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W.B. ten Brinke e.a.

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38

South-East Asia: culture and development

Start

South-East Asia:

culture and

development

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39

Start

Elephants in Thailand The elephants in this photo are dressed in bright colours because they are leading a religious procession. Elephants are very important in the Thai culture. They appear in many religious stories, and people honour them for their power and their wisdom. Once there was an elephant on the national flag. You also find them on coins and in images in temples. Rich people loved these enormous animals and often sat on their backs when they travelled to other places.

But, as you can see from Aran’s story, the elephant’s role has changed. Every evening Aran and his elephant, Sri Prae, are in the centre of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. Sri Prae holds a bag of sugar sticks in his trunk. Tourists buy these sticks and feed them to the elephant.

That is how Aran earns money. Late at night Aran and Sri Prae leave the city and return to the wasteland where they live.

Aran is a mahout, which means ‘elephant trainer’. He comes from a family of mahouts. His father and his grandfather also worked with elephants.

These powerful creatures from the Thai jungle worked in the tropical forests, pulling trees. When the government stopped the felling of trees, many elephants lost their jobs. Some mahouts took their elephant to the city, hoping for a better life. When Thailand modernized, people stopped using elephants for transport. Vans are faster and easy to use. All they need is petrol, but an elephant eats more than 200 kilos of food every day. When modernization came, elephants were no longer needed. An important part of the Thai culture that had lasted for thousands of years came to an end.

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South-East Asia: culture and development

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1 Thailand: a different world

Thailand

FIGURE 1

There are big differences between Thailand and the Netherlands.

This chapter explains why life in Thailand is so different.

Hot and humid  Most people are amazed when they

visit Thailand for the first time. Everything is so different. Nothing like the Netherlands. Let’s start with the climate.  Thailand has a tropical climate. It is always hot and there is a lot of precipitation in the rainy season. The sun shines in the morning, but the sky gets dark around lunchtime. Then there is heavy rainfall. Even when you are soaking wet, you are never cold because the temperature is always high.  Because Thailand has a hot and humid climate, tropical rain forests grow there.

The trees in these tropical rain forests are gigantic. They provide a home for many wild animals such as snakes, monkeys and elephants.  Large parts of Thailand are used for agriculture. The main crop is rice. There are lots of rice fields, especially in the lowlands. .

Gigantic statue of Buddha near a Thai temple

The Thai culture  Life in Thailand is nothing like life in

the Netherlands. The religion, the food, the language, the way people dress and the land use are all part of the Thai culture. Culture is a word that describes the beliefs and customs that we learn when we are growing up.  Most people in Thailand are Buddhist.

Buddhists believe that you are born again after you die. This is called ‘reincarnation’. They say that good deeds in this life will help you in the next life.

Wherever you go in Thailand, you can see how important religion is. There are FIGURE 2

Buddhist temples everywhere. Many of these temples are very beautiful, with golden towers and statues of dragons and gatekeepers (protectors of the religious beliefs). Inside the temple there is a huge statue of Buddha, standing or lying down.  There are a few things in the Thai culture that you also see in the Netherlands.

For example, the big shopping malls in the modern neighbourhoods of Bangkok are just like the shopping malls in the Netherlands and other European countries. They sell the same trendy clothes as the European stores.

Garden temples where people bring gifts to their household spirits

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Thailand: a different world

Culture and people  Most of the inhabitants of Thailand

belong to the Thai people. A people is a group of human beings who have lived together for centuries and share the same culture. Other peoples also live in Thailand. Small peoples, with their own culture, live in the mountainous regions on the edge of the country.

There are also many Chinese inhabitants in Bangkok and in other cities in the south of Thailand. They came here as immigrants and traders.

FIGURE 3

Western shopping mall in Bangkok

MYANMAR LAOS

The market

Chiang Mai

The local market is one of the best places to see Thai culture. The Thais are always busy. They fetch and deliver goods on scooters and carrier bikes. They work hard from morning to night. There are some very unusual goods for sale at the market.

Friendly, smiling Thai women at the meat stalls sell pig’s heads – a very popular meal! At another stall you can buy flower garlands to give to the household spirits in your garden temple. An old woman sells large tropical fruit. What is it called? There is a sign, but it is in Thai letters, which tourists can’t read.

