Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness 9789048554409

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
List of Maps and Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Language and Transliteration
Introduction
1 “We Are All Tai Lue”
2 “Normal Fruits for Laos, Premium Fruits for China”
3 “Thailand: High Quality; China: Low Price”
4 “I Didn’t Learn Any Occupation, so I Trade”
5 “No Matter What, We’ll Find a Way”
Conclusion: Large Insights from Smallness
Bibliography
Index
Asian Borderlands

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Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos

Asian Borderlands Asian Borderlands presents the latest research on borderlands in Asia as well as on the borderlands of Asia – the regions linking Asia with Africa, Europe and Oceania. Its approach is broad: it covers the entire range of the social sciences and humanities. The series explores the social, cultural, geographic, economic and historical dimensions of border-making by states, local communities and flows of goods, people and ideas. It considers territorial borderlands at various scales (national as well as supra- and sub-national) and in various forms (land borders, maritime borders), but also presents research on social borderlands resulting from border-making that may not be territorially fixed, for example linguistic or diasporic communities. Series Editors Tina Harris, University of Amsterdam Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam Editorial Board Franck Billé, University of California, Berkeley Duncan McDuie-Ra, University of New South Wales Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell University Yuk Wah Chan, City University Hong Kong

Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos Mastering Smallness

Simon Rowedder

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Trucks waiting to be loaded with Thai fruits, Khonekeo port, Bokeo Province, Lao PDR (photo taken by author, 2015) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Layout: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 236 0 e-isbn 978 90 4855 440 9 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463722360 nur 740 © Simon Rowedder / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9 Notes on Language and Transliteration

13

Introduction 15 Towards an Ethnography of Smallness 22 Taking Issue with Worlds of Larger Representations 26 Cross-Border Traders in Laos: Unheard and Invisible in Scholarship 31 The Heavy Weight of “Zomian Baggage” in (Sino-)Southeast Asian Borderlands 34 Coming to Terms with my Research Motivation/Imagination 39 Journeying the Field 40 Outline of the Book 45 1 “We Are All Tai Lue”

International Trade Fairs as Local Ethnic Affairs

61

Xishuangbanna’s Attempts at Resembling Southeast Asia 64 The Beginnings: Getting Invited to “Local Markets” in China 70 Dealing with “Chinese” Customers: Between Distancing and Antagonism 74 Reducing Chinese Customer Relations to the Economic Essentials 76 Dealing with Tai Lue Customers: Performing “Lue Localness” 77 Lao Traders’ Economic Rationale 83 “Local” Advantages of Lao Traders vis-à-vis “International” Thai Traders 90 Conclusion 98 2 “Normal Fruits for Laos, Premium Fruits for China” Transnational Flows of National Differences

103

The Tai Lue in Thailand: A Cultural Source for “Lanna Thai” 104 The Case of Ban Huay Meng: From Ethnic Frontier to National Fruit Frontier 108 Thai Fruits in Motion: “Normal Fruits for Laos, Premium Fruits for China” 124 Lao Cross-Border Traders as Mediators of Sino-Thai Frictions 130 Conclusion 137

3 “Thailand: High Quality; China: Low Price” 141 “Banal Cosmopolitanism” in Local Marketplaces

“Moving with the Market”: Amnuay and Hiang 143 Tracing “Banal Cosmopolitanism” at Marketplaces 148 “Banal Cosmopolitanism” in Practice 154 Conclusion 163 4 “I Didn’t Learn Any Occupation, so I Trade” Narratives of Insignificance

171

Tracing Narratives of Entrepreneurial Smallness 173 Trading at the Marketplace: Between (Non-)Occupation, Professionalism and Amateurism 175 From muan to thammada: Pioneers and Newcomers 179 Stories of Success Beyond the Marketplace: From Experimentation Towards Cross-Border Entrepreneurship 184 Conclusion 192 5 “No Matter What, We’ll Find a Way” Uncertain (Chinese?) Futures

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Uncertainty, Resilience, and the Shadow of the BRI 196 Contextualizing Local Engagement with China-Induced Changes 199 Dreaming the “Chinese Dream” in Northern Laos 205 Marketplaces in Luang Namtha: Material, Discursive, and Social Sites of Chinese Infrastructure and Modernity 210 Conclusion 214 Conclusion: Large Insights from Smallness 221 Entering and Exploring Transnational Worlds through Smallness 222 “Small” Productions of Transnational Connectivity 224 Bibliography 231 Index 253 List of Maps and Illustrations 1 Regional overview with GMS North-South Economic Corridor 2 Luang Namtha Province 3 Signboard advertising a transvestite show at “Thailand Street” (泰国街) in Jinghong

15 16 63

4

“The Great Pagoda Temple of Jinghong” (景洪市大金塔寺 景洪市大金塔寺) at Gao Zhuang, Jinghong 63 5 “Vientiane Town,” a shopping centre in Jinghong 65 6 “Mekong Starlight Night Market” (湄公河星光夜市 湄公河星光夜市) at Gao Zhuang, Jinghong, resembling Walking Streets in northern Thailand 67 7 Thai handicrafts sold at Gao Zhuang, Jinghong 67 8 Luang Namtha traders’ stalls at the “GMS Six Countries Trade Fair in Xishuangbanna 2015” in Jinghong 78 9 Luang Namtha traders staying in tents behind their stalls at a trade fair in Jinghong during Chinese New Year, January/ February 2017 90 10 Cross-border routes of Luang Namtha traders attending Chinese trade fairs 92 11 “Tai Lue Cultural Centre” on the premises of Ban Sri Donchai temple 105 12 Transnational Thai fruit flows radiating out of Ban Huay Meng 112 13 At the village port of Ban Huay Meng 123 14 Trucks queueing up at Khonekeo Port 125 15 Open fresh market area, Muang Sing market 149 16 Small shop selling Thai and Chinese commodities at the edge of the fresh market area, Muang Sing market 149 17 Breakfast routine at khao soi stalls, Luang Namtha market 154 18 Construction of the China-Laos Railway near Nateuy , Luang Namtha province 205 19 New Chinese-funded marketplace in Nateuy, Luang Namtha province 209 20 New conviviality: joint Chinese-Lao BBQ bar in Nateuy, Luang Namtha province 210

Acknowledgements I have been facing the awkward situation of writing a book about cross-border fluidity and mobility, about borderland aspirations and experimentations, in the middle of the new Covid-19 era of national lockdowns and global restrictions of travel and movement. Thus, work on this book took place in two very different realities. All I have been writing about took place before the pandemic; but most of the actual writing took place during the pandemic. While writing about vibrant life and conviviality in busy borderland markets partly served as a good therapy in times of isolation and loneliness, I was still worried about the current situation of small-scale border-traders in northern Laos and beyond. Moreover, I started to doubt whether continuing to write down their stories would make any sense after all. However, my doubts began to clear a bit when I tried to contact some of my interlocutors via online channels. Although this turned out to be rather difficult, I managed to make some, albeit limited, contact. The few messages I received displayed a high level of uncertainty and anxiety, but at the same time also contained the familiar language of resilience, pragmatism, optimism, and humour, which the reader will find throughout the book. I could also see that some of my interlocutors had already found some flexible solutions. Unable to cross borders by themselves, some ordered from larger licensed retailers and moved their commodities destined for physical marketplaces to online platforms, for delivery or pick-up from their homes. These very limited and preliminary contacts with voices “from the pandemic” nonetheless encouraged me to keep writing about their stories. Although most of the time it felt like it, this study is not only about the (preCovid-19) past, but equally about the present and hopefully about a better future. The traders’ stories will live on, and be lived, throughout and after the pandemic. This book is, after all, about everyday local engagement with ever-changing borderland realities. Wishing them only the best, I therefore dedicate this book to all my interlocutors, especially in Luang Namtha province (northern Laos) and in Ban Huay Meng (Chiang Rai province, Thailand). Among them, I have to mention in particular Amnuay and his family in Luang Namtha town. Amnuay’s sincere interest in my research, his unfailing helpfulness and his continuous joviality coupled with a good sense of humour has made him a good friend. In times of fieldwork struggles, he still was a person I could talk to. I always had a good time when staying at their place, sometimes staying over for lunch or dinner while gossiping about Thai television. I owe them and all other interlocutors my deepest

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gratitude for their hospitality, openness, and, most importantly, for their patience in bearing my stubborn, annoying, and overly curious questions. Without them, this book would have never seen the light of day. I sincerely hope to be able someday to thank them all again in person, toasting them with some Beer Lao. I was all the more saddened to learn of the sudden death of two key interlocutors years after my last meetings with them: Kamphaeng in Luang Namtha and the village headman of Ban Huay Meng. Kamphaeng, a good friend of Amnuay, owned a stall at Luang Namtha’s provincial market. I will always remember her positive combination of industriousness, vitality, humour, friendliness and warmth. Despite her usual claims to be too busy with her work, I still spent very long mornings or afternoons at her market stall. She usually let me share in her market gossip while continually serving fruits and snacks (until we reached a point where I felt obliged to bring some snacks as well). The headman of Ban Huay Meng, and Chiang Khong’s Wiang subdsitrict, was, together with his wife, very supportive in introducing me to other helpful villagers and traders and providing me with further contacts in Laos in the beginning of my research. As the following chapters will show, he was also essential for subsequent important changes in my research path, which eventually inspired me to draft this ethnography of smallness. My memories of our vivid and inspiring conversations still live on in this book. I would also like to thank some of my long-term academic friends in the region: Chayan Vaddhanaphuti and Wasan Panyagaew at Chiang Mai University, Kidnukorn Suebsakun at Mae Fah Luang University (Chiang Rai), Li Yunxia at Yunnan Minzu University, and Liang Chuan at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences (YASS). I also thank Dr Gao Li Shi, a retired professor of Yunnan Minzu University, who gave me private lessons in Tai Lue language in Kunming. The remainder of my acknowledgments are largely confined to people in Singapore, my home until December 2021, which I have not left for almost a year and half at the time of writing. At the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS), I would like to thank Vatthana Pholsena for consistently sharing her rich expertise on Laos; Douglas Kammen for excellent mentorship, always pushing me, rightly, to finish my manuscript, although it still took more time than expected; Itty Abraham for similarly pushing and always providing great advice; and for always having an open ear, Irving Johnson, Jan Mrazek, Hamzah Muzaini, Gerard Sasges, and Mohamed Effendy. I would also like to express my thanks to Oona Paredes, who was very supportive in the early stages of this project, before she moved to the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Acknowledgements

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My research has greatly benefited from my membership in the Max Weber Foundation Research Group on Borders, Mobilities, and New Infrastructures at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS. I particularly thank James Sidaway (Department of Geography), the convenor of this research group, for his enduring support and trust in my research potential. I also thank my fellow research colleagues Shaun Lin Ziqiang (Department of Geography) and Felix Mallin (Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen) for great cooperative work and companionship. Apart from stimulating research, the Max Weber Foundation also greatly supported the logistics of my work. I am particularly grateful for the flexible handling of the already generous travel budget, reallocating it to non-travel purposes during the pandemic and thus financing the great cartographic work for this book designed by Lee Li Kheng. In this regard, my thanks go to Franz Waldenberger, head of the German Institute of Japanese Studies in Tokyo, part of the Max Weber Foundation offices overseas, and Joachim Röhr, its administrative director. I also want to express my deepest gratitude to all the undergraduate and graduate students at NUS who have attended my admittedly reading-intensive seminars on Sino-Southeast Asian frontiers over the past couple of years. Whether they know it or not, their critical discussions, creative comments, and innovative research ideas greatly contributed to the writing of this book. In December 2021, the Chair of Development Politics at the University of Passau in Germany became my new institutional and intellectual home. While again the vivid and insightful discussions with students in my seminars gave me the necessary energy to complete the book project, I would like to thank Wolfram Schaffar, the chairholder of Development Politics, for his support and understanding in the final writing stage. Preliminary results of my fieldwork, and later parts and chapters of this book, have been presented at numerous conferences, such as, for instance, the 5th Conference of the Asian Borderlands Research Network in Kathmandu in December 2016, the 13th International Conference on Thai Studies in Chiang Mai in July 2017, the AAS-in-Asia Conference in Bangkok in July 2019, the 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) in Leiden in July 2019, and the 10th EuroSEAS Conference in Berlin in September 2019, and at several workshops at the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, and Chiang Mai University. I thank the respective organizers and audiences for their critical and constructive feedback. Parts of this book have been also featured elsewhere. Parts of the introduction and much of chapter 4 has been published as “I didn’t learn any occupation, so I trade”: Untold Stories

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of Entrepreneurial Experimentation, Cosmopolitanism and Urbanisation in Northern Laos. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 35(1): 31-64, 2020. A passage of chapter 5 appears as “Railroading Land-linked Laos: China’s Regional Profits, Laos’ Domestic Costs?” in Eurasian Geography and Economics 61(2): 152-161, 2020. I thank ISEAS Publishing and Taylor & Francis Group for their respective permissions. At Amsterdam University Press, I would like to thank the editors of the Asian Borderlands Series, Willem van Schendel and Tina Harris, for their faith in my work and their very useful comments and suggestions on the first draft. Sincere thanks are extended to Saskia Gieling, Irene van Rossum, Victoria Blud, and Jaap Wagenaar for their exceptional editorial work, as well as to the reviewers for their insightful remarks and recommendations. Lastly, managing tedious months of writing would have been impossible without the continual support of my lovely family—especially in these unprecedented times under Covid-19. My wife was part of this book project from day one, even accompanying me in the early stages of fieldwork in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture (Yunnan province, China) and Chiang Rai province (Thailand). While writing in Singapore, she always provided necessary doses of moral and emotional support, encouragement, and love. She also, rightly, did not spare me from straight, critical, and provocative questions while providing new inspirations and ideas. However, the greatest gift I could ask for, especially for going through the difficult time of a pandemic, is our three-year old son. His genuine curiosity and joy have been a much-needed engine and motivation for eventually finishing my work. While I do not expect him to read my book anytime soon (or at all), I truly hope to take him to northern Laos. There, he will probably ask, and answer, much better questions than I have tried in this book. My parents in Germany would be proud of him as they finally would not need to listen to the same questions from me anymore, as they have patiently done throughout numerous lengthy video calls, providing much-needed virtual support and hugs. For now, while waiting for even better questions, the reader of this book needs to bear with any errors, oversights, or misunderstandings, for which I take sole responsibility.



Notes on Language and Transliteration

Due to the tri-national character of my fieldwork, it was imperative to attend to vernacular terms in (Mandarin) Chinese, Lao, and Thai language. Consequently, interviews were mainly conducted in the national languages of the country in question (unless otherwise indicated), sometimes infused with Yunnanese dialect (a Mandarin dialect) and Tai Lue in China, and Tai Lue and Tai Yuan in both Laos and Thailand. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own. To visualize the multilingualism and linguistic dexterity of my informants, inherent to this studied borderland, I have decided to use the respective Chinese, Lao, and Thai scripts, followed by a romanized transliteration in italics. Exceptions are names of places (e.g., Jinghong, Luang Namtha, Chiang Mai), which are only written in English without italics. I have also integrated some vernacular terms (e.g., the Thai term kamnan referring to a head of subdistrict and village) into my English writing, without non-English script and translation. In these cases, I provide the respective script and translation only for its first usage. For the sake of standardization and convenience, I also write dialectical terms (e.g., Tai Lue and Tai Yuan) in the script of the respective national language. Regarding transliteration, for Chinese words I use the standardized Hanyu Pinyin (in short, pinyin) system. Transliteration rules for Thai and Lao words are not as standardized as for Chinese words. For Thai language, I have mainly followed the Royal Thai General System of Transcription published by the Royal Institute of Thailand. One major deviation is my use of j instead of ch when transcribing the Thai letter จ. Its pronunciation comes closer to “j” as in “jungle.” It is also used to avoid confusion with ch as the transcription of the Thai letters ช and ฉ which resemble in their pronunciation the English “ch” as in “China.” For vernacular terms already well-established in English scholarship, I have retained the more common transliteration (such as muang instead of mueang for เมือง). In view of the absence of any standardization of the transliteration of Lao words, I have taken the liberty of mainly following the aforementioned Thai system. One notable difference is the transliteration of the Lao letter ຍ (resembling ย in the Thai alphabet, transcribed as y) as ny if used in the initial position. If referring to historical and present places, the official naming is mainly retained (such as in Lan Xang, Huay Xai, or Houaphan province).



Introduction Abstract The introduction sets the scene by critically reflecting on prevailing scholarly and public representations of Laos within the wider YunnanLaos-Thailand borderlands. Moving away from the underlying deep-rooted entanglement of self-fulfilling representations of space, ethnicity, and state, I outline in detail an alternative ethnographic account of borderland trade dynamics that revolves around different facets of smallness. I develop the argument that it is the lens of smallness that enables an ethnographically grounded exploration of northern Lao small-scale traders’ actually lived transnational worlds of cross-border mobilities, social relations, commercial experimentation, and aspiration. The introduction is rounded off with extensive and reflective remarks on my f ieldwork trajectory and methodology, discussing the strengths and logistical challenges of navigating through three different national contexts. Keywords: Laos; borderland; scholarly representation; smallness; transnational world; cross-border trade

Well, Laos is an elongated land of less than a hundred thousand square miles bounded by Thailand on the west and touched by Burma on the northwest, by China to the north, by Vietnam to the east and southeast, and by Cambodia on the southwest. The Mekong River, which marks most of the twelve-hundred-mile western frontier with Thailand, is placid but considerable, a little longer than the Mississippi. Up beyond the green gorges of the southwest Chinese province of Yunnan, its headwaters are fed by the melting snows of Tibet. And until recently the Lao kingdom of the river’s middle reaches was nearly as isolated as the Roof of the World, and not half so well publicized. […]. Anywhere from a million to four million people live in Laos, depending on who is making the estimate. But it is agreed that they are dreamy, gentle, bucolic, nonaggressive people, Buddhists of the Little Vehicle who live in bamboo-and-thatch houses on stilts, wading tranquilly in their marshy paddies, fishing in the lazy rivers, and worshipping in

Rowedder, Simon, Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos. Mastering Smallness. Amsterdam: ­A msterdam University Press 2022 DOI: 10.5117/9789463722360_INTRO

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the curly-roofed pagodas. They are content. They live in a subsistence economy, and generally there is enough rice to go around. The Lao gentleness traditionally has enchanted the foreign visitor, particularly one not trying to go anywhere or do anything in a hurry. Oden Meeker, The Little World of Laos

At the crossroads of the “Kunming–Bangkok Highway” and the “Kunming– Vientiane Railway” (or “China–Laos Railway,” opened in December 2021), the northern Lao province of Luang Namtha is developing into a central regional node of transportation and logistics in the borderlands of southwestern China (Yunnan Province), northern Laos, and northern Thailand (Chiang Rai Province). Its unfolding role of linking together the markets of China and Thailand by rail and road fully aligns with various geoeconomic visions projected onto Laos by different actors over the last two decades—be it the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Corridors, or the Lao government’s promotion of the country’s transformation from a land-locked to a land-linked nation. Currently mapped as the central intersection of the GMS North–South Economic Corridor, established in 1998, northern Laos is now envisioned by China as a central node of the China–Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, initiated in 20101 and subsequently integrated into its grand Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In other words, northern Laos (and Laos in general, for that matter), has indeed become a prominent and visible spot on large-scale, top-down mappings (and academic studies) of neoliberal development and global connectedness in mainland Southeast Asia. However, local voices from the ground are largely missing in this picture. This book fills this gap. I attend to small-scale traders based in Luang Namtha province and explore their transnational worlds of cross-border mobilities, social relations, commercial experimentation, and aspiration. Hailing from diverse social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds, they flexibly cross borders to trade a wide range of everyday Chinese and Thai consumer goods. The key argument of this book is that their commercial activities are largely built on the trope of smallness. What I call smallness refers to the traders’ conscious strategies and interiorized habits of framing and performing their transnational economic practices in a self-deprecating manner, thereby reinforcing the apparent 1 Then known as the “Nanning-Singapore Economic Corridor”; see, for instance, Wong and Keng (2010).

Introduction

1 Regional overview with GMS North-South Economic Corridor

Map by Lee Li Kheng

17

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2 Luang Namtha Province

Map by Lee Li Kheng

ordinariness and triviality of their trade in mundane commodities and their minuscule regional economic standing.2 Drawing on rich ethnographic case studies, the following chapters will show how the traders’ smallness ranges from mocking their own economic inferiority vis-à-vis Thai and Chinese fruit traders, to narratives of downplaying and downscaling their trade activities at marketplaces, to low-key appearances at large international trade fairs in China. Careful examination of their discourse and performance 2 When referring to these discourses, practices, and strategies deployed by the traders, which constitute the central concept of the book, I write smallness in italics.

Introduction

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of smallness and insignificance reveals remarkable transnational social and economic skills, paired with a high degree of versatility, ingenuity, experimentation, and resilience. Skilfully reproducing, and blending in with, the geoeconomic reality of being squeezed between larger and powerful markets and economies of Thailand and China, they turn the notion of national economic weakness into transnational strength. Hence, this book invests the widely accepted, self-explanatory, and naturalized representations of the smallness and isolation of Laos—for example, as a “small, mountainous, land-locked state in the heart of mainland Southeast Asia” (Sims 2020, p. 272)—with new ethnographic substance and complexity. This is an important intervention because more than 60 years after Oden Meeker’s3 observations in his The Little World of Laos, with which I opened this introduction, the common representation of Laos (since 1975 Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lao PDR) as a small and tranquil country with friendly and frugal people remains largely, and disturbingly, the same. In such a representation, the status of a small, geopolitically weak nation, officially categorized as a “Least Developed Country” by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), is often juxtaposed with the essentialized tropes of simplicity, purity, and beauty. While rooted in legacies of external representation, this picture has become an integral part of Laos’s own nation branding, prominently reflected in the slogan “Simply Beautiful” championed by the Tourism Marketing Department.4 Primarily advertised to the outside world, it caters to and reaffirms imaginations of this “uniquely laidback” country’s “untouched beauty.” Here meant for touristic consumption, the promoted “[a]we-inspiring landscapes filled with wonder, waiting to be explored,” rooted in “[a]n ancient land of timelessness, serenity and tranquility,” are elsewhere at the heart of the vision of Laos as a lucrative resource frontier, again almost exclusively geared towards external investors. The associated developmentalist mantra of “turning land into capital” (Dwyer 2007; Kenney-Lazar, Dwyer, and Hett 2018)—of commodifying land and natural resources and granting an increasing number of Special Economic Zones (SEZs)—has been flanked by the governmental vision of transforming Laos from a land-locked to a land-linked country. Besides commodifiable land and natural resources, the evocation of Laos’s land-linked geography likewise constitutes an exploitable frontier readily serving larger transnational flows of commodities and capital. 3 Oden Meeker was the f irst representative to Laos of the US humanitarian organization CARE in 1954 and 1955. 4 See the official tourism website: https://www.tourismlaos.org (accessed 14 May 2021).

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It is through these larger development schemes for selling land-richness and land-linkedness that the relative smallness of Laos again becomes visible; Laos is commonly articulated as a weak and passive victim helplessly exposed to its larger political and economic neighbours, especially in regard to China. Consequently, recently burgeoning scholarship on China’s rising influence in Southeast Asia, remarkably still employing the stereotyped representation of China as a dangerous dragon (e.g., Emmerson 2020; Strangio 2020), continually retells the story of encroaching Chinese investment and infrastructure, which is most visible in northern Laos and has been studied most prominently in relation to exceptional spaces such as the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone and the Mohan–Boten Economic Cooperation Zone at the China–Laos border (Nyíri 2017, 2012; Tan 2017; Laungaramsri 2015, 2019; Rippa 2019, 2021).5 Often conceptualized as Chinese “enclaves” (Nyíri 2017, 2012; Laungaramsri 2019), these zones, emblematic of Chinese modes of development or “high modernism” (Sims 2020), prompt concerns of Laos losing, or “commodifying,” sovereignty to China (Laungaramsri 2015), leading to China’s “soft extraterritoriality” in Laos (Lyttleton and Nyíri 2011, p. 1256). Will Doig (2018, p. 53) puts it more drastically in his account of China’s regional railway ambitions, arguing that “Laos, to varying degrees, has relinquished its national sovereignty in exchange for modernization, giving China jurisdiction over a substantial amount of its land.” In particular, the Chinese development dynamics in the border town of Boten in the northwestern province of Luang Namtha have received much attention, given the town’s tumultuous history. Emerging in 2007 as a shady, Chinese-run casino complex, Boten grew notorious for organized crime and even murder, until the casinos were shut down in 2011. One year later, a new Chinese investor, the Yunnan Haicheng Industrial Group Holdings, took over. Abandoning the border casino model altogether, the focus shifted to trade, logistics, tourism, finance, and real estate development, culminating in the euphemistic rebranding of the development zone as “Boten Beautiful Land Specific Zone” in 2015, then officially endorsed by the governments of China and Laos as a central hub of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Boten will constitute the first stop in Laos of the China–Laos Railway, the flagship project of the BRI in Laos. Apparently, the fascination among observers for this exclusively Chinese pocket of urban and infrastructural development, sticking to Beijing time and operating with Chinese currency, has not abated; accounts of the Chinese 5 Unabated interest in development zones in various Asian borderlands is reflected in a recent volume edited by Mona Chettri and Michael Eilenberg (2021).

Introduction

21

influence in Laos, or, which have recently become more prominent, the BRI and the railway project in Laos, need to include some sensational remarks on the remarkable trajectory of Boten (Doig 2018, pp. 20-24; 45-51; Strangio 2020, pp. 102-105), as it is exemplary for “another curious byproduct of China’s hyperactive growth” (Doig 2018, p. 22). This increased infrastructural proximity to and economic dependency on China is complemented by the aforementioned Kunming–Bangkok Highway.6 Opened in 2008, it links the markets of China and Thailand through a 228-kilometre section traversing Laos’s northwestern provinces of Luang Namtha and Bokeo. This has reduced the journey time overland between China and Thailand to only three to four hours—dramatically transforming a journey which easily took several days in the past, as Andrew Walker (1999) describes in his account of cross-border traders across China, Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand more than two decades ago. It is now possible to cross over to Thailand and China in the same day, my interlocutors in Luang Namtha used to emphasize again and again. However, Laos’s intensified regional connectedness—celebrated by the government and its development/investment partners as key to national poverty alleviation and prosperity and on the ground perceived both with anxiety and aspiration—is commonly translated by observers as a consolidation of the national reality (or representation?) of marginality and vulnerability. Laos’s conflicting “peripheral centrality” (Brown 2018) has been contextualized with a longer history of being a contested, externally created space (Ivarsson 2008) that served military, geopolitical, and geoeconomic strategic interests of larger regional powers “through the history of capitalist development, spatial integration and colonial expansion in Southeast Asia” (Brown 2018, p. 229). Laos has been assigned shifting roles as “buffer state or battleground” (Toye 1968), “from buffer zone to keystone state” (Tan 1999) or “from buffer state to crossroads” (Pholsena and Banomyong 2006), with dramatic and traumatic consequences such as a decade of unprecedently heavy bomb raids committed by the United States (1964–1973) and 6 Off icially opened in March 2008, the Kunming–Bangkok Highway, which is in reality a network of different national highways and roads rather than a single international highway, usually refers to the Lao branch (R3A road, part of Asian Highway AH3) of the overall overland transportation corridor between China and Thailand (R3). The latter is also paralleled with a section through Myanmar (R3B road, part of Asian Highway AH2). The 228-kilometre R3A section traverses northwestern Laos and links the Chinese-Lao border (Mohan/Boten) with the Lao-Thai border (Huay Xai/Chiang Khong). Road construction started in 2004 and ended in early 2008. However, it could not be finalized until December 2013 when, after several delays, the much-awaited “Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge” linking Huay Xai with Chiang Khong across the Mekong River was officially opened to traffic.

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chronic underdevelopment and poverty. Therefore, Sebastian Strangio (2020, p. 106) argues that “[d]espite possessing all the accoutrements of modern nationhood, the country has remained weak and vulnerable to outside encroachment, especially along its porous periphery.” Brian Eyler (2019, p. 162) similarly concludes that “even though Laos qualifies in every aspect as a modern nation-state, its interior and periphery remain as contested spaces highly vulnerable to the machinations of both neighboring countries and global powers.” These are external accounts of Laos’s persistent relative smallness— remaining economically and politically small, or even becoming smaller, vis-à-vis its larger neighbours, Thailand and China, precisely because of improved connectivity to the latter. The established past and present status of Laos as a “small country” also appears to hold the key to its foreign policy. Hiroyuki Kishino (2017, p. 91), a former Japanese top diplomat, and ambassador to Laos from 2013 to 2015, consequently asks “how a small country behaves among big countries.” His answer is “balanced diplomacy,” which builds on Laos’s “wisdom as ‘buffer state’”: The country conducts itself heedfully so as not to create a bone of contention and not to be caught up in a struggle. It keeps a low profile, and it saves its breath. It is always mindful of not making any country its enemy, and handles extremely carefully issues in which countries of vital importance to Lao PDR are involved. (Kishino 2017, pp. 97-98)

Towards an Ethnography of Smallness Leaving behind the world of diplomacy and foreign policy, of abstractly viewing national states as actors, this book pays more profound, largely needed ethnographically grounded attention to emic notions of smallness among small-scale traders in northern Laos. Taking a cue from Andre Gingrich and Ulf Hannerz’s (2017) suggested anthropological studies of “small countries,” I attend to smallness “from a native’s point of view,” showcasing “an ‘emic’ comparative dimension of the ways important routine practices, standard speech behavior, or other cultural references indicate how people in one way or another refer to their country as somehow smaller than elsewhere” (Gingrich and Hannerz 2017, p. 6). However, as the following chapters will demonstrate, I do not merely refer to vernacular negotiations and translations of smallness as a given fact or national reality—a historical, geographical, geopolitical, and geoeconomic inevitability. I rather explore

Introduction

23

smallness as multifaceted repertoires of local discourses and practices that make sense of, and tactically frame, everyday local lives and livelihoods, both of which are intimately tied to transnational connectivity and involve the continual mental and physical crossing of borders. While they demonstrate notable trading skills and sophisticated transnational networks, the traders constantly belittle the scope of their commercial activities, stressing their lack of professionalism and their economic insignificance, especially compared to large-scale trade companies. Moreover, they dismiss the high degree of their cross-border mobility and knowledge as merely ordinary, as it would be simply part and parcel of local life. Notions of localness (ທ້ອງຖິນ ່ thongthin), ordinariness or commonplaceness (ທໍາມະດາ thammada), and unprofessionalism (ບ ໍ່ເປ ັນມືອາຊີບ bo pen mue asip, or ບ ໍ່ເປ ັນອາຊີບ bo pen asip)7 are the key constituents of their vernacular transnational worlds of smallness, in line with which the subsequent chapters of this book are mainly organized. In order to conceptually approach the empirical discrepancy between observed notable transnational trading skills and overheard discourses of insignificance, this book draws on the notion of “banal cosmopolitanism,” in which borderlands play a vital role. For Michel Agier (2016), borderlands and their “border situations” are central to constituting an “ordinary cosmopolitan condition” (p. 8), a term he uses “in the sense of a lived experience, everyday and ordinary, an experience of sharing the world” (p. 75). Similarly, in his Cosmopolitan Borders, Chris Rumford (2014) conceptualizes borders as “workshops of cosmopolitanism.” In the case of Luang Namtha, borders, as a fertile ground for cosmopolitan practices, are omnipresent in facilitating the local everyday reality of transnational connectedness—not only of mobile cross-border traders, but of local residents in general. This is most apparent for local marketplaces whose commodityscapes are inherently transnational, almost only comprising household and food supplies from Thailand and China, and to some degree from Vietnam. This mundane realm of quotidian practices of selecting, purchasing, and consuming transnational commodities entails the key dimension of the locally ingrained, “banal” cosmopolitan condition: continual comparison along the lines of essentialized national differences. Local consumption thus inevitably builds on a transnationally informed choice, weighing up Chinese products against Thai products. Trivial as it might sound, this underlying nationally framed 7 ອາຊີີບ asip literally means “occupation” or “profession.” Chapter 4 will examine in more detail how most of the small-scale traders in northern Laos frame their activities in non-occupational terms, stressing that they would not be engaged in the proper profession of trade.

