Thailand’s F***** word

Farang: 1) person of European extraction, 2. anything of European extraction, 3. guava. So here in Thailand potatoes are man farang, white people are khon farang, and Christmas is trut farang, ad infinitum.

So go the Thai dictionaries, talking much and explaining nothing, not least of which is the origin of the f****** word. It follows you around like a bad smell if you’re a white person in Thailand. It speaks volumes if you’re Thai. It explains why the weather’s hot and the food is not. It explains why some cars are big and so are some bellies. In fact, there’s not much that can’t be described as either Thai or Farang, or maybe sometimes Chinese, but that’s a sore subject, because Thais are sure of nothing so much as that they’re NOT Chinese, even though, genetically, well, you’d be hard-pressed to find the chromosomal difference and in raw immigration figures, well, that’s OK, because they ‘become’ Thai, if not in the first generation, then at least by the second or third. That’s convenient, since their features are largely indistinguishable facially and racially. It’s even more convenient since they run the country. Chinese names are forbidden to be used by Thai citizens and Chinese language is only recently making a comeback because of its obvious commercial utility and the success of the China Dolls’ song ‘Wo Ai Ni’ across the sub-continent in both Thai and Mandarin languages. Thais are nothing if not pragmatic. The number of pragmatists walking the streets of Pattaya after midnight would shock the socks, and maybe more, off Jesus, Muhammad, and Hasan-e Sabbah, too. The Buddha just smiles. He’s seen all this before.

Farangs are different, regardless of what you call them, be it Gringo, Gaijin, or Lao Wai. They have to mess with everything, sticking their big noses where they don’t belong, Africa, Asia, and America, building factories and building fences, drawing lines and claiming countries. The last Mexican governor of California Pio Pico probably said it best as he saw his state being overrun by Yankees “cultivating farms, establishing vineyards, erecting mills, sawing up lumber, building workshops, and doing a thousand other things which seem natural to them, but which Californians (i.e. Mexicans) neglect or despise.” And he was Spanish, a European mind you, so the distinction is as much cultural as racial. This has always been my objection to the term ‘Farang’, in that the white skin itself means nothing, and says much more about the person using the term than the persons referred to. Does a Russian really have anything in common with a Portuguese person? In most cases the people referred to are northern European of course, they of the Industrial Revolution and the Big Bang for your buck, the same ones who forced China and Japan’s ports to open at gunpoint. Farang. They mess everything up. The nay-sayers have a point to be sure, the list of transgressions easily filling the narrow zone between Iraq and a hot place. But Farangs also brought “liberte’, egalite’, and fraternite’”, democracy and doughnuts, on their wish list. So the problem, if there is one, is largely academic, and depends on the tone of voice to establish its intent. Any word can be insulting if it’s said in an insulting way, and of course if I want to use the word, then that’s fine, just as any black American feels free to use the ‘N’ word.

My objection to the term ‘pahsah Farang’ (Farang language) has been especially vitriolic, objecting to the former Premier’s use of the term as especially misguided. “There is no such thing as Farang language! It’s English,” I would object. On this I concede defeat. There is a ‘pahsah Farang’ and long has been, likely even being the origin of the term in Asia. It started in the Crusades, when all Europeans were considered ‘Franks’ by the homies, and their language was the ‘Frankish language’ or lingua franca, literally ‘pahsah Farang’. This was not French, mind you, but a mixture of French and Italian and anything else handy in the Mediterranean region, maybe a final attempt to re-unify Latin. Marco Polo wrote in it, or something like it, it being fluid by definition. The term now means ‘compromise language, used when there is no common language’. The common jargon typically spoken by Thais with foreigners would hardly qualify as real English, but it would certainly qualify as Farang language. It’s as though nothing has changed except that Pidgin English has supplanted Pig Latin as the axis of Western civilization moved west, and the rest is history. And so is the mystery also solved as to where the term ‘Farang’ comes from. Most have assumed a derivation of ‘France’. Well, close, but not exactly, for those were the days of the Holy Roman Empire and nationalism was still but a racial wet dream. Thus those Romanized post-Gallic Germanic Franks left their imprint on the footnotes of history. They must have had a lot of gall.

Of course the issue is not so academic when you have to hear the word all the time, usually directed at you, if you’re of European extraction. It’s not so insulting as it is tiring, until somebody gets the bid idea to charge you ‘Farang price’. Now we’ve got a problem, and it’s hard to avoid when the government itself does it, as in Laos. Well, OK, maybe foreigners shouldn’t get the socialist subsidized rate on public transportation. I doubt they’ve signed on to the WTO. Vietnam even charges three rates, one for locals, one for foreigners, and one for returning overseas Vietnamese. Communist Vietnamese don’t miss too many tricks at turning a buck, usually at your expense. If the street vendor smiles too largely, beware! He’s probably ripping you off! Thailand should be beyond such nonsense, but don’t be too sure. Prejudices die hard, even petty ones. The local ChiangMai-ChiangRai bus at one point printed on the ticket, in Thai of course, that ‘full Farang price’ was paid. Huh? (I don’t make this stuff up btw.) Interestingly, I never found any proof that there was an actual price differential, so the issue, as usual, was one only of principle and symbolism and good manners. These things matter. Ask Kramer. The blurb was eventually removed at someone’s behest other than my own btw. I persevere, and have developed a non-responsive psychological ‘blocking mechanism’, which is basically a way of ignoring problematic speech and behavior. Ignore the ignorance! Now there’s some useful symmetry for you.