Today’s Mae Sot is a bustling border town, a center for trade, manufacturing, and migration, as people continue to flee Burma, coming to Thailand for work or refuge. While many find such in the nearby refugee camps, primarily housing ethnic Karen refugees, many others live around Mae Sot without official recognition.
In response, Mae Sot has also become home base to a plethora of community and non-governmental organizations serving Burma’s displaced populations, including the Mae Tao (Dr. Cynthia’s) Clinic, founded in 1989, the only source of medical care for thousands of Burmese migrants- including many coming from Burma for basic medical care unavailable at home. However, this has not always been the case.
“I am a luk ngiew [child, born of Shan parents],” proudly proclaimed Paa Aye.
I was momentarily taken aback; ngiew is a disparaging term in Thai, referring to ethnic Shans. However, there was no such sentiment in Paa Aye's face, lit up by her mischievously twinkling eyes and broad smile, belying her 70-odd years.
“My father’s father’s father was PaO.” She paused momentarily while running through the generations, ticking off fingers. “That’s right. My great-grandfather. He married a Shan and then came to Mae Sot to work in timber.”
The first peoples documented to have settled in the Mae Sot area were ethnic Karens and Lua, establishing communities here hundreds of years ago, communities that spanned both sides of the modern Thai-Burma border. However, it was only after the British colonization of Burma that international trade burgeoned, and with it migrations of other peoples, such as the Shan. Moulmein boomed as a shipping port, trading in goods from all over the world, goods which often flowed back and forth, to and from Mae Sot. With the road connecting Mae Sot to Tak and thus the Chao Phraya River Valley still many decades away from being built, Mae Sot was isolated from the rest of Thailand by chains of mountains and dense forests, forests rich in teak. Thus, as Moulmein grew in prominence, so too did Mae Sot, attracting in particular ethnic Shans and Chinese.
“Most other Shan families here were the same,” Paa Aye explained, while intermittently greeting people on the busy street. After one such greeting with another septuagenarian, she whispered to me with barely suppressed glee, “she is also a luk ngiew. Her grandparents are from Mongnawng.”
As we navigated the busy street, ducking trucks, trishaws, motorcyclists, and pedestrians, many wearing longyis or sporting tanakha powder on their faces, Paa Aye gestured into the distance.
“Back then, this place was all thick forests. It was cool, cold even by November. No one would come here then, there was a lot of jungle fever [malaria]. Many people died of it. People used to say that if you come to Mae Sot, bring a clay pot and white cloth with you. That way, if you get jungle fever and die, they have a container to place your ashes, to later float down the river,” she chuckled.
As the local Shan community grew, the new migrants established their own monastic communities, later consolidated into a formal temple. The first Shan settlers also had their own community leaders, the first of whom was named Headman Pan Yo.
“This street used to have only Shan people,” said Paa Aye, waving her arm in the direction of the road. “They later sold [their houses and land] and moved out. They went out [beyond the city limits] and bought fields, to grow beans, rice. King Rama V issued a writ that allowed us to establish a temple here. It also included all the lands around the temple. The temple used to be the center [of the community], we would have festivals like Poy Sang Long [the Shan ordination ceremony] here. The Shan community stretched from here to past Wat Aranyakhet [located almost a kilometer away]. Back then, there was no Muslim community here. There were Burmese, Mon, and Shan. King Rama VI later granted us surnames. No one else was granted surnames then, just us Shans,” she said proudly.
“My grandfather and grandmother did not have surnames. So when we were granted last names, we often just mixed our grandparents names. For example, in your mother was named Siri and your father was named Thanom, your last name would become Thanomsiri.”
We soon reached the heart of the original Shan community, Wat Luang. Although it was now ringed by concrete buildings, the temple itself still occupies an expansive compound, the main feature of which was the main hall, now also built of concrete walls and supports, holding up multiple multi-tiered roofs, and sporting gold-painted filigree adorning its windows and doorways. The interior, consistent with the temple’s history, featured an eclectic mix of Buddha images ranging from bronze reproductions of Sukhothai-style statues to alabaster images from Mandalay, complete with the far more modern flashing electric halos, ubiquitous in Burma. Multiple framed pictures of King Rama V, the temple’s benefactor, were on display throughout the building.
