The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe: Being Sketches of the Domestic and Religious Rites and Ceremonies of the Siamese — John Shaqi
The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe: Being Sketches of the Domestic and Religious Rites and Ceremonies of the SiameseYoung, Ernest
Religion
The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe: Being Sketches of the Domestic and Religious Rites and Ceremonies of the Siamese
Young, Ernest
Thailand -- Religious life and customs; Thailand -- Social life and customs
Carpenters, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers and scavengers are all
Chinese. It is a Chinaman who sits all through the heat of the day,
under a tent made of an old sheet supported by a central bamboo pole,
displaying an array of strange-looking liquids, placed in thick
glass tumblers in a long row. Great lumps of vermicelli float in the
blue, green, red, or yellow liquids, presenting the appearance of
curious anatomical specimens preserved in coloured spirits. It is a
Chinaman who hawks about great pails of slimy, black jelly having the
consistency and colour of blacking, but said to be extremely palatable
with coarse brown sugar. The men who are watering the roads with
wooden buckets fitted with long bamboo spouts; the men who sweep the
roads, and mend them; the coolies in the wharves; the clerks in the
offices; the servants in the hotels and houses: are all subjects of
"The Lord of the Vermilion Pencil."
No Siamese pulls a rickshaw, though he frequently rides in one. The
Chinese are the beasts of burden as far as the Bangkok rickshaw is
concerned. This vehicle, as seen in Siam is a very sorry-looking
object, bearing only a distant resemblance to those met with in every
Eastern port from Colombo to Yokohama. Nowhere do you ever find such
dilapidated rickety structures as those that the coolies pull through
the streets of this city. A new one would be a veritable curiosity.
When the rickshaws of Singapore and Hong-kong have reached a condition
of extreme old age, and are so broken down that the authorities in
those ports refuse to grant them licences any longer, they are sent on
to Bangkok, where no licences are required. There the poorer classes
use them freely, and there too are they as often used for the removal
of household furniture, or the transportation of pigs, as they are
for the carriage of passengers. The coolies tear through the streets,
regardless of anyone's comfort or safety except their own; though, be
it said, that they never resent the cut of a driver's whip when some
coachman thus forcibly reminds them which is the right side of the
road.
Pigs are not always allowed the luxury of riding in rickshaws. They
are more usually transported in a far less comfortable fashion.
Their two front feet are tied together, and then their hind feet are
similarly fastened. A stout piece of wood is passed under the two
loops thus formed, and the pig is carried by two men, each bearing one
end of the pole. The animals generally object very strongly to this
form of motion, and signify their disgust, and perhaps their pain,
by the most heart-rending, ear-piercing shrieks. Thus another set of
discordant sounds is added to the medley that roars from morning to
night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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