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A new Chinatown? Authenticity and conflicting

discourses on Pracha Rat Bamphen Road

Hongmei Wu, Sethawut Techasan & Thom Huebner

To cite this article: Hongmei Wu, Sethawut Techasan & Thom Huebner (2020) A new Chinatown?
Authenticity and conflicting discourses on Pracha Rat Bamphen Road, Journal of Multilingual and
Multicultural Development, 41:9, 794-812, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2020.1746318

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1746318

Published online: 24 Mar 2020.

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JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
2020, VOL. 41, NO. 9, 794–812
https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1746318

A new Chinatown? Authenticity and conflicting discourses on

Pracha Rat Bamphen Road
Hongmei Wua,b, Sethawut Techasanc and Thom Huebnerd
a
School of Foreign Languages, Guiyang University, Guiyang, People’s Republic of China; bGraduate School,
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; cBusiness English Department, Theodore Maria School of Arts,
Assumption University, Samutprakarn, Thailand; dDepartment of Linguistics and Language Development, San José
State University, San José, United States of America

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Chinatowns around the world have been much studied in the linguistic Received 9 December 2019
landscape literature. The bulk of this research has focused on Western Accepted 18 March 2020
enclaves resulting from the Chinese diaspora of the Nineteenth Century,
KEYWORDS
which share certain semiotic characteristics and histories. Less research Authenticity; production of
has been conducted on Chinatowns in the East or on newly emerging space; linguistic landscape;
Chinese enclaves. This study, framed by Lefebvre’s Production of Space, Chinatown; Bangkok;
fills a gap by investigating a newly emerging Chinatown in Bangkok, in discourses of contestation
contrast to that city’s original Chinatown of Yaowarat, and to those of
the nineteenth century diaspora. In asking the question, ‘what
constitutes an authentic Chinatown, and in whose eyes’, it draws on
data from field trips, photographs, interviews, questionnaires, focus
group and documents to highlight how this neighbourhood differs in
important ways from Yaowarat and how both are distinct from diasporic
Chinatowns and from more recent Chinese enclaves. The study re-
examines the notion of authenticity as applied to Chinatowns and
identifies a number of distinct discourses revealing opposing
conceptions of authenticity.

Introduction
Around 2015, print, on-air and internet media sources began using the term ‘New Chinatown’ in
reference to an area of Bangkok known as Huai Khwang, and more specifically to Pracha Rat Bam-
pen (PRB) Road (e.g. Panichkul 2016; Rojanaphruk 2017; Chongkittavorn 2018; Ehrlich 2019),
despite the fact that it lacks many of the defining physical features (arches, temples, etc.) character-
istic of most Chinatowns of the world. Since Bangkok is already home to Yaowarat, one of the oldest
and largest Chinatowns in the world (Wu and Techasan 2016), we were curious to understand the
origin and justification for the label ‘New Chinatown’. This led to a contrast of PRB Road with Yao-
warat, and an exploration of how both differ from ‘traditional Chinatowns in diasporic contexts’
(Sharma 2019, 3) and from what Li (1998) calls ‘Chinese ethnoburbs’.
Much research on Chinatowns is concentrated in the urban planning, tourism and linguistic
landscape literatures. Not surprisingly, the term ‘Chinatown’ has been used to label a number of
divergent kinds of communities. The oldest Chinatowns, notably Binondo in Manila (Jazul and
Bernardo 2017) and Yaowarat in Bangkok (Wu and Techasan 2016), trace their origins to the
junk boat traders of the sixtieth century. Conversely, the term Chinatown has also been applied
to very recent developments. For example, since the turn of the twenty-first century,

CONTACT Sethawut Techasan sethawut.techasan@gmail.com

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 795

Kathmandu’s Thamel neighbourhood handicraft shops, entertainment venues, restaurants, and

massage centres targeted for tourist consumption, has experienced an increase in Chinese
language signage to accommodate the growing number of Chinese speaking tourists. But Thamel
is a Chinatown devoid of Chinese residents, with no architectural representations of Chinese cul-
ture, and with shopkeepers whose communication with the Chinese tourist/consumers is limited
to basic oral skills, gesture and translator/scribes. Nevertheless, Chinese language services pro-
vided by airlines, hotels and Chinese restaurants conspire to create a Chinese ‘tourist bubble’
(Sharma 2019, 23).
Another situation which has been referred to as Chinatown, or sometimes New Chinatown, has
emerged since the late twentieth century in many metropolitan areas of North America. It involves
the secondary migration of Chinese immigrants and their descendants away from the urban centres
to outlying neighbourhoods, as well as new immigrants from Asia and elsewhere, some low-wage
low-skill labourers, but more likely high-wage, high-skill ‘uptown Chinese’ (Kwong 1996, 22). Li
has referred to these enclaves as ethnoburbs, a new type of suburban multi-ethnic residential neigh-
bourhood and business centre ‘in which one ethnic minority group has a significant concentration,
but does not necessarily comprise a majority’ (1998, 482). Many ethnoburban Chinese own their
own houses and live and work in the ethnoburb, forming fully functioning cities-within-a-city.
Examples might be the Richmond District of San Francisco and the San Gabriel Valley of Los
Angeles County.
But the Chinese enclaves most commonly associated with the term Chinatown are those which
emerged during and as a result of the Chinese diaspora from the nineteenth century to 1949 (hen-
ceforth referred to as diasporic Chinatowns). The experiences and memories evoked make each of
these Chinatowns unique. Nevertheless, most share certain physical characteristics (e.g. the presence
of Chinese residents, Chinese restaurants; the use of Chinese script in the public space, etc.), and
similar histories of inception and evolution. These commonalities among diasporic Chinatowns
have inspired frequent reference to the theme of authenticity. Discourses of authenticity as applied
to representations of traditional Chinatowns and more particularly to PRB Road (and secondarily to
Yaowarat) is the focal point of this study.
To address that issue, this study applies Wang’s (1999) tripartite conceptualisation of authenticity
to an exploration of ‘Chinatown’ from the lens of Lefebvre’s (1991) Production of Space framework,
viewing PRB Road as perceived, conceived and lived space. Situating PRB Road in the wider Bangkok
context, the study considers how discourses of authenticity are shaped by the historical record (Scol-
lon and Scollon 2004) of diverse social actors. The following section presents the Production of Space
framework, examines traditional Chinatowns as conceived and perceived space, and identifies the
discourses of authenticity surrounding them. Section Three is a discussion of authenticity. In Section
Four, a brief sketch of Chinese immigration to Thailand and a description of the ‘new Chinatown’
controversy illustrate how, as conceived spaces, Yaowarat and PRB Road differ in significant ways
both from each other and from diasporic Chinatowns. Section Five describes the data upon
which the study is based, including notes and photographs from numerous field trips, casual conver-
sations, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, focus groups, historical
documentation and analysis of promotional literature. Section Six reports on the findings. Section
Seven discusses the implications of these findings in terms of authenticity.