“Sometimes people misunderstand, the name of this temple is Wat Luang,” Paa Aye said, enunciating the word luang. “This is not wat long [Shan for big or main]. This is Wat Luang [Thai for royal]. It is because the temple was bestowed to the community by King Rama V. Not many know that even the city pillar [of Mae Sot] was granted by King Rama V and placed in this temple,” she said, as we slowly made our way to the back of the temple, inching our way along a narrow path, to a small, nondescript, roofed enclosure, hidden behind a large reclining Buddha image. Within the structure was three wooden shafts, positioned vertically and sparsely adorned with colored cloth and flowers; we stood at the cosmologic center of Mae Sot.
“These are not the originals,” said Paa Aye sadly. “Before, no one knew about things like [care of] wood and foundations. The original one has been worn out, burned by candles left too near, and the ground shifted. These are the replacements.”
After paying our respects at this shrine, she led me back to the main hall. “You have to see this, it is not like anywhere else.
The other Shans [in Thailand] often mix their culture, with each other or Thailand. We won’t change, we want to keep it the way our parents and grandparents practiced. Now, others see our festivals- Thais, Burmese- and they want to join in.” She led me to a store room, underneath the hall, where several men were chatting. They beamed and quickly greeted Paa Aye, their hands coming up in a wai. However, my attention was immediately drawn to a magnificent, golden-headed creature with a shaggy body, resembling a yak, its body hollow and large enough to hold two men. The “fur” was made of multi-colored strings, and the creature’s head was adorned with a set of green and gold antlers.
“At the conference [on Shan Studies, at Chulalongkorn University, October 2009, where this traditional Shan dance was performed], they called this a toh. It is not called that here, we call it kwang, and ours looks different. This is the way we have always been doing it… our grandparents always called it a kwang.”
She gestured towards a middle-aged man seated behind, weaving bamboo strips into a rough cylinder. He looked up briefly and smiled, then continued working.
“You have to use the bamboo strips to weave the head,” Paa Aye indicated. “However, nobody wants to do this anymore, not the young ones.” No one in the room was under 50 years of age.
“We Mae Sot Shans are not the same [as elsewhere]. For example, maisoongka [the Shan word of greeting]; I have never heard of this before I went to Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai. We used to just greet each other by asking yoo lee yoo ha? [Are you well?] Other words are also different. Like kwa lai [where are you going?]. We pronounce it kwa hlao.”
We were soon joined by another woman, well into her 80s, her wispy hair now completely white, one of her eyes clouded over by a cataract. She conversed with Paa Aye for a moment, a mixture of Thai and oddly accented Shan. During a break in the conversation, Paa Aye turned to me, proclaiming, “she’s also a luk ngiew.”
“My grandmother and grandfather were from Anya (meaning upriver in Burmese) near Mandalay,” the octogenarian explained. “The Burmese pronounce it Inya. They came during the time of King Rama V. My mother and I were born here,” she said, beaming a broad, toothless smile.
Added Paa Aye, “Back then, all the Shans came here for the timber industry. Shans never had to flee to Thailand, they just came here for logging. It is only after World War Two that this started to happen. Especially after the coup [by Ne Win], the Shans started coming over, to seek refuge here, in this temple. They had to walk through the jungles… they would hide from the police here. This was during the time of Sao Shwe Thaike. The students here would help these students; we helped them live here, we gave them oil, rice, food. It was cold and there weren’t enough blankets, so we donated some thick curtains from our house; we had to re-stitch them to make blankets… These students are now all gone; some went home [to Burma], many disappeared into Thailand, others resettled in other countries, Australia, Canada, the United States. Even now, they still remember, and they send donations for Kathina [festival marking the end of the rains retreat, when new robes are offered to monks], to this temple. They do this every year.”
Before I had realized it, I had spent almost the entire day with Paa Aye. As I prepared to bid her farewell, she lamented as we walked out of Wat Luang, “Shan culture has become so diluted now. Osmosis, is that the right word?” she asked, using the English term amidst the rest of the sentence, spoken in Thai. “Anyhow, they don’t teach [Shan language] in Thai schools. The kids learn Thai, they learn to assimilate. No one speaks or celebrates Shan culture anymore. Many have left the community, gone to Bangkok.”
Outside the temple, a noodle stall was setting up alongside the busy street. Two middle-aged women, with the help of a younger woman, were busily setting up their vending cart and tables for customers, readying the sauces and soups, spices and condiments. I could not help but ask them, “excuse me, pen Tai ha [Are you Shan]?”
One of the middle-aged women paused in the midst of her cooking, looking up at me for a moment with a bemused expression, before replying, “aw ka, pen Tai Mae Sot aw.” [Yes, I am a Mae Sot Shan]
