Word: cornwel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Philip Cornwel-Smith argues, one defining quality of Thais is their embrace of all things un-Thai. The country is a cultural fusion of East and West, old and new, all effortlessly assimilated. The Thai horoscope, for example, is a baffling hybrid of Chinese, Indian and Western systems. Thai beauty queens still scoop their hair into a style called a faaraa, as in Farrah Fawcett. One of the most beloved singers of Thai country music is a Swede called Jonas. This ability to digest foreign influences is sometimes literal: villagers plagued by Bombay locusts 10 years ago solved the problem...
...This adopt-or-perish attitude helps explain how Thais have survived three decades of breakneck development. "In one dizzying spasm," writes Cornwel-Smith, "Thailand is experiencing the forces that took a century to transform the West." How does a nation modernize this fast without eroding the traditions that define it? In Thailand, "traditional" is now often a pejorative term, meaning low-class or old-fashioned. Many of the temple's social functions have been replaced by the mall, where, the author notes, "the principal rite is the right to shop." What matters most is looking dern. Yes, that's Thai...
...With the country this year hoping to attract a staggering 15 million visitors?one for every four Thais?one definition of "Thai-ness" is simply "whatever tourists want." Cornwel-Smith rightly condemns plans to demolish old Bangkok neighborhoods to create "Paris-style open vistas" to accommodate both tourists and convenience-store chains. Very Thai? Hardly. But however tourist-oriented Thailand has become, Cornwel-Smith's exhaustive research suggests that perhaps foreigners don't know the country as well as they assume. Despite its freewheeling reputation, Thailand surpasses even Japan in its adherence to stifling social hierarchies?note the national obsession...
...charitable at times. Is the city's Chatpetch Tower really a "post-modernist pastiche" of the ubiquitous Greco-Roman style? Or is it just rubbish, like so much urban Thai architecture? Sometimes, too, the urge to be exhaustive is just plain exhausting, although future social historians will thank Cornwel-Smith for recording how you toughen up a Siamese fighting fish before a bout. (Rather meanly, you "just stir the water.") Encyclopedic in scope, Very Thai is an unapologetic celebration of both the exotic and the everyday, and an affectionate reminder in these flag-waving times that perhaps Thais care less...
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