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comparative dimension is present throughout various local life situations in this borderland in which “[t]he ‘other’ country (or group of countries) is more or less ubiquitous in the local imaginary, as a latent reference to be activated any time” (Gingrich and Hannerz 2017, p. 7). Anssi Paasi, a prominent advocate for comprehending globalization flows spatially in their socially practiced territoriality (e.g., Paasi 1998, 2002, 2009), contends that “these [boundary-making] practices are always part of broader social action and have typically been based on the processes of ‘Othering’, i.e. the construction of symbolic/cultural boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘the Other’” (Paasi 2005, p. 18). These practices of “Othering” still often run along nationalized lines, as Paasi shows for the Finnish-Russian border (1996). Paasi’s (1998, p. 85) referencing of Michael Billig’s (1995) “banal nationalism” guides also my focus on the decidedly national dimension of transnational connectivity and banal cosmopolitan practices. I relate Billig’s (1995, p. 8) central argument of a “continual ‘flagging’, or reminding, of nationhood” in mundane contexts of everyday social life to a cosmopolitan understanding of borderlands (cf. Agier 2016; Rumford 2014), where cosmopolitanism refers to the awareness of, and capacity to handle, locally inherent transnational connectedness through practical negotiations of differences mostly framed along national lines. Serious ethnographic attention to the “ordinary” and unspectacular on-the-ground realities of everyday lived and practised land-linkedness, otherwise fervently propagated and spectacularized by the Lao government, works against the tendency whereby scholars have tended “to privilege cosmopolitanism in its philosophical sense at the expense of more vernacular types which seem to be open to the accusation of banality” (Falzon 2009, p. 37). Central to the cosmopolitan lifeworlds this book attempts to delineate is the self-stereotyped essentialization of the relative national smallness of Laos. Though on the surface it probably thwarts governmental campaigns to foreground the country’s regional centrality, it serves as a device to make sense of Laos’s regional economic and political standing of underdevelopment, which becomes all the more visible precisely through the promoted land-linkedness of infrastructural cross-border connectivity and proximity. As mentioned above, in the case of the transnational trading worlds of small-scale traders in Luang Namtha, this general banal cosmopolitan, as well as a national habitus of self-mockingly deriding Laos’s backwardness and inferiority, is coupled with discourses and practices of belittling their transnational mobility, skills, and knowledge. Their rhetoric of both national and occupational smallness should not be merely taken at face value, as a fatalistic and passive expression of their chronic state of lagging behind

Introduction

25

their regional neighbours; instead, such rhetoric often actively serves as a strategic tool to enable and sustain transnational commodity flows and networks with notable success, as the following chapters will show in more ethnographic detail. At this juncture, I should point out two important caveats. The term smallness is entirely of my own choosing. It thus does not claim to offer a direct or literal translation of an equivalent vernacular concept, but rather serves as an umbrella term with which to work out, and bring together, various instances of downplaying or “banalizing” transnational connectedness, mobility, and trading skills, all intimately tied to the internalized, at times tactically used, notion of Laos’s insignificance and inferiority. Bringing together vernacular key phrases such as thammada (normal, ordinary), thongthin (local) and bo pen mue asip/bo pen asip (unprofessional), my etic linguistic approximation of smallness is meant to be a conceptual guide with which to thoroughly examine the transnational worlds of cross-border traders in northern Laos. Moreover, writing this study of transnational trade as an ethnography of smallness, I need to be cautious about using heavily-laden, larger concepts and grand narratives, especially regarding my use of the term cosmopolitanism as outlined above. While I do indeed find it useful to reflect upon parts of my empirical material through the lens of critical cosmopolitanism, this book is not primarily a book on cosmopolitanism. I develop and apply non-normative and practical notions of cosmopolitanism mainly for the case of local marketplaces in Luang Namtha, as outlined in chapter 3. This chapter’s position precisely in the middle of the book mirrors the central role of these marketplaces in the transnational worlds of both cross-border traders and local residents. They display in their spatial and material organization, and resulting social practices, an overall setting which I attempt to conceptually grasp through cosmopolitan notions. At the very least, the latter helped me to rethink and further make sense of the cross-border trade practices and mobilities previously observed and described in the preceding chapters. Thus, as reflected again in the largely chronological organization of the chapters, the marketplaces were also central to the book’s underlying trajectory of ethnographic fieldwork. As all my various case studies, full of biographies and traders’ practices and circulations of commodities, intersect there in some way or other, marketplaces spatially ground the workings of transnational flows and in turn serve as conceptual grounds for better understanding them. With longer stays in and around marketplaces, I began to conceptually combine notions of banality and cosmopolitanism which paved the way for me to draft my study of Luang Namtha’s traders’ transnational worlds as an

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ethnography of smallness. Importantly, the conceptual engagement with cosmopolitanism in this book has gradually emerged within (almost halfway through) long-term exploratory fieldwork, and not from a working hypothesis already formulated at the outset. A priori conceptual preoccupation with cosmopolitanism, already arousing certain epistemological expectations, would, I argue, obscure and distract from the multifaceted, and at times probably counterintuitive, unexpected, or surprising realities of borderland discourses, practices, and performances. Hence, it would yet again perpetuate their invisibility in academic representations of (Sino-)Southeast Asian borderlands that often centre on (and are distracted by?) larger, less “banal,” conceptual discussions, such as notions of transborder or transnational ethnicity. Working towards an innovative ethnography of transnational trading worlds along the lines of smallness, this book takes issue with those larger scholarly representations of Asian borderlands in general, and the Yunnan–Laos–Thailand borderland in particular.

Taking Issue with Worlds of Larger Representations The borderland of Yunnan, northern Laos, and northern Thailand is naturally linked by the Mekong River and has been strongly connected culturally, economically, and politically. Tai-speaking groups, particularly the Tai Lue, were historically among the most mobile populations travelling and trading across this area and still are widely scattered across the region. In China, the Tai Lue are subsumed with other Tai-speaking peoples under the overall ethnic category “Dai” (傣族 daizu), constituting one of the 55 official national ethnic minorities (少数民族 shaoshu minzu) in addition to the Han Chinese majority. Historically constituting the predominant ethnic group in their “homeland” of Sipsongpanna (before the 16th century known as Muang Lue, “the polity of the Lue”), which was incorporated in 1953 into the People’s Republic of China as the “Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture” of Yunnan province, the Tai Lue with their population of 316,151 (roughly 28% of the whole prefectural population) are now the second largest ethnic group, behind the Han Chinese majority of 340,431 (30% of the population).8 In Laos, which represents itself as a multi-ethnic country, the Tai Lue population is estimated at 126,229 people in the latest national census of 2015, constituting 2% of the national population (Lao 8 These numbers are obtained from the Xishuangbanna section of the Chinese national census of 2010.

Introduction

27

Statistics Bureau 2015, p. 37). Liew-Herres, Grabowsky, and Wichasin (2012, p. 8) estimate that Tai Lue account for roughly 20% of the population in the northwestern provinces of Bokeo, bordering Thailand, and Luang Namtha (especially in Muang Sing) near the border to China. For Thailand, they estimate about 400,000 Tai Lue, mainly living in the northern provinces of Lamphun, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Phayao, and Nan (Ibid.) This region’s commercial history has been most prominently studied in the context of Yunnanese caravan trade networks. While Andrew Forbes (1986, 1987) specializes in the Yunnanese caravan trade with northern Thailand in the 19th and 20th centuries, Ann Maxwell Hill’s (1982) doctoral dissertation deals with historical and present migration patterns of Yunnanese into northern Thailand (with Chiang Mai as her main research site), and is the foundation of her more general study on ethnicity and trade among the Yunnanese in Southeast Asia (Hill 1998). Chiranan Prasertkul (1989), studying the Yunnanese trade in the 19th century, suggests that Yunnan was part of two major socio-economic systems, one dealing with Chinese polities and the other with neighbouring non-Chinese polities in Southeast Asia. Due to the availability of Western sources, emerging from the increased interest in the regional trading opportunities expressed by French and British colonialists, especially in the period from 1830 to 1860 (Giersch 2006, pp. 161-162), most of the historical evidence of a flourishing interregional trading network stems from the 19th and 20th centuries. Because of this temporal confinement to the late colonial era, the aforementioned scholars admit that much work needs to be done to retrace the antiquity and the historical genesis of overland trade in general, which probably “extend[s] back as far as Tang Dynasty times (618–907 A.D.) and even before” (Forbes 1987, p. 3). Acknowledging the antiquity of Yunnanese long-distance trade, C. Patterson Giersch (2006, p. 166) sees in the period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries a “commercial revolution”: “This Yunnan-Southeast Asian trade connection was an ancient one, but never before had so many local producers been incorporated into regional trade as buyers and sellers.” These caravan trade routes mainly traversed a region which David K. Wyatt (2003, pp. 28-29) identif ies as the “Tai World”9 of lowland valley See 2010年西双版纳州第六次全国人口普查主要数据公报 (“Bulletin of the Main Data of the Sixth National Census of the Population of Xishuangbanna Prefecture 2010”), available on the website of the Xishuangbanna Statistical Bureau: https://w w w.xsbn.gov.cn/tjj/67466.news.detail.dhtml?news_id=1161784 (accessed 15 November 2021). 9 David K. Wyatt uses “Tai World” as a historical term, mainly to contextualize his history of Thailand; it refers to the premodern period of the cultural, religious, social, economic, and

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settlements emerging at the fringes of the Southeast Asian empires at the beginning of the 13th century, which subsequently became more visibly institutionalized through the foundations of various larger Tai polities in the 13th and 14th centuries (e.g., Sipsongpanna or Muang Lue, which were already established in the late 12th century, Lan Na in present northern Thailand, Lan Xang in present-day Laos, the Shan States in present eastern Myanmar). The complex socio-political organization of different Tai principalities later drew the attention of colonial ethnographers and travellers (Archer 1889, 1896; Bock 1884; Colquhoun 1885; Le May 1927), influencing subsequent ethnographic studies of their customs, religion, language, agricultural techniques of wet-rice cultivation, and the social and political organization of the Tai polity itself, the muang (Condominas 1990; Tambiah 1976; Turton 2000). Amidst the cultural and linguistic similarity among different Tai subgroups, scholars began to attempt to study the ethno-cultural and -historical particularity and distinctiveness of single Tai groups such as the Tai Lue (Moerman 1965, 1968; Hsieh 1989; Sethakul 2000; Keyes 1992). Based on this scholarship, it can be stated in general that the Tai Lue are mostly sedentary wet-rice farmers in lowland river valleys, who speak and write a Tai language which is quite close to the northern Thai language,10 and follow Theravada Buddhism, in combination with non-Buddhist elements such as the worshipping of local guardian spirits (e.g., Renard 1990). Besides their agricultural sophistication and high level of socio-political organization, they also played a significant role in regional Sino-Southeast Asian trade dynamics, with multi-ethnic marketplaces at their core (Hill 1998, p. 64). Sun Laichen (2000) also highlights the role of Tai traders in his doctoral dissertation on “Ming-Southeast Asian Overland Interactions.” He cites detailed trade regulations in Tai law codes, various Tai sources referring to the aristocratic involvement in trade, the formation of caravans, the political expansion of different Tai domains with the gradual emergence of larger political entities, most notably Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, with the latter conventionally considered as the forerunner of a later newly centralized kingdom of Siam. The “Tai World,” characterized by cultural and linguistic commonality, economic interdependence, but also political fragmentation due to complex family alliances and intrigues, was subsequently partitioned by the kingdoms of Siam and China and the British and French colonial powers, and finally by the newly founded nation-states of Thailand, Burma, China, and Laos. Consequently, Wyatt stops referring to the “Tai World” when dealing with the territorial consolidation of Siam and colonial powers from the mid-19th century onwards. 10 “Northern Thai language” refers here more correctly to the kham muang (คำำ�เมืือง) language and the Tai Tham or tua muang (ตััวเมืือง) script of the Tai Yuan who constitute the Tai majority of present northern Thailand. They call themselves rather khon muang (คนเมืือง), the “people of the muang.”

Introduction

29

appearance of merchants in epics, and also Chinese sources referring to periodic Tai markets as proof for the significance of trade in Tai societies (Laichen 2000, pp. 191-194). Regarding the Chinese observation of local Tai periodic markets, Giersch (2006, pp. 162-168) argues that in fact, Han Chinese, who gradually moved into the borderlands, adopted preexisting Tai five-day periodic markets that were already locally established from the 16th century, or even earlier. Importantly, this points to inherent local economic structures, especially in the case of Sipsongpanna (see also Liew-Herres, Grabowsky, and Wichasin 2012), which were subsequently integrated into the Yunnanese long-distance trading system. Numerous scholars have interpreted the new dynamics of neoliberal regional economic opening-up since the 1990s, which have led to new degrees of cross-border openness and connectivity across the region, as reviving this premodern fluid and borderless “Tai World,” transgressing the grid of arbitrarily drawn boundaries of modern nation-states. This revitalization of historically rooted connectivity among different Tai groups has indeed been mostly studied in relation to the Tai Lue (e.g., Davis 2003, 2005; Panyagaew 2008), but also the Tai Yai (Siriphon 2007, 2008), and especially in the sense of a regional revival of a specific Tai Theravada Buddhism (Cohen 2000a, 2001; Han 2013, pp. 108-126; Kiyoshi 2000; Panyagaew 2010, 2013; Kang 2009). In this scholarship, cross-border trade flows are often reduced to the circulation of mostly cultural commodities, with border-crossing Tai Lue Buddhist monks as central carriers, creating a possible pan-Tai ethnoscape, for instance, in terms of facilitating the distribution of new formats of modern Tai Lue pop music (Panyagaew 2008; Davis 2005), potentially creating a “symbolic geography” of revived “premodern flows” (Davis 2003, pp. 181-189). Recalling the aforementioned historical context, featuring a wide range of different local and regional actors—both “highlanders and lowlanders” (Giersch 2006, p. 166) and Yunnanese long-distance traders—trading at multi-ethnic marketplaces (Hill 1998, p. 64), this ethnicity-based assumption of revived “premodern flows” seems to arise from a quite disturbingly modern understanding of and emphasis on ethnic identities constructed as part of newly created nation-states. In this ethnic translation of new globalization dynamics as (re-)emerging transnational “ethnoscapes,” comprising “landscapes of group identity” (Appadurai 1996, p. 48), cross-border trade activities are viewed primarily from an ethnic angle. Within the logics of the notion of transnational Tai communities, cross-border trade is thus understood as a major vehicle for shaping the “Tai World” by carrying symbols and meanings of Tai ethnic identity across national borders. Curiously enough, studies on Tai Lue traders

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dealing with more “mundane” commodities such as agricultural or household products are virtually absent, for they could, one might assume, undermine the logics of an “ethnoscape” since those commodities are by definition ethnically neutral.11 Andrew Walker (2009, p. 21) accordingly warns that [t]o some extent, the transnational Tai community is a compelling construction only to the extent that it is abstracted from more quotidian and socially embedded concerns. This abstraction can result in a culturalist orientation in which a hollowed-out politics of identity displaces a more grounded engagement with livelihood struggles and aspirations.

Sharing his concern about compelling but hollow abstractions, this book goes beyond scholarly expectations about representational worlds of the Thailand–Laos–Yunnan borderland by attending to the locally grounded, quotidian transnational worlds of small-scale traders of various Tai and non-Tai ethnicities in the northern Lao province of Luang Namtha. As Nigel Thrift (2008, p. 18) put it in his “non-representational theory,” “social scientists are there to hear the world and to make sure that it can speak back just as much as they are there to produce wild ideas—and then out of this interaction they may be able to produce something that is itself equally new.” Similarly trying to trace the “geography of what happens” (Thrift 2008, p. 2), instead of reifying a “symbolic geography” (Davis 2003), my study is guided by these deliberately open questions: How do traders themselves perceive, articulate, and live their worlds of transnational connectivity, mobility, and relations? How do their understandings of their borderland livelihoods contribute to a different conceptualization of this particular border region, and (Asian) borderlands in general? And, if it is still significant: to what extent do the latter overlap with or deviate from scholarly ethnic mappings (“Tai World”) and official politico-economic regional cartographies such as Economic Corridors of the GMS or the BRI? To answer these questions, I deem the lens of smallness more suitable, and more empirically relevant, than abstract and representational notions of transnational ethnicity. It illustrates how larger dynamics of infrastructure and development are concretely translated into, and in turn produced by, local discourse and practice—and associated individual personal experiences, hopes and fears—on the ground. Being closer to actually lived cross-border 11 A notable exception is Antonella Diana’s 2013 study on Tai Lue small-scale traders trading rice and corn across the China–Laos border; that study, however, mainly focuses on instrumental notions of ethnicity in studying the traders’ “border strategies.”

Introduction

31

mobility, it captures the traders’ practice of highlighting the ordinariness of transnational connectivity. It foregrounds their underlying, unadorned pragmatism of daily navigating the borderland economy of new (and old) transport infrastructure, commodity flows, marketplaces, and rotating trade fairs. Through careful ethnographic observation of the ways in which small-scale traders utter and perform smallness, I reveal previously unvoiced trajectories involving high levels of risk-taking, new aspirations, creative flexibility, mobility, and mostly self-taught transnational trading expertise that illustrate their indispensable role in this borderland economy. Operating at small scales, they are nonetheless closely linked to different state agencies, such as customs, immigration, and border patrol. Furthermore, they are often approached by larger (state-owned or private) companies because of their extensive local cross-border contacts and knowledge, enabling them to skilfully exploit the economic geographies of both state-sanctioned subregional infrastructure projects and more informal cross-border arrangements. Therefore, it is difficult, if not unproductive, to draw clear lines between the state and petty traders, large-scale and small-scale commerce, or formal and informal cross-border practices. Despite, or rather because of, their invisibility, Luang Namtha’s small-scale traders are the glue that holds this borderland economy together.

Cross-Border Traders in Laos: Unheard and Invisible in Scholarship Smallness or informality of entrepreneurship has been studied elsewhere largely as a phenomenon of post-socialist transformation, particularly in post-Soviet states (Mandel and Humphrey 2002) giving rise to (often female) “shuttle traders” or “suitcase traders” crossing newly emerging national borders within a post-Soviet world and also crossing into newly accessible markets in neighbouring Europe, Turkey, and China (Mukhina 2014; Eder and Öz 2010; Golunov 2017; Yükseker 2004; Karrar 2019; Alff 2015). Smallscale entrepreneurialism and trade has been also studied for post-socialist Asian economies such as Vietnam (Leshkowich 2014; Horat 2017) and China (Hsu 2007). Regarding Vietnam, there has been an increasing interest in the changing dynamics of marketplaces (Endres and Leshkowich 2018), paralleled by a burgeoning scholarship on small-scale traders and markets on the China–Vietnam border, which reopened in the 1990s (Endres 2015; Grillot 2016; Turner 2013; Chan 2013; Endres 2019; Grillot 2018; Bonnin 2018). One could argue, provocatively, that the centrality of Vietnam in studies of entrepreneurship and trade in mainland Southeast Asia, with the

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comparative tendency to look at China, is rooted in the somehow biased presumption of a certain cultural entrepreneurial predisposition, first rooted in Chinese culture before it gradually influenced Vietnamese society as well (see, for example, Heberer 2003). Apart from stressing cultural similarities, comparative studies of China and Vietnam also seem to be attractive for comprehending socialist transformations in Asia in general (e.g., Chan, Kerkvliet, and Unger 1999; Gillespie and Nicholson 2005).12 The virtual absence of Laos in studies of entrepreneurial smallness and small-scale traders might also be tied to the assumption of the inherently urban dimension of trade and entrepreneurship. Mainly concerned with (allegedly) rural areas, scholarship on current developments in Laos largely discounts potential urbanization dynamics beyond the cities of Vientiane and Luang Prabang. The late Grant Evans, having previously studied agrarian change during the first two decades under the socialist period (Evans 1988, 1995) highlighted the lack of studies of urban Laos as early as 2003, writing: “While many researchers understandably have their sights set on minorities in the mountains or the hinterland, some of them would also do well to look at the cities. The future ineluctably lies there” (Evans 2003, p. 205). Largely embedded in the “peasant economy” of Laos, the scholarly focus on contemporary Laos concentrates on the transformation from a subsistence economy towards a capitalist market economy (e.g., Rigg 2005). The resulting transition towards a cash crop economy involves resettlement policies and land concessions (e.g., Goudineau 1997; Baird and Shoemaker 2007). Regarding the latter, studies often focus on livelihood changes undergone by upland ethnic minorities, especially in northern Laos, whose centuries-long practice of swidden agriculture has been slated for eradication by the Lao government. The resulting involuntary dynamics of migration and mobility have been well documented, compared with the significantly smaller scholarship of somewhat voluntary or spontaneous mobility (e.g., Bouté 2014; Lyttleton 2006), increasingly focusing on the gendered dimension of mobility (Kusakabe et al. 2015). Representative of the scholarly reflection of dynamics of change, Vanina Bouté and Vatthana Pholsena (2017) identify in their edited volume Changing Lives in Laos three larger themes: the political power of the state, agrarian change and migration, and new forms of social interactions. Regarding the latter, they mention the causal relation between mobility and migration on the one hand and rising urbanization and multi-ethnicity of localities 12 However, a recent edited volume includes Laos, as well as China and Vietnam, in its comparative analysis of what the authors call “the socialist market economy in Asia” (Hansen, Bekkevold, and Nordhaug 2020).

Introduction

33

on the other hand. What is less prominently studied in this volume are the changes in the consequential occupational structure. Increasing degrees of mobility, whether of voluntary or involuntary character, have also been attributed to dynamics of occupational diversification involving more non-farming activities, signalling processes of “deagrarianisation” and “depeasantisation,” as well as a “progressive delocalisation of work” (away from the conventional analytical unit of the village) (Rigg 2005, p. 151). While Rigg’s corresponding case studies include waged labour in the garment, agricultural, and domestic work industries, trade or retail of non-agricultural commodities is not mentioned. There is brief reference to traders who are said to buy agricultural surplus from the studied households, but this is not elaborated on any further. This is probably owing to the persistent focus on predominantly “rural households,” paradoxically ignoring urbanizing localities while emphasizing urbanization elsewhere (Rigg 2005, pp. 81-83). In view of the relatively narrow focus on the role of emerging small-scale entrepreneurs and traders in other post-socialist states in Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia and Laos, a special issue of Asia Pacific Viewpoint (2016, Vol. 57, No. 2) importantly sets out to illuminate “‘under-the-radar’ crossborder livelihoods in mainland Southeast Asia” (Taylor 2016, p. 152, fn. 2). However, this promising endeavour to foreground otherwise obscured commercial dynamics in post-socialist Southeast Asian borderlands ultimately reflects the strong rural bias in (Southeast Asian) borderland anthropology: amidst the preoccupation with rural and supposedly remote areas, largely focusing on uplands and their ethnic inhabitants, newly emerging urban dynamics are, curiously, almost always overlooked. With the notable exception of Vanina Bouté’s (2017) work on the rise of urban space in the form of provincial capitals and newly-established district administrative centres in northern Laos, it seems that Laos is not yet on the radar of studies attending to newly emerging (urban) entrepreneurship in (post-socialist) Southeast Asia. The conspicuous absence of traders and entrepreneurs in contemporary Lao studies is notable against the background in which allegedly remote, non-urban upland areas can look back at a long history of involvement in regional trade networks. In the case of Luang Namtha, Olivier Evrard (1997, p. 12) states that this province “has for centuries been a place for trade and movement to and fro. Numerous mule trails, nowadays simply footpaths, once criss-crossed the province linking Siamese, Burmese and Chinese border posts, together with those of [neighbouring] Oudomxai province.” In his seminal study The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma,

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Andrew Walker (1999, p. 25) aims to unpack “the myth of Lao isolation” by highlighting Laos’s significant historical role in regional trading networks and argues that the period of restricted mobility and closed borders between 1976 and 1988, following the victory of the Pathet Lao and leading to the country’s political and economic isolation, was “something of an anomaly in Lao history” (1999, p. 62). Importantly, he adds: [h]owever, for many observers of contemporary developments, this restrictive decade has become a powerful and timeless motif of longstanding Lao isolation. The historically brief experience of closed (but not completely closed) borders has, it seems, written Lao peripherality deep into contemporary consciousness. […] Journalistic and academic images of Lao isolation and vulnerability do not sufficient justice to the historical depth of its experience in managing external connections. (Walker 1999, pp. 62-63)

It seems that this “contemporary consciousness,” described by Andrew Walker almost 20 years ago, still influences the (scholarly) perception of Laos wherein there is little room for extensive ethnographic attention to cross-border trade and traders, transnational mobilities, or urban dynamics. Tellingly, in cases where there is indeed peripheral mention of cross-border trade, Walker’s highly influential work is still often the sole text referred to.

The Heavy Weight of “Zomian Baggage” in (Sino-)Southeast Asian Borderlands Yet, at the same time, the scholarly prominence of the uplands of Laos and Southeast Asia in general has increased, largely through the influential spatial constructs of the “Southeast Asian Massif” (Michaud 2000) and “Zomia” (Van Schendel 2002; Scott 2009) which put the lesser-studied interstitial uplands of China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia back on the academic map. Initially developed by Willem van Schendel as a way of transgressing and scaling up arbitrarily drawn areas and nation-state boundaries, it is James Scott’s subsequently advanced, and extensively debated, Zomian trope, describing uplanders’ historically rooted culture of state evasion, that has attracted a large audience.13 His anarchistic understanding of Zomia reflects a certain 13 Willem van Schendel’s Zomia originally covers the highlands of Tibet, Kashmir, northern and eastern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh (Chittagong Hill Tracts), Myanmar, southwestern

Introduction

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tendency among overly ethnic conceptualizations of transnational spaces (recalling notions of a “Tai World” mentioned earlier) or borderlands, which are often set against the state. Different forms of ethnic minority resistance practices and strategies of “rejection/withdrawal/escape/hiding in response to power exerted by governments” (Leepreecha, McCaskill, and Buadeng 2008, p. 7), previously studied within national contexts, are now being projected onto a larger transnational scale in order to serve as the underlying coherent feature of the new regional upland construct of Zomia. This binary between oppressive lowland state apparatus and upland freedom-seekers dismisses any possibility of other forms of encounters between lowland and highland domains and significantly limits the scope of regional interconnection within Zomia. As this dichotomy has been already extensively discussed in criticism (Jonsson 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017; Brass 2012), and its historical accuracy and implied universal validity questioned, challenged, and nuanced (Lieberman 2010; Ma 2013; Formoso 2010; Giersch 2010; Tappe 2018, 2015; Pholsena 2017), I do not want to engage in yet another lengthy discussion on Zomia here. What should be noted, however, is that although Scott’s largely historical argument of highlanders’ state-evasion strategies ends in the early 1950s, with the rise of more sophisticated state technologies and policies of “enclosure” and “engulfment” (Scott 2009, pp. 10-12), the Zomian trope remains highly appealing to scholars working on contemporary livelihoods in Sino-Southeast Asian borderlands (Michaud and Forsyth 2011; Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015; Turner 2013, 2012), while also inspiring new applications as “maritime Zomias” (Hong 2016; Bourdier et al. 2015) as well as “Inner Zomias” within nation-states (Bourdier et al. 2015). For instance, Jean Michaud’s and Tom Forsyth’s (2011) edited volume Moving Mountains: Ethnicity and Livelihoods in Highland China, Vietnam, and Laos contains studies on local livelihood strategies of different “highland minorities” (including the Tai Lue) that emphasize their culturally embedded agency. While importantly linking diverse livelihoods to a fluid and situational notion of ethnicity, comprising flexibly shifting identities and practices, the China (Yunnan and Sichuan provinces), Thailand (besides the north also western Thailand along the border with Myanmar), Laos, and Vietnam. The geographical span of James Scott’s Zomia is more or less the area of Jean Michaud’s “Southeast Asian Massif,” first mentioned in 1997, comprising “south-west China, northern and eastern Burma, northern Thailand, eastern Cambodia, northern and central Vietnam, and nearly all of Laos” (McKinnon and Michaud 2000, p. 5). Jean Michaud, with the support of Margarete Byrne Swain and Meenaxi BarkatakiRuscheweyh, expanded the notion of “Southeast Asian Massif” in their Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the South-East Asian Massif (2016) by the uplands of northeast India, Bangladesh, peninsular Malaysia, and Taiwan.

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different case studies are, in the end, strongly framed by notions of subtle and hidden forms of resistance—thereby demonstratively borrowing from James Scott’s episteme of peasant resistance (Scott 1985, 2009). Elsewhere, Michaud (2010, p. 208) refers to the historically prevailing transregional economic connectedness between highland areas and political lowland centres, but later reduces the “current appeal” of Zomia to Scott’s notion of “friction of terrain” (i.e., highlanders’ safety through inaccessible terrain) which might soon vanish through modern global forces of all-encompassing infrastructure, communication technology, trade, migration, and tourism. This concern about the erasure of the “friction of terrain” is relevant as long as the highlands need to be seen as a genuinely different and contrasting socio-cultural hideaway from state and global forces. If it does not stress resistance, this assumed tension between marginal, traditional ethnic uplanders, on the one hand, and forces of modernity and globalization promoted by the “state,” on the other, informs the understanding of ethnic economic activities and agency as necessarily different vis-à-vis the “state.” For instance, studying the involvement of different ethnic groups (largely, but not limited to, the Hmong) in the Sino-Vietnamese small-scale cross-border trade between the provinces of Yunnan and Lao Cai, Sarah Turner (2013) advocates their creation of “upland development alternatives” or “upland trading-scapes” through which “local people possess the agency to ‘do things differently’ from hegemonic development approaches” (Turner 2013, p. 15). Hence, while not necessarily describing instances of resistance to or evasion from the state, ethnic trade practices are still mainly understood through the prism of clearly bounded relations between upland margins and lowland state centres, the latter gradually being supplemented by forces of neoliberal globalization, against which they develop “upland alternatives” conceptualized along notions of agency, indigenization of modernity, everyday politics, and resistance (see also Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015). In this vein, the “state,” while not explicitly studied, is still conceptually needed to ultimately make sense of ethnic agency as an alternative, necessarily different source of identity and practice. This only attests to Philp Abrams’s (1988, p. 61) early observation “that the state, conceived of as a substantial entity separate from society has proved a remarkably elusive object of analysis.” While not denying empirical evidence of negative, and sometimes disastrous and conflictual, effects of national or regional development policies on the local livelihoods of various ethnic groups (triggering different kinds of responding mechanisms on their part), the aspect of cooperative dynamics, at least in principle, should not be excluded a priori. By keeping open this possibility, the dynamically changing nature of the

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“state” itself is also factored in. Embracing Sherry B. Ortner’s (1995, p. 190) call for richer and more nuanced ethnographies to “reveal the ambivalences and ambiguities of resistance itself,” Holly High’s (2014) ethnography of local engagements with poverty reduction programmes in southwest Laos focuses on the complexity of individual desires which “can produce resistance to the dominant assemblage, but […] also inspire normativity and aspirations for conformity” (2014, p. 15). The notion of desire also features prominently in Oskar Salemink’s (2015) study on Vietnamese “highlanders,” the Mon-Khmer-speaking ethnic group of the Bru in particular. In critical and blunt response to Scott’s “Zomia,” he writes: I encountered hardly any Highlanders who did not wish to partake in the promise of modernity, especially in the guise of consumer goods. In spite of processes of marginalisation, dispossession and exclusion, as well as inter-ethnic tension, the desire for goods and prestige paradoxically link Highlanders firmly to state- and market-driven development programs (Salemink 2015, p. 394).

That I have arrived at this brief, by no means exhaustive excursus to Zomian representations of ethnic borderlands only demonstrates that it is almost impossible to avoid an engagement with Scott’s Zomia thesis if studying parts of upland Southeast Asia. Whether critiquing or subscribing to it, or creating new “Zomias” and “Zomians,” scholarship on upland Southeast Asia, often in different borderland contexts, seemingly needs to somehow relate to and position towards Scott’s work (that also includes me, apparently). As Harold Brookfield (2011, p. 494) predicted, “[n]o-one will again write about the people of this and other ‘marginal’ regions without reference to these ideas.” Thus, the underlying spatially configured epistemology of lowland state hegemony and ethnic upland people—the “tribal zone” or “tribal slot” (Jonsson 2017)—is being constantly sustained as an academic playground to justify new production of scholarship. That “Scott’s analysis of the Southeast Asian hinterlands until about 1950 is a representation […] that allows the readers to come into a sense of self, other, and world in a single move” (Jonsson 2014, p. 2) might be symptomatic of a certain scholarly convenience: letting research be guided by, and correspond to, the impulse to fit social, spatial, and temporal representations, resulting in neat and coherent narratives. Hjorleifur Jonsson (2014, p. 5) thus urges that [p]ractitioners [of anthropology] should try to undo and counter some of the reckless appropriation of others’ lives, stories, and identities for

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projects of scholarly achievements and factionalism that brush aside questions of the politics of producing knowledge through representations of social life.

