រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

Essay on Cambodia

During this period of decline, two attempts to bring about social changes to the Cambodian kingdom were made. The first attempt to bring about social changes to Cambodia was made during the first quarter of the 19th century by the Vietnamese who had briefly occupied Cambodia. After receiving reports about the ways in which Cambodians conducted their daily lives from his general named Truong Minh Giang who was in charge of administering Cambodia at the time, Emperor Minh Mang of Vietnam, in 1839, wrote a detailed instruction to Truong Minh Giang to institute a reform and change the habits of the “barbarian” Cambodians. Perhaps unaware of the existence of the civilization and achievements accomplished by Cambodians in the past, Emperor Minh Mang embarked on what could be called a civilizing mission to lift Cambodia from its barbarian state. The mission included changing the ways they work the fields, how they should organize and govern themselves, and, most important of all, the dress codes for Cambodian officials should be modeled after those of the Vietnamese’s. These infringements on the Cambodian identity and their way of life triggered a massive backlash. A general uprising against the Vietnamese overlords was ensued. Needless to say, the mission was a disaster and an utter failure. Every cultural icon associated with Vietnamese was hated and the rift between the two cultures has forever widened. After the failure of the civilizing mission in Cambodia, General Truong Minh Giang committed suicide by poisoning himself upon returning to Vietnam. As for the Cambodians, they were left to pursue their interests according to what they saw fit for their lives, namely a relaxed, easygoing lifestyle which was the trademark of their society since time immemorial.
Toward the end of the 19th century, another attempt to bring about social changes to Cambodia was made. At this time, France which had just established colonial rule over the peninsula of Indochina, namely Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, saw a need to civilize the seemingly primitive people it governed. After successfully convincing the Vietnamese to adapt the Roman alphabets for the writing of their language, France turned its attention to civilize the Cambodians. The first step the French took was to reform the administrative infrastructure in Cambodia by limiting the King’s role in the affairs of the state. Furthermore, the French introduced a more “effective” collection of taxes from the Cambodian people payable in the form of either, cash, kind, or labor forces, which they thought could be used to support both the needs of the colonists and the improvement of Cambodia’s administrative infrastructures. Finally, toward the end of its colonization over Cambodia, the French made the Cambodians adapt the Roman alphabets for the writing of their language just as what the Vietnamese had done.
Needless to say, the French civilizing mission in Cambodia was invariably met with failure for the most part, for it touched on one of the most sensitive issues for the Cambodians—that is the changing of their way of life and their identities. Led mostly by Buddhist monks or former Buddhist monks (the Achar), rebellions and protests were to become a regular occurrence every time the French pushed the Cambodians to accept reforms.
The French eventually abandoned their civilizing mission in Cambodia and turned their attention to exploiting the country instead. As a punishment for Cambodian stubbornness, the French made little effort to build schools or institutions for the education of Cambodian children. Basically, education for the general Cambodian population was left to Buddhist monks to take care of.

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

កំណាព្យ

Essay on Cambodia

Among all the cultural and social changes ever to shape Cambodian lives, only Hinduism, which arrived in Cambodia during the early part of its history, appeared to be met with better success—at least for a thousand years or so. As a religious concept vis-à-vis culture, Hinduism seemed to fit and intertwine very well with the Cambodian system of belief in the supernatural being, namely the Neak Ta. In all likelihood, it was probably the marriages between Hinduism and the belief in supernatural beings that propelled the Cambodians to achieve and build one of the most admirable civilizations at Angkor. Though, artistically, we don’t precisely know as to how much Indian influences upon the Cambodian creativity when their civilization at Angkor was founded, most experts agreed that Angkor was mainly the creation of Cambodians with the assistance of Indian concepts.
After the honeymoon at Angkor, the marriages between Indian and Cambodian cultures turned sour when another religion, Buddhism, entered into the relationship. The arrival of Buddhism coincided with the decline of Cambodia as an empire and a dominant kingdom. The devaraja monarchy, as an institution which had driven the placid Cambodians to conquer and build their empire for hundreds of years, began to fall apart. After being exposed to the teaching of Buddhism which emphasizes compassion and pacifism, the once assertive and, maybe, aggressive Cambodians, who, for many years, had been spurred on by the concepts of conquest and nation building, mellowed down and returned to a life of simplicity.
From the closing of the 14th century onward, the Cambodian rendezvous with destiny has been an arduous journey. The once mighty Cambodian Empire has now been reduced to a feeble and pariah state where palace intrigues and royal feuds were the regular features of the affairs of the kingdom. The internal conflicts amongst its rulers for the next four centuries, or so, were so pervasive that the Cambodian political, social, cultural, and economic infrastructures were in tatters. The kingdom grew weaker by the day. There were no able leaders to revitalize the kingdom and stop it from falling further into a state of disarray. Furthermore, the Cambodian population appeared to be utterly alienated with the reality of their lives. They seemed to be withdrawn from any ambition to rebuild their kingdom beyond that of their own basic domains. As a result, Angkor, as a city and center of the Cambodian political and cultural organizations, was abandoned and neglected. In addition, invasions and encroachments from rivaling states such as Thailand and Vietnam dealt even further blows to the weakening Cambodian kingdom. At times, the survival of the kingdom itself was in question when the once mighty Cambodia became an alternate vassal state of its neighbors, namely Vietnam and Thailand.