THAILAND

Bangkok

CAMBODIA

f of Thailand Gul

Phuket

0

MALAYSIA

100

200 km

1 : 16,000,000

Peoples in Thailand Thai

Malaysian

Karen

other

Khmer

Chinese

FIGURE 5

FIGURE 4

Buddhist monks are everywhere

SKILLS G 63

G 151

G 230

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South-East Asia: culture and development

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2 The culture of South-East Asia

FIGURE 7

Graag bijschrift inkorten...

External influences  Multiculturalism has grown fast FIGURE 6

Chinatown in Bangkok.

In this chapter we zoom out from Thailand and look at South-East Asia, a much bigger region. Has South-East Asia got the same cultural characteristics as Thailand?

South-East Asia

One cultural region?  South-East Asia consists of two parts.

The mainland is a peninsula – a piece of land with sea on three sides. The fourth side has a border with India and China.

South-East Asia has a population of about 600 million. Almost half of them live on the mainland.

The other half live on the islands between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. That is where you find Indonesia and the Philippines.  Wherever you go in South-East Asia you see a culture that is very different from the culture in the Netherlands. But there is more than one culture in SouthEast Asia. The region is described as multicultural, because hundreds of different peoples live there. There are many religions and languages, and different kinds of art, music and architecture.  Religion is a good example. In Chapter 1 you learned that most of the Thai population are Buddhist. In Indonesia most of the population are Muslim. They are called to prayer from the mosques five times a day. In Manila, the capital of the Philippines, Roman Catholics go to the cathedral. And in Cambodia, you find Angkor Wat, which was once the biggest Hindu temple.

because places are now easier to reach, especially by sea. Ports and harbours are everywhere, so it is easy for people, ideas and cultural characteristics to move from one country to another.  China has influenced South-East Asia for two thousand years. The Chinese arrived there in large numbers and usually lived together in the same neighbourhoods. There is a Chinatown in every big city in South-East Asia. The Chinese are an important ethnic group in many coastal places. Though they a minority, they often play an important role in the national economy.  Immigrants and traders also came from India and brought Hinduism and Buddhism to the region.  From the fourteenth century onward, traders from the Arabic world brought a new religion to Malaysia and Indonesia: Islam.  There is still a lot of mobility. People come to Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia to look for work because there is a big shortage of factory workers.

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The culture of South-East Asia

FIGURE 8

Modern metro in Bangkok

Eleven states

is a piece of land which is governed by a country in another part of the world.  The Europeans took over several kingdoms and territories, and combined them into colonies. The Dutch created one colony consisting of more than

 A very long time ago, South-East

Asia consisted of small kingdoms and territories. That changed in the sixteenth century when Europeans came to the region and established colonies. A colony

0

CHINA MYANMAR

500

MYANMAR

THAILAND

PHILIPPINES

CAMBODIA

In d

Ch

Pa cifi cO cea n

VIETNAM

cifi

Sr i La

BRUNEI

Pa

ia /

cO

PHILIPPINES

nk

a

MALAYSIA

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE

an ce O ian Ind

INDONESIA

In d

1,000 km

CAMBODIA

MALAYSIA

f ro m A ra b c o u nt r i e s

500 1 : 55,000,000

LAOS

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c e an

ina

from

m f ro BRUNEI

MALAYSIA

0

CHINA

VIETNAM

LAOS

17,000 islands and called it the Dutch East Indies. Colonies provided raw materials for European industry. They were also a market for European goods.  During the twentieth century the colonies became independent states, but with the same borders. So hundreds of population groups and cultures live in only eleven states. One of these states is Indonesia, the former Dutch East Indies.  There are problems in some states because of the many different population groups. In southern Thailand there are often conflicts between Muslims and followers of other religions.  But despite the cultural differences, the states in South-East Asia still work together. In 1967, four states established the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to improve economic cooperation and development. Now ten of the eleven states are ASEAN members.

1,000 km

1 : 55,000,000

from Sp ain

§2

ia n O cean

INDONESIA

EAST TIMOR

South-East Asia, external influences

EAST TIMOR Colonies in South-East Asia, 1930

Hinduism

Islam

United Kingdom

Netherlands

France

Buddhism from India/Sri Lanka

Christianity

Portugal

United States (till 1898: Spain)

current border

Buddhism from China

FIGURE 9

FIGURE 10

G 150

G 151

G 152

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3 Rich and poor in South-East Asia

We already know that there are big cultural differences in SouthEast Asia. But are there also big differences between rich and poor?