In this book, I intend to do just that. I trace the actually “lived borderworlds” (Dean 2020; Sadan 2013; Van Spengen 2000) of Luang Namtha-based smallscale traders—through their eyes. While aware of the danger of simply creating yet another borderland representation, I cautiously use the notion of “transnational worlds” to explore the traders’ subjective ways of navigating different scales of geographies of cross-border trade, combining the local “little world of Laos,” frequent border-crossing (“borderworlds”), and transnational dynamics at the same time, all played out through language and practices of smallness. In striving to emancipate from the “Zomian baggage” weighing on the Sino-Southeast Asian borderlands, going beyond binary representations of state centres and marginal ethnic subjects, a look into Andrew Walker’s (1999) pioneering work is again instructive. Introducing the notion of “collaborative borderlands,” Walker (1999, p. 112) reveals “complex and subtle collaborations between local initiative and state power.” More than 20 years later, the time is ripe for a renewed “micro-sociology of borders” (Ibid.) between Yunnan, Laos, and Thailand, which is not overly obstructed by representational narratives of the “Southeast Asian Massif” and “Zomia” or celebrations of a revived borderless ethnic “Tai World.” Looking beyond Sino-Southeast Asian borderlands is equally rewarding. For instance, Tina Harris’s (2013) Geographical Diversions: Tibetan Trade, Global Transactions is a similarly designed multi-sited ethnography of small-scale traders in a tri-national borderland. Following traders and tracing trading routes between Nepal, China (Tibet), and India, it foregrounds their own flexible practices of place-making along a spectrum of differently experienced and produced mobility and fixity, outlining “alternative mappings” of actually lived economic geographies which, depending on the particular context, might deviate from or coincide with state discourses. I am similarly engaged in an ethnographically informed confrontation with competing spatial and temporal representations and likewise invest in making connections between ordinary daily life and larger transnational and global dynamics of change. However, my ethnography is not primarily tied together by discourses and practices of place-making, but it introduces the analytical lens of smallness—as discourse, practice, and performance—to understand the social poetics of this transnationally interlinked borderland in its mundaneness, largely from the Lao (Luang Namtha) perspective.

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Coming to Terms with my Research Motivation/Imagination My oft-repeated concern with paying serious attention to the everyday lived, vernacular worlds of cross-border traders arises from the fact that I was initially quite immersed in the academic “Tai World.” Adopting the ethnic Tai lens, my original research design was to trace the transnational ethnic Tai Lue dimension of small-scale trade relations and networks across Yunnan, Laos, and Thailand. The overland link between Thailand and China through Laos, now officially labelled as the Kunming–Bangkok Highway, has fascinated me since 2008, when I studied Chinese language and International Relations at Yunnan University in Kunming as an exchange undergraduate student. I became aware of this overland route due to rather pragmatical considerations. Before my studies in Kunming, I had already lived in Thailand for two years. Relying on cheap ways to travel up to Thailand to visit my friends there, my Thai classmates recommended I take the bus, down to Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, crossing into northern Laos (Bokeo and Luang Namtha provinces), and finally to Chiang Khong in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province. Having taken this trip several times, I realized that this journey overland, taking about 20 hours from Kunming to Chiang Khong (and more than 30 hours to Bangkok), was by far the most popular way for Thai students at universities and colleges in Yunnan province (and even beyond) to visit home. My numerous journeys along this road, during which I could observe, besides students, international tourists, Buddhist and Muslim pilgrims, entrepreneurs, traders, and farm workers, triggered my further research interest in Yunnan–Southeast Asian interactions—working on the history of Yunnanese caravan trade with Southeast Asia and, subsequently, on Yunnan’s provincial authorities’ current policies to establish this border province as a geopolitical and geoeconomic “bridgehead” (桥头堡 qiaotoubao) between Southwest China and Southeast Asia. While working on the latter, I was increasingly exposed to a general hype around connectivity between Yunnan and Southeast Asia (mainly Thailand), actively boosted in Yunnan and Thailand by travel agencies, the media, business groups, and academics. One key dimension via which this newly enabled infrastructural connectivity was advertised and celebrated is the notion of commonly shared Tai Lue ethnicity, promoted most visibly in the context of touristic ethnic commodif ication, especially in Xishuangbanna, but also throughout northern Thailand. Frequently travelling between Xishuangbanna and Chiang Rai while reading scholarship on a reviving “Tai World,” I readily assumed the rising importance of transnational Tai Lue cultural and

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economic networks. I thus translated my own cross-border mobility, while consuming Tai “symbolic geography” (Davis 2003), into a transnational ethnic Tai Lue “trading-scape” (cf. Turner 2013). That I started my initial f ield research in academic institutions in Kunming and Chiang Mai only reflects the prevailing politics of the academic production of knowledge of the “Tai World,” or the “Thai-Yunnan Borderlands,”14 in which “ethnographic work emanating from north Thailand has been crucial and pivotal” (Tapp 2015, p. 10). However, when I eventually got off the comfortable international overland buses, although still equipped with a heavy baggage of secondary literature, I soon faced an ethnographic reality on the ground that did not uphold overly ethnic representations of cross-border trade. In a sense, this book traces how the lens I initially applied— that of (Tai Lue) transnational ethnicity and identity—has set the stage for a different (probably unexpected or counterintuitive) course of fieldwork that gravitates gradually towards northern Laos and foregrounds the central and vital role of small-scale traders in linking Chinese and Thai markets. This intellectual trajectory affirms George Marcus’s (2011, p. 23) central tenet of multi-sited ethnography: “The conceptual apparatus and design of a research project is derived not from academic literatures or theories, but from ethnography itself by working through a selected subjects’ or group’s para-ethnographic […] take on a problem cognitively shared with the ethnographer.”

Journeying the Field This book draws on 15 months of extensive multi-sited fieldwork, carried out between February 2015 and January 2016, January/February 2017, and August/September 2019. While covering parts of Yunnan province, northern Laos (Bokeo and Luang Namtha provinces) and northern Thailand (Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces), my research gradually came to focus on Luang Namtha province. As mentioned before, I entered the “field” through regional academic landscapes in Kunming and Chiang Mai. While I met scholars at Yunnan University (Center for Studies of Chinese Southwest’s Borderland Ethnic 14 This designation originates from the “Thai-Yunnan Project” at the Australian National University (ANU), launched in 1987, following the 3rd International Conference on Thai Studies in Canberra in the same year, which was established by the late Gehan Wijeyewardene and, after his death in 2000, significantly shaped by the late Nicholas Tapp as its director.

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Minorities), Yunnan Minzu University (Yunnan Provincial Institute for Ethnic Studies) and the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences (YASS), I was affiliated with the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) at Chiang Mai University. Becoming familiar with the local and regional public and academic discourses and scholarship, I eventually obtained promising keys that would open further doors for my actual field research on (Tai Lue) cross-border trade networks on the ground. Contacts in Kunming repeatedly suggested that I attend regional trade fairs in Xishuangbanna. A Tai Lue graduate student at Chiang Mai University drew my attention to Ban Huay Meng, a Tai Lue village in Chiang Khong district, Chiang Rai province, which is engaged in cross-border trade of fruits across the Mekong River. However, underlining the unpredictability and serendipities of exploratory fieldwork, these two entry points into a neatly assembled potential Tai Lue trading-scape opened the door to a different ethnographic endeavour: exploring the transnational worlds of Lao small-scale traders, centrally yet invisibly operating between Xishuangbanna and Chiang Rai. Studying trade fairs in Xishuangbanna and fruit cultivation and trade in Ban Huay Meng both led me to Luang Namtha province, where increasing numbers of households experiment with promising improvements in regional connectivity to China and Thailand. Having initially taken note of their cross-border practices during fieldwork in China and Thailand, my subsequent research gradually zoomed in on Luang Namtha, where I was slowly becoming acquainted with highly mobile fruit traders, shopkeepers and their local suppliers in and around marketplaces, and traders regularly attending trade fairs in Xishuangbanna and beyond. They cover a wide spectrum in terms of age (mid-20s to late 50s) and ethnicity (Tai Dam, Tai Nuea, Tai Lue, Tai Yuan, Phunoy, Haw—i.e., of Yunnanese descent), come from different social and economic backgrounds, and have arrived at their current involvement in trade activities out of different motivations. While I first, somehow accidentally, became aware of them through my own cross-border mobility between Yunnan and northern Thailand, I was later able to explore this vibrant borderland economy at first hand through their cross-border mobility. Obviously, getting down to their everyday lived transnational worlds required much travelling, as well as time and patience. Establishing a rapport with cross-border traders was challenging, given the overall climate of suspicion, cautiousness, and distance. While I was browsing around the marketplace day after day over a prolonged period, carefully observing and trying to get involved in some first conversation, numerous potential interlocutors were unsure what my actual position and role might be, often conceiving of me as a businessman or investor potentially interested in

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cross-border commerce. Hence, many initially refused to talk to me or were very cautious about disclosing any information. It often required a high degree of explanation and trust-building to develop meaningful relations with my interlocutors, which eventually worked out in most cases, although not always. I was then generally able to accompany them through participant observation, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, and situationally emerging conversations. The latter was employed most frequently as many traders constantly claimed not to be available for an interview as they were too busy with their work. I had to realize quite quickly that scheduling interviews via phone or text message simply did not work, although I was almost always told to do so, largely out of politeness. However, when I simply showed up at their shops or market stalls, I easily ended up chatting with the traders for hours, even if they always felt the need to highlight, or complain, how busy they were. Saying this, all that happened was that more snacks were shared, which often led to having some drinks together. I thus learned not to frame our encounters and conversations as a formally planned interview. Over time, I could establish trustful relations that led to invitations to some of the traders’ homes or to birthday parties and weddings, enabling more informal situations that provided me with much richer material. Some true, long-term friendships would emerge—especially with Amnuay, which is reflected in his presence throughout all subsequent chapters. Having eventually managed to gain some trust, I was still generally asked not to record our conversations. My analysis thus mainly relies on notes written during or, when the situation did not allow this, shortly after my conversations. On the other hand, most of my informants agreed that I use their real names or nicknames in my writing. In cases where they requested anonymity, I have changed their names accordingly. I need to point out that most of my increasingly cordial relations with interlocutors evolved into relationships that were still rooted in keeping some “healthy distance,” a mutual agreement not to infringe each other’s privacy. I soon sensed that they were more comfortable and conf ident when they knew in which situations and contexts they could expect me to be present and interact with me, and in which not. Therefore, I decided to stay mainly at guesthouses in town. This line between our private lives and our working relationship could, of course, be flexible; over time, I could participate in some family events and ceremonies, for instance. However, this was nevertheless possible precisely because of this line, however loosely drawn. Through this sort of mutual concord between research subjects and ethnographer, I advanced the latter’s “role of stepping in and out of society” (Powdermaker 1966, p. 19). Moreover, staying at guesthouses

Introduction

43

allowed for the necessary adaptability for navigating between in situ and en route ethnography, studying both local sites and cross-border movement and mobility whenever the opportunity arose. My stays were always temporary—“always on the go”—continually changing sites in order to trace my interlocutors’ cross-border journeys, as there was often no space left in the trucks of traders picking up fruits in Thailand or attending fairs in China, for instance. At the same time, Luang Namtha town became my base, a necessary spatial grounding which let me participate in the gossip of town and helped me to get to know numerous transient sojourners—besides tourists and businessmen, these also included cross-border traders taking a rest on the way to or from China, Thailand, or destinations within Laos. Knowing where I stayed when I was in town, interlocutors also visited me at my accommodation. Interestingly, many traders related my itinerant way of living to their own cross-border mobile lives, sometimes even expecting me to stay in hotels and guesthouses—as they would do the same while on trips to other provinces in Laos or across the border in Yunnan and Chiang Rai provinces. Some also readily recommended places to stay within their transnational world of trade. However, my own transnational world of multi-sited cross-border ethnography, which spanned three nations and was continually under construction, was in its practical and logistical realization somewhat constrained. I spent much of my time dealing with border-crossing formalities, handling immigration and bureaucracy issues. While I could obtain a first-hand account of the political reality of border regimes in this border region, I was always reminded of my limited cross-border mobility compared to most of my Lao interlocutors. Their local China–Laos or Laos–Thailand border passes, which entitle them to cross both international and local border crossings on a daily basis, are not available to foreigners from any third country, like me. I thus had to rely on a limited number of international border crossings open to passport holders, which often made it impossible to accompany traders on their cross-border trips as they often used local crossings. I could not keep up with their high degree of flexibility and spontaneity in crossing borders. During my stays in Luang Namtha, for instance, it frequently occurred that I needed to reschedule or cancel meetings with interlocutors as they were again on the way to, or had already arrived in, Thailand and China. I often learned via phone calls about their impromptu cross-border itineraries, which sometimes changed on a daily basis. Probably the most painful experience of my suboptimal cross-border mobility was when I decided to follow Lao suppliers of Chinese commodities across the border to China—travelling separately and alone through the international border

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checkpoint in Mohan while they crossed through a local border crossing near Muang Sing (Panghai/Chahe crossing). The plan was to meet up in Mengla, about 60 kilometres from the Muang Sing crossing and 40 kilometres from the Mohan crossing. However, upon arrival in China, after slowly going through the bureaucracy of border-crossing formalities, I learned that my interlocutors were already on the way back to Laos. Furthermore, being channelled through a few internationally open border checkpoints meant I was soon known to respective border officials, which often led to some degree of interrogation and scrutiny. Although it was usually not difficult to smooth these interactions by joking around in the national language of the country I was in, these exchanges were at times draining. Apparently, my linguistic proficiency was central to establishing these relations. Being fluent in Thai and Chinese, and increasingly in Lao, while also proficient in the northern Thai dialect (ค�ำเมือง kham muang), some Tai Lue language, and Yunnanese dialect (云南话 yunnan hua) not only gave me relatively easy access to interlocutors in three different national contexts, but also helped me to trace their linguistic dexterity in readily switching between languages. Although I ambitiously attempted to enter the “field” in Ban Huay Meng with some Tai Lue language skills, acquired during my first month in Kunming, I quickly realized that in the context of Ban Huay Meng’s aspirations of becoming a regional and national “fruit village” (see chapter 2), it was the national language that mattered on the ground, capable of reaching a much wider range of economic actors. Several village traders were also able to speak some Chinese, thus only demonstrating the transnational dimension of their daily business, again going beyond the notion of trading-scapes being necessarily determined by ethnic ties. As the subsequent chapters will demonstrate, this linguistic dexterity between Thai, Lao, and Chinese, which I could participate in relatively easily, is a prominent feature of this borderland region and arguably most visible in northern Laos, where elements of vocabulary from Thai and, in particular, from Chinese have already found their way in everyday language. With this in mind, I pay close attention to vernacular terms in all three national languages, which I also deliberately display in my writing in their respective Chinese, Lao, and Thai scripts to underline the incessant flagging of national language—as part of an ingrained “banal nationalism” (Billig 1995; see my remarks earlier in this introduction). However, multilingual dexterity does not necessarily mean extensive talkativeness. Ironically, the constantly observable tendency among Lao traders to downplay and trivialize their trade activities, as part of their repertoires of smallness, often found expression in their taciturnity. Browsing

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through my fieldnotes, my repeated remarks of “awkward silence” remind me only too well of my initial struggles to conduct longer and meaningful conversations (at least, those perceived as such by me). I often got stuck in a situation in which my interlocutors stressed over and over that there would not be much to say about their borderland lives and practices. The conversations probably became awkward for both sides as I ended up trying to compensate for moments of silence with incessant questions, leading to the equally awkward situation of my emerging monologue. It took me some time to learn to have silent conversations and to understand that the ethnographic spectacularity lies in my interlocutors’ borderland narratives of unspectacular ordinariness and insignificance. Over time, I slowly managed to shift to another mode of conversation, desisting from asking the larger questions and being open to gaining large insights from “small talk,” seriously engaging with the banality of borderland trade and transnational connectedness. Readers might initially feel that the observations in the following chapters are indeed trivial; however, it is this alleged triviality that, over the course of the book, opens up a grounded ethnographic account of the local translation and production of larger dynamics of transnational connectedness. Thus, I arrive at these insights through the language of smallness—both as initial empirical observation and subsequent analytical lens—and not through largely formulated representations and grand narratives.

Outline of the Book The book sketches the transnational worlds of cross-border traders in northern Laos through the notion of smallness in five ethnographic core chapters, contextualized with an introduction and conclusion. Organized to reflect the spectrum of fluid cross-border mobility and the spatially fixed sites for handling transnational connectedness—thus combining en route and in situ ethnographic fieldwork—the chapters cover the main ingredients of the traders’ transnational worlds: regional trade fairs, commodity flows, and marketplaces. To foreground their vernacular vocabulary of actually living their transnational worlds, the title of each chapter incorporates a central catchphrase that is also its point of departure. While they may sound too trivial even for part of a title, the phrases reflect the unfiltered essence of the transnational worlds of smallness this book aims to convey to the reader. The book can be organized roughly in three parts: cross-border movement and transnational commodity flows (chapters 1 and 2), spatial groundings

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in localities of northern Laos (chapters 3 and 4), and overall reflections (chapter 5, together with the conclusion). Mirroring my epistemological journey in the field, chapters 1 and 2 approach this borderland from its Chinese and Thai ends respectively. Regional trade fairs in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and the transnational trade of Thai fruits radiating from a Tai Lue village in northern Thailand might from the outset appear to be central nodes of a transnational ethnic Tai (Lue) trading world. And indeed, at the trade fairs, traders from Luang Namtha frequently stressed their ethnic affinity with China’s Tai Lue population, often bluntly stating that they were Tai Lue. However, though the group contained diverse ethnicities (mostly Tai Dam, but also non-Tai groups), almost none of them was in fact Tai Lue. In chapter 1, I develop the argument that the trading households from Luang Namtha, selling mainly Thai commodities at those trade fairs, tactically mirror the attempts by Chinese local officials and entrepreneurs to advertise and commodify Yunnan’s—and particularly Xishuangbanna’s—geographical and ethno-cultural proximity to its Southeast Asian neighbours. Cross-border ethnic groups such as the Tai Lue, subsumed under the Chinese ethnonym “Dai,” are key to Yunnan’s geopolitical and geoeconomic project of developing the Sino-Southeast Asian frontier. The creation of tangible and symbolic tourism landscapes and commodityscapes resembling Southeast Asian surroundings is a central part of this project. Blending in and experimenting with this local Dai context, Luang Namtha’s traders cultivate a sense of cultural intimacy with Chinese Tai Lue customers through employing colloquial Tai Lue vocabulary in a casual and cheerful tone—stressing, for instance, shared food customs—resulting in long-lasting local networks based on notions of close friendship and (fictive) kinship, which are central to their economic success at these trade fairs. They play their active part in inserting themselves into the representational logics of a reviving transnational “Tai World.” By contrast, in the context of transnational trade of Thai fruits from a Tai Lue village in Thailand to China, it is the emphasis on national difference, and not ethnic affinity, that enables the cross-border fluidity and mobility of traders and commodities. While this village’s cross-border trade network is geographically and culturally embedded in historical processes of Tai Lue cross-border exchange and mobility, I demonstrate in chapter 2 that the villagers’ remembrance of the latter, potentially leading to a transnational ethno-cultural Tai Lue identification, does not necessarily determine their current everyday economic practices. Instead of highlighting co-ethnic bonds across borders, Thai fruit growers and traders, mobile Lao middleman

Introduction

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traders, and Chinese end consumers articulate a vernacular discourse revolving around the notion of graded Thai fruit quality. This notion of quality is highly contested and subject to fierce negotiations across the border, bringing about confrontations over different quality conceptions, especially between much more confident Thai suppliers, on the one hand, and highly demanding Chinese buyers on the other. Mobile Lao cross-border traders appear to have a major stake in this transnational trade as middlemen mediating between Thai and Chinese traders’ quality contestations. Central to this is their often-observed discourse and practice of reserving high-quality fruits for the Chinese market and mediocre fruits for the Lao market. The two cross-border movements of Thai fruits are thus facilitated by this (re)articulated and (re)performed asymmetry of economic development, here concretely expressed in the national distribution pattern of graded fruit quality. In this way, Lao cross-border traders purposely reproduce a frontier of starkly stereotyped economic, developmental, and cultural differentials, always highlighting Laos’s economic inferiority. These two first chapters illustrate what the book is essentially about: it traces how Lao cross-border traders mirror, in discourse and practice, different large-scale representations, mappings, and dynamics of this borderland economy. Importantly, this grounded ethnography of transnational connectivity does not attempt to understand its protagonists through representations, but instead pays attention to how they perceive, pragmatically act upon, sustain, and produce as well as challenge those representations. Here, their practised smallness is a craft of blending in—blending in smoothly within different contexts and representations of this multifarious borderland. Inconspicuously, yet pragmatically and tactically “playing by the rules” of different social and economic environments, such as the symbolic geography of a “Tai World” or the geoeconomic reality of Laos’s relative smallness, these traders and their trajectories of entrepreneurial experimentation might indeed be invisible within larger borderland narratives of transnational ethnicity or top-down mappings of infrastructure, which often tend to focus on symbolic appearance instead of actual practices. The second part (chapters 3 and 4) embeds those cross-border trade strategies of flexibly blending in with different borderland representations and mappings in the locally cosmopolitan context of northern Laos. Attending to marketplaces and individual biographies and narratives of traders in Luang Namtha, these two chapters elaborate the locally ingrained habits, discourses, and practices of handling quotidian transnational connectedness through the modality of smallness. Establishing Luang Namtha’s past and present role as a regionally important and dynamic intersection instead of

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a national periphery, chapter 3 examines this province’s municipal markets in their spatial and material organization, as sites where transnational commodity flows and trade intermediaries, vendors, customers, and travellers from multi-ethnic and multi-national backgrounds intersect and interact on an everyday basis—leading to what I conceptualize as locally rooted “banal cosmopolitanism.” As already mentioned previously in this introduction, I adopt a practical—and not normative—understanding of actually lived cosmopolitanism and focus on the “banal” realm of simultaneously local and transnational mundane commodities for everyday use (almost exclusively from Thailand and China). I refer to the shopkeepers’ and traders’ cosmopolitan capacity to conceive and manoeuvre the overall transnational dimension of their local social and economic lives. Browsing through these marketplaces, this chapter demonstrates that again, as in the case of transnational Thai fruit trade, the cosmopolitan handling of transnationality is, seemingly paradoxically, rooted in clear articulations and negotiations of national differences and boundaries. In chapter 4, I foreground in more detail individual narratives of experimentation that lie behind the cosmopolitan outlook of local marketplaces in Luang Namtha province. I seek to explain, drawing on Holly High’s (2013) notion of an “experimentarian ethic,” the phenomenon of an increasing number of retailers from economically, socially, and ethnically diverse backgrounds all trading Chinese and Thai commodities at marketplaces and beyond. Their individual trajectories reveal instances of entrepreneurial experimentation and accomplishments rooted in notable degrees of transnational knowledge, experience, mobility, and skill. Yet closer examination is needed to render the former visible as these narratives are not explicitly formulated as success stories, but instead framed in a markedly self-deprecating manner, downplaying the scale and professionalism of the traders’ economic activities. By analogy with my usage of “banal” in the previous chapter, they banalize their transnational economic standing as merely “ordinary” (ກຳ�ມະດາ thammada). Besides this articulated ordinariness and implied insignificance, many traders outline their involvement in trade as non-occupational, as they have not learned any proper occupation or skills in a formal setting. One the one hand, cross-border traders euphorically stress the new convenience and practicality of handling transnational connectivity; on the other hand, they often explain their involvement in trade rather negatively as a consequence of various constraints and limitations, most often in terms of lacking education. This narrated weakness and insignificance, yet allowing in practice for successful experimentations, might be one reason for their virtual invisibility in scholarship on contemporary socio-economic issues in Laos, as mentioned before.

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After these four chapters have ethnographically grounded and complicated the representational worlds of borderlands (“Tai World,” Zomian borderworlds) and “little Laos,” therefore contributing both to (Asian) borderland studies in general and Lao studies in particular, the third part engages in some reflections. Chapter 5 returns to my initial discussion of China’s growing influence in the region, in northern Laos and beyond. Here, I critically reflect on the inescapable expectation to write f irst and foremost on China’s assertive infrastructure push under the BRI label when studying current developments in (northern) Laos. In an effort to reverse this epistemological hierarchy of superimposing the lens of BRI infrastructure, I have decided in this book to foreground the ethnographic material which gave rise to the empirically closer and conceptually innovative lens of smallness. I start by discussing the productive dimension of uncertainty and change as an integral part of the traders’ everyday operation of their transnational worlds. Their engagement with the now intensif ied, but not unprecedented, Chinese footprint in the region needs to be understood against the backdrop of their resilience, versatility, and resourcefulness in continually f inding new venues for economic experimentation—and in living with, and actively impacting on, China-driven developments. Ultimately bringing my ethnographic observations into dialogue with prevailing discussions on China’s rising influence, I flesh out how Luang Namtha’s traders, and local residents in general, translate, reproduce, or challenge larger Chinese ideological vocabularies and visions of modernity, development, infrastructural connectivity, and globalization as their own aspirations, hopes, dreams, and fears. This nuanced attention to the diversity of quotidian accounts of and concrete engagements with neighbouring China reveals a wide and intricate spectrum of inspiration, admiration, aspiration, pragmatic choices, disillusion, envy, resentment, and contempt, which might not f ind its way into conventional external comments on China’s inroads into Laos. The conclusion recapitulates northern Lao cross-border traders’ different facets and repertoires of conscious strategies and interiorized habits of smallness. It reflects on how an ethnography of the allegedly banal and trivial can shed signif icant light on larger dynamics of globalization, neoliberal development, geopolitics, and infrastructure intersecting in the borderlands of China, Laos, and Thailand. I discuss how this lens of smallness can contribute to new understandings of, and research agendas for, conventionally ethnicized hinterlands, uplands or borderlands in Southeast Asia and beyond.

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“We Are All Tai Lue” International Trade Fairs as Local Ethnic Affairs Abstract This chapter examines the practices of an ethnically diverse group of traders from the northern Lao province of Luang Namtha at regional cross-border trade fairs in adjacent Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, in China’s Yunnan province. It critically unpacks their frequent claims to share Tai Lue ethnicity with most of the local customers at these fairs. I demonstrate that, instead of constituting an authentic instance of revived longstanding Tai Lue ethnic cross-border networks, their voiced and performed fictive ethnic intimacy is a pragmatic strategy to target Xishuangbanna’s Dai (Tai Lue) customers. Therein, they tactically mirror Chinese local officials’ and entrepreneurs’ attempts to advertise Xishuangbanna’s geographical and ethno-cultural proximity to its Southeast Asian neighbours through a broad and ambiguous notion of “Dainess.” Keywords: Luang Namtha; Xishuangbanna; trade fair; Dai; Tai Lue; fictive ethnicity

In April 2015, I visited for the f irst time a “Border Trade and Tourism Fair” in Jinghong. It is annually held on the occasion of the Dai/Tai Lue New Year festivities in mid-April. Whereas the exhibition hall of the “Xishuangbanna International Convention and Exhibition Center” housed a neatly organized array of booths run by an eclectically international blend of traders both from the region and from far away (notably including traders from Ghana and Egypt), the outside square right in front of the hall displayed a rather disordered and crowded scenery, resembling local fairs (赶摆ganbai) I had visited throughout Xishuangbanna. Among the numerous, somewhat haphazardly arranged Chinese stalls mainly selling food, a cluster of several stalls selling everyday consumer goods from Thailand drew the largest attention of the visitors. Already hearing

Rowedder, Simon, Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos. Mastering Smallness. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722360_ch01

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some Lao language, I was quickly conf irmed in my initial assumption that they were from Laos when I talked to one vendor in his mid-50s, who was called Amnuay. He told me that they were from Luang Namtha province in northern Laos and regularly came over to China to attend trade fairs. He also conf irmed me in another assumption—that they were Tai Lue. “Yes, we are all Tai Lue, like the majority of Sipsongpanna here,” he explained to me. Only after several trips to Luang Namtha did I realize, in subsequent conversations with Amnuay and other traders, that almost everyone (including Amnuay) who regularly travel to those Chinese trade fairs was of Tai Dam, and not Tai Lue, ethnicity. Amnuay explained that “here, in Luang Namtha town, the majority is Tai Dam. If you want to meet Tai Lue, you need to go to Muang Sing [50 kilometres north of Luang Namtha town], near the border with China.” Nonetheless, he was also quick to assert that he could understand his Tai Lue customers without any major problems when going to Xishuangbanna, as Tai Dam and Tai Lue were linguistically very close to each other. “You know, Tai Lue and Tai Dam are mutual relatives (ເປ ັນພີ່ ນອ້ ງກັນ pen phi nong kan),” he added. However, his notion of ethnic closeness seems only pertinent to the specif ic cross-border context of attending Chinese trade fairs. In the domestic context of Luang Namtha province, I observed instances of discursive maintenance of inter-Tai ethnic boundaries, especially between Tai Lue and Tai Dam. Mai Kaeo, a Tai Lue friend of Amnuay in Muang Sing, referred to Tai Dam as “people without temple” (ຄົນບມີໍ່ ວດ ັ khon bo mi wat), as they were not Buddhists and largely followed animism (ສາສະຫນາຜີ satsana phi, “belief in spirits”). He highlighted that there were several cultural differences between them, instancing traditional architecture, and stressed that their languages were “similar, yet different” (ຄ້າຍໆກັນ ແຕ່ກ ໍ່ຍັງຕ່າງກັນ khai khai kan tae kor yang tang kan). Yet, in the context of attending Chinese trade fairs, these boundaries were blurred and merged into the general perception of an affinity between (Tai-speaking) Lao and Chinese Tai Lue. Thus, Lao traders often highlighted that they were somehow related to the Lue of Sipsongpanna, concluding that “the Lue are just Lao” (ລືກ ້ ໍ່ຄືອລາວ lue kor khue lao). This chapter sets out to decipher this puzzle of situational usage of ethnic identity. I demonstrate that Luang Namtha’s traders tactically mirror attempts by Chinese local officials, entrepreneurs, and scholars to advertise and commodify Yunnan’s—and particularly Xishuangbanna’s—geographical and ethno-cultural proximity to its Southeast Asian neighbours. Previously, Chinese ethnology served the nation-building project of the newly founded People’s Republic of China in classifying and categorizing—and

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thereby controlling—its non-Han groups, whose exoticized difference from mainstream Han Chinese culture was often considered a threat to the country’s national integrity and, especially in the border regions, to its national border security, for fear of separatist ambitions. However, since the 1980s, concomitantly with the new promotion of open borders, ethnic groups in China’s southwestern borderland, with their assumed cultural similarities, commonalities, and relations to other groups across the border, have become a useful tool with which to demonstrate cultural closeness and familiarity within the framework of China’s “Good Neighbour Policy” (see Chung 2009), or “peripheral diplomacy” (周边外交 zhoubian waijiao) (see Wang and Hoo 2019). In an early example of scholars putting together the ethnic peripheries of Southwest China and Southeast Asia, Shen Xu and Liu Zhi (1988, p. 14) stress that cross-border ethnic groups (跨境民族 kuajing minzu) are an important factor for the economic opening and development of Southwest China’s borderland. In the case of Xishuangbanna, it is the Dai who are seen as the main ethnic connecting link across the Sino-Southeast Asian frontier, potentially contributing to peaceful and harmonious relations with China’s neighbouring states. For instance, Zheng Xiao Yun (2008, p. 39 English Summary) thinks of the “cultural zone of Dai-Tai people” as a “valuable asset for the people in this region to cooperate with each other, and jointly develop, so as to promote peace and development.” Xishuangbanna’s Dai constitute in this picture the ethnic foundation for subregional cooperation mechanisms such as the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) or the “Golden Quadrangle” between Yunnan, northern Laos, northeastern Myanmar, and northern Thailand, “where China meets Southeast Asia” (Evans, Hutton, and Kuah-Pearce 2000). This blends in with Yunnan’s (and other Chinese provinces’) general strategy to foster intensifying cross-border and cross-regional economic, political, cultural, and social ties as a revival of premodern linkages, as reflected in its “Bridgehead Strategy” (桥头堡战略 qiaotoubao zhanlüe) of building links to South, Southeast, and Central Asia (Summers 2013; Su 2013); this was subsequently integrated into China’s overall BRI (Summers 2019). In Xishuangbanna, this vision has already manifested most visibly in tourism. Mainly catering to Chinese travellers, Xishuangbanna has been promoted as an ethno-cultural showcase for domestic exoticness and for neighbouring Southeast Asia—especially Thailand, with which, however, it does not directly share a border. “Only in Xishuangbanna can you get a strong sense of our Dai ethnic group, various other ethnic groups, and Southeast Asian culture, all at the same time and in the same place,” as the

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host of a “Xishuangbanna Ethnic New Year Singing and Dancing Show” in Jinghong fittingly put it.1 Traders from Luang Namtha have been able to exploit precisely this context of Chinese political and economic ambitions to develop Xishuangbanna into an exotic, Southeast Asian (or Thai) space for Chinese consumption through a pragmatic strategy of smallness: approaching, or downscaling, Xishuangbanna’s international trade fairs as familiar local markets, they inconspicuously blend in with the local ethnic Tai Lue/Dai environment. By evoking intimate ethno-cultural ties with their main customer base of Chinese Tai Lue residents, they perform on the ground the very ethnic cross-border linkages that local authorities, in tandem with entrepreneurs, actively advertise and utilize in order to create tangible and symbolic landscapes for consuming an imagined Southeast Asia, mainly through architectural mimicry and providing regional commodities at different touristic sites or events. Before delving deeper into the Lao traders’ “local” market performance of Tai Lue/Dai ethnicity at international trade fairs in Jinghong, I will in the following elaborate further on the overarching context of Chinese political and economic ambitions to develop Xishuangbanna into a Southeast Asian (or Thai) space within Chinese territory.