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

6th Grade Reading (Video)

3rd Grade Reading (Video)

The State of Cambodian Reading
(Please Click on the 3rd grade reading (video) above to watch)

This is the story of an accidental discovery. Though I am not a researcher by any shape or form, this discovery was compelling enough that it merits, I think, sharing with the Cambodian public at large.

Starting almost a decade ago, I, in collaboration with some of my friends, have worked on creating reading books for Cambodian children. We divided the books into three volumes. As each volume was completed, I would go to Cambodia, publish it, and distribute it to poor children. In 2008, I distributed some books to a group of poor children living near my aunt’s house. Due to limited number of books, I gave the books to only those children who could read. The ones who could not read yet had to wait for next time. However, one courageous boy, who had just begun learning in the first grade, came up to me and asked if he could have a book to keep with him so that when he was able to read he would learn to read that book. Unable to turn down his request, I decided to give that boy a book and hope that he would keep his promise.

Earlier this year, after getting the final volume of the children’s books published, I went to visit my aunt’s home again and sought out that boy to whom I had given a book 3 years ago. He is in the third grade now. I told him that I had some new books that I would like to give him and his friends if he would mind going around asking them to come to receive the books. The boy went around the neighborhood and found a few of his friends to come and receive the books. As a way to test the children’s ability to read, I decided to ask each child to read me a story while I am recording them on my digital camera. As I was listening to the children’s reading one after another, I noticed that their reading ability varied greatly. As it is evidence in the video clip above, the boy (wearing red vest) to whom I gave a book 3 years ago could read very well while his classmates were performing rather poorly. I know this is a very small sample of subjects on which to conduct a study, but the finding has nevertheless given us an indication on how much difference supplemental reading books could make. I hope that this finding would generate some interests among Cambodian researchers to conduct a more systemic study to see how great an impact supplemental reading has on children’s ability to read.

Essay on Cambodia

It is perhaps worthwhile to look into how the Cambodian governmental structures were like throughout history, especially, the uses and development of the terms Phaendey and Sroks. There seems to be no evidence suggesting when the terms phaendey or daendey and sroks entered into the Cambodian vocabulary. However, based on historical context, these terms might have dated back to the Angkorian Era when the concept of universal monarch began to take roots in Cambodia. The term phaendey could probably be intertwined with the concept of a universal monarch (sdach phaendey) because he was the only master of his domain and his phaendey means territories (including those under the rules of other monarchs) of which he, the universal monarch, was able to consolidate under his rule.
Organizationally, the Cambodians of antiquity appeared to structure their governmental administration along the concept of a federation system possibly similar to the former Soviet Union in the late 20th century. The kingdom as a whole would be composed of a number of vassal kingdoms and autonomous territories which would answer to the central kingdom, Cambodia, and her universal monarch. It was those vassal kingdoms and territories that the Cambodians used the term sroks to identify them.
In the administrative scheme of things, each srok had a semi-independent leader either a vassal monarch or a chieftain. Their roles were to protect the interests of their own turfs vis-à-vis those of the universal monarch who acted as a grand council and protector, or, in some cases, prosecutor, for all of them. As far as government was concerned, the relationships between the Cambodian monarch and his administrative staffs, namely leaders of the sroks, were largely based on a patronage structure. As a matter of fact, we could still see this patronage structure remains in practice today.
Like most monarchical empires throughout the ages, whose rules of governance were usually based on absolutism, the Khmer Empire (though comparatively small in size) was eventually fallen apart after several hundred years of existence. As the empire fell, the influences of the universal monarch waned, new or renewed kingdoms emerged, the administrative structures began to change as well. This was what happened to the Cambodian kingdom in the late 14th century. The event coincided with the Mongol invasion and occupation of China. As the Mongol invaded and occupied China, the Tai people, an ethnic minority living in the Chinese southwestern province of Yunnan, moved down the Mekong River valley to settle in northern Siam (Thailand). There they commingled with the Siamese and eventually formed the kingdom of Sukuthai from where the present kingdom of Thailand was originated.
Sukuthai (and subsequently Ayutthaya) played a pivotal role in the demise of the Khmer (Cambodian) Empire. It not only challenged the Cambodian hegemony over Siam but also subdued and broke down the power structure of the Cambodian kingdom. After the rise of Sukuthai, we saw that the concept of universal monarch and the term phaendey as a political administration began to fade away from the realm of Cambodian politics. The term srok was also modified to signify a large region instead of a vassal kingdom. Subsequently, in the 19th century, after the arrival of the French colonial rulers, the Cambodian political administration was once again changed to reflect the taste of French politics. The French drew the boundary of the Cambodian kingdom and divided it into provinces (khaets), districts (sroks), communes (sangkats), and villages (phums) similar to that of France. So, this is what remains of the Cambodian kingdom--a country now bureaucratically cloaks in French clothes and survives largely through the wits of its easygoing and placid people.
Throughout its historical journey, Cambodia, as a nation, appeared to be full of paradoxes. To most observers, the Cambodian people, from the past to the present, appear to be socially, economically, and politically unremarkable, yet they were able to manage to build one of the greatest civilizations on earth. Throughout their history, the Cambodians have been, from time to time, subjected to the most horrific tragedies and abuses ever occurred to humankind, yet they were able to rebound, regroup, rebuild, and preserve their society and culture. At times, the survival of their culture and identity as a people appeared to be rolling down toward the abyss of extinction, yet they were able to manage to rescue themselves from the graveyard of history. These Cambodian paradoxes are perhaps one of the most misunderstood and interesting phenomena of Cambodian history. Take the building of Angkor, for instance. When the monuments at the Angkor complexes were discovered by the European explorers in the 19th century, not many of them believed that such grandiose civilization could have been founded by the backward and apparently unremarkable Cambodians. However, evidences showed that they did it. Just how did these backward people manage to do it, nobody seems to be able to give a satisfactory answer to that question either because it appeared to be part of the Cambodian paradoxes.
As a nation, Cambodia appears to be less receptive to social changes, especially those imposed by outsiders. The greatest forces to resist social changes were and are the Cambodian people themselves. Though easygoing and placid, the Cambodians appear to be very reactive when their traditional way of life is threatened by the imposition of outsiders’ ideas. Over the course of its history, we have seen attempts to bring about social changes in Cambodia quite a few times, the latest being the worldly beloved concepts and principles of democracy which the United Nations and the international community try to instill within the Cambodian psyches since the 1990s.