Diasporic Chinatowns and the Production of Space

Lefebvre’s Production of Space framework presents space as ‘a complex social construction […] based
on values and social meanings which affect spatial practices and perceptions, and is conceptualised in
terms of three dimensions: “spatial practice”, “representations of space” and “representational
spaces”’ (Lefebvre 1991, 220). These dimensions of space, referred to elsewhere as perceived
space, conceived space and lived space, respectively (e.g. Trumper-Hecht 2010; Malinowski 2015),
represent ‘three distinct modes of being in, relating to, interacting with, and knowing the world’
796 H. WU ET AL.

(Malinowski 2015, 1). Perceived space refers to what people can see, hear or detect through other
senses. Conceived space is the product of policy makers and others whose ideologies and actions
have formed the space as perceived. Lived space refers to what people actually experience in public
spaces.
As conceived space, the diasporic Chinatowns historically date back to the nineteenth century
when Chinese emigration reached a peak in response to push factors such as population growth,
unequal wealth distribution and political unrest. Pull factors included discovery of gold in the Amer-
icas and Australia, employment opportunities abroad, and the need for service industries to maintain
these populations. Wherever a critical mass settled, a Chinese enclave formed, in part as a result of
racist policies, de facto or de rigueur (e.g. Zhou and Logan 1991; Chow 1996; Kwong 1996; Gyory
1998; Huebner and Uyechi 2004), but also as self-generated support systems for new arrivals, pro-
viding help with accommodations, employment, financial assistance, education, spiritual well-being
and contacts with the homeland (e.g. Lyman 1974; Wong and Chan 1998).
A common pattern to these Chinatowns is an eventual period of economic decline in the early
twentieth century, followed by a reconceptualization of the space with an emphasis on urban
renewal, preservation and tourism (e.g. Henderson 2000; Guan 2002; Pang and Rath 2007; Shaw
2007). Guan (2002) documents the external institutional discrimination and internal forces that
formed the basis of the socioeconomic transition of Philadelphia’s Chinatown from an ethnic enclave
to a cultural and tourist centre. Pang and Rath (2007) chronicle the roles community leaders, city
planners and local government regulation played in the ultimate physical appearance of Washington
D.C.’s Chinatown. Shaw’s case study of Montreal illustrates the role of Chinese residents, merchants
and societies, and the ‘mediating role of city governments’ in the process by which ‘multicultural dis-
tricts are “aestheticised and transformed” into “cultural” attractions’ (2007, 49).
As perceived space, these Chinatowns often share linguistic and semiotic affordances indexing
Chineseness and marking them as Chinatowns, including the presence of Chinese characters,
often in the traditional style, alphabetic transliterations suggesting many were written in regional
languages such as Fujian or Cantonese, the prominence of red and gold colour schemes, elaborate
gates, stylised lampposts, stone lions and other architectural features contributing to the authenticity
of Chinatown as perceived space. In Singapore, gentrification initiatives intending to stem a decline
in tourism, were aimed not at an ‘attempt to re-create Chinatown’, but rather to recall and revitalise
the ‘Chinatown spirit’ (Henderson 2000, 528). These efforts were attacked as lacking ‘character and
authenticity’ and resulting in an ‘Oriental caricature’ based on a simplistic and exoticised Other
(Henderson 2000, 530), an Orientalism attributed to remnants of European imperialism and to
the cultural hegemony of the West (Said 1978).
The products of these reconceived Chinatowns have been the subject of linguistic landscape
studies in numerous international cities, including Washington DC (Leeman and Modan 2009),
Melbourne (Chen 2014), Liverpool (Amos 2016), Bangkok (Wu and Techasan 2016), Manila
(Jazul and Bernardo 2017), Vancouver (Li and Marshall 2018), San Francisco (Cheung 2018),
New York City (Kim 2018) and Incheon (Lee and Lou 2019). These studies reveal how the inception,
reconceptualization and marketing of Chinatowns has generated multiple ‘discourses of authenticity’
(Leeman and Modan 2009, 354). For example, Chen shows how the use of bilingual signs creates a
sense of both familiarity among those literates in Chinese and authenticity among those who are not.
In Vancouver’s Chinatown, bilingual signage (E&C) has been promoted as an image-enhancing
strategy to highlight a culturally authentic streetscape (Li and Marshall 2018, 9). In Washington,
the goal of developers and city planners was to create and capitalise on Chinese architectural
elements and Chinese characters to create a ‘destination location’ to draw tourists (Leeman and
Modan 2009, 346). Lee and Lou point out how the pervasive use of the colour red in Incheon’s Chi-
natown indexes Chineseness ‘in an effort to resemiotise, or indeed “invent”, the space as “authenti-
cally” Chinese’ (2019, 193). Amos (2016) observes how Liverpool’s Chinatown as perceived space
forms the bases of a sense of authenticity for out-group discourses. At the same time, notice boards
with their hand-written monolingual Chinese messages represent a site of in-group exclusivity and
 JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 797

‘the interpretation of Chinatown as an authentically Chinese space’ (141). In her multi-level socio-
ethnographic analysis of Washington, DC’s Chinatown, Lou (2016) contrasts the signs of Chinese-
owned shops with those owned by non-Chinese to make her case for Chinatown as heterotopia (Fou-
cault 1986). By tracing Chinatown’s temporal trajectory, she shows how the changing discourses,
social actors and resources have impacted Chinatown as an authentic space. By linking the dis-
courses in place in Washington with those in other Chinatowns, she highlights how ‘spatial practice
itself is used as a key criterion of authenticity’ (126). She concludes, ‘Just as Chinatown’s linguistic
landscape is a product of temporal and spatial chasm, the critique of its inauthenticity is also based
on an imagined ideal of a “real” Chinatown that must be a maximally different and unfamiliar Other
place’ (133).
What constitutes authenticity is central to any discussion about Chinatown and is contingent
upon whose authenticity is referenced. Henderson, writing from the perspective of the tourism
industry, describes the dilemma thus:
‘The problem then is determining what and whose authenticity is presented to the visitor. As the authorities and
tourism industry seek to create an atmosphere and environment which evokes the past and reintroduce tra-
ditional activities in modified forms, Chinatown might be seen as an attempt to devise and present a form
of selective and possibly distorted authenticity which avoids area of contention and controversy’ (532)

This raises the question whether Pracha Rat Bampen Road can be considered an authentic China-
town, and if so, by whom. Specifically, the research questions addressed in this paper are:

(1) What linguistic and other physical semiotic affordances justify calling PRB Road a new
Chinatown?
(2) In the experiences of social actors, does PRB Road constitute a Chinatown?
(3) What are the discourses of authenticity surrounding the conception of Pracha Rat Bampen Road
as a new Chinatown?

