Tai Peoples of Chiang Mai

Part of Ancient Chiang Mai

According to the National Statistical Office of Thailand 2003 Report, the population of Chiang Mai Province currently stood at 1,595,855, or just over 2.54% of the total population of Thailand, which numbered 62,799,872 at the time of the 2002 Census. The provincial capital, Chiang Mai, is generally considered to be Thailandís second city, but while this may be true in terms of historical and cultural importance, it is not true in terms of population.

Within Northern Thailand, as well as within Chiang Mai Province, the largest ethnic group, numbering in excess of 50 percent of the population, are the Khon Muang. This is a socio-political category which includes various closely related local Tai groups - Tai Yuan, Tai Lü, Tai Khoen and Tai Yawng. Other Tai groups resident in the north include Tai Yai (or Shan), Tai Isaan (or Lao) and Tai Pak Klang (or Siamese) of Bangkok and Central Thailand. Collectively the various Tai peoples living in the north number around 10,800,000 or almost 90% of the population, with ethnic Chinese and Chao Khao or ‘People of the Hills’ making up the balance.

Khon Muang

Khon Muang, or ‘People of the Principalities’, is the name most commonly applied by the people of northern Thailand to themselves. In fact it is more a social and political category than a distinct ethnic grouping, comprising the Tai Yuan, or Northern Tai, together with such closely-related sub-groups as the Tai Lü, Tai Khoen and Tai Yawng.

The Central Tai generally refer to the northerners as Khon Neua, or ‘people of the North’, rather than Khon Muang which is a local name. In the 19th century they were often called lao phung dam, or ‘black-bellied Lao’, as the northern men tattooed themselves, to distinguish them from the lao phung khao, or ‘white bellied Lao’ of Laos and Isaan. In fact, the Khon Muang are a Tai people, closely related to the Lao of northeast Thailand and Laos, the Tai Yai of Burma, the Tai Lü of Sipsongpanna in Yunnan, and the dominant Siamese of central and southern Thailand. Like Tai peoples everywhere, they prefer to inhabit fertile lowland regions where they can practice their traditional lifestyle, the intensive cultivation of wet rice in irrigated paddy fields.

The Thai term khon simply means people - thus Lao people, for example, would be described as khon lao in Thai. But what of the term Muang, which has been translated above as ‘principality’? In fact, the term Muang is complex, and can be applied to describe a city or urban centre, a region, or even a country. When used in reference to the Khon Muang, or people of north Thailand, the sense most generally evinced is that of small fiefdoms or principalities. North Thailand is lush and green, an upland region of forested mountain ranges and hidden valleys. In times past, before railways and surfaced roads were driven through and across the hills, the fertile valleys were cut off from each other in a very real sense, so that it might take days or even weeks to walk or ride from one Muang to another. In this way, people became identified with particular valleys, each of which was administered by a local chao or lord, from his provincial capital. These might range in size from major towns like Chiang Mai, the main city of the north and the capital of the former Lan Na Kingdom, to smaller centres such as Lamphun, Nan and Phrae.

The inhabitants of these principalities differed from each other sufficiently to be recognisable by accent or style of dress as citizens of different Muang - people of Chiang Mai, or Lampang, or Chiang Rai, for example. But what they shared - a common tongue, known as kham Muang, or the ‘language of the principalities’, their lifestyle, cuisine, clothing, firm Buddhist faith and preference for eating glutinous, sticky rice (instead of the long-grain rice of the central plains) united them as a single, cohesive, readily discernible people. They are the Khon Muang or ‘People of the Principalities’.

Today, as northern Thailand becomes increasingly prosperous and sophisticated, and as links between the various ‘principalities’ continue to expand and improve, a new sense of what it means to be Khon Muang is emerging, and the people of the north are rediscovering and celebrating their unique cultural identity.

The main constituent part of the Khon Muang remains overwhelmingly the Tai Yuan, or ‘Northern Thai’, but other Tai peoples so closely related as to have become a part of this group include the Khoen, Yawng and the Lü of China’s Yunnan Province.

Thus today inhabitants of Chiang Mai who date their ancestry back to the resettlement of the city by Chao Kawila in the late 18th century might identify their background as Tai Khoen or Tai Yawng. Yet they would, nevertheless, consider themselves to be fully integrated within the northern Tai group as Khon Muang.

Tai Lü

The Tai Lü are a Tai-speaking people who are closely related to the Tai Yuan of Chiang Mai and originate in the Sipsongpanna region of China’s Yunnan Province. Today this constitutes the autonomous Dai (Tai) region of Xishuangbanna, with its capital at Jinghong. During the 18th and 19th century Tai Lü from Sipsongpanna migrated south and settled across northern Laos and Thailand, bringing with them distinctive temple styles and weaving patterns. An estimated 80,000 Lü live scattered across Northern Thailand, including Chiang Mai Province. Within Chiang Mai city, descendants of the Tai Lu live particularly in the Haiya area south of the Old City.

Tai Khoen

Tai Khoen (also written Tai Khün) are another group within the Khon Muang, closely related to both the Tai Yuan and the Tai Yai. They originate in the Kengtung region of eastern Shan State. During the late 18th century Chao Kawila, the ruler of Lampang who drove the Burmese out of Northern Thailand, settled numbers of Tai Khoen in and around Chiang Mai, especially in the Nantaram area south of the Old City. Their descendants still live here, but have become fully integrated within the Khon Muang.

Tai Yawng

Tai Yawng (also written Tai Yong) are yet another Tai-speaking people who are closely related to the Tai Khoen. Their homeland is around the town of Muang Yawng to the east of Kengtung in Myanmar’s Shan State. Like the Tai Khoen they were settled in Chiang Mai and at neighbouring Lamphun by Chao Kawila in the late 18th century. Most have become fully integrated within the Khon Muang population, but some Tai Yawng, especially the older people, still speak the distinctive Yawng dialect of Tai in Lamphun as well as in the nearby district of Pasang.

Tai Yai

Closely related to the Khon Muang, the Tai Yai or ‘Great Tai’ are also known as Shan and inhabit Myanmar’s Shan State. During the latter half of the 19th century they migrated throughout northern Thailand, working mainly in the lumber trade and as skilled mahouts, or elephant masters. Tai Yai settled in some numbers in Chiang Mai province, both in small urban centres like Mae Chaem, by Doi Inthanon, in the west, and at Mae Rim, to the north of Chiang Mai itself. Both towns retain a strong Shan presence today, as does the area between Chang Puak and Wat Ku Tao north of the Old City.

Tai Pak Klang, Tai Isaan and Tai Pak Tai

Tai-speaking people from Central, Northeastern and Southern Thailand migrate between the various regions and the North at will, as they have for decades and sometimes centuries. Many Central Tai arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as administrators and government civil servants. Similarly others have migrated to the north in search of work, often in the construction industry. There are fewer Southerners, but they too exist within the Tai-speaking population of Chiang Mai. In recent decades Chiang Mai has emerged as an increasingly prosperous region, encouraging people from all over Thailand to move here on a temporary or permanent basis, to work or to retire. Inevitably, the resultant population mix makes it impossible to identify in any precise or scientific fashion the percentage of Chiang Mai residents belonging to these various Tai groups. Quite simply, they fit in quickly and well.

Text by Andrew Forbes, images by David Henley. © CPA Media, 2007