កំណាព្យ

កំណាព្យ

Poem

FROM NOW ON...AND FOREVER

Oh coy lady!
Don’t you hide from me,
‘Cause you’re mine,
Please be kind,
Let me hold your hands,
For once and again,
‘Cause I’m yours,
And I do love you,
Don’t you love me, too?
Please say Yes!
Like you would as a promise,
And seal it with a kiss
That I will remember
From now on...and forever.

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

Essay on Cambodia

Angkor or Nokor or Nagara (in Sanskrit) means city. However, the Cambodians use these terms to mean country or kingdom as well. For instance, if one spoke of Nokor Khmer, he or she would refer to the Khmer kingdom. Thus, the term Angkor, in this context, would be used interchangeably between city and kingdom.
Upon their arrival in Cambodia, the Indian warriors or Javanese Brahmins began the process of transforming the primitive world of the Funanese/Cambodians into a civilized culture--one that had the sound and rigor of an organized society. We did not know how the indigenous people reacted to the arrival of these conquerors, but based on what they left behind, they appeared to have formed a very successful society which was built around absolute monarchy and the adherence to Hinduism.
The achievements of these early Cambodians could be found at an ancient city of Angkor which is presently located in Siem Reap Province, Cambodia. Though many infrastructures, namely the domains of mankind, had not survived to the present day (because they were built of wooden materials), the religious monuments, which were splendidly built of stones, had indicated a well-organized society with superb civilization. Based on the scattering religious monuments at Angkor, it appeared that this ancient Cambodian City was at least as large as the United States Capital, Washington, D.C. From the various religious monuments and the inscriptions and carvings left on their walls, we learned that the Cambodians who lived during this period (roughly from the 1st to the 14th century) were followers of Hinduism. They were ruled by absolute monarchs and appeared to have formed a federation of kingdoms under the leadership of a universal sovereign who (from the 9th-14th century) used Angkor as the central seat of government.
As far as population was concerned, after the arrivals of those early Javanese Brahmins and their companion settlers, other ethnic groups such as the Mons and the Khams (Khemaras or Khmers), who appeared to have lived in the territories north of Cambodia or Funan, began to make contact and commingled with the Funanese at roughly around the 8th century. Also, many Chinese (most of them sailors) appeared to have made Cambodia their home as well once they made contacts with the indigenous people after their exploration ships docked at Cambodian ports. Perhaps the clearest evidences of the Chinese immigrants living in Cambodia were a report made by a Chinese envoy named Chou Ta-Kuan who visited Cambodia at the end of the 13th century.

***************

Little is known about how early Cambodian society was organized before the arrivals of Indian/Javanese traders/settlers. However, from archaeological and historical evidences, it appeared that early Cambodians led a rather simple life, or “subsistent lifestyle”--as some historians would have put it. Their society was largely built based on the dictates of nature rather than the dictates of mankind. In this context, early Cambodians were probably hunters and gatherers whose rhythms of life followed the rhythms of nature. Because hunting and gathering of foodstuffs tends to require collective efforts in order to ensure success and to maximize the outputs, this phenomenon would certainly lead to the formation of a society which was based on the premise of collectivism.
In terms of territorial administration, early Cambodians appeared to structure their territorial administration somewhat based on a federation system. They called their kingdom or country phaendey and the territories of which they ruled or put under the sphere of their influence sroks. Phaendey or kingdom referred to the overall territories, which a certain monarch had conquered or persuaded to submit to his or her rule whereas the sroks or nokors referred to the territories (in some cases kingdoms) that were subjugated into the larger sphere of influence. Please notice that the Cambodians nowadays used the term srok interchangeably to mean district or county as well. However, the term srok or nokor here mean territories or kingdoms populated by distinct ethnic groups of people and ruled by chieftains or lesser monarchs. For example, sroks or nokors Cham, Leav (Laos), Siem (Siam), et cetera, would mean the territories or kingdoms of Champa, Laos, and Siam, respectively.
Traditionally, the Cambodians used mountains or bodies of water to mark the borders of their kingdom. Because early Cambodia, as a kingdom, depended largely on the ability of her monarchs to muster and extend their overall controls or influences over various semi-autonomous territories which were populated by different ethnic groups of people, the Cambodians have never had a fixed and firm demarcation of their territorial borders. The present boundary was only drawn in the 19th century by French colonizers who ruled over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia roughly from the 1860’s to the 1950’s. Thus, throughout much of Cambodian early history, we found that the kingdom of Cambodia sometimes stretched over vast areas under the rules of certain monarchs who were able to assert their influences over distant territories while other times the country was moderate in size.