The next section explores the multiple notions of authenticity.

Authenticity
From a Production of Space framework, Lefebvre sees everyday life as the arena in which the auth-
entic and the inauthentic come into conflict (2002, 24). Franco interprets this to mean that within
this framework, ‘the perceived space, defined by its physical structure, and the lived space,
defined by social interaction are the most direct translation of this authentic reality of the city’,
(2015, 265) whereas conceived space is built by politicians and architects with often fixed ideals.
Recognising the ambiguity of the term, Wang (1999) offers a tripartite conceptual classification of
authenticity as objective, constructive and experiential. Originally intended to describe tourist
experiences, its influence has been felt in many areas. Objective authenticity, or authenticity of orig-
inals, refers to object’s or event’s provenance (Trilling 1972). In the tourism industry, the test for
objective authenticity is whether the object or event is enacted ‘by local people according to custom
or tradition, as in Baro’s “authentic marketplaces”’ (2019, 49). Another example of objective auth-
enticity might be the objects on display in the Jajangmyeon Museum in Incheon, as described in
Lee and Lou (2019).
Like objective authenticity, Wang’s constructive authenticity is object-related, but unlike objective
authenticity, it is the result of social construction. In this case, events and objects are authentic not
because of their provenance but because they are constructed according to a point of view, a set of
beliefs or an ideological stereotype. They are relative, negotiable and contextually determined and
therefore cannot be measured by any objective criteria. Tourists search out not objective authenticity,
but rather socially constructed symbolic authenticity. Semiotic resources found in the reconceptua-
lised diasporic Chinatowns function to communicate to non-Chinese an air of authenticity (Leeman
798 H. WU ET AL.

and Modan 2009; Jazul and Bernardo 2017; Li and Marshall 2018; Lee and Lou 2019). Restaurants
are often deemed authentic based on their décor, employee uniforms and dishes (Ho 2019). The
‘authentic Chinese architecture’ of the Friendship Gate in Philadelphia (Guan 2002) and indeed
the Orientalism and staged authenticity of most of the Chinatowns around the world reconstructed
in the twentieth century are authentic in this sense.
Unlike the first two of Wang’s three types of authenticity, existential authenticity is activity-
-rather than object-related. Wang places existential authenticity within the long tradition of philo-
sophical notions of authenticity dating back to Rousseau, with the emphasis on being true to one’s
inner motives, emotions and conscience. In a tourist context, existential authenticity is an existential
state of being internal to the individual. Experiences which compel one to confront alternative ways
of interacting with the world and to be true to oneself are existentially authentic. Existential authen-
ticity does not apply to real world objects per se. Instead authenticity in this sense is about ‘lived
experiences’ (Klein and Zitcer 2012, 51), and is akin to Lefebvre’s representational or lived space.
It is the individual’s constructions and interpretations of lived experience. Since it is internal to
the individual, it is pluralistic. Since it is experience-, time-, and context-dependent, it is mutable.
The individual becomes the final arbiter / repository / determinant of authenticity.
The notion of authenticity as internal and rooted in experience is now common throughout the
applied and social sciences. Reflecting these widening perspectives on authenticity in the field of
architectural reconstruction, Bold observes,
‘The concept of authenticity now goes beyond the original, straightforward qualifying elements of form,
fabric and function, to include traditions and techniques, location and setting, spirit and feeling, cultural iden-
tity and social value and other internal and external factors, raising the question of how potentially competing
“authentic” values may be understood as credible or truthful, and raising the further question, who decides?’
(2018, 20)

Sansbury writing on the role of authenticity in historic reconstruction maintains, ‘Preservationists

should move beyond fabric-based preservation towards an “authentic” experience of the landscape’
(2018, 183). Historian King defines authenticity as ‘[…] staying true to oneself. More widely it would
refer to the attempt to live one’s life according to the needs of one’s inner being. […] authenticity
related to one’s actions and changes in response to these pressures [external forces and influences
which may be very different from oneself]’ (2017, 20). Sociologist Zukin writing of life in modern
urban centres, observes, ‘[…] The concern of the consumers shifted from experiencing an authentic
place to “lifestyle goals of liberation and personal authenticity”’ (2009, 15; cited in Baro 2019).
With regard to authentic language, sociolinguist Bucholtz proposes abandoning the search for the
most authentic variety among speakers of those language varieties least effected by external contact.
She maintains that
… authenticity is not there to be discovered, nor even to be cleverly coaxed into range of our recording equip-
ment; rather, it is conferred – by language users and their audiences, and by us, the sociolinguistics who study
them (2003, 408).

From this perspective, identity is ‘the antecessor of authenticity and “emerges from the specific con-
ditions of linguistic interaction” and is therefore fundamentally a social and cultural phenomenon’
(Bucholtz and Hall 2005, 588). Rather than pursuing authenticity per se, Bucholtz and Hall advocate
attending to the process of authentication, ‘the processes by which speakers make claims to realness
[…] the ways in which identities are discursively verified […]’ (2005, 601). Applying this notion of
authentication to the linguistic landscape of the Pilsen area of Chicago, Lyons and Rodriquez pro-
pose a set of four ‘frames of authentication’ or points of view that are a consequence or represen-
tation of an ideology of ‘real’ speakers representing four different conceptions of identity in Pilsen
(2015, 6).
Whether PRB Road can be considered an authentic Chinatown is inextricably linked to the pro-
duction of Chinese space in Thailand.
 JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 799