Xishuangbanna’s Attempts at Resembling Southeast Asia These efforts to approximate Yunnan’s Southeast Asian neighbourhood are mainly focused on Thailand due to the prevailing, rather undifferentiated and starkly simplified, association of Dai ethnicity with Thai culture, often leading to interchangeable and blurred references to Dai/Tai (傣) and Thai (泰) labels. In a sense, the Dai of Xishuangbanna have been transformed from subjects of exoticization, eroticization (Hyde 2007), and commodification for domestic touristic purposes, through food, festivals, stage performances, and cultural theme parks (He, Luo, and Luo 2008; Li and Wall 2008, 2009; Cable 2006, 2008), to ethnic carriers of Chinese conceptions of (closeness to) “Thainess,” which again serves China’s overall political agenda of approximating its near and distant neighbours. There have been several attempts to establish a sort of a symbolic Thai landscape, particularly in Jinghong, where a “Thailand Street” (泰国街 taiguo jie) has been opened on the bank of the Lancang/Mekong River (with a daily Thai transvestite 1 I attended this primarily touristic event during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Jinghong on 10 February 2016.

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3  Signboard advertising a transvestite show at “Thailand Street” (泰国街) in Jinghong

Photo taken by author, 2015

4  “The Great Pagoda Temple of Jinghong” (景洪市大金塔寺 景洪市大金塔寺) at Gao Zhuang, Jinghong

Photo taken by author, 2019

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show as its highlight) and the new prime tourist attraction is Gao Zhuang Xishuang Jing (告庄西双景), usually only referred to as Gao Zhuang by Jinghong residents. With the name sinicizing Tai Lue language, officially translated awkwardly into English as “Nine Towers and Twelve Walled,”2 this large-scale tourism and real estate project is meant to be a replica of ancient Jinghong. Although Gao Zhuang is advertised as comprising “Dai-style guesthouses, unique commodities from every Southeast Asian country, gourmet food […] bringing together the unique culture of the entire Golden Triangle region,”3 it is essentially an attempt to resemble a northern Thai space, with numerous Thai restaurants, “Thai-style” (often emphasizing “Lanna-style”) hotels, guesthouses and spas, and countless shops mainly selling Thai products, ranging from daily life consumer goods to food, beverages and souvenirs. One can dismiss all this merely as another instance of what Bianca Bosker (2013) terms as China’s general trend of “architectural mimicry,” creating “simulacrascapes.” However, her examples focus exclusively on duplicating Western styles and forms, such as replicas of the Eiffel Tower and a “Venice Water Town” in Hangzhou, and a “Holland Village” in Shanghai. By analogy with the trend that “now China is making itself into the center that actually contains the world” (Bosker 2013, p. 1), it can be argued that Xishuangbanna’s mimicry of Thailand implies China’s aspiration to become a regional centre that actually contains Southeast Asia, thereby following its political agenda of amicably approaching Southeast Asia through symbolically resembling it. This reverses the widely studied, historically rooted dynamics of smaller Southeast Asian upland polities mimicking symbols and rituals of lowland state power, particularly of the Chinese empire (Leach 1954; Scott 2009). Pál Nyíri (2017) applies this historical thread to the present developments of two SEZs in northern Laos. There, he observes that processes of “replicating the paraphernalia of the Chinese state, from communiqués to ceremonies, from banners to uniforms […] serve as a metonymy for the authority of the strong neighbouring state and evoke efficacy as a developmental regime by imitating the practices of a state associated with developmental powers” (Nyíri 2017, p. 68) Now, if this act of “[n]eighbouring China, in the case of Laos, means importing its development” (Ibid.), I argue that (imaginarily) neighbouring 2 In Thai script, the Tai Lue name kao jom sipsong joeng would be written as เก้้าจอมสิิ บสองเจีียง (kao jom sipsong jiang), which could be translated more literally as “nine peaks (or pagodas), twelve (walled) cities.” 3 My own translation of an excerpt from a Chinese tourist brochure.

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5  “Vientiane Town,” a shopping centre in Jinghong

Photo taken by author, 2017

Thailand means, in the case of Xishuangbanna, importing its cultural, and hence touristic and economic, attractiveness. China’s incorporation and intensified display of its Southeast Asian frontier—here by creating a sense of “quasi-Thainess” often embedded in arbitrary Southeast Asian references—has already succeeded in influencing the perception of tourists and visitors, Chinese and foreigners alike. The English Lonely Planet travel guide, for instance, hypes Xishuangbanna as “China’s Own Mini-Thailand,” whereas Alywin Chew (2015), a travel writer with Singapore’s tabloid Today, writes that “[t]his exotic-sounding prefecture offers travelers a refreshing experience of the Middle Kingdom. Hint: It’s more Thai than Chinese.” This resemblance with Thailand is suggested and conceived in different ways, ambiguously ranging from symbolized geographical and ethnocultural Dai-Thai cross-border proximity and familiarity to the emphasis on domestic Dai exoticness (again different from Han Chinese mainstream culture). This ambivalent, Thai-focused “Southeast Asianization” of Xishuangbanna’s ethnic (mainly Dai) frontiers—comprising, depending on the perspective, instances of cultural mimicry or approximation—occasions metonymic references to Dai, Thai, or Southeast Asian culture. This fuzzy Dai/Thai/Southeast Asian amalgamation lets visitors to Jinghong appreciate exotic culture in a Dai minority park, enjoy Thai cuisine and “Thai style” hospitality in restaurants and hotels, or go shopping in “Vientiane Town.”

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However, it all converges most visibly in the aforementioned tourist complex of Gao Zhuang. There, the first edition of a “Tai Lue Cultural Festival,” held in February 2017, epitomizes this attempt to integrate the promotion of Dai culture into the construction of a “Thai-scape.” The entire event was deliberately fashioned in three languages (Tai Lue/Dai, Chinese, and Thai, notably omitting those of its adjacent neighbours Laos and Myanmar, where large Tai Lue populations also reside), all of which were written on signboards and spoken during cultural performances and shows. During a cultural show on the last evening of this festival, an odd situation occurred when a Thai woman, elegantly dressed in traditional “northern Thai style” attire, went on stage to promote the province of Chiang Mai exclusively in Thai language without any further translation, as had been normally the case for announcing the other items on this evening programme. After introducing Chiang Mai as the cultural, political, and economic centre of northern Thailand, stressing its historical legacy as the capital of the previous Lanna kingdom, she rounded off her short speech by declaring that all “Sipsongpanna relatives” (พ่อแม่พนี่ อ้ งชาวสิ บสองปันนา pho mae phi nong chao sipsongpanna, literally “fathers, mothers, older and younger siblings of Sipsongpanna”) would be welcome to visit Chiang Mai. Making this statement in Thai, purposely kept untranslated, can again be seen to underscore the assumed cultural and linguistic affinity between Xishuangbanna’s Tai Lue and the various Tai-speaking peoples (including the Tai Lue) living in northern Thailand, and by extension, Thai people in general. It somehow appears that the trend in Thailand, emerging in the 1990s, of “popular and academic writing on the culture of the Tai peoples in neighboring countries [that] emphasiz[es] affinity and thus draw[s] these people into a Siamese Thai orbit” (Reynolds 1998, p. 138), is now being actively re-appropriated on the Chinese side in Gao Zhuang. Thai and Chinese imaginations of “Thainess”/ “Tainess”/ “Dai-ness” intersect in the production of spaces of cultural consumption. Besides architecturally mimicking an amalgamation of northern Thai and mainland Southeast Asian spaces, Gao Zhuang attempts to import the model of Thai tourism and leisure, revolving around spas, massage, boutique hotels, restaurants and, most importantly, night markets and walking streets. Here, they sell Chinese “ethnic products” (民族商品 minzu shangpin), but mostly Thai products (clothes, handicrafts, cosmetics, medical products) and street food (both Dai and Thai), therefore strongly resembling “walking streets” (ถนนคนเดิน thanon khondoen) in northern Thailand, which are already very popular among Chinese tourists. Despite recent ambitions to educate the general public on Dai/Tai and Southeast Asian culture, Gao

“We Are All Tai Lue”

6  “Mekong Starlight Night Market” (湄公河星光夜市 湄公河星光夜市) at Gao Zhuang, Jinghong, resembling Walking Streets in northern Thailand

Photo taken by author, 2015

7  Thai handicrafts sold at Gao Zhuang, Jinghong

Photo taken by author, 2017

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Zhuang’s main goal is not the appreciation of culture, but consumption of its commodified form. This goal is shared by yet another venue in Jinghong that creates Southeast Asian commodityscapes— the “Xishuangbanna International Convention and Exhibition Center,” where this chapter began. As I was able to witness, this is the venue where small-scale traders from Luang Namtha have recently emerged to play a central role by regularly attending international trade fairs. Tracing briefly the beginnings of their involvement in Chinese trade fairs, I will in the following sections examine how they position themselves at these fairs through practices and discourses of smallness—of downscaling international commodity fairs into local Dai ethnic marketplaces. Based on closely accompanying some of the traders during four trade fairs in Jinghong,4 also actively helping them selling goods and translating between Lao and Chinese language, I will expound how they concretely create the environment of a Lao-Lue similarity and intimacy to facilitate and sustain the flow of mainly Thai, but also Lao, commodities into Xishuangbanna’s local market scene.

The Beginnings: Getting Invited to “Local Markets” in China Among the traders with the longest trade fair experience were Tot and his wife Ya, both of Tai Dam ethnicity. Realizing that I was becoming increasingly interested in his involvement in those trade fairs, Amnuay decided to take me to their house in Luang Namtha town, assuring me that they would know much more as they had been to Chinese fairs more often than him. During our visit, one afternoon in September 2015, I noticed a large number of boxes full of Thai products, such as instant noodles, fish sauce and cooking oil, various sorts of beverages, soap, and detergent. They were stored inside their spacious house, while a midsize truck (a Chinese model) was parked outside. The couple was deep in preparations for the upcoming “2015 Xishuangbanna GMS Six Countries Commodity Fair” in Jinghong in October on the occasion of the Chinese National Day Week (“Golden Week”), which Amnuay and his wife, Hiang, would skip this time. Amidst all the busyness, Tot and Ya found some time to talk to me while their son, Khong, preferred to use this opportunity to watch a Thai soap opera on TV. Despite not being able to recall the exact year 4 Between April 2015 and February 2017, I carried out four field trips to trade fairs in Xishuangbanna, on the occasions of Tai New Year festivities or Chinese National Day celebrations.

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when they first went to a trade fair, they both somehow agreed that it was around the year 2010. Back then, the provincial Department of Industry and Commerce of Luang Namtha was announcing upcoming trade fairs to be held in adjacent Yunnan province. As numerous traders told me, this was in line with the general trend of public and private actors in Yunnan creating events to attract sellers from Laos and other neighbouring Southeast Asian countries. This trend had probably already begun with a cross-border trade fair in the border town of Mohan (Boten on the Lao side) in 2008—the year the Kunming–Bangkok Highway was officially opened. Enthusiastically celebrating this new axis of regional connectivity, the Chinese side managed to attract large numbers of Lao traders through incentives such as waiving stall fees and reducing taxes. Held weekly, it always drew large crowds of visitors. However, the initial period of enthusiasm ended after three years when the attractive enticements were dropped, and the Mohan fair was changed to be held only once a month. Additionally, in 2015, it changed its location away from the main road to a somewhat hidden area within the town, connected only by a side road.5 Many traders stopped going there. Amnuay highlighted the importance of certain skills for remaining in the Chinese market environment: In the beginning, when many incentives were given, numerous people from Luang Namtha flocked there. In principle, anybody who was capable could easily go there. But over time, when it became costlier to go there [i.e., after the incentives were abolished], it soon became clear who had, in addition to skills, also some capital and who didn’t. In the end, only 5 I witnessed its new opening as “International Fair of China, Laos and Thailand” (中老 泰国际赶摆场 zhong lao tai guoji ganbaichang) in April 2015 on the occasion of the Tai New Year, under the management of the Xishuangbanna Zhongjin Investment Company, a regional sub-company of state-owned Yunnan Zhongjin Real Estate Development Company. To underline its internationality, the name of the fair is written across the main entrance in Chinese, Thai, Lao, English, and Dai script. While it is designed as a permanent market area, with the large Chinese-run “Southeast Asia International Shopping Center” (东南亚国际商品购物中心 dongnanya guoji shangpin gouwu zhongxin) as its core, a monthly cross-border trade fair is scheduled to be held between the sixth and eighth day of every month. Thus, the Tai New Year event was the first monthly fair, taking place on 6–8 April 2015. Already during this very first event at the new location, advertised as “1377 [according to Dai calendar] Dai New Year Celebration and China-Laos Cross-Border Cultural and Tourism Festival” (傣历1377 新年节暨中老边境文 化旅游节 daili 1377 xinnianjie ji zhonglao bianjing wenhua lüyou jie), I could overhear mainly negative and pessimistic comments from Chinese and from the few Lao traders, expressing their concerns about the unfavourable location and nostalgically recalling a much better time some five years ago.

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five to six trading households have remained until now. It really depends on the goods you are able to sell and your profitability (ມີກໍາໄລ mi kamlai, “have profits”) whether you still can make it there [in China].

Since the initial announcements by the provincial authorities in Laos, the exchange of information and updates on upcoming trade fairs have gradually started to happen autonomously. While top-down policies provided the impulse for their trading activities in Xishuangbanna in the first place, Lao traders became less and less dependent on them. As they were now well-known to the Chinese side, they would be informed by several Chinese organizers (public, state-supported for major fairs, private or semi-private for smaller fairs), as Amnuay further explained: We will receive a call from China that there would be a fair [ຕະຫຼຼາດ talat, literally “market”], asking us whether we want to go there. If we agree, we will normally transfer the stall fee beforehand. Sometimes, depending on the organizer, we also might pay later in cash directly there.

Over the years, five to eight more “skilled” and financially sound trading groups (mainly couples, sometimes supported by another family member) have attended trade fairs throughout Yunnan province (mainly in Xishuangbanna, but occasionally also in Pu’er prefecture north of Xishuangbanna). As in Amnuay’s case, with more than 20 years of experience in cross-border trade (chapter 3 will elaborate on his biography in more detail), this relatively recent activity builds upon previous involvement in (cross-border) commerce and serves, to varying degrees, as an additional business on top of their existing ventures. Most of them are already suppliers of everyday consumer products, mainly from Thailand, for markets in Luang Namtha (see chapter 3 for an extended focus on local marketplaces). Their wide range of Thai food and household products is thus extended across the Chinese border, now supplemented by some Lao consumer products and Lao ethnic dresses, handicrafts, and basketwork. These Lao products are usually ordered from Vientiane with only a few bought in Luang Namtha. The traders also sell large quantities of fragrant rice and white and black sticky rice, both imported from Thailand and locally grown in Laos, which is highly sought-after and popular in China. Some traders also carry electrical appliances and kitchenware, which they buy in Thailand. This product range, mainly geared towards everyday necessities, can be then boosted with fresh Thai fruits, freshly prepared food and, depending on the season, some flowers from Thailand. As in the case of transnationally supplying Lao

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markets, the traders would either go directly to Thailand (Chiang Khong and Chiang Rai), or order from intermediaries in Bokeo province and from larger import companies in Vientiane, depending on their price calculations and the type of commodities (for example, fresh fruits and flowers are bought in Chiang Rai shortly before the fair). Despite this apparently transnational scale, standing in front of piles of Thai commodities to be loaded onto a Chinese truck for the upcoming fair in October 2015, Tot seemed eager to downplay his and other traders’ activities, dismissing those trade fairs as merely “local markets” (ຕະຫຼາດ ທ້ອງຖິນ ່ talat thongthin). After all, Amnuay had introduced me to Tot and Ya as a researcher who was interested in “communal markets” (ຕະຫຼາດຊຸມຊົນ talat sumson), “like the ones we attend in China.” Ya agreed with Tot, adding that they were not professional traders. They would even sleep in tents next to their goods—unlike other exhibitors who would often work on behalf of real companies and stay in hotels throughout the entire fair, like real “businessmen” (ນັກທຸລະກິດ nak thulakit). Apart from downplaying the scale and skills of their cross-border commerce, Tot and Ya related the “local” character of these trade fairs to the fact that most of the customers were Tai Lue, “just like the Tai Lue of our Luang Namtha.” (Fictively) shared or at least intimately familiar ethnicity transforms Chinese trade fairs, packaged by the organizers with celebratory international and regional labels, into local affairs. Traders from Luang Namtha always assured me confidently that they, as Lao traders, would be in an advantaged position in areas with larger Tai Lue populations, like in Jinghong. While Tot and Ya had attended trade fairs across Yunnan province (Mohan and Mengla in Xishuangbanna, Simao and Lancang in Pu’er prefecture, and even as far as Kunming), Jinghong was clearly their first choice as it fulfilled two necessary criteria: a significant Tai Lue population and sufficient distance from the border. Mengla, for instance, despite its large Tai Lue population, would be too close to the border, as Tot explained: “There is already a cheap supply of Thai and Lao products available. Apart from that, many residents simply cross the border by themselves. They don’t need us there.” The same would nowadays also apply to Mohan where, in addition, the sale of Southeast Asian goods would be clearly dominated by “Haw Chinese” (ຄົນຫໍ້ khon ho). With “Haw Chinese,” Tot actually referred to Han Chinese, thereby interestingly transferring the local Lao ethnonym reserved for Lao citizens of Yunnanese descent across the border into the Chinese context.6 6 Although its exact etymological origin and accurate meaning is not entirely clear, it is considered a more or less established fact that the term “Haw” started to be used in the 13th and

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This overarching Lue–Haw dichotomy, simultaneously producing otherness and similarity across the border, is key to how Luang Namtha’s traders, in their performance, approach international trade fairs in Xishuangbanna as local markets of ethnic familiarity. Concretely translated into social practice, they maintain rather impersonal, atomized, and limited relations with Han Chinese customers and more personal, socially embedded, and extended relations with “local” Dai/Tai Lue customers. It goes without saying that the boundaries between these two types of customers and their respective trading relations are in practice often blurred and at times even misleading. Remaining aware of possible deviations and the general danger of oversimplification, I will in the following sections continue to focus on generalized notions of “the Chinese” and “the Tai Lue” as they constitute the key ingredients of how Lao traders perceive and conceive of the social workings of these trade fairs.

Dealing with “Chinese” Customers: Between Distancing and Antagonism During the “Xishuangbanna GMS Six Countries Commodity Fair” in early October 2015, I spent most of my time at Tot and Ya’s booth. They were both assisted by their youngest son, Khong, and his f iancée, Fa. While Fa was mainly responsible for preparing spicy papaya salad (ຕຳ� ໝາກຮຸງ່ tam mak hung), Khong was, among other things, responsible for preparing khao soi (ເຂ າົ້ ຊອຍ), a rice noodle soup popular in northern 14th centuries in the various Tai languages of the Tai states in present-day northern Thailand, Laos, and Xishuangbanna/China, where it referred to the Chinese traders who come from Yunnan and were perceived as different from Han Chinese from other parts of China (Hill 1998, p. 68). To the best of my knowledge, there is no equivalent label in the Chinese language itself; hence, it is an exonym. However, Chinese sources tend to refer to them as Muslim Hui Chinese (回族 huizu). While it is true that a signif icant number of these merchants were Muslim Hui, they also included Han Chinese (Hill 1998, p. 50). “Haw” therefore should not be derived from the Chinese “Hui” and thus also not be misunderstood as a Tai reference to predominantly Muslim Chinese from Yunnan. In the present context of northern Laos, ethnic Chinese Lao citizens with Yunnanese roots are commonly referred to as “Haw,” who mostly live in the northernmost province of Phongsaly, whereas Chinese citizens, especially newly incoming migrants (新移民 xin yimin in Chinese), are referred to as Chinese (ຄົນຈີນ khon jin). I also sometimes heard khon jin sot (ຄົນຈີນສົດໆ), which could be translated as “pure Chinese.” However, as I will demonstrate later in this book, the distinction between “Haw” and “Chinese” is often blurred and the terms are used interchangeably. For further discussion of the origin and historical role of the term “Haw,” see Hill (1998, pp. 68-72) and, in more detail, Hill (1982, pp. 92-97).

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Laos. Enjoying my own bowl of khao soi for breakfast (see chapter 3 for khao soi as a central part of my f ieldwork routine at local marketplaces in northern Laos), an older Chinese (Han) woman came by, looking around curiously at what they were selling. After some hesitation, she f inally ordered some mi gan (米干, the Chinese term for rice noodles), using rather rude and impatient gestures. It was not long before she started to complain incessantly about Khong’s way of preparing the noodles. She bluntly lamented the lack of hygiene and quality, repeating how dirty everything was, and directly blamed Khong for touching the rice noodles with his bare hands and not with clean chopsticks. When Khong offered raw vegetables as a side dish, she scolded him, asking him whether he wanted her to get diarrhoea. Not intending to end her display of dissatisfaction, she also complained that their prices were far too high. A heated atmosphere was in the offing, with Khong responding angrily in Lao that this was simply their way of serving khao soi, whether she liked it or not. The Chinese customer, not deigning to look at Khong any more, took the rice noodles only grudgingly and kept muttering complaints and curses. However, in the end, she still f inished her bowl of rice noodles, so her general undertone of complaining and blaming almost seemed to be nothing more than a matter of principle, making clear her different (Chinese) view of doing things properly. Right at the outset of my f irst visit to cross-border trade fairs in Xishuangbanna, I was able to witness an instance of the overall atmosphere, involving a fairly rough, rude, antagonistic, if not occasionally hostile, tone between Lao traders and Chinese customers. Importantly, this occasionally arising antagonism is not meant to lead to any serious conf lict or contest that would imply a winner or a loser. If one were indeed trying to determine a winner in this “khao soi incident,” one might tend to pick Khong as he was also able to speak some Chinese after having studied in China for almost a year. He clearly had the advantage of understanding the customer’s complaints and the flexibility to hit back in Lao, which was not understood by the customer. He made use of his advanced linguistic dexterity. However, he did not choose to argue back in Chinese as he was not interested in further provoking a quarrel. This incident rather demonstrates the practice of staking out one’s own territory. The Chinese customer tried to safeguard her (“Chinese”) standards of hygiene and quality while Khong did not want to compromise his (“Lao”) way of preparing food. When two non-negotiables collide, the national China–Laos boundary is markedly redrawn; this is, more often

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than not, reflected in the Lao traders’ general way of interacting with Han Chinese customers.

Reducing Chinese Customer Relations to the Economic Essentials Chinese customer: Ya: Chinese customer: Ya: Chinese customer: Ya: Chinese customer: Ya (laughing):

How to use this one? (grabbing a bamboo rice strainer) 25 Yuan! (in Chinese, together with hand gestures) No, I mean—for what is this good? Can I dry food on this as well? 25 Yuan, 25 Yuan! Aiya (Chinese interjection), you don’t understand me? You don’t speak Chinese? How do you want to sell this? Strange… You want it? Take it, only 25 Yuan! You just don’t understand! No, I don’t understand (in broken Chinese). I don’t understand anything you say to me. I’m only here to sell things (in Lao).

As with the “khao soi incident,” neither side appeared to be willing to overcome obvious communication barriers. Apart from these significant language barriers, Chinese customers and Lao traders also dealt in different prices. Chinese customers’ widespread habit of vigorous bargaining almost never evoked a reaction from Luang Namtha traders, which again contributed to an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, occasionally leading to bursts of openly displayed anger on the part of the customers. Tellingly, Lao traders often complained at the same time that Chinese customers would not buy anything. Ya reiterated this predicament in the following way: “There are many people here, but they don’t buy much.” During the Chinese New Year fair in January/February 2016, Amnuay similarly told me with a shrug: “Most of the Chinese won’t buy anything anyhow. They would rather only ask questions, try to bargain, touch or smell at our products before leaving our stall again.” Tot sees the major reason for Chinese customers’ unfamiliarity with their products: “The Chinese often don’t know our goods, so they don’t buy, or don’t dare to buy them.” However, again, not much is or can be done to change this seemingly unfavourable situation. While some Lao sellers were indeed not able to further explain their commodities due to obvious language barriers, it seemed that even sellers with some Chinese language skills did not put

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much effort into explaining their goods in conversations with interested potential customers. In the latter case, answers to curious queries were brief and abrupt, followed by attempts to quickly proceed to the actual economic transaction. Considering their customers’ queries answered, they usually ignored further questions and provided instead the same short answers or kept asking impatiently whether they wanted to buy the product. Their message to potential Chinese customers was clear: they were not in Jinghong to explain or to showcase their commodities, but simply to sell them without much fuss. For this to happen, they expected from their customers a certain preexisting familiarity with their products. It is this demanded familiarity which reflects their framing of these trade fairs as “local markets.” Although the trade fairs are often associated with a regional cross-border tourism label, traders from Luang Namtha were not much interested in catering to inexpert tourists. Dealing with those, they deemed it sufficient to reduce their interactions to merely quoting prices, building on the calculation that some customers would be persuaded simply by low prices to buy in large quantities, despite their unfamiliarity with Lao traders and their commodities. This logic is reflected in Tot’s remark: “Many Chinese might not be familiar with all products we sell. But I tell you, if they finally buy something, they buy in large quantities.” They were content with the prospect that from time to time a larger economic transaction might evolve on its own, without great effort on their part. As a matter of principle, Lao traders translated their perception of Chinese customers’ lacking product familiarity into the language and practice of distancing and othering. This was in contrast with how they tried to interact with local Tai Lue customers.

Dealing with Tai Lue Customers: Performing “Lue Localness” During the trade fair in January/February 2016, a group of three older Tai Lue women were slowly approaching Hiang’s and Amnuay’s stall. Hiang promptly got up from her chair to heartily welcome them: “Oh, beautiful grandmothers (ແມ່ເຖ າົ້ ຄົນງາມ mae thao, khon ngam)! How are you today? You are going out today? Come in and look around. What do you need (ເອາ ສັງ ao sang, deliberately using the Lue phrase)?7 Detergents? Soap?” What 7 For the sake of simplicity, I have refrained from using Tai Lue script and here use the Lao script. Moreover, it nicely illustrates the Lao traders’ claimed similarity between Lao and Lue and the way that they approached, or appropriated, Lue language.

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followed was a rather intense and lengthy encounter during which Hiang carefully listened to the three women’s requests and gave some advice and suggestions. Strikingly, the Tai Lue women displayed a much more targeted way of shopping than Han Chinese visitors who had come by the shop earlier that day. They already knew in quite some detail what they wanted to buy, and therefore asked Hiang for specific products. Hiang then guided them through their requests and finally started to discuss the prices, always accompanied by some small talk, numerous exchanges of laughter, and a lot of joking and teasing. This encounter, here only briefly described, is one of numerous instances that, taken together, portray the Lao traders’ distinctive way of closely and heartily interacting with Tai Lue customers. Luang Namtha traders often invoked their linguistic similarity, although I could still observe several moments of mutual communication problems between Lao traders and Chinese Tai Lue customers. Nevertheless, it is these notions of similarity and familiarity that the traders were geared towards, initially reaching out to potential Tai Lue customers primarily through language. Consequently, as a rule, Lao traders usually addressed customers first in Lue language, then in Lao, and if they realized that they still did not understand them, finally switched to Chinese, as in this sequence, used for asking the customers what they wanted: ເອາສັງ ao sang (Lue)— ເອາຫຍັງ ao yang (Lao)—要什么 yao shenme (Chinese). Regardless of whether the customers were Chinese Han or Lue, or of any other ethnicity, Lue tended to be spoken first. The traders would primarily build on the probability that potential customers could understand their Lao or their approximation of Lue while risking the possibility of a language barrier and the associated loss of other (Han) customers. In the calculation of Luang Namtha’s traders, the cost of losing a single new customer appeared to weigh less than the prospect of longerterm trade relations with Tai Lue customers that build on a strong sense of familiarity and closeness, not only through attempted linguistic affinity, but also through the consumer goods they sell, especially food. Basic Thai cooking ingredients, such as fish sauce, lemon juice, shrimp paste, or oil, apparently bound together Lao traders and Chinese Lue customers through extensive exchanges on similar food habits, both stressing their shared preference for Thai products and commonly distancing themselves from rather mediocre Chinese food. This is in line with what Tot had told me back in Luang Namtha: if the Tai Lue of Sipsongpanna were given a choice, they would prefer Lao food over Chinese food (ອາຫານຫໍ້ ahan ho, literally “Haw food,” once again demonstrating the Haw–Lue dichotomy) as it was simply fresher and tasted better and would be in general much closer to

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their own food. At the trade fairs in Jinghong, they offered customers this very choice. They provided samples of Lao cuisine (e.g., khao soi or papaya salad) while selling mainly Thai cooking ingredients whose allegedly better quality and taste the Tai Lue would likewise know to appreciate, as Tot and other traders repeatedly assured me. The continually high number of Tai Lue customers who were buying their food products for personal consumption, for use in Jinghong’s Dai-Thai restaurants or for further retail in Jinghong’s suburban areas, appeared to prove them right. While creating (fictive) ethnic bonds, the Lao traders’ product assortments, seemingly combining local Dai dishes, ethnic handicraft and textiles, and Thai consumer goods, also contributed to their external perception of them being Dai. Many Han Chinese visitors, who often travelled from other provinces, thought of them as Xishuangbanna’s Dai and were even more irritated upon being told that they were from Laos. Once, while helping out at Tot and Ya’s stall, I could overhear how a Chinese mother explained to her son that those Dai sellers were “very similar to Thai people” (他们很像泰国 人 tamen hen xiang taiguoren). “Living very near to Thailand” (离泰国很近 li taiguo hen jin), they could easily trade across the border with their “Thai friends” (泰国朋友 taiguo pengyou) or “Thai relatives” (泰国亲戚 taiguo qinqi). Viewed from the perspective of this trade fair’s spatial structuring alone, it might indeed appear intuitive to think of Luang Namtha’s traders as the local ethnic Dai component of Xishuangbanna’s regional economy, as their stalls are usually located outside the actual exhibition hall. Only inside the hall are the booths all clearly labelled with national flags. Their stalls are not part of this paraded internationality, expressed by national flag displaying, and are instead located next to domestic Chinese stalls mainly selling Chinese and, more specifically, local Yunnanese delicacies, together constituting the local market area. Not equipped with any national label, their stalls merely display their goods with no further explanation.8 Through 8 This only changed during the Chinese New Year trade fair in Jinghong in January and February 2017, during my most recent. For the first time, their stalls were now labelled in Chinese as “Distinguished Commodities from Luang Namtha, Laos” (老挝南塔特色商品 laowo nanta tese shangpin). This certainly had some impact on how they were perceived and approached by Chinese visitors, many carefully reading the letters over the top of the stalls before examining the traders and their goods again. Now informed of the traders’ national origin, many also seemed to be more concerned about the national origin of their products, repeatedly asking whether this or that was from Laos and thereby abiding by the rules of internationally flagged trade fairs. However, this newly written national Laos label did not seem to have a major impact on their regular clientele of mainly local Tai Lue visitors. The mode of targeting ethnic intimacy and friendliness thus remained unchanged amidst the new national branding, as it did not seem to matter to local Tai Lue customers.