កំណាព្យ

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិនងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិនងរឿងនិទាន

Reading

The State of Cambodian Reading

This is the story of an accidental discovery. Though I am not a researcher by any shape or form, this discovery was compelling enough that it merits, I think, sharing with the Cambodian public at large.


Starting almost a decade ago, I, in collaboration with some of my friends, have worked on creating reading books for Cambodian children. We divided the books into three volumes. As each volume was completed, I would go to Cambodia, publish it, and distribute it to poor children. In 2008, I distributed some books to a group of poor children living near my aunt’s house. Due to limited number of books, I gave the books to only those children who could read. The ones who could not read yet had to wait for next time. However, one courageous boy, who had just begun learning in the first grade, came up to me and asked if he could have a book to keep with him so that when he was able to read he would learn to read that book. Unable to turn down his request, I decided to give that boy a book and hope that he would keep his promise.


Earlier this year, after getting the final volume of the children’s books published, I went to visit my aunt’s home again and sought out that boy to whom I had given a book 3 years ago. He is in the third grade now. I told him that I had some new books that I would like to give him and his friends if he would mind going around asking them to come to receive the books. The boy went around the neighborhood and found a few of his friends to come and receive the books. As a way to test the children’s ability to read, I decided to ask each child to read me a story while I am recording them on my digital camera.


While I was listening to the children’s reading one after another, I noticed that their reading ability varied greatly. As it is evidence in the video clip below, the boy (wearing red vest) to whom I gave a book 3 years ago could read very well while his classmates were performing rather poorly. I know this is a very small sample of subjects on which to conduct a study, but the finding has nevertheless given us an indication on how much difference supplemental reading books could make. I hope that this finding would generate some interests among Cambodian researchers to conduct a more systemic study to see how great an impact supplemental reading has on children’s ability to read.

កំណាព្យ

Essay on Cambodia

Based on cultural and linguistic evidences, both Funan and Champa appear to share their identities with people living in the Indonesian archipelagos. Though Funan seems to have a rather murky linkage with Indonesia, Champa has nevertheless had a very strong link with Indonesia. According to the archaeological and historical evidences, it has been accepted that Champa, as a kingdom, was founded by the people of Indonesian origin. These people appeared to be pirates who had been chased away from the Strait of Malacca’s and Sunda’s areas by their Indonesian kins. Given the fact that Champa had been founded and appeared on the Chinese foreign mission’s records a few hundred years behind Funan, it begs the question whether the Funanese could have been an earlier group of people who had been chased out from the Straits of Malacca and Sunda as well. At this point, we should point out that the Straits of Malacca and Sunda were the most important maritime trade routes in the early day. They provided and acted as a vital conduit for maritime trades between the Far East, Middle East, and beyond—just like the Panama Canal nowadays providing maritime linkage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Thus, whoever controlled the Straits of Malacca and Sunda would control one of the most lucrative maritime routes in the world because they allowed people who controlled them to impose taxes and tariffs on ships passing back and forth. We could only imagine that back in those old days, the Straits of Malacca and Sunda must have been the most contested areas because of their strategic and commercial importance. As a matter of fact, our imagination couldn’t have been wrong if we briefly looked at the history of colonialism. It was the strategic importance of the Straits of Malacca and Sunda that brought the Dutch to Indonesia. Whether the Straits of Malacca and Sunda played any role in the process, Indonesia was also the first country in Southeast Asia to be colonized by the Europeans. If we assumed that the Straits of Malacca and Sunda had been the major maritime trade routes since pre-historic time up to the 19th century of the Christian Era, it would be possible that people had been fighting one another countless times to gain control of these areas because they were the economic power bases for global trades which depended mostly on maritime transports. Though we could only hypothesize what had taken place in insular Southeast Asia during the earlier period of its history, it is possible that among the people who had probably contested, lost, and been chased away from the Straits of Malacca and Sunda were the Funanese (Cambodians). For the Cambodians, or Khmers, or Funanese, the history began at the place called Oc Eov (a corrupt spelling of the Khmer words O Keov which were given to the French colonialists by their Vietnamese assistants who could not pronounce the Khmer words properly), located at the southern end of present-day Southern Vietnam. It was probably at Oc Eov’s settlement that the Chinese travelers/sailors reported of seeing “ugly” people with very dark skin and frizzy hair. The Chinese called their country Funan. From the records left behind by these early Chinese travelers, the Funanese are the predecessors of modern Cambodians or Khmers. But, just like other indigenous people throughout the world, the Funanese and their culture were eventually glossed over by the arrivals of new ethnic groups and their cultures. Based on historical evidences, the Funanese led a very primitive existence. Their lives revolved around hunting and gathering. They lived in villages surrounded by fences. Little was known about their governmental structure. However, it was likely that the Funanese formed tribal community and appointed or accepted whoever was the strongest or most cunning person to be their leader. Culturally, the Funanese liked to wear tattoos on their bodies and believed in shamanism and spirits. One of the most enduring symbols of spiritual worshiping was the Neak Ta, the omnipresent guardian of both the villages and the forests, which is still being worshiped today by many Cambodians. The primitive world of the Funanese was first transformed around the 1st century of the Christian era when they came into contact with the Indian explorers/adventurers. According to the Cambodian history, these Indian adventurers or conquerors were not coming from India but rather from Java (Indonesia). The Cambodians or Funanese called them Pream Chvea or Javanese Brahmins and regarded them as warriors. Thus, it was likely that the Indian warriors who came to conquer or colonize Funan were Indian immigrants or traders from Java. Along with these Indian traders/warriors, there must have been Javanese troops, for, in order to conquer or colonize a territory which had already been settled by other people, ones must have forces.