The Production of Chinese Space in Thailand

The role of the Chinese in Thailand is unique in the world. According to Worldometers.info, of
Thailand’s approximately 69 million people, about 14% are Sino-Thai, or Thais who trace their heritage
to Chinese immigrants (Anderson 2016), making them the largest non-Thai ethnic group in the
country and the largest overseas Chinese community in the world. This figure is somewhat misleading,
however. Since the earliest years of Chinese immigration, Chinese have intermarried with Thais and
many Sino-Thais, including members of the royal family, prominent politicians and wealthy entrepre-
neurs consider themselves 100% Thai. Luangthongkum (2007, 191) estimates that at least 40% of Thais
can trace their ancestry at least in part to Chinese immigration. These figures do not include the most
recent wave of immigration from China, what Niyomsilp (2012) calls the ‘Fourth Wave’.
Records indicate that Chinese sea merchants began arriving in Thailand by at least the thirteenth
century CE. However, the first wave of large numbers of immigrants began in the mid-seventeenth
century CE. These early immigrants, essentially all men, were primarily merchants and artisans who
spoke a variety of Chinese languages, including Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hunanese
and Hainanese. Many took Thai wives or concubines and settled in what is now the heart of Bang-
kok. In 1782, when King Rama I moved the capital of Siam from the west to the east bank of the Chao
Phraya River, the Chinese settlement was displaced to the current location at Yaowarat, which has
continued to be a thriving commercial and entertainment centre uninterrupted to this day. Many
contemporary Thais, including members of the royal family are descendants of these early settlers.
Subsequent Chinese immigration has fluctuated in response to domestic conditions in China and
foreign policy shifts in Thailand. For example, the second Opium War (1858–1860) precipitated the
emigration of millions of Chinese labourers, mostly single men, mostly speaking Chinese languages
from southern China. As with the initial wave, many took Thai wives, settled around Yaowarat and
produced offspring with 50% Chinese heritage. By the time of the Chinese communist rose to power
in 1949, another estimated five million Chinese came to Thailand. Unlike previous waves, the third
wave included both men and women and tended to be more highly educated. Although many had
hoped to return to China when political conditions improved, most never did (Niyomsilp 2012;
Anderson 2016). As the economic situation of Chinese-Thai descendants of the early residents
improved, many moved to the suburbs, maintaining ownership of the shops, now run by employees
from Burma, Laos and Cambodia.
This long history of Chinese immigration to Thailand, its integration into Thai society and its
central and uninterrupted role in Thai commerce and politics, is unique across Asia and dis-
tinguishes Yaowarat from the Chinatowns established as a result of the nineteenth century Chinese
diaspora. As conceived space Yaowarat lacks the exotic Orientalism characteristic of other China-
towns. Its origins in the reign of Rama I and continued vitality as a distinctive Bangkok urban district
weigh heavily on Thais’ experience with Yaowarat as lived space.
In contrast, PRB Road is the product of the latest wave of Chinese immigration (Niyomsilp 2012),
begun after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the
Thai government. Unlike earlier immigrants to Thailand, this new group comes to Thailand not out
of desperation but rather to seek additional and more lucrative opportunities. They are students, tea-
chers, and well-educated entrepreneurs, technicians and employees of Chinese companies doing
business in Thailand. Unlike earlier groups, they speak Mandarin, come from many regions of
China, and arrive via multiple means of transportation. Unlike the Chinese of the ethnoburbs of
the West, many do not view Thailand as a final destination. They can return to China if they so
desire, and some plan to do so. Others plan to move on to greener pastures in Australia, Europe
and North America when opportunities arise. Unlike earlier waves, whose social relationships
centred around family names, clans, home regions or languages, the social relationships of this
wave tend to centre around school alumni or professional associations. In 2006, their numbers in
Thailand were reported as 350,000–400,000, but that number has risen sharply in the past decade.
Attracted by relatively low rents, convenient transportation and proximity to the Chinese embassy,
800 H. WU ET AL.

many of them settled in the Huai Khwang district and PRB Road, once a traditional Thai residential
and commercial neighbourhood. New business opportunities for Mandarin speakers opened with
cultural exchanges between Thailand and China begun in 2001 and the increasing numbers of Chi-
nese tourists, which by 2012 had risen to four million, representing a 60% increase over the year
before. In 2018, that number reached ten million.
The influx of Chinese to Huai Khwang has prompted the promotion of the district and PRB Road
as ‘Bangkok’s New Chinatown’, a space conceived by developers for tourists and new residents to
‘experience vibrant Chinese culture, language, and all of the deliciousness you can imagine’ (Sansiri,
July 9, 2018). As perceived space, this conception of Huai Khwang has been challenged for its lack of
‘visible civic spaces, such as the various ethnic and clan association’, with ‘no shrines or temples, and
no Chinatown Gate’ (Rojanaphruk 2017).

Methodology
Our research focuses on the linguistic landscape of approximately one kilometre of PRB Road from the
Huai Khwang subway station to the intersection with PRB 20 Road. The road is lined with Chinese res-
taurants, barber and salon, pharmacies, stores selling latex products, leather, bird nest, cosmetics, and
other commodities. A number of multilingual signs, ranging from small shop names on the store
front to the giant perpendicular signs attached to the building, can be seen along the roads (Figure 1).
From October 2018 to October 2019, we took multiple data collecting field trips of PRB Road,
taking photos of the shop signs of 174 shops along both sides of the road, informally talking with
shopkeepers, customers, passers-by, and a motorcycle taxi driver. Conversations were conducted
in the language of the interlocutor since one of the researchers is graduate student from China, a
native speaker of Chinese (Mandarin) and another is a Chinese Thai university lecturer whose
first language is Thai but grew up hearing his grandfather in Yaowarat speak Teochew. The quan-
titative unit of analysis was restricted to the permanent shop signs containing the shop name. All the
signs are classified into three types. The first type, major sign, is the sign above the door and window
on the store front which mainly indicates the name of the shop. The second type, extended signs,
emerge overhead and perpendicular to the front of the shop which can be clearly seen by pedestrians.
The last type includes signs appearing on shop doors and windows. Signs such as ‘push’, ‘pull’ and

Figure 1. Pracha Rat Bamphen Road.

 JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 801

menus are excluded from the analysis. In total, there are 295 signs taken by Fujifilm X-T100 camera.
Signs were categorised by shop type, languages used, type of Chinese orthography, and nature of
transliteration. Also considered were semiotic affordances such as colour schemes, community
organisations, and physical artefacts and structures that index Chineseness.
Supplementing these data are questionnaire surveys of 25 Thai and 28 Chinese university gradu-
ates or students, 20–50 years old, all friends of the first two authors, who have lived in Bangkok over
one year (see Appendix 1). A focus group was also conducted with a group of Thai, Chinese, and
Philippine graduate students.
During our visits to PRB Road, we engaged in informal conversations, in either Thai or Mandarin,
with restaurant staff, shop keepers, and a motorcycle taxi driver, and ‘listened in on’ conversations of
passers-by, customers and shopkeepers. In addition, more formal interviews were conducted with
the District Senior Sanitation Technical Officer, the District Chief of Environment and Sanitation,
and two Revenue Collecting Officers at the District Office, and a city planner and lecturer at a
local university’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Developers’ promotional materials
and media coverage of the neighbourhood were also analysed.