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8  Luang Namtha traders’ stalls at the “GMS Six Countries Trade Fair in Xishuangbanna 2015” in Jinghong

Photo taken by author

their practices at, and by the spatial layout of, these trade fairs, Luang Namtha’s traders blend in with China’s broad ethnic domain of “Dainess,” encompassing all Tai-speaking peoples and ambiguously referring to cultural closeness with Thailand. Their pragmatic and tactical performance of the officially propagated cross-border ethnic (Dai) glue of Yunnan’s regional economy, targeting obviously high local demand for Thai commodities, is further reflected in gradually evolving networks with local customers beyond the actual trade fairs, across Xishuangbanna and beyond. Weaving Local Trade Networks I first observed the existence of locally woven business networks when I stayed at Tot’s and Ya’s stall during the “Xishuangbanna GMS Six Countries Commodity Fair” in Jinghong in October 2015. Ya was busy dealing with a middle-aged couple who thoroughly screened her product assortment. With notebook and calculator in hand, Ya was carefully preparing a bill for their relatively large orders of food products. After some prolonged conversation with Ya, the couple left without paying or taking any goods. Registering my

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curiosity, Ya explained to me that she had known them for quite a while. They were originally from Menglun in Mengla county, located halfway between Jinghong and the Lao border, but often sojourned in Jinghong as well. Always informed about Tot and Ya’s trade fair attendance, they just caught the first day of the trade fair to examine their full assortment and order accordingly. On their way back to Laos, Tot and Ya would deliver their order directly to them in Menglun.9 However, for the most part, customers would rather place orders beforehand and collect their goods in Jinghong by themselves, as Ya further clarified. Some days later, I saw how Tot and Khong unloaded a large number of big, black, heavy-looking sacks from their truck. “Twenty-six sacks full of salted, dried buffalo skin (ໜັງເຄ ັມ nang khem), ordered by customers in Menghai [50 kilometres west of Jinghong],” Tot proudly explained to me. They would come directly to the trade fair to collect them, “maybe today or tomorrow.”10 “The Tai Lue of Sipsongpanna love our dried buffalo skin. They know it’s delicious, but they also know that they can’t get this in China,” Tot further explained, again highlighting their role as significant suppliers of local demand. In response to my repeated, curious questions about how they initiated and maintained their networks of local customer relations in Jinghong and beyond, they constantly told me that doing this was anything but difficult: interested customers would simply show up, examine their goods, and easily fall into conversation with them; thereafter, phone numbers would be exchanged. To them, the process appeared straightforward and not worth investigating further: “Our customers know our products, we can understand them easily, so we are just used to each other (ເຄີຍກັນ khoey kan).” Introducing me to the milieu of Chinese trade fairs at the very beginning of my stay in 9 I asked whether it would not have been more convenient for both parties if they had delivered the goods in question on their journey from Luang Namtha to Jinghong, passing through Menglun, which their customers would then have ordered in advance. However, Ya explained to me that, in the first place, they only focused on reaching the trade fair in Jinghong with all their goods as soon as possible. There would be simply no time to stop somewhere else on the way. Only after the trade fair would there be room for handling other related business. On the part of the Menglun customers, they would simply prefer to first have a direct look at their stall in Jinghong before ordering. 10 Unfortunately, I missed this particular encounter between Tot’s family and the Menghai customers. Later in the day, Tot assured me that they would see them the following day. Therefore, I decided to carry out my original plan to visit Jinghong’s daily “Riverside Night Market” (滨江夜市 binjiang yeshi) to compare what sort of commodities were sold there. To my surprise, the bags of nang khem had already disappeared the following day. Their customers somehow changed their mind and still came by late in the evening, Tot told me. This only reflects the overall climate of doing research in the traders’ milieu —that is, being confronted with last-minute changes of plans and appointments and infused with a general sense of uncertainty, unpredictability, and contingency.

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Luang Namtha, Amnuay had similarly described their privileged relations with the Chinese Tai Lue customers as operating on the principle of in the realm of “being informal” or of “being among themselves” (ເປ ັນກັນເອງ pen kan eng). I will return to the prevailing language of simplicity, straightforwardness, and ordinariness among traders, which form a central part of their repertoires of smallness, in the following chapters. However, while staying at the stall of Hiang and Mo, her niece, in January/ February 2017 (Amnuay skipped this fair), I was able to gain a clearer picture of how much active effort was behind this seemingly “natural” and convenient informality. A woman, along with her little child, was carefully walking from stall to stall as if she were looking for something or someone. Finally, looking relieved and happy, she entered Hiang and Mo’s stall, asking Hiang with a big smile whether she still could remember her. After a moment of hesitation, Hiang indeed slowly began to recognize her, recalling her name and the year when they last met each other. This customer then told Hiang that she had looked for her several times before. She had also tried to call her, but always to no avail. Hiang was quick to apologize, explaining to her that she changed her mobile phone number and needed to skip several trade fairs due to some other duties back in Luang Namtha. However, they could now make sure again to keep in touch, Hiang assured her. She took out a time-worn notebook full of names and phone numbers, vividly outlining the dimension and scale of the incessant effort required to keep track of her customer network, to recheck whether she still had the correct number for her customer while giving out her new phone number. Over the course of this fair, Hiang was approached time and again by Tai Lue customers who apparently already knew her. While Hiang was obviously well-known to a notable number of customers, she had to admit that she could certainly not remember all of them. This was also not necessary as she could conveniently rely on her well-established prominence, building on the confidence that “the Lue, the locals will come, for sure.” She was proved right as large flows of local Tai Lue visitors flocked to the fair, especially in the evening, and primarily to the Lao stalls. After dinner, they would come from the surrounding villages, Hiang told me, with a high dose of pride. Besides these “instant” local visitor flows, she could also renew certain customer relations with ease if she wanted; here, she pointed meaningfully to her notebook, stressing the new convenience of cross-border communication by mobile phone applications, to which I will return in more detail in chapter 3.

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Lao Traders’ Economic Rationale Often when talking to me, several Lao traders expressed a certain admiration of Gao Zhuang, Jinghong’s most prominent tourist site, promoting ethno-cultural Dai-Thai closeness and showcasing Southeast Asian commodityscapes. Praising its impressive size and large numbers of visitors, they often stressed how much better and “fun” (ມ່ວນ muan) business would be in Gao Zhuang. They brought up this issue in times of relatively low numbers of visitors at the trade fairs they attended, usually in the early afternoon. Sometimes they also claimed that they regretted not having taken up an offer to sell commodities in Gao Zhuang. However, the reason why they tried to package their local market performance in a vocabulary of discontent and higher aspirations may possibly stem from the concern that their current state of trade might strike me, as an outside researcher, as unsophisticated and insignificant. When putting aside their discourse of missed opportunities, and instead closely examining their actual performance on the ground, it became clear how well they performed at the trade fairs, having become an indispensable part of them. They did not, in fact, need to relocate to Gao Zhuang. Tot, who did not share the excitement about Gao Zhuang, once got to the heart of their actual perception: There might be indeed many more people there [in Gao Zhuang], but most of them would be only tourists or visitors simply seeking entertainment and leisure. They do not really intend to buy much stuff, or at least not those ordinary [household] goods we sell. They would rather visit Gao Zhuang to enjoy performances, to drink, to eat.

Thus, contrary to the aspirations of the Chinese authorities and tourists, Gao Zhuang is in fact considered by Lao traders a sideshow. For them, the real business, although downplayed, was happening at their “localized”— downscaled and ethnicized—trade fairs outside the hall of Jinghong’s “International Convention and Exhibition Center.” I could experience the Lao traders’ preference for approaching regional or “international” trade fairs as local ethnic cross-border affairs through my own positionality at these events, assuming the role of a mediator between Lao traders and Han Chinese customers, mainly translating and explaining. This turned out to be an intervention which was certainly welcome, but also not necessarily sought, through which I could better understand the traders’ rationale behind their economic tactics at these fairs.

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My Intervention as a Sino-Lao Mediator and Translator At the “Xishuangbanna GMS Six Countries Commodity Fair” in October 2015, when I was still new to Chinese trade fairs, I first decided to browse through all eight Lao stalls to get a better overview. While browsing from stall to stall, I observed a Chinese mother with her son and his girlfriend who were struggling to buy a durian because of the obvious language barrier. Ready to help, I started to translate between them and the older Lao male trader, who could hardly speak any word of Chinese. While I told the Chinese family the price they had been so eager to know, I had to translate to the trader their series of questions (“Can you ask him how one can recognize a good durian?”; “Can he be sure that none of his fruits are rotten?”), requests (“Tell him that we don’t want overripe durians!”; “Can you ask him to cut the durian in slices? We want to eat it right away!”), in addition to their constant attempts at bargaining. My spontaneous translation exercise lasted much longer than I had initially expected. The Chinese family seemed to be glad and relieved to have found someone who made them comprehensible to the Lao trader. The mother repeatedly stressed that they simply relied on translation. Not understanding anything would only make her afraid of being cheated. My busy translation endeavour gradually triggered more attention and astonishment on the part of this Chinese family and other visiting customers nearby. Initially mistaking them for Dai or Thai people (the mother used these labels interchangeably, jumping on the bandwagon of the widely mediated Dai-Thai similarity and metonymy), the mother expressed her amazement that I could speak “their language” (他们的话 tamen de hua). She was even more stunned to hear that the traders were actually from Laos and that consequently I was conversing with them in Lao language. Obviously, Laos had been absent from her mind, which prompted her to ask numerous questions—for instance, whether Lao language would be close to Thai language, what Laos was like in general, whether it was still really so poor. I was suddenly granted the function of filling a gap in terms of mutual communication and acquaintance, but in practice, only on the part of inquiring non-Dai Chinese customers. Although we did not know each other at that time, the Lao trader did not show any sign of astonishment and intense curiosity (unlike the Chinese buyers), but rather, as if taking it for granted, pragmatically worked with me as a translator. While easily coming to terms with me, apparently welcoming my help, he still seemed to be trying to minimize this translational encounter, with his responses becoming more and more brusque. He made it abundantly clear that he

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would not be much willing to continue any longer a conversation with the Chinese customers beyond closing the actual transaction (unlike my subsequent observations of Lao traders dealing with Tai Lue customers in which “talking around” was integral part of their sales strategy). I soon got the paradoxical impression that my intervention did not benefit both sides equally. Although I ultimately facilitated a deal for the Lao trader—the Chinese customers would have been otherwise put off by the language barrier—it was only the Chinese customer who was disproportionally delighted, giving profuse thanks to me for my assistance. However, on the Lao trader’s side, this sort of support through translation, even if available and momentarily welcome, was in principle not envisaged in his handling of attending Chinese trade fairs. After selling the durian, he quickly went back to business as usual, leaving their further inquiries about his trade activities (e.g., “How often do they come to Jinghong?”; “When is the next time they will sell things in Jinghong?”) unanswered and leaving me alone to talk further to the Chinese customers. As I observed in the following days of this trade fair and during subsequent visits over the years, there was indeed significant demand for knowledge and attentive communication, mainly on the part of Chinese tourists, but also from Han Chinese residing in Xishuangbanna. If their demand for attention was not met, it could lead to expressions of disappointment or even anger, conveying an impression of aversion or even hostility, as mentioned before. Now, Chinese visitors were able to channel their curiosity through me and did not need to struggle with potential language barriers and misunderstandings anymore.11 Continuously struggling with the balancing act of conducting participant observation without too much intervention, my presence and occasional assistance were generally welcome. Particularly during my stays at the stall of Amnuay and Hiang (or Hiang and Mo when Amnuay skipped fairs), where 11 However, in many cases, the focus of their interest gradually shifted towards my own person, questioning me with a combination of astonishment, curiosity, and sometimes suspicion as to where I was originally from, what I was doing there, why I could speak Chinese and the traders’ language, and so on. Confronted with the attention bestowed on a Western researcher, I often had to simultaneously explain the traders’ and my own position. Once, while spending some time at Tot’s and Ya’s stall during the Chinese New Year fair in February 2016, this led to an awkward situation. The woman of an older couple from Kunming became so interested in the traders and me that she kept asking me questions just in front of Tot, who was busy slicing a jackfruit. Several times pointing directly at him, she asked whether he also was from Laos, what he was currently doing there next to me, and where and how he and Ya got their commodities. Realizing Tot’s discomfort at being talked about, I tried to bring the conversation back to asking whether the couple wanted to buy anything, thereby trying to divert the attention away from me.

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I spent most of the time during the trade fairs of 2016 and 2017, they realized that my longer conversations with Chinese visitors could indeed prove to be rewarding, ultimately leading to some additional sales. Sometimes, they left it up to me to attend further to overly interested Chinese customers, once giving rise to the situation that I also carried goods to the car of a retired Beijing couple who regularly spent the winters in Jinghong. Delighted by this service and the general assortment of the goods, they returned the next day to buy even more items, assuring us that they would come back again next year, hoping to see me again then as well. On the last day of the Chinese New Year trade fair in 2017, I helped Hiang to strike yet another deal. Having heard that Chinese liked buying Moringa seeds (ແກ່ນອີຮມ ຸ kaen ihum in Lao, 辣木籽la mu zi in Chinese), Hiang brought in a few bags of these seeds, which a friend of hers was cultivating for testing purposes in Luang Namtha. She only brought three one-pound bags as she wanted to try out first how they would sell, still doubting whether there was such a Chinese demand as she had heard.12 During the entire trade fair, she could not sell any of these bags, which she placed in the back of her stall where they were hardly visible. Whenever it happened that curious Chinese customers asked what these bags contained, placed together with some other more exotic, sometimes illicit curiosities from Laos (such as elephant skin, bones and bone dust from several animals, etc.), Hiang could not go much beyond quoting prices. Apart from the language barrier, she herself was not very clear about the exact usage of those products, also having difficulty explaining it to me in Lao. She simply commented that the Chinese would know about them anyhow; therefore, there should be no need for any explanation.

12 Named “Plant of the Year” in 2008 by the US National Institute of Health, Moringa also caught the attention of Chinese scientists and the government. Moringa seeds even play a key role in China’s agricultural engagement in Central and South America. In 2014, during a state visit to Cuba, President Xi Jinping of China symbolically handed Moringa seeds over to Fidel Castro (already retired and without any official governmental role, but still acting as an elder statesmen), following the signing of a cooperation agreements to further deepen the research and development of Moringa, which also saw the establishment of the Moringa Science & Technology Cooperation Center, comprising the Tropical Crop Research Institute of Yunnan and the Institute of Pasture and Forage of the Ministry of Agriculture of Cuba (Abdenur 2017, p. 156). During my stays in Mohan, I was able to directly witness the extent of the popularity of and demand for Moringa seeds, which was reflected in numerous import shops advertising Moringa, mainly from India, but also from Laos. In front of one shop, there was a large sign showing a photograph of that meeting between Xi Jinping and Fidel Castro, followed by a longer description of all the benefits of Moringa seeds.

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However, this calculation of a spontaneous ensuing demand from Chinese customers based on the assumption of their knowledge and familiarity with the product apparently did not work out; several potential transactions failed due to the lack of explanation. Even when I occasionally translated some customers’ enquiries to Hiang, she did not seem to want to put much effort into making the transaction actually happen, simply telling me that I could explain to them that it was somehow usable for producing traditional herbal medicine. Most of the customers were obviously not satisfied with this sparse and vague answer, prompting some to complain that even the vendors did not know their products. However, on the last day of the fair, this changed due to the fortunate arrival of a small tourist group from Sichuan province, comprising three women and one man, all in their 60s. Obviously in the mood for shopping, they looked extensively and asked around. Their interest soon shifted towards the Moringa seeds. Unlike previous customers, they had more patience for studying the seeds and were not daunted by the lack of information. They even took out their mobile phones to do some online research about Moringa, comparing Hiang’s bags with the pictures online to make sure that these really were Moringa seeds. After I had kept them in their good mood with patter and some jokes, and translated and mediated some heated price negotiations between them and Hiang, the group ultimately decided to buy all three bags. Triumphantly assuring each other that they made a good bargain, they enthusiastically thanked me for my help. Having cashed in 480 Chinese yuan at once, Hiang told me: “If you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have sold these at all. I don’t know the language. If I knew it, I would sell well.” However, when I asked her why they were not hiring some translators, such as students from Luang Namtha, she argued that this would be too bothersome to organize. Although, in front of me, she reflected self-critically on the need to expand her knowledge and skills, it was equally clear that there would be no intent to change this in the near future, thereby implying a satisfaction with the status quo. The Rational Approach of “Satisficing” instead of Optimizing Economic Performance While this might strike the outside observer as lacking a certain business acumen, or as confirming assumptions of Lao traders’ idleness or their traditionally rooted adherence to subsistence ethics (Rehbein 2007, 2017), it only fits into the overall strategy of approaching this international trade fair as a local market (ຕະຫຼາດທ້ອງຖິນ ່ talat thongthin). Here, the inability or lack of effort to translate, explain, and properly advertise their goods in a foreign

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Chinese environment is largely compensated by their ability to nevertheless optimize the satisfaction of local demand and maintenance of local networks through practices that target ethno-cultural intimacy. Any additional effort to improve their handling of exclusively Chinese-speaking (Han) Chinese would, in this logic, hinder their specialization in the service of the Tai Lue customer segment, creating in economic parlance “opportunity costs,” that is, the perceived costs of missing the opportunity of alternatively dealing with Tai Lue customers. However, the costs of neglecting the opportunity to extend their interactions with Han Chinese customers might be higher than missing out on Tai Lue encounters. I already mentioned Tot’s remark that Han Chinese customers would normally buy in larger quantities if they did ultimately decide to buy, implying their relatively high purchasing power. However, high degrees of predictability and security, achieved through establishing long-term and reliable relationships with Tai Lue customers, are in the traders’ calculation preferable to higher degrees of profitability, which are only achievable in less predictable and controllable relations with Han Chinese customers. A brief digression on behavioural economics might be useful here. Whereas a decision model following a classically optimizing economic rationality would be geared towards maximizing the possibly more prof itable opportunity, the Lao traders’ calculation rather follows the rules of what Herbert Simon (1955, 1956) prominently termed “satisf icing.” Simon f irst coined the term in his conceptualization of “bounded rationality,” and subsequently ref ined it (Simon 1982), which has led to further studies of “ecological rationality” (Gigerenzer, Todd, and Group 1999; Gigerenzer and Selten 2001) that examine “the conditions under which a heuristic leads to a better outcome than a competing strategy” (Gigerenzer 2016, p. 40). Simon famously noted that “[h]uman rational behavior […] is shaped by a scissors whose two blades are the structure of the task environment and the computational capabilities of the actor” (1990, p. 7). Within the specif ic “task environment,” or “ecology,” of the trade fairs in Xishuangbanna, Lao traders are thus “[f]aced with a choice situation where it is impossible to optimize, or where the computational cost of doing so seems burdensome […] [so that they] may look for a satisfactory, rather than an optimal alternative” (Simon 2008). Satisfactory in this context means making the best of their trading relations by focusing only on a less prof itable but more predictable segment of fair visitors, instead of putting additional efforts—which may be beyond their skills or too costly and laborious—to optimize their relations with all potential customers, including Han Chinese customers, outside of

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their targeted environment of “localizing” and ethnically “familiarizing” consumer relations. Defying the conventional conception of economic rationality, the Lao traders operate within an “embedded rationality” or “contextual rationality” that is “embedded in the context in which it occurs and acquires meaning in reference to that context” (Townley 2008, p. 92). While intervening at these trade fairs, I acted outside this specific context of tactically utilizing the generally suggested representation of ethnocultural proximity and affinity between Yunnan (Xishuangbanna) and Southeast Asia (Thailand). It seemed that I tried to optimize something beyond the traders’ “aspiration level” (Simon 1955). My additional dealings with Han Chinese customers yielded good results in the short term, and generated additional revenue, but would not change the overall path of their “satisficing” approach of sticking to the “good enough” choice to maintain their low-key, “local” market performance, instead of trying an allegedly optimal but riskier strategy. There is simply no “better enough.” However, again, I need to stress at this juncture that the Lao traders’ market strategy was indeed still open to ways of further optimizing their selling performance, for which, however, no additional efforts on their part were needed. Often, the “bothersome” effort necessary for interacting with Han Chinese customers was absorbed by Chinese Tai Lue customers themselves, who came with their Han friends, for whom they would translate or to whom they explained and suggested certain commodities. In this case, the first contacts for the Lao traders were Tai Lue customers, with their accompanying Han friends benefitting from this targeted Lue–Lao affinity. It also sometimes occurred that Han Chinese themselves made what would otherwise have been additional efforts obsolete, through their own familiarity with the goods on offer, knowing exactly what to buy. They were mainly residents of Xishuangbanna, but sometimes also originated from other provinces. In the latter case, they had become acquainted with some of the offered goods through previous travels to Xishuangbanna, Laos, or Thailand. Thus, this extension of the Lao traders’ “local” clientele—primarily centred on Tai Lue customers, but also possibly including other groups somehow familiar with their products—made potential additional efforts to take care of “non-local” Han Chinese circles of customers, at that point undertaken by me, even more obsolete.

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“Local” Advantages of Lao Traders vis-à-vis “International” Thai Traders Given Xishuangbanna’s environment of symbolically and materially approximated “Thainess,” several trade fair attendees from Thailand similarly aimed to create a sense of Dai-Thai ethnic intimacy and “localness.” Most of them came from Chiang Rai or Chiang Mai provinces and covered a commodity range of northern Thai snacks, clothes, and organic cosmetic and medical products (especially soap). Some of these traders approached Chinese Tai Lue customers in northern Thai language (Tai Yuan or ค�ำเมือง kham muang) or simply in central Thai language, thereby likewise implying, starting with language, a certain sense of closeness to them.13 Besides some more experienced Thai traders who had previously been to trade fairs in other parts of China, there was a considerable influx of newcomers who usually provided rather sceptical and cautious accounts of their performance. They often stated that they were still checking out the current market situation in China. At the same time, they were already complaining about considerable burdens and difficulties. Moreover, they expressed their disappointment about the relatively low number of visitors at these fairs. Amidst this pessimistic and negative undertone, some began to pay attention to the group of Lao traders with a mixture of curiosity, admiration, and envy, wondering how they could sell “their own” Thai products so successfully. Many Thai vendors, most of them selling inside the exhibition hall, came over to the Lao stalls and tried to reach out to their counterparts by engaging in small talk, mainly in northern and occasionally in central Thai language, sometimes also trying to speak some Lao. Behind their efforts to foster a sense of cultural affinity, within the perception of jointly sharing the challenges of operating in a culturally distant Chinese environment, often lay the straightforward interest in fully grasping the apparently successful performance of the Lao traders. For instance, Tui, a woman in her mid-60s, was attending a Chinese trade fair for the first time. Together with her close friend, Saengduan, and some other friends from Chiang Rai, she was selling fried pork skin and a variety of Thai snacks and sweets during the National Day trade fair in October 2015.14 13 At the four trade fairs I visited, I only once met a Thai saleswoman who was in fact Tai Lue. Hailing from Chiang Mai, she worked for a Chiang Mai-based label specializing in ethnic fashion, particularly “Lanna” and Tai Lue dresses. 14 Since this trade fair in October 2015, Tui has not been to any other trade fair in China. Back home in Chiang Rai, she was running a noodle restaurant just along National Highway 1 (connecting Bangkok with the Thai–Myanmar border crossing in Mae Sai, Chiang Rai province),

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She often came over to the Lao stalls to carefully inspect their goods. She also asked both the retail and purchasing prices, although the Lao traders usually did not disclose the latter. Meticulously browsing through their assortment and witnessing their crowds of customers, she nodded approvingly and acknowledged how skilled they must be. In contrast, her own business did not go that well. My stays at her stall were dominated by her embittered remarks about the chicaneries at the Thai-Lao and particularly the Lao-Chinese border crossings, the struggles to obtain a Chinese visa, and the logistical burdens and financial expenses of transporting their goods. “Troublesome” Border Crossing and Flexible Cross-Border Mobility Throughout my subsequent visits to trade fairs, Tui’s struggles and complaints were echoed by several other Thai traders, who stressed the complicated and costly procedures needed to cross two national borders (to Laos and China) and their reliance on shipping companies and usually overpriced accommodation in China. Their situation stood in sharp contrast to that of the Lao vendors, who generally organized everything by themselves and literally settled down at the fair. Small trucks and tents flanked their stalls at the back. They were the only trade fair participants sleeping on the spot in tents they had brought themselves, staying with their commodities day and night, thereby rebutting potential concerns of transportation and accommodation. However, several Lao traders shared the concerns of their Thai counterparts that it would become more difficult to import Thai goods into China, citing ever-tightening restrictions on Thai imports resulting from protectionist measures on the Chinese side. During an extended stay in Mohan in February 2017, shortly after the Chinese New Year trade fair in Jinghong, I came across numerous shopkeepers who likewise gave accounts pointing to recent difficulties of importing Thai commodities. Again, it seemed that Thai-owned import businesses were hit hardest. I talked to one of the few remaining Thai entrepreneurs in Mohan, who was running a Thai supermarket on behalf of an import-export company based in Pathum Thani, near Bangkok. She grimly reiterated a plethora of problems revolving around unpredictable and increasingly restrictive customs policies. Trouble with customs, together with a Chinese-dominated mainly catering to tourists and transients travelling from or to Phayao, Chiang Mai, or as far as Bangkok. In late 2016, I got to hear from her son that she had closed her noodle shop and opened a new one in Bangkok where his son (her grandson) lived. This is only one of the many trajectories I came across that are shaped by high degrees of change, mobility, and unpredictability.

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9  Luang Namtha traders staying in tents behind their stalls at a trade fair in Jinghong during Chinese New Year, January/February 2017

Photo taken by author

oversupply of Thai goods, prompted many Thai newcomers in Mohan to give up their businesses and return to Thailand, she explained. Citing as an example the closure of a bigger Thai supermarket run by Thai entrepreneurs from Bangkok, which I had only just seen opening its doors in April 2015, she likewise planned to close down her supermarket in a few months and return to Thailand. In a sense, I was confronted with the counterintuitive situation that international business ventures—trusting in the promises of national governments and (sub)regional bodies of ever-opening and ever-growing cross-border mobility and integration—failed, whereas local, often referred to as informal and small, business actors seemed to succeed. Again, to be sure, small-scale local traders such as Amnuay and Tot shared those concerns about the increasing logistical troubles in realizing the transnational flow of goods from Thailand to China. In this connection, the difficulty of importing highly sought-after Thai energy drinks into China was frequently cited as a prominent example. Many traders were worried that China’s alleged attempts to protect domestic brands (e.g., promoting Chinese versions of the Thai brand Red Bull, กระทิงแดง krathing daeng) would be extended to other products, such as popular Thai instant noodles or soybean milk. Regarding the highly lucrative trade in Thai fruits, which will be described in more detail in the following chapter, there were

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also some rumours that the Chinese side would only allow fruits properly packed in designated boxes with Chinese letters—which would identify officially licensed fruit importers—and would refuse fruits from Thai fruit cultivators, which had usually been wrapped in Thai newsprint.15 However, at the same time, Amnuay and Tot displayed an imperturbable pragmatism. “So, we need to hide those problematic goods by putting other goods on top,” Amnuay explained, importantly adding that they therefore only used smaller local border crossings (ດ່ານເລ ກັ dan lek, “small checkpoint,” or ດ່ານ ທ້ອງຖິນ ່ dan thongthin, “local checkpoint”). Indeed, most of the Lao traders at the fair crossed the border into China through the local Panghai/Chahe checkpoint near Muang Sing, whereas they would return with their (half-) empty trucks through the larger Boten/Mohan checkpoint, which constitutes the only international border crossing (ດ່ານສາກົນ dan sakon) between Laos and China (i.e., non-border residents and travellers from third countries can cross here with passports and visas). While the small border crossing near Muang Sing is open only for local residents on both sides of the border, using border passes instead of passports, it has been a significant node of transnational trade networks as “it serves some long-distance trade that heads down the old caravan route to Xiangkok and onward to Myanmar and Thailand” (Walker 2000, p. 133).16 Opened in 1962, and temporarily closed during the Sino-Vietnam conflict of 1977–1983 (Lyttleton 2006, p. 214),17 it precedes the Boten/Mohan crossing, which opened to local cross-border trade in the late 1980s and ultimately to international travel and trade in late 1993 (Walker 2000, p. 133). “In Muang Sing, they don’t check every car very carefully, but in Boten it is almost impossible to cross without problems. There, they even have an X-ray machine,” Amnuay explained to me. Tot similarly described the Boten crossing as too troublesome and expensive. In addition to the annoying combination of overly strict checking procedures and high fees, he also declared, notably, that the officials on both sides of the border would not be “corrupt” at all (he used the English pronunciation of “corruption,” kholapsan ຄໍຣບ ັ ຊັນ). I was not entirely sure whether to take his remark at face value or, rather, as being ironical. What he did say, without ambiguity, was that, at least for the local border crossing, it would be easier to know some customs 15 I heard similar rumours on the Thai side, emphasizing that the Chinese authorities attempted to be stricter about the correct and standardized packaging and labelling of imported Thai fruits. 16 Besides the Panghai border crossing, Luang Namtha province has another local China–Laos border crossing in Ban Mom (Mengrung on the Chinese side). 17 Chris Lyttleton (2006, pp. 214-215) refers to the “Pangthong border crossing” which is also known as “Panghai border crossing.” I use the latter name throughout this book.

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10  Cross-border routes of Luang Namtha traders attending Chinese trade fairs

Map by Lee Li Kheng

officials and to establish a certain degree of long-term relations with some room for reciprocity. In addition to resorting to the local border crossing, Lao traders still were able to make use of the international crossing in Boten while skilfully circumventing its strict border regime. Sometimes, they would transport those “restricted” (ຈໍາກັດ jamkad) or “forbidden” (ຫ້າມ ham) goods on the public local bus running from Luang Namtha to the northernmost

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province of Phongsaly, which takes a shortcut through China via Mohan.18 They would simply tell the customs officials that those goods were not for sale in China but were intended to be sold in Phongsaly. With the border out of reach, they would unload the goods on the Chinese side when the bus stopped over in Manzhuang, near Mengla town. This pragmatic flexibility and creativity in organizing alternative crossborder logistics distinguishes the Lao traders from their Thai counterparts. They are in the advantageous position of being able to fully make use of local cross-border dynamics, whereas the Thai participants have no choice but to operate within the more standardized and regulated international border regime, only able to enter China through Boten/Mohan. Lao traders have the privilege of being able to operate with both Lao-Thai and Lao-Chinese border passes, allowing a higher degree of flexible cross-border mobility, fully covering the Thailand–Laos–Yunnan borderland economy. Any Lao citizen, including those not residing in the provinces directly bordering China (Luang Namtha, Oudomxai or Phongsaly), can apply for a Lao-Chinese border pass directly at the border in Boten. It is valid for one year and can be easily extended annually. It entitles the holder to stays of up to 15 days on each occasion in Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and Pu’er Prefecture. Many traders emphasized that applying for a Lao-Thai border pass would be much more troublesome. It is again open to any Lao citizen but can only be applied for at the provincial immigration office of Bokeo province, and not directly at the border. Hence, I was often told that it might be easier to travel to Thailand with a passport since they, as citizens of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), are exempted from visas for stays not exceeding 30 days. However, this requires the possession of a passport in the first place. Having said that, the point here is that Lao citizens can easily enjoy relatively high degrees of cross-border movement, spanning two international borders at a local scale. Predestined to be middlemen between China and Thailand, the calculated efforts of Lao traders at Chinese trade fairs to perform locally are embedded in, and enabled by, the favourable structure of border policies allowing the local handling of transnational commodity flows.

18 This local bus enters China at the international border crossing of Boten/Mohan before crossing back into Phongsaly province through the local border crossing in Manzhuang/Ban Duea. This bus is not considered to serve an international route.