(Excerpt from the Cambodian Royal Chronicle)

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

Reality Journalism

Reality Social Experiment

Over the years, especially during the past two decades, I have heard on numerous occasions about young Cambodian women jumping onto the marriage’s bandwagon for the opportunity to come to live in the United States, or some other developed countries. Some of these young women sometimes married men as old as their grandfathers or married people they didn’t even know. Though there are reasons regarding our individual personal choices, the issue of a woman, especially young woman, deciding to marry someone as old as her grandfather or someone she didn’t even know and took the risk of possibly living unhappily ever after has always stirred my curiosity. After giving some thoughts to the issue over the years, I came to a hypothetical conclusion that the reasons these young women took the risk might stem from the following factors:

1) Lack of education
2) Lack of opportunity to find jobs and maintain a secured livelihood.
3) Uninformed or misinformed about what life is really like living in a foreign country

There are many more factors that could be added to the list, but I believe, if people have these three factors eliminated from their lives, they would certainly not take the options mentioned above.

Late last year, I had an opportunity to put my hypothesis into a test. Because I was not a researcher, and, by no means, an expert on what I was doing, my life-altering experiment was somewhat eccentric, to put it mildly.

After having gone through a divorce, I found myself feeling lonely and sad. So I took a three week vacation and went to Cambodia to look for a soul mate. Upon arriving in Cambodia, I met M who is an independent factory inspector and my cousin. M offered me a temporary job as an assistant factory inspector so that I could tag along with him to visit the many garment factories located in and around Phnom Penh. My compensation was $20 for each day I went to work. Though tiny comparing to my salary working at my job in the US, the $20 a day pay was a huge sum comparing to the salary of factory workers who make only $61 a month on average. So, without giving it much thought, I accepted the job offer and became an assistant factory inspector during my three week stay in Cambodia.

A brief bio about M: M was a rather dimwitted boy when he was growing up. His mother told me that she had to make him repeat the first grade because he could not read or understand the basic letters being taught to him in the previous year. As a result, his younger sister caught up with him on the grade level.

When I left Cambodia almost 3 decades ago, M was just a tiny boy running in the dusty country road naked. He knew me only through my picture when he was growing up. Because I was somewhat successful in terms of overcoming adversity in life, his mother occasionally used my picture as a role model to inspire him to learn and be successful in school. With his mother’s cajoling, M was able to make it to the 12th grade at which point the family was no longer able to support his schooling. So, M’s mother told him to write me a letter asking for financial support for his continuing education at the college level in Phnom Penh. M’s letter was the most uninspiring one I had ever seen coming out of a 12th grader’s writing that it made me thought he was not college material. I did not answer him. A few months later, M’s younger sister wrote me a letter asking for financial support for her higher education. It was the most convincing letter which could only come out of a brilliant young mind. So, I decided to fund M’s younger sister to go to college instead of him. But through a twist of fate, I ended up funding M’s college’s education instead of his younger sister as there was no place for her to stay in Phnom Penh except for the pagoda which was not suitable for a girl to seek refuge from.

The promise had been made; the money had been sent; nothing much I could do except for going through with my commitment investing my hard earned money with a less than ideal candidate. After funding M’s college education expense for 2 years, I had an opportunity to go visit Cambodia in late 1997 which enabled me to meet him for the first time. During our initial meeting, M struck conversation with me in English which revealed a rather determined young man who would not let life’s adversity hinder his struggle for success. After that initial meeting, my confidence in M grew and he has become one of my trusted friends from whom to seek consultation when I need to get things done in Cambodia. This is how M and I get to know each other at the personal level.