Results
Analysis of Quantitative Data
Our quantitative analysis begins with an inventory of business types along PRB Road (Table 1). As
with Chinatowns worldwide, restaurants are a major attraction. But here, wholesales businesses
catering to Chinese exporters/importers specialising in bird nests, Chinese herbs, cosmetics, and
latex products outnumber everyday retail ones. Other businesses catering to a more transitory clien-
tele include logistics companies, travel services and hotels. Noticeably absent are the numerous gold
shops characteristic of Yaowarat.
Turning to the signage of these shops, Table 2 shows that of the 295 signs collected, 165 are major
signs. Some shops have extended signs or signs on doors or windows displaying the name of the shop
name. The shop signs are also categorised into monolingual, bilingual and multilingual signs. For the
major sign, around half (47.9%) are monolingual, among which Thai is the most prominent language
followed by Chinese and English. It is seen that mono-Thai shops are grocery shops, clinic, phar-
macy, barber salon, restaurant and gold shops, which probably targeted local Thai customers. In con-
trast, the mono-Chinese shops are restaurants, logistic company, latex wholesale shop, and bird’s
nest shop which provide popular export commodities and services for Chinese-speaking customers.

Table 1. Number of shops by business type.

Total Number of Shops by Business Type
Food and Drinks – 36 Personal Services -51 Retail Stores – 29
Restaurants – 34 Hair, nail, beauty salons – 19 Pharmacies – 10
Coffee shops – 2 Massage, spas – 8 Grocery – 4
Wholesale Stores – 39 Print shops – 6 Gold Shops – 2
Bird nest shops – 5 Clinics, dentists – 4 Hardware Stores – 2
Latex shops – 9 Game & Internet Cafés -2 Stationary stores – 2
Leather shops – 3 Photo shops – 2 Bakery – 1
Combined wholesale – 21 Accounting, Tax Consultant – 1 Curtain, fabric stores – 2
Lumber trading – 1 Carpet Cleaning Service – 1 Gift, jewellry shops – 2
Logistic Businesses – 6 Construction Contractor – 1 Fishing equipment – 1
Logistics – 5 Laundry, sewing, tailor shops – 3 Mattress shop – 1
Mail carrier – 1 Phone Repair Shop – 1 Rice seller – 1
Travel Services – 5 Pet Clinic – 1 Aluminum shop – 1
currency exchange – 3 Pawnshop – 1 Automotive Services – 4
travel agency / tour company – 2 Driving School – 1 Car service, repair – 2
Hotel / Hostil – 2 Car battery shop – 1
Motorcycle shop – 1
802 H. WU ET AL.

Table 2. Mono-, Bi-, Multilingual signs on major, extended signs and signs on doors and windows.
Language Major Extended Door & Window Total
Mono CH 13 7 5 25
Mono EN 11 3 4 18
Mono TH 55 10 10 75
Bi (CH-EN) 9 11 4 24
Bi (CH-TH) 25 22 3 50
Bi (EN-TH) 25 8 8 41
Multi (CH-EN-TH) 27 19 10 56
Multi (CH-EN-TH-JP-KR) 0 2 2 4
Multi (CH-EN-TH-KR-VT) 0 1 0 1
Multi (CH-EN-TH-JP-KR-AR) 0 0 1 1
Total 165 83 47 295

Mono-English shops include a hostel, bakery, currency exchange company, and eyebrow beauty
clinic which seem to be international, fashionable and modern, and tend to be aimed at a wider audi-
ence. Among the bilingual major signs, Chinese-Thai and English-Thai occur with equal frequency
and either Chinese or English plays the prominent role, being of bigger font or brighter colour than
the Thai. All multilingual major signs include all three languages. While no major sign contains with
more than three languages, on the extended signs or signs on doors and windows other languages –
Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Arabic – are occasionally found. On extended signs, Chinese-
Thai shows higher frequency than English-Thai, whereas English-Thai appears more often in the
signs on doors and windows.
On aggregate, the language which appears most frequently (228 times) in these shop signs is Thai,
perhaps a function of the language of the owners of those shops (i.e. Sino-Thai), the intended audience,
or the culture they wish to identify with (Spolsky and Cooper 1991). Another impetus for the preva-
lence of Thai is a law specifying that shop signs must contain Thai script or be taxed at a higher rate.
The fact that in total Chinese appears on more signs, whether monolingual, bilingual or multi-
lingual, than English, and is written in simplified script, distinguishes Huai Khwang from other
neighbourhoods in Bangkok, exerting a symbolic function to those not literate in the language
and an informative function for those who are, particularly customers from China, Hong Kong, Tai-
wan, Macau, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Unlike Yaowarat (Wu and Techasan 2016) and most Chinatowns in the West (e.g. Lou 2007;
Amos 2016; Li and Marshall 2018; etc.), in Huai Khwang simplified Chinese characters outnumber
traditional script by more than three to one (67.8% vs. 25.3% traditional and 6.9% mixed; see
Table 3), indexing a new look and a different kind of Chinese community. An examination of trans-
literations from Chinese characters into either Thai or Roman script shows that with one exception

Table 3. Chinese orthography.

Simplified Chinese Traditional Chinese Mixed Orthography
N 59 22 6
% 67.8 25.3 6.9

Table 4. Transliteration of the shop names.

Transliteration
CH-TH CH-EN
Mandarin Dialect Mandarin Dialect TH-CH TH-EN EN-CH EN-TH Total
N 32 1 23 0 5 11 1 35 108
% 29.6 0.9 21.3 0 4.6 10.2 0.9 32.4 100
 JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 803

(Teochew), signs are transliterated from Mandarin (Table 4), reflecting a contemporary Chinese
identity on the part of either shop owners or targeted audiences.
It has been observed that colour, specifically red and to a lesser extent gold and green, index Chi-
neseness in Chinatowns around the world (e.g. Amos 2016; Lou 2016; Lee and Lou 2019; etc.),
including in Yaowarat (Wu and Techasan 2016). Red in particular symbolises good luck, fortune,
happiness and auspiciousness. These colour schemes are also popular in Huai Khwang, yet white,
blue and black are prominent as well. White in particular is more common than even the classic Chi-
natown colours. One notable red sign, however, observed during the most recent field trip, supports
the Chinese government’s stance in response to the 2019 Hong Kong protests (Figure 2).
Finally, the ubiquitous Chinatown arches or gates, Chinese statues, Chinese lanterns, bilingual
street signs and other objects and structures serving as tokens of authenticity in Chinatowns world-
wide are completely absent in the semiotic landscape of PRB Road. In summary, in terms of PRB
Road as perceived space, it shares few of the semiotic affordances of Chinatowns around the
world, including Yaowarat.