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Smallness as the Art of Blending In Returning to the trade fairs in Jinghong, this thoroughly local alignment in the performance of ethno-cultural intimacy and cross-border logistics sets Lao traders apart from Thai actors, who similarly try to target exploit cultural affinity when interacting with Tai Lue customers. However, while Thai entrepreneurs made an attempt at an “international trade fair” (often using the word งาน ngan, in this context translatable as “event” or “fair”), the group of Luang Namtha-based traders attended a “local market” (ຕະຫຼາດ ທ້ອງຖິນ ່ talat thongthin or ຕະຫຼາດຊ ມ ຸ ຊົນ talat sumson), reflecting the intimate dimension and mental mapping of their cross-border business. Struggling with the harsh market realities in China, Thai traders were amazed at, and envious of, the large supply of Thai commodities provided by the group from Luang Namtha, which at the same time were very welcome for their own needs. They often came over to the Lao stalls to buy papaya salad (in Lao ຕຳ�ໝາກຮຸງ່ tam mak hung, in Thai ส้มต�ำ somtam), half-jokingly expressing their excitement at tasting some tam lao (ต�ำลาว)—that is, “Lao style” somtam/papaya salad. Apart from happily consuming somtam, Thai traders came by to buy Thai instant noodles, canned mackerel, beverages (especially energy drinks and soybean milk), and other snacks, or to borrow some fish sauce and shrimp paste. Stressing that they felt closer to home when buying Thai goods from the Lao traders, they complained at the same time about the bad Chinese food available there. In some way, the Lao traders supplied their Thai counterparts with the necessary ingredients to (re)build a sense of Thai identity and self-esteem through which they could distance themselves from the Chinese “Other,” or probably compensate for periods of felt failure or hardship. Ironically, in resorting to the consumption of reasserted “Thainess,” mainly through food, Thai traders relied on suppliers from Laos, thereby inverting the sense of economic and cultural superiority through which Thai suppliers, or ordinary Thai border residents, usually view Lao people and the state of their economy in general (see chapter 2). At least in the case of the trade fairs in Jinghong, the creation of Thai commodityscapes, in which Thai traders still are certainly partaking, is undertaken most successfully in terms of quantity, visibility, and popularity by the group from Luang Namtha. These traders continue the ordinariness and localness of selling Thai goods in marketplaces throughout (northern) Laos, as I will describe in more detail in chapter 3, in the context of an international trade fair in China. They do indeed sell their Thai goods as “local” commodities to Tai Lue customers for whom they are familiar, to (Han) Chinese interested in or likewise already familiar with the products, and to fellow Thai traders eager to get a taste of home. This

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certainty of continual demand from different groups of customers, coupled with evolving local customer networks and the availability of alternative cross-border mobilities, positions the Lao traders well at these trade fairs. While my intervention in extensively catering to non-Dai (Han/Haw) Chinese customers had already unpacked the calculated and rational dynamics behind this semblance of irrationality or unprofessionalism, my encounter with Rung, a Thai saleswoman, during Jinghong’s Chinese New Year trade fair in 2017, made it even clearer how different the Lao traders’ market approach was from that of other fair participants. Rung had just started her own business, promoting self-made herbal cosmetic products inside the exhibition hall alongside her niece and an interpreter. Having been to some other trade fairs in China before, she kept complaining about the relatively small size and, in her eyes, low attendance of the trade fair in Jinghong. On the second day of this fair, we had a longer conversation in which she became more interested in my research, and by extension in the Lao traders I was spending most of my time with. After that, she started to go out to visit the Lao stalls with increasing frequency, specifically the stalls of Tot and Ya and Hiang and Mo, where I was mainly staying. She already knew Ya from her previous visit to Jinghong. Like me, Rung usually sat down at one of these two stalls, mainly to observe or to make some small talk, leaving her niece and their interpreter alone at her stall. While hanging around at the Lao traders’ stalls, she often mentioned the boredom inside the hall, which would be so different from the bustle outside. Once, towards the end of the trade fair, Rung approached Mo, Hiang, and me at “our” stall. After chatting with Mo, who now and then needed to prepare papaya salad for some customers, Rung quickly became more active and motivated to help them selling goods. Despite speaking hardly a word of Chinese, she tried to talk to Han Chinese customers, drawing on her very limited vocabulary of numbers that she had only just picked up during the fair while constantly asking me for other Chinese words. Without asking or being asked, she took on the role of a busy vendor, trying to attract even more customers, quoting prices, and ultimately settling transactions and handing payments she received to Mo or Hiang. In all her activity, as if compensating for her portrayed boredom, she implicitly demonstrated a more effective way of trading, which she also explicitly communicated to me, asking me jokingly why I was just sitting around like the other Lao traders. “As a trader, you need to take care of your customers, you need to be talkative and you need to promote your goods,” she explained to me. Her endeavour to act out her version of a “good” vendor was met by Hiang and Mo with ambiguous and weary smiles—expressing a mixture of slight

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delight, awkwardness at being shown and told how to “better” (i.e., more professionally and efficiently) sell their goods, and an unvoiced confidence that they did not need to be concerned with such a hassle. After Rung left again, Hiang noted laughingly: “She really can talk, and she talks a lot!” Hiang’s statement gets to the heart of her perception of their role at the trade fair. There is simply no need for what would be perceived as unnecessary talk, indiscriminately addressing any customer or passers-by, which would go beyond their “satisficing” aspiration level of specializing in Tai Lue customer relations. Their trading activities beyond this level are confined to the ostensibly passive mode (i.e., involving minimal effort) of merely suppling commodities without much conversational or social ornamentation. In the end, Rung herself, in subsequent conversations, revealed her admiration for the Lao traders despite her determined imposition of purportedly more appropriate or “professional” marketing practices. She appreciated their successful local networking and their readiness to give up any comfort (i.e., sleeping in tents). Her admiration, in combination with her maternalistic impulse to help, again reflects well the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of this group of Lao traders who superficially lack business acumen while succeeding on the ground. They succeed as a permanent feature of the trade fairs. They conspicuously live at the trade fair sites, sleeping in tents and virtually keeping their daily profits under their pillows. They have blended in within the regional landscape of trade fairs in Xishuangbanna and beyond; in the words of a Chinese observer working in a Chinese import company in Nateuy (Laos, near Boten) who regularly visits those trade fairs: “They are awesome. No matter which trade fair, they will always be there.”

Conclusion The relentless efforts of local authorities and entrepreneurs to transform Xishuangbanna into symbolic and commodifiable landscapes resembling parts of Southeast Asia and Thailand in particular—howsoever imagined and ambiguously articulated through metonymical references to Dai ethnicity and Thai culture—are at regional trade fairs skilfully reappropriated by Lao traders. They straightforwardly target notions of (fictive) ethnic affinity and intimacy with Xishuangbanna’s Dai (Tai Lue) population, their primary customer base at trade fairs. In this strategy of locally performing and re-enacting the representational and commodifiable logics of a “cultural zone of Dai-Tai people” (Zheng 2008), little effort is undertaken to extend their circle of customers beyond local Tai Lue residents, a tendency which

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is clearly reflected in their different modes of interacting with potential customers. While they make every endeavour to proactively forge personalized relations with Tai Lue customers, their relations with non-Tai Lue (i.e., mainly Han Chinese) customers are characterized by equally calculated practices of distancing and minimizing social interaction, thereby giving the impression of passivity. The traders’ twofold approach towards trade fairs in Xishuangbanna might initially appear irrational and inconsistent to outside observers like Rung or myself, as it seems to miss out on the larger, allegedly promising, and lucrative Chinese market. However, the rationality behind their purportedly irrational economic behaviour needs to be understood in its embeddedness in the specific context of Xishuangbanna trade fairs, of which they have become an indispensable local feature without putting much additional effort to reach out to non-Dai and non-local Chinese visitors and tourists. Their successful performance of smallness is—in its humbleness (sleeping in tents in the outside) and its seeming economic irrationality (“ignoring” the wider customer range of curious Han Chinese)—also acknowledged by several fellow Thai traders, who at times struggle with the unfavourable Chinese market reality amidst their similar attempts to invoke ethnocultural closeness with potential Tai Lue customers. In the next chapter, I take the reader to the Thai side of this transnational borderland economy—to a Tai Lue village in Chiang Khong district, Chiang Rai province. Located along the Mekong River, on the border with Laos, this village is intensively involved in transnational trade of Thai fruits to Laos and further afield to China. As in the case of regional trade fairs in Xishuangbanna, this trading village initially appears as a predestined node of a revitalized ethnic Tai Lue trading world. However, while this village’s cross-border trade network indeed is geographically and culturally embedded in historical dynamics of Tai Lue cross-border exchange and mobility, the currently thriving transnational fruit trade is not facilitated by notions and practices of (fictive) shared cross-border ethnic commonality, but by strong articulations of national difference. Whereas small-scale traders from northern Laos pragmatically act out top-down representations of ethnically distinct Dai/Thai-Southeast Asian landscapes in Xishuangbanna, they enable and sustain the transnational flow of Thai fruits to China as middlemen who skilfully mirror and re-enact, through playful self-stereotyping, the geoeconomic reality (or representation?) of underdeveloped and overdependent Laos surrounded by powerful neighbours, thereby demonstrating yet another facet and tactic of smallness.

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Li, Yang, and Geoffrey Wall. 2008. “Ethnic Tourism and Entrepreneurship: Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China.” Tourism Geographies 10 (4): 522-544. Li, Yang, and Geoffrey Wall. 2009. “Authenticity in Ethnic Tourism: Domestic Tourists’ Perspectives.” Current Issues in Tourism 12 (3): 235-254. Lyttleton, Chris. 2006. “Cultivating the Market: Mobility, Labour and Sexual Exchange in Northwest Laos.” In Population Dynamics and Infectious Diseases in Asia, edited by Adrian C. Sleigh, Chee Heng Leng, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Phua Kai Hong, and Rachel Safman, 207-230. Singapore: World Scientif ic Publishing. Nyíri, Pál. 2017. “Realms of Free Trade, Enclaves of Order: Chinese-Built ‘Instant Cities’ in Northern Laos.” In The Art of Neighbouring: Making Relations Across China’s Borders, edited by Martin Saxer and Juan Zhang, 57-71. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Rehbein, Boike. 2007. Globalization, Culture and Society in Laos. London and New York: Routledge. Rehbein, Boike. 2017. Society in Contemporary Laos: Capitalism, Habitus and Belief. London and New York: Routledge. Reynolds, Craig. 1998. “Globalization and Cultural Nationalism in Modern Thailand.” In Southeast Asian Identities: Culture and the Politics of Representation in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, edited by Joel S. Kahn, 115-145. London/Singapore: I. B. Tauris/Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Shen, Xu, and Zhi Liu. 1988. Zhongguo xinan yu dongnanya de kuajing minzu [Cross-Border Ethnic Groups of Southwest China and Southeast Asia]. Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe. Simon, Herbert A. 1955. “A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 69 (1): 99-118. Simon, Herbert A. 1956. “Rational Choice and the Struture of the Environment.” Psychological Review 63 (2): 129-138. Simon, Herbert A. 1982. Models of Bounded Rationality. Volume 2: Behavioral Economics and Business Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Simon, Herbert A. 1990. “Invariants of Human Behavior.” Annual Review of Psychology 41: 1-19. Simon, Herbert A. 2008. “Satisficing.” The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online, edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Su, Xiaobo. 2013. “From Frontier to Bridgehead: Cross-border Regions and the Experience of Yunnan, China.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37 (4): 1213-1232.

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Summers, Tim. 2013. Yunnan-A Chinese Bridgehead to Asia: A Case Study of China’s Political and Economic Relations with its Neighbours. Oxford: Chandos Publishing. Summers, Tim. 2019. “The Belt and Road Initiative in Southwest China: Responses from Yunnan Province.” The Pacific Review 34 (2): 206-229. Townley, Barbara. 2008. Reason’s Neglect: Rationality and Organizing. New York: Oxford University Press. Walker, Andrew. 2000. “Regional Trade in Northwestern Laos: An Initial Assessment of the Economic Quadrangle.” In Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social and Cultural Change in the Border Regions, edited by Grant Evans, Christopher Hutton, and Kuah Khun Eng, 122-144. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Wang, Jianwei, and Tiang Boon Hoo. 2019. China’s Omnidirectional Peripheral Diplomacy. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Zheng, Xiao Yun. 2008. Quanqiuhua beijing xia de zhongguo ji dongnanya tai dai minzu wenhua [The Cultural Diversity of Dai-Tai Ethnic Group of China and Southeast Asia in the Globalization]. Beijing: The Ethnic Publishing House.

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“Normal Fruits for Laos, Premium Fruits for China” Transnational Flows of National Differences Abstract This chapter focuses on Luang Namtha traders’ role in the transnational trade of Thai fruits between Thailand and China, radiating out from a Tai Lue village in northern Thailand. They appear to have a major stake as middlemen mediating between Thai and Chinese traders’ fruit-related quality contestations. Central to this is their discourse and practice of reserving high-quality fruits for the Chinese market and mediocre fruits for the Lao market. While their view of an under-performing agricultural sector explains the import of Thai fruits, their perception of China’s economic supremacy explains the further export of premium fruits to China. Lao cross-border traders purposely reproduce a frontier of nationally stereotyped differences to enable and sustain the transnational flow of Thai fruits. Keywords: Thai fruits; discourses of quality; Laos; China; transnational flow; national stereotypes

Located along the Mekong River, in Thailand’s northernmost Chiang Rai province, Ban Huay Meng is the oldest of three Tai Lue villages in Chiang Khong district, followed by Ban Sri Donchai and Ban Hat Bai. It shares with Ban Sri Donchai the history of Tai Lue migration from Muang Ou in Sipsongpanna (now located in present-day Phongsaly province in northernmost Laos) into Chiang Khong in the late 19th century.1 Sophida 1 As the most recent Tai Lue settlement in Chiang Khong, Ban Hat Bai emerged from a migratory past that differed from that of Ban Huay Meng and Ban Sri Donchai. Only in the late 1940s did the first wave of Tai Lue migrants, escaping the political turmoil of the looming First Indochina War (1946–1954), cross the Mekong River from Ban Nam Keung Kao in Bokeo province to the present-day Rimkhong subdistrict of Chiang Khong district. While they initially lived

Rowedder, Simon, Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos. Mastering Smallness. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722360_ch02

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Wirakunthewan (2005, p. 44) refers in her comprehensive study on ethnicity and trade dynamics in Chiang Khong to the historical account of Ban Sri Donchai’s former subdistrict headmen (ก�ำนัน kamnan), Thongdi Wongchai and Wong Wongchai. According to them, the Tai Lue of Muang Ou Nuea decided to escape their destitute situation amidst several Chinese invasions in 1885. Under the leadership of Phaya2 Kaeo, they first migrated to Doi Lak Kham in the present-day China–Laos border area, where they remained for less than a year. They continued to migrate southward and eventually crossed the Mekong River to Ban Thung Duk in present-day Wiang subdistrict of Chiang Khong before they moved again to Ban Thung Mot, now in Chiang Khong’s Sathan subdistrict. There, this group of Tai Lue migrants divided into three groups. The first one settled down further north at the Meng creek (ห้วยเม็ง huay meng) and founded the village of Ban Huay Meng. The second group returned to Laos to the villages of Ban Pung and Ban Tha Fa (or also called Ban Sang), in present-day Bokeo province, 30 and 70 kilometres away from Huay Xai, respectively. The third group migrated further southwest to Ban Tha Kham in Chiang Rai’s present-day Wiang Kaen district before the villagers, in search for new agricultural land, moved again in 1949 to Ban Sri Chai Mongkol, which preceded the village of Ban Sri Donchai, established in 1957.

The Tai Lue in Thailand: A Cultural Source for “Lanna Thai” I have briefly provided some details of Ban Huay Meng’s migration history here as it is part and parcel of the present state of academic and public representations and mappings of Tai Lue ethnicity and identity in Thailand, which always emphasize Sipsongpanna as the Tai Lue homeland. In the general context of the ethno-cultural Lue revivalism across the region from the late 1980s onwards (Panyagaew 2013; Cohen 2000a; Davis 2003), Tai Lue communities in northern Thailand have been appropriated by Thai state discourses and policies (often backed by scholars) for promoting regional identities (Jory 1999), specifically as an integral part of a distinct Lanna together with local khon muang (คนเมืือง) (Tai Yuan) in the area of Ban Don Thi, they subsequently moved westward to establish the exclusive Tai Lue village of Ban Hat Bai directly on the banks of the Mekong. A second wave of migration arrived in Ban Hat Bai during the Laotian Civil Wars following the end of the First Indochina War in 1954. For more on the migration history of the Lue of Ban Hat Bai, see Wirakunthewan (2005, pp. 47-49). 2 The Lanna term Phaya (usually spelled พระยา or พระญา) refers to a historical aristocratic title, translatable as “lord.”

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culture. Based on an understanding of different historical waves of forced (but also voluntary) southward migration that concludes that the “Tai Lü in northern Thailand have been largely assimilated, both linguistically and culturally, into the local Tai Yuan mainstream” (Liew-Herres, Grabowsky, and Wichasin 2012, p. 8), Thai studies on the Tai Lue in northern Thailand and Xishuangbanna are thus often intended as a means to make sense of the notion of a unique Lanna culture unifying an ethnic diversity of different Tai-speaking peoples. The Tai Lue are therefore seen, and studied, “as representatives of one variant northern Thai culture” (Keyes 1992, p. 16). The study Tai Lue: An Identity of the Tai Ethnic Group, published by the Social Research Institute at Chiang Mai University to promote the university’s “Lanna Cultural and Ethnic Museum,” vividly illustrates this: The north of Thailand includes numerous ethnic groups living together. According to history, the migration of communities of a variety of ethnic groups from muang in Upper Lanna let the ethnic groups living in the flat valleys, including various Tai-speaking groups such as the Tai Yohng (Tai Yonok), Tai Yong, Tai Khuen, Tai Lue and Tai Yai, all have a role in propelling or developing an economic and social system, in creating the cultural uniqueness of Lanna, causing the north of Thailand to have notable characteristics different from other parts of the country. (Project of Lanna Cultural and Ethnic Museum 2008, p. v)

Consequently, Sipsongpanna, as the homeland of the Tai Lue, constitutes one of several original sources of authentic Lanna culture, which nowadays potentially serve as the point of origin for a certain (commodifiable) “Lanna Style” as part of a “Lanna Renaissance” (Johnson 2014). James Austin Farrell (2009) considers the year of 1996 as the “year of the Lanna revival,” when Chiang Mai was celebrating its 700th anniversary. As part of the anniversary celebrations, Chiang Mai hosted the International Conference on Thai Studies for the first time, which notably included panels on Lanna history and Tai Yuan culture, clearly marking a shift away from dominant national, Bangkok-centred historical narratives towards an emerging focus on regional histories and identities (Jory 2000, pp. 18-19). In this regard, Nicholas Farrelly (2009, pp. 69-72) draws attention to the occasional naming of the “Tai Studies Project” of Thai intellectuals and scholars as a “relative-seeking movement” (กระบวนการสื บหาญาต krabuan kansuebha yat) that aims to detect the essence of a broader “Tai family.” The idea of Sipsonganna and Tai Lue culture as pure and authentic ingredients of “Lanna Thai culture” is also utilized for touristic purposes.

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For instance, the “Maekhong Delta” travel agency, based in Mae Sai in Chiang Rai province, once offered four-day package tours from Chiang Saen to Chiang Rung (Jinghong) by boat, which promised “The Charm of Chiang Rung: The Area of Tail-feather Spreading Peacocks—The Land of Tai Lue—The Much-Cited Ancient Kingdom.”3 Under the slogan “re-tracing Lanna Thai culture,” travellers are invited “to feel the original way of life of Lanna Thai in the past.”4 Behind the desire to trace the origins of a unique Lanna way of life also lies the concept of phum panya (ภูมปิ ัญญา). Translatable as “native consciousness” or “native wisdom,” “which bears the mark of a Thai authenticity uncontaminated by foreign knowledge” (Reynolds 1996, p. 113), phum panya is the subject of studies on Tai-speaking peoples within and beyond the national boundaries of Thailand. With regard to the Tai Lue, besides religion and architecture, the craft of weaving textiles is considered to be by far the most important element of their phum panya. Charles Keyes (1992) observed in the early 1990s an increased state focus on Lue material culture, especially textiles. Paul Cohen (2000b, p. 57) sees in his case study of a Tai Lue textile revival in Nan province a “process of appropriation, of elite Thai perceptions of where the Lue fit in national culture and what elements can be profiled and commoditized, and of the Lue response to these perceptions.” Appropriated by the state, Tai Lue textiles have also found their way into the discourse of cultural “heritage” (มรดก moradok). A prime example is the National Culture Commission’s 1992 project to promote and disseminate knowledge of Tai Lue textiles from the “Lanna Thai” region. As part of this project, two books were published: From Lan Na towards Lan Chang (Prangwatthanakul 1993) and Sipsongpanna (Office of National Culture Commission 1994). The latter added the Chinese dimension to the former publication on Tai Lue textiles in Thailand and neighbouring Laos, which was based on an official one-week research trip to Kunming and Xishuangbanna in 1992. In the foreword, the then Secretary General of the National Culture Commission, Mongkol Bunwong, repeatedly stressed the project’s anticipated contribution to new perspectives for understanding the “heritage of Tai Lue textiles,” and investigating its “origin and brightness.” Besides numerous studies that delve into the cultural heritage of Tai Lue textiles as such (e.g., Prangwatthanakul 2008), there is also an increasing body of work concerned with their meaningful commodification and marketization (e.g., Jommeuang 2003; Nopharat and Ananchai 2009; Pinsak 2013). 3 My own translation from a travel package advertisement from “Maekhong Delta Travel Agency.” The original Thai reads: “เสน่่ห์เ์ ชีียงรุ่่�ง ถิ่่�นนกยููงรำำ�แพน ดิินแดนไทลื้้�อ ร่ำำ��ลืืออาณาจัักรโบราณ.” 4 See above. The original Thai reads: “ย้้อนรอยอดีีตวัฒั นธรรมล้้านนาไทย.”

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11  “Tai Lue Cultural Centre” on the premises of Ban Sri Donchai temple

Photo taken by author, 2019

Indeed, having previously lived in northern Thailand, I could witness a burgeoning landscape of newly promoted “Tai Lue Weaving Centres,” which simultaneously act as small museums or “study centres” (ศูนย์ความเรียน รู ้ sun khwamrianru) and often offer “Tai Lue-style” homestays. I had the chance to visit those places in Chiang Kham district (Phayao province), Ban Luang Tai and Ban Luang Neua villages in Doi Saket district (Chiang Mai province), Ban Nong Bua village in Tha Wang Pha district (Nan province), and, eventually, in Ban Hat Bai and Ban Sri Donchai villages in Chiang Khong district (Chiang Rai province). These places, which combine the commodification, museumization, heritagization, and “touristicization” (homestay tourism) of Tai Lue culture and associated ethnic identity, constitute the most visible destinations for tourists as well as scholars interested in Tai Lue artistic and cultural heritage. In Chiang Khong district, Ban Hat Bai and Ban Sri Donchai gained some prominence in this respect. The latter in particular boasts quite a developed Tai Lue cultural infrastructure along the main road. Besides several smaller textile shops, it consists of the “Sri Donchai Women Weaving Group,” the “Heuan Khamphaeng” (เฮือนค�ำแพง, translatable as the home/house of Khamphaeng, the owner)—offering the tried and tested combination of homestay, small museum, sale of self-woven traditional textiles, and Tai Lue cultural performances—, and the “Lue Lai Kham Museum.” Opened in November 2015, this museum mainly displays old

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collections of Tai Lue textiles from different parts of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and China, and also houses a chic café overlooking a wide plain of rice fields stretching to the Mekong River—offering a panorama which is also advertised for “traditional Lanna Thai” wedding pictures. Moreover, a brand-new “Tai Lue Cultural Centre” opened in April 2018 on the premises of the temple of Ban Sri Donchai.

The Case of Ban Huay Meng: From Ethnic Frontier to National Fruit Frontier Consequently, from the outset, the northern Thai border district of Chiang Khong appeared to be an ideal area for my initial research interest of tracing ethnic Tai Lue cross-border trade dynamics across northern Thailand, northern Laos, and southern Yunnan, looking back at a rich migration history with links to Sipsongpanna/Xishuangbanna and displaying a strong consciousness of Tai Lue ethnic identity and cultural heritage. The village of Ban Huay Meng drew my particular interest as I had heard a lot about its engagement in cross-border trade, especially in fruits, during my affiliation with the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) at Chiang Mai University. Equipped with its own river port, this village has been very active and successful in trading Thai fruits across the Mekong to Laos and, in larger volumes, further afield to China. Excited to come across a potential node of a larger transnational Tai Lue trade space, I travelled to Ban Huay Meng, first to talk with the village headman who is at the same time the head of Chiang Khong’s Wiang (“city”) subdistrict (ก�ำนัน kamnan).5 Together with his wife Oy (well-known in Chiang Khong and also beyond in Laos and Xishuangbanna as “Pa Oy” [“auntie Oy”]), he was himself largely involved in cross-border fruit trade. I started our conversation straightaway by asking about the significance of ethnic Tai Lue cross-border bonds in facilitating their trade activities. Thinking for a moment, then smiling to himself, the kamnan explained that their Tai Lue village, whose inhabitants had migrated down from Sipsongpanna through northern Laos starting some 130 years ago, still maintained some relations to the Lao side based on kinship. They would occasionally invite each other for weddings or Buddhist ceremonies. He also agreed that their cross-border trade activities started as a Tai Lue enterprise, drawing on ethnic bonds and notions of kinship. 5 In the following, I will simply refer to him as kamnan, using the Thai title for a subdistrict head with which I usually addressed him during our conversations.

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However, he gradually shifted our conversation to the recent past and the present, proudly stating that, nowadays, their trade operations involved a wide range of Lao and Chinese trading partners, regardless of whether they were of Tai Lue ethnicity or not. It seemed important to him to clarify several times that their current cross-border trade relationships were not based solely on ethnicity, but were rather “relationships of a purely economic nature” (ความ สัมพันธ์ในด้านธุรกิจอย่างเดียว khwamsamphan nai dan thurakit yang diao), therefore to be seen separately from socio-cultural events, in which Tai Lue kinship and its migratory history might be momentarily recalled and celebrated. The kamnan’s delineation of two distinctive domains of cross-border ties should not be taken at face value, but rather be understood as his personal practice of positioning himself—and by extension his village—and his commercial activities within a decidedly economic setting closely tied to the perceived function of Ban Huay Meng as a forward-looking agro-economic supply centre with local, national, and transnational commercial relations. In practical terms, this setting might be more relevant to the village’s current residents than references to historically rooted Tai Lue connections. Regarding the latter, the kamnan often joked that he simply did not have enough time to learn more about his Tai Lue heritage due to his busy working schedule as village headman and cross-border trader.6 Over the course of our first conversations, I got the impression that the kamnan was trying to damp my initial enthusiasm about the ethnic Tai Lue dimension of their village’s cross-border trade network. When I insisted on asking questions about Tai Lue ethnicity, he answered rather brusquely and preferred instead to draw my attention to a different account of Ban Huay Meng’s development—not as an ethnic settlement, but as a nationally and regionally significant frontier of cultivation and trade in fruits. As I will show later, it is this representation of Ban Huay Meng as a national premium fruit village, and not as a node of ethnically mapped “trading-scapes” (Turner 6 Another facet of his sharp division of ethno-cultural and economic domains of cross-border ties was his reference to an “expert” of Tai Lue culture and history, whom he suggested I consult if I were keener to learn more, since he himself might not be the right person, as he put it. That expert is a female owner of a guesthouse with an attached Tai Lue textile shop in Chiang Khong town. She runs a successful textile business from her home village of Ban Hat Bai, as well as selling other Lue-themed souvenirs in a museum-like setting with numerous old family photographs displaying the traditional Tai Lue craft of weaving. Further offering “Shan-style” (Tai Yai) accommodation in her guesthouse, which is highly popular among Thai and foreign tourists, she thus makes a living from displaying and selling certain representations of Tai Lue history, identity, and culture within a pan-Tai setting (with references to Tai Yai and Tai Yuan and to “northern Thai people” in general), whereas the livelihood of the kamnan simply relies on fruit cultivation and trade.

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2013) or “heritage-scapes” (Di Giovine 2009), which small-scale traders from northern Laos masterfully translate into economic cross-border practice through the language of smallness, contrasting the claims and realities of Thailand’s agricultural superiority and sophistication with overemphasized notions of Laos’s economic, and even cultural, backwardness. However, on a few occasions the kamnan still tried to satisfy my initial scholarly quest to trace the Tai Lue dimension of this cross-border commerce. For instance, when I asked him and his wife once whether they would provide me with some of their trade contacts in northern Laos and Xishuangbanna, they recommended I get in touch with Kaeo, a female trader in Huay Xai, just across the Mekong. They told me several times that she was a Chinese Tai Lue with outstanding skills in Chinese, Lao, and Thai languages. Eventually meeting her in Huay Xai, I learned that she was in fact a Lao citizen of Yunnanese (Han Chinese) descent with roots in the northern province of Phongsaly, which had earned her the nickname Kaeo Jin (ແກ້ວຈີນ “Chinese Kaeo”). Looking back at a very mobile life trajectory, with stations in Phongsaly, Oudomxai, and Luang Namtha provinces (the latter because of the boom in large-scale rubber and banana cultivation), Kaeo moved to Huay Xai in 2011 to start working as a broker (代理 daili in Chinese)7 between Chinese customers and Thai suppliers. There, she quickly heard about Pa Oy in Ban Huay Meng. When I asked Kaeo about her opinion of the supposed role of Tai Lue ethnic ties in cross-border trade, once again imposing my Tai Lue focus, she briefly responded that though Tai Lue were indeed living in all three countries concerned, they would be involved in trade only in smaller numbers. While she referred to Tai Lue using the overall Chinese ethnonym daizu (傣族), she clearly introduced herself as a Han Chinese to distance herself from any membership of an ethnic minority group (少数民族 shaoshuminzu). She also claimed that most of the businesses in this region were run by Han Chinese. Interestingly, the Chinese ethnic classification, including the Han perception of daizu as insignificant economic actors, found its way across the border to northern Laos. Mainly dealing with Chinese business actors, Kaeo’s Chinese descent became her main business tool, as she adopted the common reduction of “Chineseness” to Han ethnicity in the local context of northern Laos. More significantly, Kaeo was also not sure about the ethnicity of her Thai trading partners in Ban Huay Meng: “For me, they are all just Thai.” 7 We conducted our conversations mainly in Chinese as we found that this was the most convenient way to communicate, given the fact that my Chinese was at that time much better than my Lao.

