The Chinese in North Thailand

Part of Ancient Chiang Mai

Ethnic Chinese have been migrating to Thailand for centuries. Indeed, according to most historians, the Chinese people - who call themselves Han or, if resident outside Greater China, Hua people - have been expanding south from their original homelands by the Huang, or Yellow River, for several millennia. By about 1250 the first Tai kingdom in Siam had been established at Sukhothai, closely followed in 1292 by Mangrai’s founding of Chiang Mai. Even at this early date it seems certain that cultural and commercial links existed with China, and that Chinese people were travelling to Hsien Lo - as Siam first appears in the Chinese annals - on a regular basis.

Overseas Chinese in Chiang Mai

Most ethnic Chinese who flocked to Thailand in the 19th century came by sea, often landing at Ko Si Chang in Chonburi Province. From here they settled throughout the country, initially mainly in and around Bangkok, but subsequently in every city and town of the Kingdom, including Chiang Mai. Most originated from southern China and spoke a variety of southern dialects. The great majority were Teochiu (Chaozhou) and Cantonese speakers from Guangdong, but there were also Hakka and Hokkien from Fujian, and Hailam speakers from Hainan. In Chiang Mai they congregated mainly between Kad Luang or Warorot Market and Kad Muang Mai, especially along Ratchawong Road, which became the heart of Chiang Mai’s ‘Chinatown’. For a long time these ethnic Chinese kept a relatively low profile, concentrating on the commerce at which they excelled. Today, however, just as the Khon Muang, Tai Yai and others are rediscovering their past and celebrating their cultural heritage, so too are the Chinese, and a new and highly visible ‘Chinatown’ is emerging between Thanon Praisani and Warorot Market.

Overseas Chinese migrants also settled widely throughout Chiang Mai Province, notably in Hot, Chom Thong, Mae Rim, Chiang Dao, Chaiprakan and Fang. As in Chiang Mai City, they were (and are) overwhelmingly involved in commerce, and extensive intermarriage has taken place with the Tai host population - not least because so many of the original migrants were single men.

Overland Chinese

Chiang Mai and the north are unique in Thailand for having a considerable number of Yunnanese amongst their ethnic Chinese population. These people, known colloquially to the Tai as ‘Chin Haw’ or just ‘Haw’, have been migrating southwards from Yunnan Province for centuries - indeed as early as 1433 AD the Ming Chinese chronicler Ma Huan, himself a native of Yunnan, mentions an overland “back door” between Northern Thailand and China.

Many guidebooks and travel agents describe the Chin-Haw as Thailand's ‘Chinese Hill Tribe’. In fact these hardy Yunnanese traders who live amongst the Hill People and dominate much of their commerce are Chinese migrants who came to Thailand overland, rather than by the more usual overseas route. Their dialect of Yunnanese Mandarin has become a lingua franca in the hills, and through a remarkable combination of astuteness and experience of the outside world they have become the financial and cultural middle-men of the northern hills.

Whilst Yunnanese Muslim traders have been travelling to north Thailand for many centuries, and a small settled presence has existed in Chiang Mai from at least the middle of the 19th century, in recent years this presence has grown considerably due to political unrest in the Sino-Burmese borderlands. In part this was occasioned by the Japanese (and related, if largely forgotten, Thai) invasions of the Shan States in World War II.

The Japanese, inveterately anti-Chinese to the point of ignoring the basic economic realities of imperialism, attacked and destroyed the affluent Panthay community at Panglong, dispersing the settlement's Yunnanese Muslim inhabitants throughout the Shan States and beyond. Some displaced Panthays settled at Tachilek on Burma's frontier with northernmost Thailand; others crossed into Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai provinces, where they built mosques at Mae Sai, Chiang Rai, Fang and other lesser towns.

Subsequent political disturbances added to this trend. In 1949 the victorious communist forces of Mao Tse-tung drove elements of three KMT armies across the Yunnanese frontier into Burma. Of the three senior KMT commanders, one was Muslim, as were many of the soldiers. Following years of warlordism and failed attempts to undermine the communist regime in Yunnan, many of these ageing soldiers settled in Thailand where they became businessmen, the more successful moving to Chiang Mai where they assimilated into the local ‘Haw’ community.

Many such Yunnanese - Muslim as well as non-Muslim - have relatives, friends and former comrades scattered throughout Laos, Thailand, Burma and Yunnan, so that the imam of, say, Taunggyi in the Shan States is well-known to the imam of Chiang Mai's Charoenprathet Mosque. The same is true of Muslim leaders and businessmen in Fang, Mae Sai, Tachilek and even Yunnan itself. The community is rich, influential, confident and - despite earlier involvement in some rather dubious cross-border trading and KMT enterprises - increasingly respectable and respected.

Within Chiang Mai, the oldest and best-established Yunnanese community is Ban Haw. Here, in an area centred around Charoenprathet Soi 6 and the Anusarn Market, may be found numerous ‘Chin-Haw’ households, both Muslim and Buddhist. As a general rule, the Muslim Yunnanese live mainly to the north, clustered around the large mosque distinguished by a red-and-gold sign in Thai, Chinese and Arabic - which, incidentally, gives the date of founding according to both the Thai Buddhist and Chinese Republican eras, but not by the Islamic Hijri calendar. By contrast the non-Muslim Yunnanese tend to live further south, around Anusarn Market. The non-Muslims are more recent arrivals, and much of the land on which they live is rented from their longer-established Muslim Yunnanese fellows.

Relations between Muslim and non-Muslim Yunnanese, and with the surrounding Thai Buddhist community, are good - though by-and-large eating together is restricted to non-Muslim visits to Muslim restaurants. Prohibitions against pork and other haram (forbidden) foodstuffs keep the Muslims at home, just as in China itself! Sections of the original Ban Haw community have spread out to establish themselves on Loi Kroa Road, Si Dornchai, and by the fruit market in Talad Muang Mai, north of the Mae Ping Post Office.

Because of centuries of intermarriage it is impossible to be precise about the exact number of ethnic Chinese in Chiang Mai and the North. In Thailand as a whole ethnic Chinese from various parts of China are generally considered to constitute around 11% of the population, though many - indeed most - are closely integrated with the Tai majority, using Tai as their first language and considering themselves as much Thai as Chinese. In Chiang Mai the percentage may well be less, given distances from the sea and the comparative difficulties of overland travel - but it is clear that Chinese, both of Overland and Overseas origin, have been a part of the city’s scenery for many centuries, and they remain a visible and prosperous minority today.

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