, who moved here in 2002, has begun collecting handicrafts and texts that he hopes eventually to turn into a town museum. "I really want to keep the culture going. If I don't teach them, one day it will be gone," he says.

—Simon Montlake is a Bangkok-based writer.

 

Trip Planner

Shan culture can be seen in Chiang Mai, a popular tourist destination in northern Thailand. There's frequent air service from Bangkok, as well as flights from Singapore, China, Taiwan and Laos.

• Wat Pa Pao is a Shan Buddhist temple with distinct architecture and lively celebrations during Shan holidays. It lies just outside the city walls and can be reached by motorized rickshaw.
• Shan New Year is a lunar holiday that falls this year on Nov. 28 and usually attracts huge crowds of Shan living in Thailand. Temple rituals and concerts of Shan music are the main draw.
• Another colorful event is the annual ordination of novice monks, who are carried through the streets in a parade before taking their vows. Each temple has its own schedule; Wat Pa Pao ordains its novices April 4 to 6 each year.
• There is no Shan museum or art center in Chiang Mai, but the downtown night market sells some Shan handicrafts and clothing. A useful primer is "The Shan: Culture, Art and Crafts" by Susan Conway (River Books), available at Asia Books and other Bangkok bookshops.

Where to Stay

• Dusit D2 Hotel has bright modern rooms and is located across from the night market. Rooms from $117.
  66-53-999-999
  Web: www.dusit.com
• Veranda is a new boutique hotel on a hillside west of the city. Rooms from $173.
  66-53-365-007
  Web: www.verandaresortandspa.com/chiangmai

Simon Montlake

photos: Luke Duggleby

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122357294530319641.html

 

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