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This instance of the mutual indifference to or even “misknowledge” of ethnicity among traders from the Thai and Lao banks of the Mekong might only be odd to the researcher who assumes as a given that the notion of ethnic belonging is the main point of reference for establishing and maintaining cross-border ties (conceptualized as inter-ethnic, co-ethnic, or trans-ethnic ties) in a multi-ethnic borderland. And it might only be odd if one is overly concerned with the objectively “correct” ethnic identity label based on the presumption of externally clearly identifiable and internally self-identifying ethnic labels. The way in which the kamnan and his wife “wrongly” attributed Tai Lue ethnicity to Kaeo can also be seen as yet another instance of invoking fictive ethnicity through which economic cross-border relations can be more meaningfully and plausibly explained to external audiences such as scholars, who might be indeed satisfied with this account, conveniently recognizing “a representation through which people can come into knowledge of self, other, and world” (Jonsson 2014, p. 43). My initial encounters in Ban Huay Meng were an important turning point for my research project, underlining Hjorleifur Jonsson’s general reminder that “[r]egional anthropology may become more plausible and rewarding if we do not take an ethnic category as an object of study, but instead insist on recognizing any encounter as an individual case of what has happened in mainland Southeast Asia as a region” (2014, p. 151). The focus on a decidedly ethnic account, which I had ambitiously and naively pushed for—and which I deliberately still put at the beginning of this chapter by introducing prevailing scholarly mappings of Tai Lue ethnicity—gradually gave way to Ban Huay Meng’s success story of a nationally integrated fruit village, as I learned in subsequent conversations with the kamnan. Having enjoyed close relations with the governor of Chiang Khong early on, Ban Huay Meng managed to gain access to plenty of arable land. After early intensive cultivation of rice and corn, followed by tobacco investment, the decisive turning point in Ban Huay Meng’s agricultural trajectory, which would dramatically uplift the living conditions in the village, was orange cultivation, pioneered in 1963 by the villager Tan Chantakhat, whose name I often came across during my stays in Ban Huay Meng. Sophida Wirakunthewan (2005) also mentions Tan Chantakhat’s pioneering spirit in her study on trade and ethnicity in Chiang Khong. Having heard stories of successful orange cultivation in Nan province, Tan decided to travel there to have a look for himself and eventually bought several orange saplings.8 8 Wirakunthewan (2005, p. 46) interestingly describes Tan Chantakhat’s arduous itinerary to Nan. Ban Huay Meng was at that time not connected to Chiang Khong town or elsewhere by

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He had to wait five years for the first harvest in 1968, which sold well at several markets throughout Chiang Khong; as a result, more villagers of Ban Huay Meng became interested in this new, promising agricultural business. Altogether, the kamnan referred to seven farmers who subsequently grew oranges with great success, leading to a veritable “orange boom.” With the help of the Chiang Rai provincial government, which started to promote the local cultivation of fruits such as oranges and organized fruit festivals and fairs, the oranges of Ban Huay Meng began to be known outside of Chiang Khong district and Chiang Rai province, attracting the interest of sellers nationwide, especially merchants in the south (Hat Yai province) who were eager to sell them further afield in Malaysia. Incoming interested buyers also recommended to the Ban Huay Meng farmers several other markets suitable for selling oranges and thus opened up contacts with an ever-growing number of new customers. Lines of waiting cargo trucks dominated the village-scape throughout the 1980s, as described by Wirakunthewan (2005, p. 46) and as Art, the son of the kamnan, assured me several times. Thus, Ban Huay Meng had been gradually integrated into the logistics of the national fruit market as a prominent supplier of oranges. However, this boom ended abruptly in 1996 due to an encroaching bacterial infestation, which destroyed the entire orange harvest and permanently contaminated the water, the soil, and the trees. The kamnan told me that most of the villagers abandoned orange cultivation altogether and shifted to the marketization of other fruits, which at f irst they mainly bought from markets in Chiang Rai, but subsequently grew by themselves. They increasingly focused on cultivating rambutan, which, at least in the eyes of the kamnan, led to another success story in which the village gained a regional and national reputation for high-quality agricultural produce. The kamnan contended that rambutans had already replaced oranges as the flagship fruits of Ban Huay Meng. In addition, farmers had also started to successfully grow other fruits such as longkong (ลองกอง),9 mafai (มะไฟ),10 and mangosteens, as well as durian.11 any paved road, so he needed to take a boat to Chiang Saen and from there he took a bus down to Chiang Rai city. After one night there, he continued on another bus to Nan. The kamnan told me once that only in 1975 was a paved road built to connect Ban Huay Meng with Chiang Khong municipality. 9 Thai vernacular name for Lansium parasiticum, usually referred to as langsad or lanzones in English. 10 Thai vernacular name for Baccaurea ramiflora, colloquially called “Burmese grape.” 11 Northern Thailand is not known for durian cultivation, with the notable exception of Uttaradit province. The fruit repertoire of Ban Huay Meng is generally interesting since it does

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This increasing diversity of cultivated fruits was paralleled by a rising number of involved fruit growers. In my conversations with some of them I was consistently told that about 20 years ago, most of the villagers had shifted from the previously prevailing crops of rice and corn to fruit cultivation as the former became less and less profitable. Sombun, for instance, mainly growing fruits and sometimes acting as an assistant to the kamnan’s trading operations, stressed in this regard how glad he was to have shifted to fruit cultivation, as it created harvests and prof its all year around. Like the kamnan, he further claimed that almost the entire village did likewise—that is, they mainly rented out their formerly managed rice fields, not uncommonly to Hmong and Khmu farmers from nearby elevated villages, so that they could focus solely on their fruit orchards.12 Notions of profitability and success dominated conversations with Ban Huay Meng’s fruit growers. Somkiert, an experienced orchardist of Ban Huay Meng, honoured with numerous awards from the provincial governments of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai for his agricultural expertise, put it this way: It is only fruits with which you can make profit here; before, we grew rice and corn, but now, we are enjoying growing fruits as it is much less physically demanding and much more profitable. You can yield different seasonal harvests throughout the whole year!

The Emergence of Cross-Border Trade Ban Huay Meng has not only found its place in the Thai economy as a significant supplier of fruits for the local and national markets; it has also emerged as an important supply centre for a thriving regional borderland not consist of fruit crops characteristic to the northern region (such as longan, lychee, and the temperate-climate crops such as strawberries, peaches, or plums that cultivators generally focus on establishing), but rather comprises crops which are grown in large quantities in the eastern seaboard (provinces of Rayong, Chanthaburi, and Trat) and in the south (especially Chumphon, Surat Thani, and Nakhon Si Thammarat provinces). 12 I was often told by the villagers of Ban Huay Meng how they would help various “hill tribes” (ชาวเขา chao khao) from surrounding villages to generate new livelihoods by leasing out their arable land to them or by hiring them as seasonal workers. Thus, besides the leasing of rice fields and small plots on rubber plantations—now deemed unprofitable—to the Hmong of nearby Ban Thung Na Noi, I also learned of seasonal Khmu labourers (Khmu being a Mon-Khmerspeaking ethnic group mainly living in northern Laos, but also in parts of northern Thailand, Xishuangbanna, and northern Vietnam) from Ban Huay Kok and Ban Huay Yen working on the village’s orchards. For more insights on the relationships between the Khmu of Ban Huay Kok and the Lue of Ban Huay Meng in particular, see Wirakunthewan (2005, pp. 49-51).

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12  Transnational Thai fruit flows radiating out of Ban Huay Meng

Map by Lee Li Kheng

economy equipped with regionally well-connected traders. The kamnan mentioned the year 1996 as the beginning of the village’s increased cross-border trade activities with Laos after their main domestic market

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segment of oranges had broken down. The village’s own informal river port (to which I will return later in this chapter), which is located outside of Chiang Khong’s infrastructure of formal international and local border crossings (i.e., the international crossing at the Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge and the three local river-crossings at Tha Ruea Bak, Wat Luang, and Chiang Khong port) and one “temporarily permitted” border checkpoint (จุดผ่อนปรน jut phonpron) in Ban Hat Bai,13 has enabled them to ship Thai fruits across the Mekong river to the port of Khonekeo in Huay Xai, on the Lao side, for further distribution to markets in northern Laos (Luang Namtha, Muang Sing, Oudomxai) and, more recently, to markets in China (Xishuangbanna). At present, there are six trading households involved in cross-border fruit trade, among whom the kamnan and his wife Pa Oy were one of the first established. Besides trading fruits from Ban Huay Meng’s own orchards, they also trade fruits bought from wholesale markets in the provinces of Chumphon (southern Thailand), Kanchanaburi (western Thailand), Rayong (eastern Thailand), or Bangkok, thus underlining their full integration within Thailand’s overall national fruit market infrastructure. While the kamnan again alluded to the initial ethnic Tai Lue dimension of their nascent cross-border trade activities, specifically referring to ethnic kin in Ban Pung on the Lao side (in Bokeo province, some 30 kilometres northeast of Huay Xai), he was quick to assert that not long after those humble beginnings, an increasing number of non-Lue people in Laos became interested in this cross-border fruit trade, their curiosity triggered by the observable, growing wealth of Tai Lue merchants. Attracted by this promising opportunity of a lucrative business, more and more non-Lue actors came in to participate in cross-border trade with Ban Huay Meng—among them a growing number of Han Chinese traders from nearby Xishuangbanna (mainly Jinghong). The present wide range of different actors prompted the kamnan to regularly emphasize that Ban Huay Meng’s border trade could and should not be understood as primarily or exclusively based on Tai Lue kinship or family relations. Over the last 15 years, trading fruits with China has become increasingly important, and consequently some Ban Huay Meng traders have also started to trade directly with Chinese buyers. The kamnan claimed to be the first trader, along with his wife, to initiate direct trade with 13 The Chiang Khong customs office is also responsible for four further “temporarily permitted” border checkpoints outside of Chiang Khong district: Jaempong and Ban Huay Luek checkpoints in Wiang Kaen district (Chiang Rai province), Ban Rom Pho Thong in Thoeng district (Chiang Rai province), and Ban Huak in Phu Sang district of neighbouring Phayao province.

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the Chinese side in 2005.14 When I asked him how he got to know Chinese buyers in the very beginning, he told me about some Lao trading partners who had introduced him to potential Chinese customers by bringing them directly to his doorstep in Ban Huay Meng. Operating in markets in Muang Sing, near the Chinese border, increasingly these Lao traders also conducted business with Chinese merchants who had developed a liking for the goods brought in from Laos, especially Thai fruits. Ban Huay Meng as an Attractive, Strategical Border Crossing In his long-standing experience as the village head and, more recently, as the subdistrict head, the kamnan has successfully managed a close-knit network with several local state agencies, which enables Ban Huay Meng to continuously run its own river port. This informal but tolerated bordercrossing has attracted numerous traders not only from across the border, but also other places on the Thai side within and far beyond Chiang Khong district due to its reputation for providing a smooth, uncomplicated, and affordable handling. Interestingly, this includes also cross-border traders located nearby other official local border crossings. For instance, I heard that a trader from neighbouring Wiang Kaen subdistrict was interested in shipping pomelos (Wiang Kaen is a prominent pomelo-growing site) across the border through Ban Huay Meng. This is quite remarkable given the distance of some 50 kilometres between his subdistrict and Ban Huay Meng and the fact that Wiang Kaen subdistrict itself has already two formal state-sanctioned local cross-border ports in Jaempong and Ban Huay Luek at its disposal. The kamnan also told me that traders from Ban Hat Bai, which is likewise equipped with a formal small river port, sometimes drove 30 kilometres to use the facilities at Ban Huay Meng. The village also received enquiries from traders who were looking for alternatives to the new international border crossing at the Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge. “Riverine trade is much more convenient than using the bridge. The paperwork there [at the bridge] is just too much and complicated, it’s like you need to fill five different forms,” the kamnan explained to me. This even prompted some larger Thai companies to approach him, hoping to avoid the burdens and hassles of crossing the international bridge. All of this only underlines the strategic location of Ban Huay Meng. The kamnan openly expressed his confidence that, at least in the medium term, their village 14 His claim seems to be valid as the other traders stated that they started directly selling to Chinese customers only a few years ago.

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would still benefit from the new friendship bridge as it was still operating under suboptimal conditions for the time being. The planning of the bridge, and the repeated delays to its completion and opening, gave the kamnan one of many opportunities to mock the Thai state for implementing policies too slowly and often imperfectly, which he related to a general cultural “Thai problem” (ปัญหา ของคนไทย panha khong khon thai). “Many state projects were just built at large before actually thinking about their subsequent consequences, impacts, and developments—it’s all about blindly building large first,” he lamented. However, his complaint was also an expression of a certain satisfaction at being able to informally f ill the gaps left by still-incomplete governmental development plans and policies. It seems that imperfect policies, or more generally framed as a genuine “Thai problem” of short-sightedness and unreliability, contribute to boosting the logistical advantage of the village. In addition, the kamnan was not worried about the recent plans to reopen the Wat Luang port in Chiang Khong town as a local border-crossing point,15 for “Ban Huay Meng will always have some unbeatable advantages such as a huge direct supply of fruits and flexible working hours.” Importantly, especially with respect to the affordability of the port, these advantages are built on the hiring of exclusively Lao labourers for boat transportation and loading of goods from the boats onto trucks and vice versa— unlike other river ports in Chiang Khong, which are mainly operated by Thai boats. Undoubtedly, Ban Huay Meng’s recent transformation into a successful fruit-growing village and a strategically located cross-border trade hub for fruits has led to unmistakable prosperity, which was visible in the great 15 Wat Luang port” (named after the temple Wat Luang just next to it), or also “Pha Than port,” is located next to the Office of Chiang Khong Customs. After the Customs Office moved to a much bigger site near the Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge on 23 September 2015, symbolically underlining the fact that the majority of cross-border trading would be relocated to the bridge, the port ran to the risk of shrinking in importance as its function as a permanent border crossing fell away. Losing its traditional “monopoly on cross-river freight transport” (Walker 1999, p. 98), the association of boat operators of Wat Luang, together with other associations of tricycle drivers, motorcycle taxi drivers, cross-border traders, the community of Ban Wat Luang and the people of Wiang subdistrict in general, lobbied to run this port as a temporary local border crossing point (จดุ ผ่อนปรน jud phonpron). I could see numerous posters and banners displayed by the abovementioned associations during visits at the Wat Luang port throughout the year of 2015. These local interest groups thus try to preserve what Andrew Walker (1999, p. 105) observed almost 20 years ago: “Cross-river boat operation is part of the residential identity of the village and, within Chiang Khong, it is recognised as one of Wat Luang’s occupational specialisations. […] In the local landscape of power, Chiang Khong’s cargo port is a place where the residents of Wat Luang have a natural authority.” For more on the boat operators of Wat Luang and their relational arrangements with powers of local authority and the state, see Walker (1999, pp. 93-112).

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number of newly built, impressively large houses, and the expensive cars as well. In this regard, Sophida Wirakunthewan (2005, p. 47) was already expressing her astonishment, ten years earlier than my first visit, that “in Ban Huay Meng there are more than ten large villas which one does not expect to see in a small village at the border.”16 Wirakunthewan’s amazement at this “unexpected” visibility of material wealth in a small ethnic border village is coupled with her surprise at the invisibility of distinct ethnic features in this Tai Lue village: “If one is visiting Ban Huay Meng at present, one might not find the uniqueness of being a Tai Lue community like in Ban Sri Donchai or Ban Hat Bai” (Wirakunthewan 2005, p. 63).17 The villagers’ orchards, yielding high-quality fruits—and not openly displaying Tai Lue material culture—have become the predominant emblem of Ban Huay Meng, apparently lessening its cultural visibility as a distinctively Tai Lue village. This might be the reason why Ban Huay Meng is not mentioned as one of Chiang Khong’s Tai Lue villages in the aforementioned “Lue Lai Kham Museum” in Ban Sri Donchai. The introduction of Tai Lue communities across the Upper Mekong region in its main gallery lists only Ban Sri Donchai and Ban Hat Bai as Tai Lue villages in Chiang Khong. The English section of the respective bilingual poster informs the reader that “[t]he Chiang Khong group […] comprises two villages whose reputation in textile weaving is outstanding. These are Ban Sri Don Chai and Ban Hat Bai.” At f irst glance, Ban Huay Meng, as a Tai Lue village, f its well into the larger state-sanctioned and scholarly well-established ethnic landscape, with historical cross-references to Sipsongpanna and Lanna, through which one could easily and conveniently understand current cross-border trade dynamics. However, on the local scale, this village has not been put on this ethnic Tai Lue map—either by Ban Huay Meng villagers themselves or by other villagers in Chiang Khong. Visiting some of Chiang Khong’s Tai Lue cultural centres or homestays, and in casual conversations beyond those, I was often told that Ban Huay Meng was “not really that much Tai Lue” as it has not set up anything like the cultural heritage infrastructure of Ban Sri Donchai or Ban Hat Bai. Strangely enough, when I asked Ban Huay Meng’s village head about the possibility of establishing Tai Lue-style homestays, he resorted to the culturalist explanation that “the Lue of Ban Huay Meng are not able to do 16 The original Thai reads: “ที่่�หมู่่�บ้้านห้้วยเม็็งมีีบ้า้ นหลัังใหญ่่ราวคฤหาสน์์กว่า่ 10 หลัังชนิิดที่่�ไม่่คาดว่่าจะพบเห็็นในหมู่่�บ้้านเล็็กๆ ริิ มชายแดน.” 17 The original Thai reads: “หากใครเข้้าไปเยืือนหมู่่�บ้้านห้้วยเม็็งอาจไม่่พบความโดดเด่่นของความเป็็ นชุุมชนชาวลื้้�อ ดัังเช่่นที่่�อาจ พบเห็็นได้้ที่่�หมู่่�บ้้านศรีีดอนชััยหรืื อบ้้านหาดบ้้าย.”

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that.” Moreover, instead of celebrating ethnic festivals, Ban Huay Meng hosted the f irst “Festival of Fruits and Specialties of Chiang Khong” in August 2011. The kamnan also cited 2011 as the year of starting an “orange revival” in Ban Huay Meng, which he claimed to have initiated by beginning to grow oranges on a newly cleared plot of land measuring 34 rai.18 By his own account, he now runs, mainly through his son Art, the biggest of currently five plantations in the village. In 2014, after three years, they were able to bring in the first harvest. From what I could hear and observe during the second harvest in December 2015, Ban Huay Meng’s oranges sold quite well again, with orders arriving from northeastern Thailand, Bangkok, and southern Thailand. Emerging Cross-Border Discourses of Thai Superiority and Lao Inferiority Spurred on by this “orange revival,” more than by notions of a transnational ethnic revival, Ban Huay Meng villagers have developed a strong sense of identity and pride based on their agricultural and economic achievements. Their occupational identity, both as agriculturalists and traders, is markedly national in character, firmly rooted in emotional attachments to their cultivated land and resulting commodities. My numerous attempts to talk about their cross-border trade practices and relations often ended in lengthy, rather technical conversations revolving around their homegrown fruits. Proudly detailing aspects of quality (คุณภาพ khunaphap), related grade (เกรด kret), taste (รสชาติ rotchat), and appearance (mainly in terms of beauty, ความสวยงาม khwamsuaingam), they made it unmistakably clear that it was their advanced experience, knowledge, and skills, embedded in the highly sophisticated agriculture of Thailand in general, that helped them to produce such distinctive and inimitable high-quality fruits, superior to the agricultural produce of China and Laos and thus ideally suited for international trade. Khumpan, one of the three assistants of the kamnan and a proud and experienced fruit grower, put it this way: “The Chinese have a sophisticated large-scale fruit industry, but Thai fruits are still more delicious, and I don’t know why.” He stared at me in joyful anticipation of any reaction on my part. Before I could say anything, he started to laugh roguishly: 18 One rai equals 1600 square metres or 0.3954 acres.

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Of course, I know. I tell you. It is all about care. This makes the difference. The beauty of the fruits largely depends on care. Different fruits require different degrees of care. Rambutan and mafai are relatively easy to take care of while cultivating oranges is a much more complex endeavour. Oranges, you cannot grow them only according to nature [ตามธรรมชาติ tam thammachat].

He thus stressed the vital importance of the human factor in being able to use the right fertilizers and other chemicals (pesticides and insecticides, for example)19 while also ensuring optimal, permanent irrigation. Securing ample capital resources would also be essential as cultivating oranges meant a relatively high long-term investment. It would take two to three years before the first harvest could be brought in. He often used detailed technical remarks to emphasize the high degree of sophistication behind their successful agricultural work. Capability and a high degree of care were also the key, according to Art, the son of the kamnan, who to a great extent manages the family’s orange plantation. “Planting oranges is like taking care of children, it requires a lot of care. You also need to be smart and very skilled to be really successful in orange cultivation,” he explained. About ten years ago, they were still selling oranges (bought from other markets, not those they had grown themselves) to Laos, but nowadays, the Chinese would sell their own oranges at very low, unbeatable prices. However, speaking of Chinese fruits, Art was quick to make the following clear: “But to be honest, the quality of their [the Chinese] oranges is not that good; they cannot compete with Thai oranges, with our delicious oranges.” It was this claim of qualitatively inferior Chinese fruits with which he tried to underline the overall premium quality of fruits produced in his village, and by extension in Thailand in general. This discursive self-assuredness on the part of Ban Huay Meng villagers, who are confident of realizing high-quality agricultural produce through advanced skills and extensive care, is also built upon the perception of a much less developed agriculture in neighbouring Laos, which is often tied to 19 Ban Huay Meng villagers do not engage in organic farming. Kumphan argued that organic fruit farming would be simply too costly, especially given the lack of state support. Furthermore, Thai customers would never be willing to pay higher prices for fruits. The kamnan made a similar point, stating that fully organic farming was still impossible for their fruit trade. However, they would try to minimize the amount of chemicals; they were already using a combination of natural fertilizers and only a small amount of chemicals. He was quick to assure me that their fruits were non-hazardous to human health.

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cultural stereotypes. Sombun, another assistant of the kamnan, attributed the low development level and small scale of the agricultural industry in Laos in general, and the virtual lack of fruit cultivation in particular, to the fact that most of the Lao farmers would simply be reluctant to really work hard and would just rely on some easy small-scale trade (for a Lao perspective on their growing engagement in small-scale trade, see the following two chapters). They would rather follow their Lao principle of sabai sabai (สบายๆ, “being easy-going”). This sentiment was echoed by many other fruit growers and traders from Ban Huay Meng, who habitually made the point that they were only exporting to, and not importing from, Laos as there was nothing importable from that country which would reach their quality standards. Although readily adopting the image of the “lazy Lao,” Somkiert nonetheless suggested another, more nuanced argument for the sluggish agriculture in Laos. Based on what he had heard from some Lao friends, another reason why Lao farmers were not engaged in any large-scale fruitgrowing business might be the fact that the state collected exorbitantly high fees on land. Kumphan also prefaced his remarks on the Lao agriculture with the familiar cultural reference to a general “Lao laziness,” but later acknowledged that they had recently started to grow substantial quantities of fruits in Laos, especially rambutan and mafai. He also envisioned that Lao farmers would grow fruits at a larger scale in the foreseeable future, in tandem with prospective economic development, especially with regards to improving transport infrastructure, which might grant more farmers access to a potentially thriving domestic market. This might even create the situation that Ban Huay Meng traders would no longer sell as many fruits to Laos, he added. However, he eventually concluded that they, as Thai farmers, would continue to be at an advantage as they would be able to grow fruits that Laos did not and would not have in the future. He instanced the cultivation of avocados, supported and promoted by the Royal Project Foundation, from which he arrived at his general argument concerning Thailand’s regional forerunner role in agricultural research and innovation. Scaling this down again to the context of fruit cultivation in Ban Huay Meng, Kumphan stressed that they could draw on their long-standing experience of continually introducing new fruit crops. It would be their core competency— that is, always being “up to date” (ทันสมัย than samai) in researching the market and new agricultural techniques—that gave them an advantage over the agriculture of their neighbours in Laos. As long as Laos needed to import the fruits of their innovative agricultural skills, so his argument went, everything would

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work well for Ban Huay Meng. Kumphan also dismissed my question about whether he was concerned about the probability that inflows of cheaper Chinese fruits into northern Laos would increase. He was confident that most of the Lao customers would still appreciate the higher quality of Thai fruits as they would know too well about the heavy use of dangerous chemicals in Chinese agriculture. The notion of long-time agricultural experience was also central to the remarks of the kamnan. He argued that the agricultural expertise of Ban Huay Meng would outweigh the agricultural efforts of Laos in the long term. It would take a long time for Lao farmers to catch up with them—long enough for Ban Huay Meng’s farmers to move ahead. Interestingly enough, this Thai perspective, formed in Ban Huay Meng, of agricultural superiority in relation to Laos and China was also often mirrored in conversations with traders and consumers in Laos as well as in China. The markets I visited in Luang Namtha province were the main sites at which Chinese and Thai commodities intersect; it was therefore inevitable that chats there mainly revolved around comparing these goods. The common argument was that Thai commodities were in general of much better, more reliable quality while Chinese commodities were cheaper, but of lower quality (see chapter 3). Many traders cited probable high toxicity levels of Chinese vegetables and fruits, which prompted them to express their concerns about the lack of food safety in China at large. Market women selling fruits and vegetables also often lamented—half-jokingly, halfseriously—that Lao farmers were simply not able to engage in professional, large-scale agriculture and thus they would have no choice but to buy and sell agricultural produce from China or Thailand. One vendor in Muang Sing described the Lao consumers’ dilemma that “both Chinese and Thai fruits are delicious but full of chemicals.” Lao agricultural products would be free of any chemicals. However, as they were only grown on a small scale, their retail prices would be even more expensive than imported products from Thailand and China, so they would not find their way into the markets. He cited insufficient expertise and professionalism on the part of Lao farmers as the main reasons for the very limited scale of Lao domestic agriculture. Tot, whom I already introduced in the previous chapter, found clearer words for the status of agriculture in Laos. He explained to me that the “Thai method” (ວິທກ ີ ານໄທ withikan thai) of agriculture would be much more developed, mature, and professional. Thus, Thai farmers would generally do better as they carefully studied how to apply specific agricultural techniques and to develop products. By contrast, Lao farmers would try to

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grow something rather hastily, without any prior knowledge, research, and experience. This prompted him to reflect more broadly on the general “Lao national problem” (ປ ັນຫາຂອງປະເທດລາວ panha khong pathet lao) of a lack of education. He even went so far as to imply a culture-bound reluctance to gain proper knowledge and skills, which would all hinder processes of sustainable professionalization. The subjective discourse of Thai agricultural sophistication and largeness, which I observed and listened to in Ban Huay Meng, thus found its way across the border, embraced by Lao consumers and customers as part of their discourse of smallness that describes their agro-economic underdevelopment. On the other hand, they also used Thai agricultural standards as a yardstick, frowning upon the inferior quality of Chinese commodities, thereby somehow rhetorically compensating for their low regional economic standing. The common remarks about the lack of quality and food safety standards of Chinese products overheard at markets and among traders in Laos were in turn also echoed at the Chinese end of the overland supply chain of Thai commodities. Chinese customers and sellers at regional trade fairs and at numerous supermarkets specializing in Thai products throughout Xishuangbanna often cited a loss of trust in Chinese product quality, reliability, and safety as one of the main reasons why they preferred Thai commodities. As the notion of quality is inherently comparative and differentiating, it is therefore well-suited as a device for realizing and articulating differences across borders, thereby easily scaled up to a starkly simplified national dimension. The initially technical discussion of agricultural quality—based on claims of (lacking, superior, inferior) skills, experience, and expertise—provides the foundation for a broader discourse of nationally couched and stereotyped cultural differences. That is not to say that those remarks on different agricultural techniques or states of knowledge always point directly and overtly to national stereotypes. Instead, they often merely lay the groundwork for the latter. My conversations with Thai and Lao traders and farmers, initially touching upon agriculture, frequently got lost in discussions of overall national issues of economic and social development, education as well as politics, which often gave way to generalized and simplified references to Thai or Lao cultural idiosyncrasies. Following Ban Huay Meng’s fruits across the border to Laos, in subsequent sections I show in more detail how mobile Lao fruit traders put those nationally framed quality discourses into cross-border motion and practice through self-stereotyping and reflexively mocking Laos’s relative national smallness.

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Thai Fruits in Motion: “Normal Fruits for Laos, Premium Fruits for China” It only takes ten minutes to cross the Mekong River from Ban Huay Meng to Khonekeo. I crossed the Mekong on Ban Huay Meng’s fruit boats several times in June 2015, in the middle of the fruit season. While I usually took the boat ride only with Lao labourers (the boat driver and shippers), I was once accompanied by Chang, a Ban Huay Meng trader in his 40s, and two of his assistants several days later. The latter crossing appeared to have the character of a special event as the Thai village traders, who themselves would only occasionally cross over to Laos, were full of excitement and pleasant expectation, often playfully asking me whether I shared their happiness to “travel to Laos” (ไปเทีย่ วลาว pai thiao Lao). However, before we could start our “travel” to Laos, we had to wait at the port of Ban Huay Meng until the boats were fully loaded with fruit baskets. At the Port of Ban Huay Meng Business at the port of Ban Huay Meng normally starts in the early afternoon when fruit baskets are transported on small trucks from different village trading groups down to the port.20 It then takes several hours to load the boats until they can eventually cross the Mekong in the late afternoon hours. When I arrived there, some four boats were being loaded by Lao workers. Amidst the bustle was Pa Oy, who industriously checked the cargo against the different incoming orders written down in her notebook. She also acted as the main coordinator of the operations at the port. In consultation with the Lao boat operators, she decided which goods, from which trader addressed to which buyer, were to be loaded onto which boat. Hence, the Lao boat operators were not only simply transporting full fruit baskets to Laos and returning empty baskets to Thailand, but also acting as trustworthy middlemen delivering Thai bills and Lao orders, as well as occasionally collecting payments directly from Lao and Chinese buyers to be delivered to the traders of Ban Huay Meng. On the Lao side, in Muang Sing, Pa Saeng (“auntie Saeng”), a Tai Lue customer of Pa Oy and the kamnan, explained to me that Ban Huay Meng villagers requested they provide “good, trustworthy” workers: 20 The use of the word “port” might be misleading if understood literally, as it rather resembles a small, sandy beach, without any actual pier. However, I will continue to refer to it as “port,” “pier,” or “river port” to underscore its function. Its regional significance is indeed reflected not in its rather small size, but by its bustle starting every afternoon.

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13  At the village port of Ban Huay Meng

Photo taken by author, 2015

Pa Oy often tells us that she doesn’t want ‘not that good’ (ບໍ່່ຄ່່ອຍດີີ bo khoi di) Lao workers. For example, if a Lao worker is involved in something not good, she won’t want him. She rather needs good people whom she can trust; if there are any problems, she won’t take these workers. She is also concerned about immigration police and regularly patrolling military who don’t want them to get on the Thai shore.21

Pa Saeng further explained that the traders from Ban Huay Meng relied on Lao workers as they would be much better suited to this kind of work, since they knew the Lao buyers who collected the fruits at the Khonekeo port very well. Pa Saeng was convinced that the Thai traders, on the contrary, would not be willing to undertake such work: “They only care about transporting the fruits to their port; then, they just escape.” Thus, 21 Pa Saeng further told me that the kamnan and Pa Oy, drawing on their close relations with local immigration and police authorities, guaranteed the safety of the Lao labourers on Thai soil, given that they did not move beyond Ban Huay Meng. For this, Pa Saeng would report to them in advance the names of five or six Lao workers.

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instead of standing for cross-border fluidity, the Mekong River forms a sharp line, determining the division, and payment, of labour between Thai traders and Lao labourers. Pa Saeng pays for Lao labourers’ services on the Lao side (i.e., loading fruits from boats onto trucks) while Pa Oy pays for their services on the Thai side (i.e., loading fruits from trucks onto boats) and their ferry fees. Watching for a while how Lao labourers loaded basket after basket full of fruits onto different boats under the watchful eyes of several Ban Huay Meng traders, I often overheard the term thammada (same term in Thai and Lao: ธรรมดา or ທໍາມະດາ), meaning “normal” or “ordinary.” When I asked Pa Oy about it, she explained that this referred to the quality grade of the fruits. Taking a mangosteen out of one of the baskets, she explained that “this one is an ordinary one (ธรรมดา thammada).” She was taking another mangosteen: And this one here is one of the bigger ones, the better ones. There are numerous different quality grades, but for today I can tell you that these ordinary ones are assigned for Lao buyers. The bigger ones we sell to the Chinese as usual. They like big and beautiful fruits. Of course, these are also more expensive, but the Chinese are willing to pay for this as they can afford it.

This bluntly articulated practice of reserving high-quality fruits for the Chinese market and low-quality fruits for the Lao market was constantly reiterated both in Thailand and in Laos. Thai fruit quality gradation, defined in Thailand, thus reproduces national borders in its transnational circulation, invigorating economic, social, cultural, and political hierarchies. In other words, Thai fruits as a transnational commodity are moving markers of national boundaries. This nationally framed and graded quality configuration of transnational fruit flows—supplied by Thailand, transiting through Laos, and received and demanded by China—inevitably leads to instances of conflict, particularly between Thai suppliers and Chinese customers, revealing underlying frictions understood as “the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference” (Tsing 2005, p. 4). Equipped with their high confidence in the premium quality of their cultivated fruits, the traders of Ban Huay Meng often come face to face with the somewhat different and challenging Chinese understandings of fruit quality and aesthetics. I could best observe this further across the Mekong River at Khonekeo port where I witnessed what I call the “mangosteen incident.”

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14  Trucks queueing up at Khonekeo Port

Photo taken by author, 2017

The “Mangosteen Incident” at Khonekeo Port When I took the boat ride to Khonekeo with Chang and his two assistants, there was a considerable line of trucks waiting to be loaded. As the port of Khonekeo is relatively narrow, connected via a single uphill road, only two trucks can be loaded at a time. This point had been also raised by the kamnan, who complained that the narrowness of the Lao port entailed many inconveniences, often leading to long queues of trucks causing long waiting times. And it is not only cargo traffic that keeps the port of Khonekeo busy. It also functions as a local cross-border port-of-entry for passenger boats coming from Chiang Khong town (mainly from the passenger port tha ruea bak [ท่าเรือบัค๊ ] which used to be the international immigration point before the opening of the Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge22) and handles tourist boats leaving for or arriving from Luang Prabang. Our boatload also had

22 Since the opening of the Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge on 11 December 2013, international immigration (for passport holders) has entirely moved away from tha ruea bak (ท่าเรื อบัค๊ ), which since then has been functioning only as a local border crossing, only open to local residents holding border passes. At present, passport holders from Thailand, Laos, and any third country can only cross the border at the bridge.