My decision to become M’s assistant was not so much to earn that $20 per day pay but rather to peer at his career and to find out what has become of him after I spent so much of those hard earned money funding his college’s education. Now that you know M’s background, let’s go for a ride with a factory inspector.

The first garment factory we went to inspect was located in Khan Reusey Keo. We showed up at the factory’s gate in a dilapidated 16 years old Toyota Corolla. The security guards were not impressed and reluctant to let us in even after we told them our credential. So, a phone call to the factory’s higher-up had to be made in order to gain access into the premise. While we were waiting, I asked M why isn’t there any memo of our inspection left with the security guards so that the process would go smoothly. M told me that this is how things normally operate in Cambodia. He told me of an incidence he once had showing up to inspect a factory on a motorbike. He was not allowed to get through the factory’s gate and made to wait outside for hours. After a few phone calls to his headquarter in Hong Kong, an apologetic compliance officer came charging out to get him in.

After a few minutes of waiting, we were given access into the factory’s compound. The manager came down to meet us at the parking lot and we were taken up the elevator to the executive suite where a number of administrative staffs waited to greet us. A VIP’s treatment I felt, while a few minutes earlier we were not even accorded any regard by the security guards.

The first order of business for us was to meet with the factory’s owner or general manager (GM), who was usually a foreigner, to go over the protocol of our inspection. Because he was the lead inspector, M did most of the talking while I observed him in awe and amazement. Based on M’s fluent conversation in English, and his confident exhibition of skill and professionalism, it was painfully clear that the once considered dimwitted boy has now earned my utmost respect. As a US trained journalist, I even doubted my ability to perform the tasks anywhere close to M’s professional level.

With the factory manager acting as our guide, we began our inspection from the very bottom of the organization’s echelon and moved our way up to the administrative areas where we spent a lot of time inspecting payroll and legal paperwork to ensure that the workers were not abused one way or another. It took us one full exhausting day to complete a factory’s inspection. After work, M took me to dinner at a restaurant to go over my first-day-on-the-job experience and to see how I feel working in Cambodia for the first time. I told him that I was very excited to be able to gain unlimited accesses to a factory and had a good look at what was going on inside. However, after observing how the workers were organized within the factory’s organization, I noticed a group of office personnel sitting in front of computers as they were working. This group of people was given air-conditioned rooms in which to work and appeared to be mostly performing administrative function. The majority of them were women in their late 20s or early 30s.

I made some inquiries about the backgrounds of these administrative staffs. M told me that those who worked at the factory’s administrative level were mostly college graduates. They were among the most successful, the crème of the crops one would say, in the private sector. They generally came from the province and had to overcome a lot of adversity in life to get that far. As administrative staffs, they earned between $300 to $500 per month, plus some other perk such as free food and transportation to and from work. Based on what M was telling me, it appeared that the young women who worked as factory’s administrative staffs were among the most secured people as far as careers and incomes were concerned, not to mention their educational assets. After a quick thinking, I decided to put my hypothesis into a test by using myself as a subject of experiment.

Without revealing what I was up to, I told M that I came to Cambodia to look for a soul mate, and that I was interested in searching for a prospective mate among the young ladies who worked as administrative staffs in the factories. Upon learning of my desire, M was so excited. He told me that he knew a lot of the young ladies who worked as administrative staffs in the garment factories because he had been in frequent interaction with them when going about doing inspection. After careful discussion on what we would go about meeting my prospective dates, we decided to use dinner as a venue for our endeavor. M and I would use the occasion to talk about our lives and in the process evaluate the compatibility between my date and me. We both agreed that I would go to the next step by asking my date if she would like to be my spouse and go to live in the US with me only if both M and I unanimously believed that she was the right person.

My first date, Ms. A, was a 34 years old lady. For a woman her age, she looked great. However, after the meeting, I didn’t feel any spark igniting up in my emotion. I asked M if he had any sense of positive thought about my date. He too was feeling rather hapless. So, we decided to move on.

My second date, Ms. B, was a 31 years old woman who was very bright and intelligent. Being the first born child, she had to quit school at 19 in order to work and help support the family. Her income helped put many of her siblings through college. She was truly a selfless person. After the meeting, both M and I agreed that I should go on to the next step. Next day, M made a phone call to Ms. B on my behalf to make the proposal. Her answer was a disappointing no, as she already had a boy friend. Whether having a “boy friend” was just a diplomatic way of rejecting my offer to take her to the US was anybody’s guess. But we had to accept her answer on face value though.

Feeling a bit dejected, M and I went to conduct another inspection on a factory located in Chaum Chao. At that factory, I met a very attractive young lady, Ms. C, who was working as compliance officer there. She had a Westerner’s name and could speak English fluently. At first I thought she was an expatriate, but upon further inquiry she only had relatives living in the US, and her Westerner’s name was bestowed upon her by one of those relatives. She happened to know M as well. Thus, after our initial interaction, I conferred with M if I should explore a possible dating with Ms. C. M told me a bit about her background and we both agreed to pursue the subject of my desire.

