Bound by Two Strings

Prologue

Thailand was never fully colonised by European forces, nor was it ever made into a Chinese state, but as a syncretic state that is known for borrowing aspects of its culture from its neighbours and further afield, it has a unique set of customs and traditions. Between the 1800s and the 1900s, nearly 20,000 Chinese entered Thailand from southern China establishing themselves in occupations requiring arduous labour, skills or entrepreneurship. The Chinese brought with them aspects of their culture, including their music and instruments. By the 20th century, the Government had forced Chinese migrants to adopt Thai names, Thai language and Thai customs, but forbid them to take any names already in use as part of a growing Thaification of the country which was enacted in complete force by 1932. Integration was not a seamless process.

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We headed into the kitchen. The lights were dim and I squeezed my mother’s hand tightly as she led the way. It had been three hours since the police had investigated the house for signs of evidence. They found little, but the scene was heartbreaking. The kitchen was typically arranged with the sink, kitchen and stove in triangular formation and whilst the walls were adorned with original white and commonplace beige, the room now lay desecrated. Scuff marks and faeces had replaced the bright layout. It was no longer the kitchen I knew. I could barely register what I was seeing and my eyes began to well up. 

The Buddha, from its original place high on the top of the cupboard of the far wall, had been knocked to the floor. It had landed with tremendous force such that the pieces of soft, nephrite jade littered the kitchen tiles. My mother was distraught and my father was not much happier. I could see the anger in his face as he attempted to make sense of the mess. I watched him pick up a stray wok as he tried desperately to organise the kitchen utensils and reclaim order in his home. My mother turned to me, Nong, she whispered, the word for ‘little one’ in Thai, she only called me Nong when she was being sweet. “Turn your feet away from Him, even when he lies-” She couldn’t finish her sentence. I trembled, curling my toes awkwardly away from the Buddha. In the dimly lit room, she let go of my hand setting out to help baba and I left the kitchen heading to my room.

-

By evening, my father and his friends, or clan, had gathered in a group round the open door of the house, laughing, smoking and gambling over Mahjong. The group would stop to watch and listen as the larger man, by both waist and height, would carefully move his fingers on the er hu, a type of two-stringed fiddle. The instrument gave them all great joy and they all laughed intermittently in between rounds of their lots. 

The musician was a man named Ajarn Sritangrakanakul, Ajarn meaning teacher. Born in Thailand he is Chinese like my father with his family descending from a region called Chaozhou in the far-eastern part of the country. Their family had been living here in Thailand since the start of the century and also like my family there were three members in them in total.

Carrying a bowl of boiled rice-soup with pieces of pork in it, I walked delicately over to Ajarn’s son, Yim, making sure to step with my left foot as I left the building’s interior. Yim means smile in Thai. He was tall, and he was the only young man in the neighbourhood who could grow facial hair. He detested shaving it, and thought his beard to be a sign of his adolescence and status. I walked carefully over to the smaller table situated to the right of the main group. We were not old enough to sit at the men’s table, mother had forbidden it, especially around the alcohol. Tonight it seemed they were drinking rice-wine - the perfume was a mixture of petrol and local fruits.

“Did you eat yet?” I asked. Yim shook his head as I portioned out half of the soup to him. We both looked over at the group of older men. “I hate the sound of that instrument,” he sneered. “My father plays it all the time. For the past four days he has dedicated himself to composing. The worst part is he doesn’t even write it down.” I considered Yim for a moment, before speaking shyly. “It doesn’t sound that bad, does it? Besides, most of the time he teaches me by spoken-word.” Yim looked at me for a moment, shrugging, before hungrily spooning some of the rice-soup into his mouth. We changed the subject to talk about the rest of the boys in the area. “Nant went to the temple and got his tattoo finished yesterday. When will you get yours?” he enquired. I blinked, curling my toes again. “In six days time, I have to perform to the friends and family of the neighbourhood. Only after that can I get my temple sak.” Sak is the sacred markings of the local temple inked onto the back of the neck which provide blessings against immorality and evil. Each temple have their own particular blessings, our local temple blessed use with prosperity in business.

I never used to believe in the old ways, but my mother kept them alive. She is the only Thai woman in the neighbourhood - everyone else is Chinese. She fell in love with my father when they lived in the up-country just outside of Chiang Mai. He was working with his family running a small bar on the outskirts of Chiang Rai, whilst she used to clean the house of her parents - but she was infamous for how she killed chickens. She used to collect their blood from their garrotted, exposed neck siphoning it for blood pudding, a common ingredient for noodle soup; a community favourite.

My reminiscing was cut short by the sound of Ajarn Sritangrakanakul’s voice. It was that time in the evening when the men were so drunk that they would absent-mindedly begin passing on their words of wisdom. “Nong, nong - What you need to remember - we don’t say that we got this instrument from India or China,” he barked in a drunken stupor, “For simplicity sake, we don’t say our music is Chinese, or Burmese, or Laotian, or from the West or Japanese. When you play this instrument, the music comes from your hands and your hands, Nong”, he stumbled over his words, “your hands are Thai. Your hands and feet are Thai. Your spirit is with the Thai.” He pulled the bow across the two strings and the instrument let out a rich, high-pitched noise. A ripple of energy ran from my shoulders to my posterior. There was a warmth, starting slowly, as if from under my skin wings were sprouting and protruding. He continued his playing, conjuring upon a whirlwind of incredible expression. I watched his fingers closely. Even in his alcohol-addled brain, he could still convey the grand pageant of the instrument’s history, stirring and intermingling with his spirit. By the time he had finished, the men were comatose, Yim was disgruntled and I was quite happy with what I had heard.