Wealth and poverty  You can recognize wealth and poverty

in different ways.  Look around you and you will see if people are rich or poor. Look at the clothes, the homes, the shops and the roads. How do they travel? Is there a lot of rubbish on the streets?  You can also measure wealth and poverty (level of development) with figures. For example, you can work out if there are enough teachers or if some people do not get enough food.

Level of development  Levels of development can be mea-

sured in two ways.  One important development indicator is the average income. In Singapore, which is rich, people earn about €40,000 a year. That is much more than in Laos or Cambodia, where the average income is €1,700 a year. You can find out a lot about the level of development in a country when you look at the average income. And you can find out even more if you also look at what people can buy with their money (purchasing power).  But you must also look at how people live. Do they get enough to eat? Have they got a roof over their heads? Food and shelter are two of the basic necessities, the things that everyone needs for a reasonable life.

FIGURE 11 Poverty in Myanmar

 The average income and the basic necessities tell us about the level of development of a region or country.

A region or country is developed when the largest part of the population has a good income and can afford the basic necessities.

South-East Asia: three faces  When you look closely at the level of

development you could say that SouthEast Asia has three faces.  Rich countries There are two rich countries that stand out straightaway: Singapore and Brunei.

Both are small. Only 415,000 people live in Brunei, but the country is rich because it has oil.

Singapore is like one big city, with a population of almost 5 million. It became an independent state in 1965 and has grown very fast. The level of development is high. You can see that in the modern buildings and roads, and the expensive shopping malls.

 Emerging countries For a long time Singapore and Brunei developed much faster than the rest of the region. But other countries have also become more prosperous in recent years. For example, the Thai economy grew very fast when international businesses came to Thailand to produce goods at low costs. Thailand and other emerging countries are also working hard to improve their infrastructure – everything you need to transport goods, people and information, such as roads, railways and high-voltage power lines.

They are also focusing on education.

Well-trained workers are important for economic growth.  Stragglers Some countries have been left behind.

The poorest country in South-East Asia is Myanmar. The poverty is so bad there that many people do not get enough to eat. Most of them live in slums and there are no schools. They have no money for a doctor if they are ill and they cannot afford the basic necessities.

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Rich and poor in South-East Asia

0

500

1,000 km

x 1,000 euros

1 : 55,000,000

CHINA

Growth in GNP (purchasing power per head of population)

10 MYANMAR

Pa

LAOS

THAILAND

cifi

c Oc

Malaysia ean

Indonesia

7.5

VIETNAM

CAMBODIA

Thailand Philippines Vietnam

PHILIPPINES

BRUNEI

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MALAYSIA SINGAPORE

Ind

ian

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O

INDONESIA

ce

an

EAST TIMOR Average income in South-East Asia less than 2,500

5,000 - 10,000

2,500 - 5,000

10,000 - 20,000

FIGURE 12

more than 20,000

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2011 year

FIGURE 13

FIGURE 14 Wealth in Singapore

FIGURE 15 Growing prosperity in Vietnam

SKILLS G 17

G 229

G 230

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4 Sources: Focus on - Indonesia SOURCE 2

Population Indonesia consists of more than 17,000 islands. No country in the world has more islands than Indonesia. About 250 million people live on these islands, but more than half of them live on Java. The population density is much higher on Java than on the other islands. So the population distribution in Indonesia is unequal.

Indonesia

SOURCE 3

Rice and volcanoes

You have learned a lot about culture and development, climates, natural landscapes and population density. Now you will use this information to focus more closely on Indonesia.

In many parts of Indonesia people have changed the natural landscape into arable landscape. The conditions are perfect for growing rice, especially on Java. Often, when volcanoes erupt, lava and volcanic ash flow onto the soil. The minerals in the volcanic ash make the soil very fertile. Farmers on Java harvest rice three times a year. The rice grows on sawas – fields that are flooded with water. So they make use of irrigation.

A volcano erupts on Java

SOURCE 1

Nature and Climate Indonesia is in the middle of the tropics, on both sides of the equator.

It is hot and humid there all year, with a temperature around 30° C. There is a dry season in some parts of Indonesia.

Because of the hot and humid climate there are many tropical rainforests in Indonesia.

SOURCE 4 Sawas on Bali

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Sources: Focus on - Indonesia

SOURCE 5

SOURCE 7

Language and religion Big differences in level of development Indonesia is developing and modernizing very fast. You can see that in the capital Jakarta, which has a population of about 10 million. The level of development is higher in Jakarta than in the rest of the country.

Indonesia is developing well. Take another look at Figure 13 in Chapter 3. But it still has a long way to go. More than 10% of the population is so poor that they cannot afford basic necessities. They live in slums. There is no money for proper food, or for a doctor if they are ill.