We were scheduled to inspect the factory where Ms. C worked for a period of two days. So I had ample time to interact with her. M and I planned to invite Ms. C to dinner in the evening of the last day of our inspection. However, due to her busy schedule, she was unable to join us for dinner. So we took the afternoon of our last day of inspection, which by then our works had been completed, to talk with Ms. C about what was going on in our lives. To my absolute surprise, I learned that one of Ms. C’s relatives, who lives in the US, and I know each other. What a coincidence! Without even consulting with M, I decided to move ahead to the next step by telling Ms. C what I was up to. I asked her to call her relative in the US to inquire about my character and let me know about her decision in a couple of days. M and I waited for two days for Ms. C to call and give us her answer. But no call from Ms. C was forthcoming. So, M decided to give her a call, which was met with dead silence, another diplomatic way of saying no, I assumed.

By the time I met Ms. C, it was the last weekend of my stay in Cambodia. Both M and I were a bit depressed after failing to accomplish our objective. In a last minute effort, M’s girl friend arranged for me to meet Ms. D over dinner. We ended up having breakfast and lunch together the following day. Due to the breakneck nature of this high speed dating, I had to leave my tacit agreement to go on to the next step’s pursuit of this affair of the heart with M after returning to the US. Three weeks later, I was informed that Ms. D did not want to come to the good old US of A, or, to put it in other words, NO to my matrimonial offer to sponsor her to the US.

Back to my hypothesis: It appears that when people are well educated, well informed, and have a means to maintain a fairly good livelihood, the allure of a better life in a faraway land does not have much appeal. Of course my experiment was crude, by any scientific standard. But it nevertheless provides us with a tiny glimpse into people’s behaviors. Though I feel a bit disappointed over my failure to find a soul mate, I am somewhat happy to see that my hypothesis has been supported by this rather short and silly experiment. And I welcome those who wanted to challenge my finding to conduct a more structured experiment to see if this result could be rebutted.

Chanda Chhay
cchanda@verizon.net

Poem

UNCHAINED LOVE

You capture my affection with your beauty;
You delight my feelings with your romance;
You take away my misery
And please my soul with your passion.

You keep my life from uncertainty;
You touch my heart with your compassion;
You destroy my sins with your piety
And free my spirit with your common sense.

You take away my anxiety;
You lull my fear with a gentle care;
You soothe my thoughts with serenity
And serenade me out of despair.

You kill my pain with your empathy;
You send away all of my fears;
You heal my depression with your sympathy
And make me become your only Dear.

You keep my soul in a beautiful Heaven;
You give me hope and happiness;
You fill my life with enchantment
And take away all my sadness.

You wreck my vices with your powerful grace;
You bring me peace like a little dove;
You raze my rage with a warm embrace
And bless my life with your unchained love.

Essay on Cambodia

Cambodian People, Society, Culture and Civilization

The Cambodians are “passive,” “shy,” “docile,” and “easy-going” people. They are also slow in changing their way of life and remain rather backward and “primitive.” The words in quotation marks are some of the adjectives used by scholars or “experts” of Cambodian study to describe the characteristic traits of the Khmer (Cambodian) people who have inhabited the western portion of the Indochinese Peninsular.

These perceptual observations, especially, the view of Cambodian society as “unchanged,” are both impressive and striking because the Cambodian ways of life, both in the past and present, seem to be forever intertwined. Without a doubt, if one looked closely at the Cambodian lifestyles as depicted in the carvings on the walls of the monuments at the ancient city of Angkor, and at the lifestyles of ordinary Cambodians who live around the region of Angkor nowadays, one could certainly see the resemblance. The similarity between present-day Cambodians’ way of life and their ancient counterparts is such a timeless attribute that many people (both scholars and casual observers alike) seem to fail to look beyond the surface. As a result, the view of Cambodian society vis-a-vis their way of life as backward and unchanged remains one of the prevailing precepts throughout the ages. After all, time changes; and, as time changes, so do people. Therefore, the Cambodian people, I believe, are no exception to this natural phenomenon.

Though most assessment of the Cambodian characteristic traits rendered by scholars who had or have studied Cambodian culture and civilization appears “valid” to a certain degree, the notion of describing cultural, social, and/or characteristic identity of a people is (and I strongly believe) nothing more than an intellectual stereotyping. Given the fact that, there are more to society, culture, and civilization than meeting the eye, the business of writing about or describing any particular people vis-a-vis their society, culture, and civilization is certainly a daunting task. Perceptional errors and prejudices are inevitably bound to occur. As far as human society, culture, and civilization are concerned, no amount of knowledge could uncover the complete truth. At best, we could perhaps only skim the surface and uncover a small portion of the overall picture while the rest of it remains hidden. In a sense, the study of human society, culture, and civilization is almost like the human genome project. There are so many more hidden facts out there waiting to be discovered.

***********

Evidences of human settlements in mainland Southeast Asia dated back to at least as early as 10,000 BC. Among these early traces of settlements are the Hoabinhian cultures, so named after the village of Hoa Binh located along the Red River Delta in Northern Vietnam where they were first discovered. According to archaeological evidences, the Hoabinhian cultures appeared to spread from Northern Vietnam to Southern Thailand. Though there are no firm indications that the Hoabinhian people were the first and only group of people to settle in mainland Southeast Asia, based on similar artifacts and stone tools found in different caves in the region, it appears that they were, at least, the precursors of Southeast Asian civilizations.

