For many Westerners, there are a string of related images and ideas which come to mind when someone mentions Southeast Asia. Many are connected with the Vietnam War - napalm and Agent Orange, the TET offensive, the domino theory of the spread of communism, boat people. If we think beyond those images we are likely to picture rainforests and rice paddies, prostitution, large rivers, tribal peoples, or perhaps drugs and the Golden Triangle. To say the least, it is a shallow image...
The area which we call Southeast Asia today is wedged between two of the world's great cultural influences: India and China. And it is only since WWII that the region has come to be recognized as somehow distinct from these two locations. Early efforts to characterize Southeast Asia generally fell short in that they neglected the indigenous cultures of the region. These efforts attempted to describe the region as basically Indian or Chinese. Names like Greater India and Indochina were common. But there are important cultures unique to Southeast Asia, and they can be divided broadly into 5 categories:
- The Malayo-Polynesian peoples, including the Malays, the Javanese, and most other Indonesians.
- The Austro-Asiatics, including the Khmer, the Mon of Burma and Thailand, and many of the region's smaller groups.
- The Tai, including the Thai people, the Shan of Northern Myanmar, the Lao, and the Zhuang (China's largest minority group).
- The Tibeto-Burmans, including the Burmese, the Karen, many of Myanmar's minority groups, and ethnic Tibetans in China's Yunnan Province.
- The Miao-Yao, including the Hmong.
Not a great deal of the early history of Southeast Asia was recorded. The earliest records on the region are the annals of the Chinese court. They give Chinese names to early Southeast Asian political units which were in most ways Indianized. Europeans tend to think of the region's history as beginning with the arrival of the Portuguese in Melaka (in modern Malaysia) or perhaps the Spanish in the Philippines. The truth is that Southeast Asia was in the midst of a long and golden era of civilization when European colonizers arrived - an era that had included great literature, architecture, the study of Sanskrit, international trade, and extensive political organization.
The city of Chengdu in China's Sichuan Province sits at a crossroads. It is situated between two tributaries of the Yangtze River and rests on the edge of the fertile plain which has made China the most populous nation on Earth. To its west, mountains rise to incredible heights - out of which Tibetan nomads have historically come to trade or plunder. To its north the arid areas of Central Asia and the freezing tundra of Siberia have served as a channel for bringing migrants to the edge of lowland China.
As newcomers settled on the plains which surround Chengdu, they usually found a period of hospitality and learned things from their Chinese hosts. Eventually though, they would be driven back into the mountains or assimilated into Chinese culture. Those who chose the mountains usually worked their way down through the unending number of river valleys to emerge in what is now the Indian State of Assam, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, or Vietnam.
In the peopling of Southeast Asia, Chengdu was a major transit lounge where the former residents of Tibet and Central Asia rested and learned before starting the 600 mile journey which would take them to modern Hanoi, or the 1000 mile trip to Yangon, in Myanmar. The foot prints of history can still be found in Southern China, where perhaps a third to half of the world's ethnic Tai peoples live in the mountains of Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces.
China's biggest contribution to the making of Southeast Asia may have been the simple unwillingness of the Chinese to live side by side with other cultures. The result was a constant funneling of people into modern Southeast Asia. While it has slowed considerably, the process continues today.