Analysis of Qualitative Data

Casual observations of interactions on the streets and informal conversations with restaurant staff
and shop keepers were congruent with the language of signage. Among pedestrians we heard
both Mandarin Chinese and Thai, and very little English or other languages spoken. Many of the
restaurant staff and shop keepers speak Mandarin, some exclusively, and rely on it for communi-
cation with customers regularly. Other shop keepers, for example in the pharmacy, speak only
Thai and report that their customers are predominantly Thai.
Examination of English, Thai and Chinese print, television and on-line media sources reveals
multiple discourses surrounding PRB Road as a new Chinatown. For example, the English daily

Figure 2. Pro-Chinese government sign.

804 H. WU ET AL.

Bangkok Post refers to PRB Road as the ‘New China Town’ when reporting on the proliferation of
new Chinese migrants in Thailand over the past half decade (Bangkok Post, September 23, 2016). But
an opinion piece in the same newspaper two years later argued that PRB Road ‘is not really a China-
town in the truest sense of the word – not another Yaowarat for sure’, and ‘at best represents the
dynamic and raw passion of new Chinese entrepreneurs, wanting to make money from millions
of Chinese tourists through social media’ (Chongkittavorn 2018). CNN Travel speculates that the
area may ‘eventually become Bangkok’s next Chinatown’, but withholds final judgement because
of the lack of architectural affordances indexing Chineseness (Ehrlich 2019).
On-line discourses are equally diverse. The Thai language website Post Today (Figure 3), an affili-
ate of the Bangkok Post, invites the reader to ‘ย่ำถิ่นมังกรใหม่ ไชน่าทาวน์ห้วยขวาง’ [‘experience the place of dra-
gons, Chinatown Huai Khwang’]. On the website Coconut Bangkok, an article by a Bangkok real
estate developer extols the authenticity of the food, products and entertainment (Sansiri, July 9,
2018). An on-line video by another real estate developer promotes ‘Bangkok’s “New Chinatown”’
as ‘prime downtown real estate’ (Figure 4). Interestingly, it even includes icons of three non-existent
Chinese gates. Khawsodenglish, an online tourist-oriented English version of Khaosod, a popular
Thai language newspaper, frames reference to PRB Road in the discourse of adventure and discovery,
but highlights a debate between a Mandarin speaker and a Chinese Thai about its status as a China-
town (Rojanaphruk 2017).
However, new Chinatown as conceived by developers and the tourist industry does not comport
with everyone’s experience of the area as lived space. Our questionnaire revealed distinct differences
between the Chinese and Thai respondents. Among the 28 Chinese respondents, only four had never
been to PRB Road and only one had never heard of Huai Khwang. Of the remaining 23, the fre-
quency of their visits ranged from several times a week to once or twice a year for business at the
Chinese Embassy. The most commonly cited reasons for going there were to eat and shop; other
reasons were to meet friends, to work and to study Thai. Among the reasons respondents preferred
Huai Khwang to other neighbourhood were its proximity to their residences, its convenient access
from MRT and:

Figure 3. Screenshot from https://www.posttoday.com/social/local/449346 (Retrieved on 9 November 2019).

 JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 805

Figure 4. Video by Coconuts Bangkok x DDproperty (Retrieved on 9 November 2019).

‘I feel comfortable seeing lots of stores in Chinese style’. (female 25, Hubei)

‘Chinese people like to go there for its Chinese atmosphere’. (female 21, Chongqing)

‘I can speak Mandarin Chinese to people in Huai Khwang’. (female 39, Shanghai)

‘[…] the shop assistants in Huai Khwang can speak Mandarin Chinese. Moreover, there are a variety of Chinese
and Thai products in Huai Khwang’. (female 26, Inner Mongolia)

The overwhelming respondents were favourably disposed to calling Huai Khwang a new Chinatown,
with comments like:
‘I think it is reasonable to call it a New Chinatown in that most Chinese newcomers go there to run businesses
and purchase apartments. (female 21, Chongqing)

‘I think it is proper to call Huai Khwang New Chinatown because it is the gathering place for Chinese people.
They can speak Mandarin Chinese and there are various kinds of products. It is worth mentioning the Chinese
restaurants which are really as Chinese as in China’. (female 26, Inner Mongolia)

‘I would feel proud if it is New Chinatown’. (female 39, Shanghai)

‘Compared to the old Chinatown in Yaowarat, which is more localised in Thailand, Huai Khwang can represent
modern China. […] I think it is worthy of the name New Chinatown’. (female 25, Hubei)

Among the few negative comments cited it as only ‘a place for procurement services’ and its lack of
‘cultural history’.
The 25 Thai respondents to the survey reported a very different experience, though 17 of them
self-reported being of Chinese-Thai heritage (14 Teochew, two Hokkien and one Shantou). Nineteen
of the 25 had been to PRB Road, but only 13 had ever heard of it being referred to as a new China-
town. Of the 18 participants who responded to the question, ‘Why did you go there?’, ten said they
were just passing through, four reported living in the neighbourhood, two had gone to eat and two to
806 H. WU ET AL.

attend a speech competition. Asked if they consider it a new Chinatown, half said no, citing reasons
such as:
‘No Chinese atmosphere like Chinatown in Yaowarat. […] Unlike Chinatown, there is no apparent Chinese
culture presented in Huai Khwang’. (female 27, Teochew-Thai)

‘[…] no other [beside restaurants] shops showing Chinese culture and way of life (e.g. no Chinese herb shops,
no gold shops).’ (female 25, no self-identified ethnicity)

‘I see no Chinese culture. It doesn’t feel like Chinese’. (female 37, Teochew-Thai)

The other half felt it could be considered a new Chinatown, based on the many Chinese shopkeepers,
customers and tourists there. However, negative attitudes toward the neighbourhood were also on
display with comments like:
‘I’m afraid the businesses there don’t pay the revenue tax to the government legally. I’m afraid if the Chinese
businesses there are more prosperous, it will negatively affect Thai vendors’. (female 50, Teochew-Thai)

‘Yaowarat is the old place for Chinese immigrants to settle down and adapt their lives to Thai society but Chi-
nese in Huai Khwang seem to come to change the landscape of Bangkok’. (male 27, no self-identified ethnicity)

‘Chinese people here are temporary residents while the people in Yaowarat are permanent citizens’. (female 38,
Teochew-Thai)

