What’s a Farang?
Farang means something on the order of “honkey,†had the term honkey caught on. Let’s be honest – beyond those two years sometime in the 1970s, nobody has heard or used that term with any seriousness or regularity.
Farang is the designation Thais use for most non-Asian foreigners. More specifically, a stereotypical farang has light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. Ironically, as I pointed out to my Thai friend Nut, those features are the same as you see in Siamese cats.
That brought no end of hilarity, it seemed for a little while. Farang cat, not Siamese cat. Good times.
What does it mean to be a farang in Thailand? It is like a sword with two edges. On one hand, Thais love for farangs to come and visit, spend their money and generally have a good time. On the other hand, Thais don’t particularly enjoy having farangs around for too long, thinking of us as rather uncultured, smelly people.
The smelly part – well, I hate to admit it, but that’s true. Farangs go about Thailand sweaty from the heat and don’t take the two or three showers a Thai person might take each day. For most Americans, one time is enough. And we stink.
As far as being uncultured, almost all cultures see almost all other cultures this way. We might look at Thai people and remark on their lack of proper sanitation, their open-air butcher shops and their fried insect snacks and call them backward or unhygienic. On the other hand, they see us as people who don’t shower enough, don’t remove our shoes when entering buildings and don’t bow properly in Buddhist temples and think of us as dirty and uncultured.
Which side is correct? That’s not the point. The problems with these labels are obvious and it’s easy to see how they can lead to a lack of cultural understanding on both sides. Seeing differences between cultures is not the problem. When we get into trouble is the moment we apply a value to a cultural difference.
It’s like measuring the world on a Cartesian plane in which you are at the origin – the (0,0) point. When we put ourselves in that spot and don’t see where we are on someone else’s map of the universe, it is very easy to assume that person is wrong or misguided. Just like we were told since first grade – not to judge another person before walking a mile in his shoes – we should not judge another culture before stepping into it and examining it for what it is and not necessarily from the basis of how it is different from what we are used to.
Certainly, our own point of origin is where we start from and our only real point of reference. But what we have to do, so that we can function properly in another culture, is to try to find our spot in a different Cartesian plane. We have to at least try to understand things as they are, adopt local customs as best we can and not judge the differences we encounter. We have to realize that we are no longer at the origin but at some other, less familiar point.
Understanding each other is the cornerstone to finding a meaningful dialogue, no matter the point of conflict. We have to find the humility within ourselves to let go of our point of origin and find our new home in light of the other culture.
Technorati Tags: honkey, farang, Siamese cat, Thailand, Thai, cultural understanding, cultural difference, Cartesian plane, dialogue, humility
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May 16th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
[...] was already, but quickly learned that, like many racial terms, the meaning was not always positive. You can read more about all this here, but I wanted to share one excerpt from the Next Life in the Afternoon blog: Farang means something [...]