SOURCE 6 0

500

1,000 km

1 : 4,500,000

Pac ific O cean

Sumatra

Kalimantan Sulawesi Papua

In di an

There are many different peoples and cultures in Indonesia. There are also hundreds of languages, but only one official language: Bahasa Indonesia (which means the language of Indonesia). There are many different religions, but most of the population (85%) are Muslim. Traders from Saudi Arabia brought Islam to Indonesia at the end of the thirteenth century. They built homes on the island of Sumatra and married local women, who became Muslim too. Then Islam spread across all the islands. Later, in the sixteenth century, the Dutch brought Christianity to Indonesia, which was a Dutch colony at that time.

The people who live on Bali are Hindu.

Jakarta

Oc ea n

Java

Bali

Poverty in Indonesia percentage of the population living in poverty 10 - 15% less than 5% 5 - 10%

more than 20%

15 - 20%

Differences between provinces There are big differences between the provinces. In Papua more than 30% of the population live below the poverty line compared with 4% in Jakarta.

SKILLS G 4

G 50

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South-East Asia: culture and development

Zoom in Look at all the boats on the floating market in Cai Rong in Vietnam. This photo was taken at the estuary of the Mekong River, the longest river in South-East Asia. Can you see scenes like this everywhere in Vietnam? Or are other parts of the country completely different? You are going to investigate that in Focus on‌ You can also use Focus on‌ to find out more about another country in South-East Asia. Choose one yourself.

SOURCE 8

3

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Zoom in

SKILLS G 4

50

South-East Asia: culture and development

Options A A trip through South-East Asia Organize a trip through South-East Asia. Look in the sources for examples of nature and culture.

Source 9 shows Hindu women carrying offers to the temple. Source 10 shows the modern city of Singapore, and Source 11 shows a tropical beach.

SOURCE 9

SOURCE 11

SKILLS G 4

SOURCE 10

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Options

B Country puzzle In Source 12 you can see the outlines of eleven countries.

They are all in South-East Asia. Look in the atlas and find their names.

Find the names of the capitals too.

SOURCE 12

C Country competition The population size and the level of development are different in the countries of South-East Asia. In this option you select and compare two countries. Which country has the highest level of development and the biggest population?

When you have the answer, find out if they play football.

How does the population size and the level of development influence the results of the national football team?

D Organizing regions into groups There are big differences between the regions of the world. Your task is to find these differences and organize the regions into groups.

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South-East Asia: culture and development

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Finish Terms you should know artificial border A man-made border, marked by signs. basic necessities Things that people need for a reasonable life (food, shelter, education and healthcare). colony A region that is governed by another country. continental plate Part of the seabed that belongs to a country. convectional rainfall Rainfall at the equator. The air gets warm. Then it rises and cools. This causes rain. cultural region Region with a more or less similar culture. culture All the beliefs and customs that you learn when you grow up. development indicator A measurement of wealth and poverty in a region. development level The level of wealth or poverty in a country. diffusion The spread of cultural elements from one region to another. equator An imaginary line that divides the world into two halves: the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. ethnic group Group of people that live together in another country (not the country of origin).

GNP (Gross National Product) The money that all the people in a country earn together.

GNP per head of population The average income per head of population. You calculate this by dividing the GNP by the number of people who live in the country.

Illiteracy rate The percentage of the population over the age of 15 who cannot read or write. infant mortality rate The number of children who die before their first birthday (per thousand babies that are born alive).

infrastructure All the facilities that are needed to transport people, goods and information. irrigation Bringing water to agricultural land. multicultural People from different cultures who live together. nation A people that lives in one state. nation state A state where one people lives. natural border A border that forms a natural obstacle, such as a river or a mountain range. peninsula A piece of land with water on three sides.

FIGURE 16 Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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Finish

people A group of human beings who have lived together for centuries and who share the same culture. physician distribution The number of doctors per thousand people. population density The average number of people per square kilometre. population distribution The spread of the population across a country or region. purchasing power The amount of goods or services that you can buy with your money. sawa A rice field that is always underwater because of irrigation. state A region with clear borders and its own government. tropical rainforest Very thick forest in the hot and humid tropics.

tropical climate Hot region near the equator where the average temperature is always higher than 18° C. tropics Warm region at the equator between 23½° NL and 23½° SL.

FIGURE 17 Petronas Twin Towers, Malaysia.

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