A few negative comments extended beyond the idea of a new Chinatown, to Chinese tourists more
generally, commenting that Chinese tourists are ‘noisy’, and when travelling in a big group contrib-
ute to overcrowding.
The bifurcated lived experiences apparent in the two sets of responses to the questionnaire was also
evident in the comments of the focus group. A Thai participant questioned the notion of Huai
Khwang as a Chinatown since the residents, business owners and clientele don’t observe the tra-
ditional customs found in Yaowarat, for example observing ‘je’, the practice of maintaining vegetarian
diets for a short period of time in mid-rainy season. Two Chinese participants felt that Chinese go to
Huai Khwang to buy Thai goods popular in China, such as latex pillows and cosmetics. One felt that
Chinese go there to ‘feel at home’ as opposed to Yaowarat, where they might feel like tourists.
Among the government officials interviewed, the unanimous opinion was that PRB Road was not
a new Chinatown, based in part on its physical limitations (only one kilometre long, narrow sidewalks,
lack of affordances indexing a traditional Chinatown, etc.). They expressed more overtly the same
negative comments made by the Thai respondents. Among the explicit reasons given were that
some Chinese businesses are registered under the names of local Thais, obscuring the exact number
of Chinese businesses in the area. Since late 2017, police have cracked down on Chinese shopkeepers
holding only tourist visas, Chinese employees without work permits, and shops peddling counterfeit
products, seen as a threat to the reputation of Thailand as a source of high-quality goods.
However, the most ardent criticism that emerged from our formal interviews with officials is that,
in contrast to Yaowarat, PRB Road is devoid of ‘รากเหง้า’ /rak-ngaw/ [deep roots or origin]. Unlike
Yaowarat, where many generations of Chinese-Thai have melded ancient Chinese traditions with
a sense of Thai identity, the Chinese enclave in Huai Khwang does not have a tradition of Chinese
rituals and celebrations, such as religious ceremonies at the Guan Yin Shrine, the annual vegetarian
festival, and Chinese New Year, when Yaowarat is bustling with residents and family returning home
to celebrate. By contrast, Chinese in Huai Khwang go back to China to celebrate, leaving the area
quiet during the long holiday. The officials also maintain that many Chinese people who do business
in Huai Khwang are temporary residents who move out and seek for better business opportunity
elsewhere when their business is going badly. This out-migration, aggravated by the police crack-
down, increased taxes and rents, a generally sluggish economy, and subsequent rising vacancies
caused one motivated a waiter in a Chinese barbecue restaurant to predict, ‘All the Chinese stores
here will be closed in two years’.
 JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 807

Discussion
The aggregate results of the quantitative and qualitative data suggest that as perceived space, PRB
Road shares very few linguistic and physical characteristics with Yaowarat or the Chinatowns of
the nineteenth century diaspora. Yet PRB Road as perceived space is not the defining determinant
of its authenticity. As conceived space too, PRB Road differs from these other Chinatowns as well.
Yaowarat, as one of the earliest and original Chinatowns, grew from a trading settlement during the
reign of King Rama I in the 1780s and has remained a bustling commercial centre to this day. Diasporic
Chinese enclaves from the mid-nineteenth century were, after a period of economic decline were later
reconceived as outsiders’ constructed versions of ‘authentic’ Chinese communities, appealing to
notions of exoticism and Orientalism in order to revive dying neighbourhoods as tourist attractions.
Huai Khwang, by way of contrast, was conceived by an influx of contemporary, educated Chinese
seeking opportunity rather than refuge, and by developers’ desires to take advantage of that influx.
As lived space, PRB offers quite distinct and contrasting experiences, depending on the historical
record (Scollon and Scollon 2004) and notions of authenticity held by various social actors. On the
one hand, the Chinese respondents experienced PRB Road as representing modern China with
respect to its ‘real’ food, products, entertainment, signage and language. Most are happy to consider
it a new Chinatown and many prefer it to Yaowarat. Thai respondents, on the other hand, go there
with a very different set of experiences and expectations, measuring PRB Road against the original,
Yaowarat, and finding it lacking in many respects. The negative comments of the Thai questionnaire
respondents may be a reverberation of public comments found in the local media and iterated in our
interviews with officials. There appears to be a resistance on the part of Thais to recognising PRB
Road as a new Chinatown.
Examination of PRB Road as lived space reveals competing discourses of authenticity, each
shaded by the historical record of individual actors. For Thais, the concept of ‘Chinatown’ has
been inextricably tied to Yaowarat since birth, the original Chinatown. Unlike the constructive auth-
enticity of diasporic Chinatowns, to the extent that any neighbourhood can be considered objectively
authentic, Yaowarat can, functioning as a thriving commercial district with an unbroken history for
over 200 years since its conception. It has ‘รากเหง้า’ /rak-ngaw/ and in that sense has provenance. PRB
Road does not. Viewed against the original authenticity of Yaowarat, PRB Road is sadly lacking in
authenticity.
For our Chinese informants, on the other hand, Yaowarat represents the past, a history they can-
not identify with. PRB Road is a sanctuary in a foreign country, a place to taste food like that back
home, see signs that they are familiar with and to speak and hear a language they can understand. It
has for them an authenticity that is internal and rooted in their experience. For them, PRB Road has
experiential authenticity.
Finally, developers and other private actors have promoted a Chinatown of constructive authen-
ticity, based on a set of beliefs or stereotypes motivated by the prospect of financial gain. Lacking
many of the physical features of a prototypical Chinatown, PRB Road was conceived as a new China-
town for its food and entertainment outlets. These efforts have been less than successful in part
because of the strongly held beliefs among Thais as to what constitutes an authentic Chinatown,
but also because resistance from a second and perhaps more powerful set of actors, government
officials, raising taxes and cracking down on visa violators and merchants selling of fake products.
These official discourses of resistance associated with enforcement of visa restrictions and patent vio-
lations call out for an investigation beyond the scope of this paper. But they, together with the dis-
courses of authenticity outlined above have rendered PRB Road a contested space.

Conclusion
The exponential increase in Chinese immigration and tourism to Thailand is representative of chan-
ging geopolitical role of China in the world and in particular in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, that
808 H. WU ET AL.