Spirit is an unusual term. It doesn’t fully translate into English. In Thai, my mother always refers to it as khwan. When you are born, your khwan is born with you and grows with you, like a twin-brother. Sometimes when I am alone I can hear my khwan. There are times when my mother says she can see my khwan, usually when I’m playing and practicing. She tells me that when I play my instrument, I begin to emulate the power of the by-gone Kings of Thailand who are the most perfect people in existence. As I play, I am drawn closer to the perfect form of meritorious-karmic divinity, and that my khwan is the thing that guides me. My friend Yim says he lost his khwan once, so he had to go to the temple to make merit and have a monk give him a blessed, white, lace cord to tie around his wrist. This kept his khwan safe from wandering away from him. Only those who are Thai, or half-Thai, like me, have khwan. So I don’t think Yim has khwan.

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It was seven hours until my performance and my nerves were getting the worse of me. Eight of my nine aunties were travelling down for the occasion and I already knew the gargantua amount of food we would be eating. I lay on my bed and my stomach rumbled noisily, this was the sign I needed to start my day. I showered early, the water was cold and pricked my skin as I poured bowl after bowl of water washing myself.

I dried off in my room and hung my clothes out. I had accumulated ten shirts over the past weeks and I watched them drip dry onto the floor for a few moments. I came down into the kitchen to see that peace had been restored. This morning my mae, mother in Thai, was making omelettes and she was in a joyous mood. She had put her hair up and her almond eyes smiled as she beamed at me. “Are you ready for today?” she asked carefully, gently breaking a jumble of eggs into a wok. Fluently, she flicked the pan back onto the heat as the eggs rotated in it, solidifying and she seasoned them. I took a handful of boiled rice and placed it into a bowl and waited for my omelette.

A few hours later, I sat trembling. I couldn’t tell if it was the prickly water that was causing me to shake or if it was my nerves. I had a peculiar feeling of being boxed in as if I was walking down a cavern where the tunnel would slowly get narrower and narrower to the point where I couldn’t turn back because my skin would have shaved itself on the roughness of the walls, leaving me confided in the space and trapped. I calmed myself for a few minutes, counting my breath.

-

By the time of my performance, all of my mother’s extended family were sitting in the front room. My father and his friends, Yim, my Ajarn had all come as well, and there was an energy about the place. I had speculated correctly, eleven enormous plates decorated the table behind them, a mixture of fruits, fried-chicken, succulent pork, fried-rice, more omelettes, prawns of all shapes and sizes, one person had even brought sticky-rice. I saw other dishes including pak-choi, beef drenched in oyster sauce and chicken sweetened with tangerine lying next to one another.

I delicately took a chair from the side and placed it in front of the audience. I sat down with my instrument. Adjusting myself and the instrument into the correct position. I carefully moved my big-toe on my right foot and rested it against the cobra-skin resonator. Half of the audience turned their eyes down maintaining their smiles, but disgusted by what I had done. I uncomfortably readjusted in my seat aware of how I had made so many of the audience feel mortified. My mother kept her gaze, her lips flattening. 

I opened my concert with a small, sweet-piece. Phleng pasaa, or language pieces, is how my ajarn had sectioned each composition, drilling the movement of my fingers into me through ruthless and unwavering repetition, you could even call it rote-memorisation. The piece began high-pitched and exuberant, making a sound as if I was conducting a series of mares and stallions to neigh at different times, before becoming a more somber in tone. I smiled as I felt the nervousness melt away down my spine, being replaced by the same warmth I had felt before when I heard the music outside the house. If you had heard the piece, you might have thought it was sorts of musical trifle. Consuming the spongy-base, you would have heard deeply mulled, foreign themes, like French cognac, intermingling with light custard and cream as if the opus rose in layers and culminated in enchantment and delight. A light dusting of sugar, so familiar to Thai mouths brought the piece to a conclusion. I sat there, the warmth having spread over my body entirely. Before standing up and giving a curt bow. No one clapped, but I wasn’t anticipating it.

-

By the evening, my mother and I were standing in the kitchen washing the plates from the day. Since sundown, the nephrite-jade Buddha had been replaced when my mother’s sisters had arrived. I watched as they worked together to lift the new image into place, sitting high above on the kitchen cabinets. “You know what you did wrong, don’t you?” she said rather curtly. I placed the thirteenth and last cup on the wooden-draining board, smiling at Lord Buddha.

Epilogue

The records show the existence of a single, er hu instrumentalist who lived in Bangkok, Chinatown, during the tail-end of the 19th century. His work had been recognised by the scholarship of the, then, European academia and he was well-regarded for his abilities but his compositions were never recorded. Much of the sweet music, or ‘language pieces’ that Thai composers produce, aren’t maintained between generations. What was lost, cannot be found, and in the present day we can only speculate on what his life might have been, caught between two cultures.