In terms of place(s) of origin, the Hoabinhian cultures seem to be shrouded in mystery. Though some experts believe that they were parts of the larger cultures of China and India, the hypothesis remains inconclusive, for there are so many broken links between pre-historic Southeast Asian cultures and their counterparts in China and India. For example, according to the artifacts found on mainland Southeast Asia, prehistoric Southeast Asian people appeared to have developed a distinct culture independent of influences from either China or India. One of the evidences of this independence is the development of metallurgic technology. According to a bronze spear head found near the village of Ban Chiang, Thailand, prehistoric people of mainland Southeast Asia appeared to have made bronze tools in about 2,000 BC, which was only 800 years or so after the Bronze Age began in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). If the trail of archaeological evidences were valid, after it began in Mesopotamia, bronze tool making technology reached China about 800 years later which, in effect, put China and Southeast Asia matching neck and neck into the Bronze Age. Also, given the fact that people did not have instant Internet-speed means of disseminating information then, it is hard to imagine that the Bronze Age moved into China and filtered down into Southeast Asia in such a short period of time. If it took some 800 years for bronze tool making technology to travel from Mesopotamia to China, it would take at least another 300 years for this technology to travel from China to Southeast Asia. Thus, it is very unlikely that pre-historic people of Southeast Asia learned their bronze tool making from China. On the other hand, it is quite possible that both geniuses in China and Southeast Asia developed their bronze tool making at about the same time. Furthermore, based on metal artifacts found at Ban Chiang, it appears that pre-historic people of Southeast Asia might be or were among the first to move into the Iron Age.

(Excerpt from the Cambodian Royal Chronicle)

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

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រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

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Khmer Rouge Re-Visit

A Mother’s Love
One day, out of the blue, my mother came to visit me during our noon time break for lunch. My mother, along with a small group of other younger elderly from Ponlear Chey, had been sent to work in a field near Bonteay Staung (the distance between Ponlear Chey and Bonteay Staung was about one and a half hour’s walk) and she took the opportunity to make inquiry of my whereabouts as she learned that the children’s mobile brigades had been stationed there. So, during her lunch break, my mother went to the place where the children from the mobile work brigades came to receive their meal ration and eventually tracked me down to the house where I was staying. I was both surprised and excited to see my mother. We talked briefly as my mother had to return to her worksite. Just as she was about to walk back to work, my mother took me aside, pulled out a sweet yam, which she steam-cooked in her kettle early in the morning before she came to work, from her pocket and put it discreetly in my hand. Without waiting for her to tell me what to do with it, I gobbled up the whole yam and savored every bit of it. It was the tastiest yam I had ever tasted in my life. After seeing that I had eaten all the forbidden food (under Khmer Rouge’s draconian rule, possession of foodstuff other than that given by Angkar, even a yam, could get a person in trouble), my mother returned to her worksite.
After our initial meeting, my mother continued to come to visit me whenever she had the opportunity to come to work near Bonteay Staung. Sometimes, I think she might have come all the way from Ponlear Chey to see me. Every time she came to visit me, my mother always brought a yam or a small rice cake which she wrapped inside banana leaves for me to eat. I didn’t know where or how my mother obtained those foodstuffs which she brought for me. As hunger had complete control on my reasoning, I just ate those foodstuffs like a blind chick being fed by its mother. However, at one point, my conscience freed me from the grip of hunger as I started thinking about the possibility of how my mother might have obtained the foodstuffs she brought me. If she didn’t steal those foodstuffs from the communal kitchen, my mother must have bartered them from her neighbors by using jewelry or valuable clothes that she might have in her possession. Either way, it was illegal, for the Khmer Rouge did not allow people to barter with one another. People were not even allowed to have possession of foodstuffs which had not been provided by the communal kitchen. Hence, every time my mother brought me that tiny piece of yam or rice cake carried the risk of grave punishment if she were caught. The more I thought about the consequences, the more concerned I became. So, one day, I told my mother about my concern and asked her to stop coming to visit me. But it was to no avail. My mother still continued to come to visit me every time she got a chance.
One evening, as I was returning from work, I felt extremely fatigued and my body temperature appeared to be high. Upon arriving at our lodge, I went to the homeowners to ask if they had any coin that I could borrow to use as a scratching device to scratch my skin in a form of Cambodian traditional treatment called kaus khchol. As I went into their quarter, I walked in front of a tall vanity mirror which was imbedded in the door of a 6ft. tall cabinet. Upon seeing my image in the mirror, I was quite startled that my flesh and bones looked like a living skeleton. My eyes sank rather deeply into their sockets and the muscle on my face shrank to reveal the contour of my cheek bones which made my head looked more like a skull than a living human head. At that instance, I realized that my mother must have been moved by the fact that I was a walking skeleton which compelled her to use any means possible to find food to feed me and risk being punished by the Khmer Rouge’s authority just for the sake of saving me from starving to death.

(Excerpt from unpublished manuscript)

រឿងល្បើកនិងរឿងនិទាន

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