change evokes sometimes conflicting reactions. On the one hand, the resources brought by the new
residents and tourist presents a perceived opportunity for increased wealth. On the other, it rep-
resents a potential threat to what is held to be Thai. The assignation of PRB Road as a new China-
town is both an emanation of those changes and a motivation for reconsideration of what constitutes
an authentic Chinatown. Application of a Production of Space framework to the analysis of PRB
Road reveals not only those conflicting reactions; it also contributes to a deeper understanding of
the linguistic landscapes of diverse Chinese enclaves around the world that share the appellation
‘Chinatown’. Like the reconceptualised diasporic Chinatowns of the 19th and early 20th centuries,
and in contrast to both Yaowarat and the new Chinese ethnoburbs of the San Gabriel Valley,
PRB Road as conceived space is brainchild of the real estate and tourist industries. On the other
hand, a perceived space it shares few of the linguistic and semiotic features of those diasporic China-
towns. Finally, how PRB Road is experienced by various actors is a function of the concepts of auth-
enticity they apply to the encounter. These in turn are determined by the historical records that
individuals involved bring with them.
This study rejects any notion of a generic template for those enclaves referred to as Chinatown. It
calls for the necessity to move beyond the linguistic landscape as perceived, recognising that perception
may not be the ultimate determinant of a community’s authenticity. The diverse ways communities are
conceived is sometimes overlooked in the LL literature and suggests a broad taxonomy of enclaves
labelled Chinatown. These differences in conception also influence how communities are experienced
and what may qualify as authentic. The study expands the discussion of authenticity in the linguistic
landscape of Chinatowns, and unveils the co-existence of multiple authenticities in a single lived space.
The question becomes not ‘What is authentic’ but rather ‘whose authenticity is it’.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the respondents to the questionnaires, all of the interviewees, especially the District
Senior Sanitation Technical Officer, the District Chief of Environment and Sanitation, and two Revenue Collecting
Officers at the District Office, and a city planner and lecturer at a local university’s Department of Urban and Regional
Planning. We also want to acknowledge the contributions from the following students: Yang Wang, Runze Xu, Pong-
bodin Amarinthnukrowh, Joey Andrew Lucido Santos. Participants in the XIScape workshop contributed useful sug-
gestions for improvement of our paper presented at the workshop. One of the co-authors received grant number GYU-
KYC (2019-2020) WY-02 from Guiyang University for her Ph.D. study in Chulalongkorn University. This study was
partially funded by Thai Research Fund (TRF) grant number DPG5980002. Finally, the authors would like to thank
two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions have made this a more cohesive and cogent paper. All
remaining shortcomings are the responsibility of the authors.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Appendix 1

Questionnaires for Thai and Chinese Informants

Questions

1. What comes to your mind first when you heard about “Huai Khwang”?
เวลาพูดถึง “หวยขวาง” คุณนึกถึงอะไรเปนอันดับแรก
当您听到曼谷“辉煌”时，您首先想到的是什么？
2. Have you ever been to Pracharat Bamphen, Huai Khwang?
คุณเคยไปบริเวณถนนประชาราษฎรบำเพ็ญหรือไม
您去过曼谷辉煌布拉查拉邦烹路吗？
3. Why did you go there? How often? Why not go other places instead?
คุณไปทำอะไรที่นั่น ไปบอยแคไหน และทำไมถึงไปที่นี่แทนที่จะไปที่อื่น
您为什么去辉煌?您多久去一次呢？您为什么不去其它地方，而去辉煌呢?
 JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 811

4. Have you ever heard about New Chinatown?

คุณเคยไดยินเกี่ยวกับ New Chinatown หรือไม
您听说过“新中国城”(“新唐人街”)吗?
5. What do you think about it being called Chinatown?
คุณคิดอยางไรกับการที่บริเวณถนนประชาราษฎรบำเพ็ญไดชื่อวา Chinatown
您怎么看待辉煌被称为“新中国城”?
6. What exactly is “Chinatown” in your point of view?
Chinatown ในความหมายของคุณคืออะไร
您认为到底什么是真正的“中国城”呢？

The profile of Thai informants

No. Age/Range (years) Gender Education Occupation Chinese-Thai Ancestry

1 43 Female Ph.D. Lecturer Teochew
2 34 Female Ph.D. Lecturer Thai
3 27 Female MA Office worker Thai
4 25 Female MA Tutor Teochew
5 50 Female BA Business owner Teochew
6 27 Female BA Senior Data Research Analyst Teochew
7 27 Female BA Data Research Analyst Teochew
8 37 Female Ph.D. Lecturer Teochew
9 30 Male Ph.D. Lecturer Teochew
10 25 Female BA Office worker Thai
11 25 Female BA Office worker Thai
12 52 Female MA Lecturer Hokkien
13 25 Male BA Business owner Teochew
14 28 Male BA Office worker Thai
15 28 Female BA Business owner Teochew
16 25 Female BA Real Estate Agent Thai
17 27 Male BA Business owner Thai
18 28 Female MA Lecturer Shantou
19 27 Male BA Financial Adviser Hokkien
20 28 Female MA Office worker Teochew
21 27 Female BA Flight attendant Thai
22 28 Female MA Office worker Teochew
23 38 Female MA Lecturer Teochew
24 32 Male MA Steward Teochew
25 28 Female MA Office worker Teochew

The profile of Chinese informants

Age/Range Home Region in Time in BKK

No. (years) Gender Education Occupation China (years)
1 20–30 Female MA Lecturer in China China Yunnan 3
2 47 Female BA Parent in BKK China Beijing 2
3 20–30 Female MA Translator in BKK China Guangxi 5
4 20–30 Female MA Lecturer in China China Yunnan 2
5 25 Female MA Company staff in China China Hubei 2
6 20–30 Female MA Company staff in BKK China Nanjing 4
7 20–30 Female BA Exchange student China Guiyang 1
8 20–30 Female MA MA Student in BKK China Hebei 4
9 40–50 Female MA Parent in BKK China Heilongjiang 2
10 40–50 Male MA Taiwan Company staff in BKK China Heilongjiang 2
11 27 Female MA Company staff in China China Sichuan 3.5
12 20–30 Female MA Company staff in China China Chongqing 3
13 21 Female BA Exchange student China Chongqing 1
14 40–50 Female BA Staff of a church in BKK China Taiwan 10
15 39 Female BA Parent in BKK China Shanghai 2
16 46 Male Ph.D. Associate Professor of a University in China Yunnan 6
China
17 30–40 Female BA Staff of a church in BKK China Taiwan >10
18 34 Female Ph.D. Ph. D. student of Mahidol University China Chongqing 6
student
19 37 Female BA China Jilin 4

(Continued)
812 H. WU ET AL.

Continued.
Age/Range Home Region in Time in BKK
No. (years) Gender Education Occupation China (years)
Teacher of an international school in
BKK
20 26 Female MA Company staff in China China Inner 1
Mongolia
21 35 Female BA Parent in BKK China Jiangsu 2
22 39 Male BA Businessman in BKK (restaurant) China Jiangsu 2
23 47 Female BA Piano teacher in BKK China Guangdong 1.5
24 30–40 Female BA Businesswoman (leather goods) China Jiangsu 1
25 40 Female Ph.D. Associate Professor of a University in China Yunnan 8
China
26 40 Female BA Parent in BKK China Beijing 1
27 32 Female Ph.D. Lecturer in China China Yunnan 8
28 40–50 Female BA Parent in BKK China Beijing 1