As China and Thailand have benefited from cultural exchange since ancient times, people-to-people exchanges between the two countries are increasingly close, showing unprecedented vitality over the past years with the all-round development of bilateral relations, said Fu Zengyou, former dean of the Confucius Institute at Chulalongkorn University.
Recalling his first trip to Thailand in 1980, Fu said many people from the two countries barely knew each other then, partially due to poor transportation and a lack of communication. The condition had not changed until 1975, when China and Thailand officially established diplomatic relations.
Invited by the Thai government for an exchange program, Fu and two other Chinese scholars who studied the Thai language traveled to Bangkok from Beijing by plane. Back then, there was no direct flight between the two cities and they had to transfer twice at Kunming in Southwest China’s Yunnan province and Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
“It was an old flight. When it flew above the mountainous region at the border, we were told to wear life jackets. No one asked the cabin crew for a reason, leaving only an unearthly silence,” he recalled.
The plane eventually flew back to Vientiane and took off again after a two-hour repair. Fu’s Chinese friends had to bid farewell to the group twice in a day, as the plane returned even before they left the airport.
“It was really an unforgettable and arduous journey,” Fu said, making a special mention of four apples given by his neighbor as a farewell gift before he left Beijing. “I should thank her for the wishes of peace and safety for the trip,” he said.
During their stay in Thailand, Fu said many Thai people asked him lots of questions about China. Apart from ordinary ones such as whether China had banks or photo studios, many Thai people asked questions that came from bizarre rumors that went far beyond Fu’s imagination.
“They asked me if we would kill elderly people aged more than 70 years old and used their bodies as fertilizer. Also, they were curious about my marriage and ask whether my wife was picked from a group of women that were ‘arranged’ by the government,” Fu recalled with laughter.
“Those questions with bias mostly resulted from a lack of mutual understanding for a long time. It exactly indicated the importance of communication. Friendship only forms when you know each other well,” he said, adding that language learning played a crucial role in promoting exchanges and deepening understanding between people from different countries.
As co-founder of Thailand’s first department of Chinese language that was launched in 1996 at Srinakharinwirot University and vice-chairman of the Thai Chinese teachers’ union, Fu said Chinese language learning has been booming among Thai people over the past decades.
“Since Thailand and China built diplomatic relations in 1975, the Thai government has encouraged learning Mandarin thanks to the efforts from Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who had a leading role in particular,” Fu said.
Having been to China more than 50 times, the Thai princess learned Mandarin well and even translated several Chinese novels into Thai. She also made great efforts to deepen the exchanges and cooperation between the two countries in the fields of education, traditional medicine, science and technology, and even aerospace.
“More than building bridges of friendship, Princess Sirindhorn embodies the solid bond that unites China and Thailand,” Fu said. Different from the 1980s when few people could speak Mandarin, he said now all Thai schools have Mandarin classes.
Over the past 20 years, about 20,000 volunteer teachers from China have given language classes in Thai schools and helped to train Mandarin teachers for the kingdom.
Tens of thousands of Thai students head to China annually, studying a wide range of subjects, including Mandarin, medicine, IT, science and technology. In China, the number of colleges providing Thai language classes has also increased, from seven in the 1990s to more than 50 now.
“Historically, cultural exchange between China and Thailand has been rich and multifaceted,” Fu said.
“As the two countries see closer ties now, people-to-people exchanges will keep upgrading to a higher level and their long-standing friendship will also reach a new stage.”