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to wait for two smaller Lao trucks before its cargo could be shipped onto one bigger Chinese truck. When I was about to sit down with Chang at the port’s only food stall, located directly opposite of the parked boats, to grab some snacks and have some Beer Lao (he insisted on drinking some to fully appreciate the “real Lao atmosphere” [บรรยากาศลาวแท้ๆ banyakat lao thae thae]), three baskets of mangosteens drew the attention from a larger crowd. It turned out that Chinese buyers had abandoned those mangosteens as they were dissatisfied with their quality. Chang whispered to me angrily: “You know, Chinese are like that. They are too often not satisfied with the goods and just return them again. They would refuse to pay as well. This is really not good for the market!” His comments were widely echoed in a broader discussion by other bystanders, who joined in the complaints about too picky Chinese customers. Some of the Lao traders involved examined the fruits and concluded that most of them were of very good quality, ostentatiously eating some of them. They also invited me to test them and were all the happier when I conceded that they were indeed quite delicious (to the best of my layman’s knowledge), interestingly prompting them to state—partly in pride, partly in jest—that even a German researcher knew better about aspects of taste and quality of tropical fruits than their Chinese customers. Although said in a joking manner, the claim of a general Chinese unfamiliarity with tropical fruits was repeated seriously several times by most of the Lao and Thai bystanders. Somehow, in absence of the Chinese customers in question, who had long since left the scene, a sudden sense of solidarity among Lao and Thai traders seemed to emerge, sharing the resentment that the Chinese buyers would not be able to fully discern and appreciate the quality of these fruits. Apart from blaming the Chinese trade participants for lacking knowledge of and familiarity with their goods, the discussion quickly turned to further negative qualities associated with the “Chinese” in general. Dishonesty, unpredictability, a tendency to cheat, greed, rudeness, and arrogance were cited. Amidst this spontaneous discursive solidarity against the Chinese buyers, who were perceived as troublesome and annoying, the abandoned and devalued mangosteens, now detached from their originally destined Chinese economic ownership, became a public good at Khonekeo port, available for everyone who still attached some value to them. Two women from a nearby restaurant made the first move and happily started to put some mangosteens into plastic bags, laughingly replying that they would only be for their own consumption when I asked them whether they would sell them somewhere else. However, others told me that some would take the opportunity to sell them on at local markets. This would make sense as

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that type of highly graded mangosteen is usually not destined for the Lao market but reserved for the Chinese premium market. What might be understood as a Chinese slight against their proudly articulated belief that they guaranteed unmatched quality and standards triggered much discontent among traders of Ban Huay Meng. My subsequent conversations there were very much dominated by references to problematic issues with the Chinese. Often complaining about the difficult “Chinese character” (นิสยั ของคนจีน nisai khong khon jin) in general, some also questioned the future of directly trading with the Chinese. I was told stories of several traders who entirely gave up trading with the Chinese side. Some of them ran into debts due to outstanding payments and insufficient profits, which they all attributed to unacceptable business practices involving cheating on part of the Chinese buyers. These conflicts over product quality and allegedly different business practices and habits between Thai suppliers and Chinese buyers often occur on Lao soil. However, Laos is not merely a passive venue for these frictions arising from transnational trade flows of high-quality Thai fruits, but rather a site of their active mediation and facilitation by Lao traders. Much more mobile than the trading agriculturalists of Ban Huay Meng, whose trade activities mostly end at their own river port, Lao fruit traders are more flexible and successful in handling “the troublesome Chinese.” Accompanying several Lao cross-border traders, I could observe that they tactically adopted a rather “neutral” and practical position in which the Chinese traders’ judgement of low fruit quality did not represent a personal affront against them as it did to Ban Huay Meng traders. They furthermore appeared to blend in with this logic of tri-nationally graded quality by capitalizing on their status of belonging to an allegedly inferior, underdeveloped, and low-quality economy, thus underscoring their nationally framed relative smallness. Reminiscent of the market vendors in Laos, mentioned above, their self-ironic manner often led them to play up the idea that Lao people in general were just too lazy and unskilled to establish a large-scale and professional agriculture competitive with Thailand or China. They actively sustained their cross-border neighbours’ stereotypes of Laos and transformed them into an essential engine enabling the transnational flow of Thai fruits. While their view of an under-performing agricultural sector explains the import of Thai fruits for the Lao domestic market, their perception of China’s economic supremacy explains the further export of high-quality fruits to China. Lao traders, operating between different quality spheres with regard to the trade in Thai fruits, are thus in a unique position in this “qualitatively bordered” transnational trade system. This is illustrated by my encounters

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with Pa Saeng, a locally well-known Tai Lue fruit trader in Muang Sing briefly mentioned above, who regularly buys from Pa Oy in Ban Huay Meng and sells further across the border in China.

Lao Cross-Border Traders as Mediators of Sino-Thai Frictions Trading fruits directly with Chinese merchants is a relatively new endeavour for Pa Saeng, having been involved in this business since only 2013. However, she has known Pa Oy in Ban Huay Meng for a much longer time, ever since 1996. Back then, Pa Saeng’s husband, from Luang Namtha town and of Tai Dam ethnicity, was a bus driver. Regularly plying the route between Huay Xai and Luang Namtha, he got to know about Pa Oy and the thriving supply of Thai fruits from Ban Huay Meng. Having been introduced to Pa Oy through some contacts in Huay Xai, he then started to purchase small amounts of Thai fruits from her to sell at markets in Luang Namtha. This trade turned out to work relatively well, although it did not yet constitute their main commercial activity. Within Pa Saeng’s rich repertoire of cross-border trading activities, which were without doubt closely linked to her husband’s high mobility, thanks to his work, trading with China was nothing new, nor did they just begin with her most recent initiative of selling Thai fruits directly to Chinese buyers and markets. Only five years before I met her, Pa Saeng had fully switched to her current main business of trading Thai fruits. Her most recent direct “China connection” evolved from her activities at the marketplace of Muang Sing, mainly selling Thai commodities and fruits. The increased inflow of Thai fruits into Xishuangbanna drew the interest of an ever-increasing number of Chinese merchants. Many therefore crossed the border into Laos to see for themselves the fruits available at the markets in Muang Sing. During their market surveys, Chinese potential buyers also wanted to find out who the main suppliers of the market were and thereby learned that Pa Saeng had a direct link to fruit suppliers in Thailand. Subsequently, Pa Saeng received a dramatic rise in the number of orders from the Chinese side, to the extent that she eventually decided to focus solely on fruit trade in Muang Sing. For trading connections to China, she also relied heavily on her close Tai Lue friend Mai Kaeo (or “Po Kaeo” as she used to call him)23 as he was already well connected with traders on the Chinese side, especially in Mengman (just across the border from Muang 23 “Po” literally means father. See Diana (2007) for the usage of po seo and mae seo among the Tai Lue.

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Sing), Mengla, and Menglun. With a commercial base in Muang Sing, but constantly shuttling to Luang Namtha, where her husband usually stays at their primary residence, and often travelling to Huay Xai at the Thai border, Pa Saeng translates her high degree of mobility into the flexible handling of the two economic quality spheres represented by the Lao and Chinese markets for Thai fruits. My first long conversation with Pa Saeng, which took place in Muang Sing in early July 2015, opened straightaway with a discussion on fruit quality. As it was in the middle of the fruit season, Pa Saeng prepared a plate with several fruits, among them rambutans from Ban Huay Meng. She was quick to comment that “this year, rambutans (from Ban Huay Meng) are not that beautiful.” She reiterated this point again throughout numerous subsequent conversations, stressing that this would potentially impact her sales in China. The proud and self-confident assertions about the premium quality I had heard while talking with fruit growers and traders in Ban Huay Meng were now, on the Lao side, relativized or already contextualized with anticipated Chinese concerns about quality. That Pa Saeng was talking about the allegedly deficient beauty (ຄວາມງາມ khwamngam) and not about the quality (ຄຸນະພາບ khunaphap) of the fruits, as had always been the case on the Thai side, could be also interpreted as an instance of adapting to the Chinese fruit quality discourse that mainly revolved around the fruits’ outer appearances. Fruit farmers in Ban Huay Meng looked down on such a cosmetic and aesthetical approach to fruits as overly superficial, only attesting the lack of skill to fully comprehend and appreciate the true essence of Thai fruits. Apart from their “beauty,” this essence would be manifested in aspects of taste on a sour–sweet spectrum, smell, consistency, and ratio of water, among other things. They also attributed this “wrong” Chinese understanding of fruits to an overuse of chemicals in Chinese agriculture in general, which would only focus on the size and aesthetic immaculacy and symmetry of fruits and vegetables. Traders in Thailand often cited this as one of the reasons why they would never import Chinese vegetables or fruits. Pa Saeng shared this uneasiness about the questionable food safety of Chinese products, joking that for her own preference, she would rather not eat Chinese agricultural products. However, she was very aware of Chinese preferences. Unlike the traders from Ban Huay Meng, she had certainly developed some distance from the Thai quality claims as she was not directly being held accountable for the quality of her traded fruits. Mirroring Pa Oy’s remarks at the port of Ban Huay Meng, Pa Saeng explained that “we are sorting out the pretty fruits for China and the less pretty ones for Laos.” “If the Chinese tell us to bring over a car of fruits,” she continued, “well, then,

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you know, if the fruits are all pretty, we’ll take them all to China; if they are not pretty, we won’t do so as the Chinese won’t want them.” However, depending on the situation, Pa Saeng would also delegate to the Chinese buyers the task of screening the fruits for high quality: If they [the Chinese] want something, they will call us. Something like ‘Bring us 50 boxes of mangosteen, we need 50 boxes of mangosteen!’ We then organize that. But the boxes without pretty fruits … well, I mean, we then first take 100 boxes to China, to Mengman. Over there, they [the Chinese] will check which boxes are good, which are not. Those which are not, we would sell back in Laos; those which they regard as pretty, we would just leave in China. Sometimes they want the entire cargo if the fruits are all pretty.

Pa Saeng then directed our conversation to her worries about Chinese buyers’ recent quality-related complaints. Several of her Chinese customers also accused the Thai fruit growers of covering low-grade fruits with high-grade fruits.24 Thus, she had no choice but to tell Pa Oy in Ban Huay Meng about these issues in a “friendly manner” (ເວ າົ້ ດີໆຫນ້ອຍ wao di di noi), mainly over the phone. Saying this, she sounded as if she claimed to undertake the diplomatic task of mediating Sino-Thai disputes about fruit quality and trade practices. How “friendly” her negotiations with the Thai side were in actual practice remained unclear to me, though. Art, the son of the kamnan in Ban Huay Meng, for instance, made references to Pa Saeng’s relatively frequent complaints about the difficulties of this business and her forwarding of Chinese customers’ concerns over quality. Apparently taking those complaints personally, Art commented laconically that nobody forced Pa Saeng to buy their fruits. Nor did Pa Oy further specify the ways through which Pa Saeng might communicate with her, but only generally described their relationship as longstanding, amicable, and trustful. Befriending the National “Other” The notion of “being friends,” pen phuean kan (เป็็ นเพื่่�อนกััน), is central here. Across the border in Laos, traders usually expressed social relations, and 24 Notably, the kamnan in Ban Huay Meng admitted that this was indeed a problem. He mentioned that several fruit growers (tellingly, not from Ban Huay Meng) graded their fruits wrongly, thus artificially upgrading their products, which prompted him once again to state self-critically that “the problem are Thai people themselves.”

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particularly cross-border relations, through the notion of seo (ສ່່ຽວ) or “companionship.” Thus, Pa Saeng continually referred to Pa Oy in Ban Huay Meng, as well as her main customer base of seven fruit wholesale retailers across Xishuangbanna, as her seo. Widely used among Tai Lue and other Tai-speaking peoples, and in Lao language in general, the term seo refers to relatively close and cordial relations between people of roughly the same age. In her study of Tai Lue rice and corn traders in the China-Laos borderlands, Antonella Diana (2013, p. 31) describes seo as a Tai cultural concept of “mateship, […] defined by shared age, friendship, drinking and hanging out together in non-business settings such as parties, festivals and travelling.” In Diana’s case study, this particularly Tai concept of ethnic mateship is thus embedded in notions of transborder ethnicity which smooths and facilitates trade relations. However, in the case of the transnational Thai fruit trade out of Ban Huay Meng, the equally frequently used notion of seo did not rest on ideas of shared ethnic commonalities, but on essentialized national differences. Moreover, seo were not confined to the “broader Tai ethnic community” (Diana 2013, p. 31), but extended to a wider, multi-ethnic range of actors involved in cross-border trade, within and beyond national boundaries, sometimes not knowing or paying attention to ethnic labels, as I have demonstrated in the case of “Chinese Kaeo” in Huay Xai. Pa Saeng assured me with some pride that some of her closest trading seo in Mengla were in fact Han Chinese. In parallel with the nationally graded quality of the transnational commodity of fruits, seo-relations were first and foremost nationally labelled. I will illustrate this with an anecdote from Muang Sing. At one of our numerous large dinner parties with Po Kaeo and Pa Saeng in Muang Sing, both of them excitedly told stories about their visits to their seo in Menglun, Mengla, and Jinghong. As in Ban Huay Meng, my stubborn scholarly inquiries about their seo’s ethnicity were brushed off—it simply did not matter. Whether Tai Lue or Han, what seemed to matter more was their decidedly “Chinese impression” of their interactions with their trading seo, mostly speaking of the “Chinese people” (ຄົນຈີນ khon jin) or “China” (ປະເທດຈີນ pathet jin) in general. Po Kaeo particularly entertained the audience with his somewhat exaggerated account of the Chineseness of his seo, and of Xishuangbanna in general, which he broke down into three main negative traits—lack of hygiene, excessive smoking, and rudeness. Speaking specifically about Xishuangbanna’s Tai Lue, he often emphasized that despite originally being ethnic brothers and sisters (ເປ ັນພີ່ ນອ້ ງກັນ pen phi nong kan), Lao Tai Lue and Chinese Tai Lue were nowadays inescapably different. He had to say something about the youth in particular:

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Like the Chinese in general, the new Chinese Lue generation is using a very rude language, lacking any sense of politeness. They would use such low terms such as ku [‘I’] and mueng [‘you’] to address each other, instead of using our traditionally polite phrases such as jao pho [salutation for men] and jao mae [salutation for women].

Although his remarks on the rude vocabulary of the young Lue generation in China might be attributable to the apparent generation gap rather than to a particular Chinese context of rudeness (indeed, I could also hear the use of ku and mueng among younger Tai Lue in Laos), what matters here is that for Po Kaeo, the nationally framed articulation of difference had great significance. In sum, it can be said that the notion of (ethnic) closeness, articulated through the use of vernacular terms indicating familiarity, such as phi nong or seo, is at the same time couched in processes of “neighbourly othering,” which Kirsten Endres (2015) similarly observes for trade relations across the Sino-Vietnam border (see also Endres 2019, pp. 54-72). Primarily for the sake of an entertaining performance during a playful evening, Po Kaeo escalated his engagement with the national lens of “othering” by presenting his personal national ranking for the burning question, at least for him, of cleanliness and hygiene, in which he placed Thailand at the top, Laos second, and China last, the latter’s placement accompanied by theatrical gestures of disgust. He also readily and very quickly responded to my rather jocular question about whether he regarded China or Thailand as a more convenient place to travel to: Thailand without doubt! There we can always understand most of the language, there is no real big language barrier. But in China, we don’t understand anything. In addition, as I have already told you, the Chinese are not polite at all. They speak very rudely, not like us Lao people with our more charming language (ປາກຫວານ pak wan, literally: “sweet mouth”).

Yet, however pejorative his remarks on China were, at the same time, they rested on an intimate familiarity with his Chinese counterparts. Although Po Kaeo claimed not to understand anything in Chinese, he was still nonetheless sufficiently knowledgeable about Chinese phrases, which he used more and more after drinking several beers. Excited to learn that I was fluent in Chinese and had lived and studied in China for quite some time, he used common Chinese toasts to invite me to drink with him, all of which provided me with a glimpse of what it might look like when Po Kaeo spent time with his seo in China. This at once outwardly essentialized and inwardly

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intimate engagement with Chinese trade partners was further coupled with similar jokes and exaggerated performances of “Thai habits” (ນິໄສຂອງ ຄົນໄທ nisai khong khon thai). Although mimicry and mocking of the national “Other” took place in a playful and, indeed, alcoholized setting, they still provide some insights into the distinct intermediary position of Lao cross-border traders in general. They are equipped with flexible and strategically deployable repertoires of national stereotypes and labels, which serve as a key element of their transnational world, navigating the trade of Thai fruits between Thailand and China. Unlike trade fairs in Xishuangbanna, which are readily approached as sites of officially produced landscapes of Sino-Southeast Asian ethnic (Dai/Tai) commonalities, Lao cross-border traders’ transnational worlds of fruit-trading fully adopt, in both discourse and practice, the nationally labelled and hierarchized logics and workings of the social life associated with this cross-border commodity (cf. Appadurai 1986). In other words, Lao fruit traders re-enact and sustain the regional reality of uneven national economic development, which is continually made visible by the transnational flow of Thai fruits. While they explain their fruit trade activities by mocking their “Lao” politico-economic smallness, cultural laziness, and agricultural incapability, they ultimately enable the transnational movement of fruits by mediating possible frictions between Thai suppliers and Chinese buyers through stereotypes of the respective “Others.” Another look at the Khonekeo port will illustrate this better. As previously described, the incident of mangosteens being returned by unsatisfied Chinese customers prompted several Lao traders to join the Thai traders from Ban Huay Meng in complaining about problematic, unpredictable Chinese business practices, which on the surface might appear to be Lao-Thai solidarity against their common problem of handling “the Chinese.” However, two days earlier, during my first border-crossing to Khonekeo without traders from Ban Huay Meng, I was able to catch some snippets of a conversation between two Chinese buyers and two Lao middlemen in Lao language.25 The middlemen were trying to appease the buyers’ discontent and concerns about recurring quality failures by showing 25 I could not determine the ethnicity of the Chinese and Lao traders as I could follow some of their conversation only in passing. I was watching how the boat on which I travelled to Khonekeo was being unloaded when I registered this ongoing conversation on an adjacent boat that was also being unloaded. I could only hear how fluent the two Chinese traders’ Lao language was while they were speaking to each other in Yunnan dialect as Han Chinese normally speak it. This would not be particularly strange as I was able to witness no small number of Han Chinese in Laos speaking fluently in Lao.

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their understanding and referring to the general tendency among certain Thai agriculturalists and traders to cheat, a circumstance over which they had no control. I could also hear cultural references to a particular perceived “Thai way” (ວິທໄີ ທ withi thai)26 of ambivalent and oblique communication. The Lao merchants assured the Chinese buyers in this connection that they would clearly communicate this issue to the Thai suppliers, making the point that they knew “how to talk to the Thai” (probably in the spirit of Pa Saeng’s notion of “friendly talk” with Pa Oy). Again, Lao traders skilfully managed to socialize with and cater to Thai and Chinese counterparts by invoking national stereotypes about themselves and the respective “Other.” This example shows how Lao traders respond to and, conversely, revitalize Sino-Thai frictions, which in turn are needed to maintain the transnational flow of Thai fruits. This mirrors Anna Tsing’s (2005, p. 6) emphasis on the productive dimension of frictions: “Friction is required to keep global power in motion.” This versatility possessed by the Lao traders, coupled with a higher degree of physical cross-border mobility, contrasts with the relatively one-sided complaints about the unfairness of Chinese business practices on the part of Thai traders from Ban Huay Meng. Towards the end of my fieldwork, I could sense an overall negative, pessimistic undertone in several conversations with fruit traders, as I heard stories of frustration and the loss of large amounts of money to Chinese customers. Many once more dwelled on Chinese buyers’ troublesome habits of continually coming up with new ways of cutting prices. In particular, the practice of reweighing the fruits in China seemed to be a hot button issue as it was communicated to me quite emotionally. Chinese buyers would insist on paying only according to the weight they themselves recorded in China. What those Chinese traders simply did not want to understand, the Ban Huay Meng traders claimed, was that the net weight of fruits would slightly decrease over the course of its transportation, due to some water loss. Apart from the trouble with Chinese buyers giving them headaches, Thai traders also held a grudge against Chinese border formalities, and ultimately against the Chinese state in general. They often complained about the political chicanery with which importers of Thai fruits into China had to contend, in the form of higher taxation compared to agricultural products originating from Laos, which I have already pointed out in the previous chapter. The practice in Laos of relabelling imported Thai fruits as Lao fruits, which had previously 26 Compare Tot’s remark on the “Thai method” [ວິິທີກ ີ ານໄທ withikan thai] of agriculture mentioned before.

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been deployed on occasion, was also no longer possible, the kamnan added. As in the case of regional trade fairs in China, Thai small-scale traders appear to struggle more than their Lao counterparts to engage with the Chinese market, which ironically relies on connectivity with and supply from Thailand.

Conclusion As the two case studies of Chinese trade fairs (chapter 1) and fruit trade (chapter 2) show, this Sino-Thai connectivity is centrally enabled by otherwise seemingly insignificant—small—actors from Laos. They attune their cross-border mobility and versatility to the representational and operational logics of the overall Thai–Lao–Chinese borderland economy, thereby assembling, in different ways, transnational social worlds of trade practices. While they seamlessly blend in within regional ethnic mappings of a “Tai World” in trade fairs throughout Xishuangbanna, they act out and thus reproduce Laos’s geo-economic position of smallness—as an inferior transit zone for its powerful neighbours—by breaking down transnational trade flows (of fruits) into stereotyped and essentialized national components. Both the domestic cultivation and the tri-national cross-border trade of Thai fruits is centrally tied to the notion of quality, which in turn opens up a complex discourse of decidedly nationally framed “othering,” articulated through a combination of unequal economic development, power differentials, and stereotypical cultural habits among the three countries. I have shown in this chapter that it is its recent success story—growing and trading fruits—that has transformed the Tai Lue village Ban Huay Meng into a model of Thailand’s agro-economic development narrative, being now fully integrated into the logics of the national agricultural market. While there still undoubtedly exists a historical and cultural awareness of their Tai Lue origins, which right up to the present day has been manifested in ethnic cross-border relations of kinship and friendship, it does not determine the everyday economic practices of the village’s cross-border traders. They are, in a sense, trading “national commodities” instead of “ethnic commodities.” If they were trading “ethnic commodities”, it might explain a possible emergence of cross-border or transnational ethnic “trading-scapes” (Turner 2013). Ban Huay Meng’s traders’ economic cross-border geographies are structured around pronounced national categorizations and stereotypes, emphasizing differences over cross-border ethnic commonality. They are locally rooted in a self-positioning that stands for skilled and experienced

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high-quality agriculture, which they claim is superior to Lao and Chinese products. The sense of superiority is mainly based on Thai traders’ proud confidence in the premium quality standards of their fruits; however, in their crossborder movement this is challenged by the quality expectations of Chinese traders, their most lucrative customer base. Much more mobile than the traders of Ban Huay Meng, whose trading activities mostly end at their own river port, Lao fruit traders such as Pa Saeng or Po Kaeo utilize their formally inferior economic status (of being a receiver of low-grade fruits, for instance) to become close to and socialize with Thai suppliers and Chinese customers, between whom they mediate through the skilful deployment of generic national stereotypes of the respective “Other.” This also explains why traders on the Lao side seem to handle the “troublesome Chinese” in a more relativized and balanced, as well as somehow a more relaxed manner than the Thai suppliers who are directly and emotionally attached to their traded commodities, which have grown from the soil nurtured by proud Thai agriculturalists. To sum up, the transnational flow of Thai fruits—initiated by fruit growers in the Thai border village of Ban Huay Meng, facilitated by highly mobile Lao traders, and received by demanding Chinese traders—puts in cross-border motion highly simplified and clearly defined national stereotypes which are usually characterized by rigidity. Here, they (paradoxically?) enable cross-border fluidity and mobility through Lao traders’ interventions, which stress their nationally framed smallness.

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Village, Chiang Kham District, Phayao Province]. Khreuakhai borihan kanwijai phakneua ton bon [Upper Northern Research Administration Network, UNRN]. Office of National Culture Commission, ed. 1994. Sipsongpanna. Bangkok: Samnakngan khanakammakan wathanatham haengchat [Office of the National Culture Commission]. Panyagaew, Wasan. 2013. “Remembering with Respect: History, Social Memory and the Cross-Border Journeys of a Charismatic Lue Monk.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 14 (1): 23-40. Pinsak, Jetsuda. 2013. Kanwikhro suanprasom kantalad khong thuragit phatho tai lue na taladchaidaen ban huak amphoe phusang jangwat phayao [Marketing Mix-Analysis of Tail Lue Textile Business at Ban Huak Border Market, Phu Sang District, Phayao Province]. Chiang Rai: Mae Fah Luang University. Prangwatthanakul, Songsak, ed. 1993. Lanna su lanchang [From Lanna toward Lanchang]. Bangkok: Samnakgan khanakammakan wathanatham haeng chat [Office of the National Culture Commission]. Prangwatthanakul, Songsak. 2008. Moradok wattanatham phatho tai lue [The Cultural Heritage of Tai Lue Textiles]. Chiang Mai: Department of Thai Language, Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Mai University. Project of Lanna Cultural and Ethnic Museum. 2008. Tai Lue: atlak haeng chaatphan tai [Tai Lue: An Identity of the Tai Ethnic Group]. Chiang Mai: Project of Lanna Cultural and Ethnic Museum, Social Research Institute, Chiang Mai University. Reynolds, Craig. 1996. “Thailand.” In Communities of Thought, edited by Anthony Milner and Mary Quilty, 100-125. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Tsing, Anna L. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Turner, Sarah. 2013. “Under the State’s Gaze: Upland Trading-Scapes on the SinoVietnamese Border.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 34 (1): 9-24. Walker, Andrew. 1999. The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Wirakunthewan, Sophida. 2005. Chiang Khong: chatiphan lae kankha thi chaidaen [Chiang Khong: Ethnicity and Trade at the Border]. Bangkok: The Thailand Research Fund.

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“Thailand: High Quality; China: Low Price” “Banal Cosmopolitanism” in Local Marketplaces Abstract By establishing Luang Namtha’s past and present role as a regionally central intersection instead of a national periphery, this chapter examines this province’s municipal marketplaces in their spatial and material organization as sites where transnational commodity flows and trade intermediaries, vendors, customers, and travellers from multi-ethnic and multi-national backgrounds intersect and interact—leading to what I conceptualize as locally rooted “banal cosmopolitanism.” Adopting a practical understanding of cosmopolitanism, I refer to the shopkeepers’ and traders’ capacity to conceive and manoeuvre the overall transnational dimension of their local social and economic lives. Browsing through these marketplaces, this chapter demonstrates that this cosmopolitan handling of transnationality is, seemingly paradoxically, rooted in clear articulations and negotiations of national differences and boundaries. Keywords: Luang Namtha; marketplace; banal cosmopolitanism; transnationality; national difference

While the two previous chapters have pointed to Lao small-scale traders’ highly mobile, strategic, and intentional ways of acting out larger representations and realities of land-linkedness through different embodiments of smallness (inconspicuously blending in with landscapes of transnational Tai Lue ethnicity or self-ironically deriding their national underdevelopment and inferiority), this chapter spatially fixes those mobile practices in the local context of marketplaces in northern Laos. Zooming in from frequent cross-border trade fair trips and transnational commodity flows to concrete physical locations, I will examine the marketplaces of Luang Namtha and Muang Sing towns (both in Luang Namtha province) as central nodes of an overall local condition of

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everyday lived transnational connectedness—and consequently as sites of a certain variety of cosmopolitanism where transnational commodity flows and trade intermediaries, vendors, customers, and travellers from multi-ethnic and multi-national backgrounds intersect and interact. Parallel to the seemingly antithetic “peripheral centrality” (Brown 2018) of Laos in general, nationally rather remote but regionally interlinked, Luang Namtha province is central to the Yunnan–Laos–Thailand borderland economy. It is in Luang Namtha where the cross-border mobilities of Chinese trade fair attendees and traders of Thai fruits converge. This is best illustrated by Amnuay, my key informant in Luang Namtha, who in fact centrally facilitated my research by providing essential contacts that linked together these two cross-border trade activities. To put it bluntly, the reader would not have enjoyed the previous chapters if I had not met Amnuay—first in Jinghong, then in Luang Namtha. While he introduced me, as my first Luang Namtha contact in Jinghong, to the transnational world of Lao small-scale traders at Chinese trade fairs, he was also my first contact person in Luang Namtha, subsequently introducing me to the overall local transnational economy, without which the successful performance in Jinghong and beyond cannot be fully understood. When I first caught up with him in Luang Namtha, three months after our first encounter in Jinghong in April 2015, he listened to my research interest and plans very attentively and eventually thought of one of his younger brother’s close friends (seo), Mai Kaeo (or “Po Kaeo,” see previous chapter). Still responding to my (too loudly?) articulated Tai Lue focus, Amnuay was convinced that Mai Kaeo would be of great help to me as he was a very knowledgeable Tai Lue cross-border trader in Muang Sing who had also been the village head of Ban Nam Kaeo Noi, near Muang Sing town, for 17 years. When I eventually managed to talk to Mai Kaeo in Muang Sing, he further referred me to his closest female seo, Pa Saeng, who, as I described in the previous chapter, mainly traded Thai fruits to China. It did not take me long to realize that Pa Saeng was getting her Thai fruits mainly from Pa Oy in Ban Huay Meng, where I had stayed in the meantime to initiate my research on (Tai Lue) cross-border trade, based on contacts in Chiang Mai. It is worth noting that I got to know about Pa Saeng first in Luang Namtha, and not during my stay in Ban Huay Meng. Even more ironically, it was through Amnuay, a Tai Dam trader not involved in this fruit trade network at all, and not through Tai Lue traders from Ban Huay Meng, that I first learned about this vital Tai Lue fruit trader in Muang Sing. Instead, Pa Oy and the kamnan referred me to allegedly Tai Lue trading peers across the Mekong in Huay Xai, who turned out not to be Tai Lue. After all this, in Luang Namtha, things had come full circle.

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Before directing the focus toward the marketplaces of Luang Namtha province as central venues of transnational worlds of smallness, I will first describe the trajectory of Amnuay and his wife Hiang at some length and in detail, as it is vividly representative of Luang Namtha’s present and its past as a transnationally well-connected place of noticeable economic dynamism, mobility, and flexibility.

“Moving with the Market”: Amnuay and Hiang That Amnuay knows numerous cross-border traders comes as no surprise as his and Hiang’s livelihood has been organized around the market for more than 20 years, continuously experimenting with different commercial activities. Consequently, Amnuay and Hiang live with their son Top, who is in his early 30s, in a shop house right opposite the entrance of the provincial market (ຕະຫຼາດແຂວງ talat khwaeng).1 Contrary to my assumption, formed during my first encounter with him in Jinghong, that he must have been selling Thai goods on a regular basis, he in fact was running a small shop selling paint and some other building materials. Only then did I learn that, as far as he was concerned, selling Thai consumer commodities was a seasonal business activity, exclusively limited to the occasional attendance of trade fairs in China. Amnuay arguably comes from a professional background as he studied trade and commerce in Xam Nuea in Houaphan province after high school.2 1 The talat khwaeng (ຕະຫຼາດແຂວງ) is the biggest market of Luang Namtha province, located in the “new town” of Luang Namtha, which was only built in the late 1970s after the original town near the airport had been almost completely destroyed by US bomb raids in the Second Indochina War (1965–1975). The much smaller district market (ຕະຫຼາດເມືອງ talat muang) is still located in the old part of Luang Namtha town at the main road, just opposite the airport. Regarding Luang Namtha town, this chapter mainly focuses on the talat khwaeng, whereas it focuses on the single larger market of Muang Sing, the “morning market” (ຕະຫຼາດເຊ າົ້ talat sao). 2 However, he stressed the involuntary character of his studies. He had actually dreamed of becoming a learned agriculturalist, a farmer who would grow several products such as rice, bananas, corn, and so on. But his dream could not materialize because of “Lao politics” (ການ ເມືອງລາວ kan muang lao). His comment became a lot clearer to me when he told me later that his parents were on the “Vientiane side” (ຝ ່າຍວຽງຈັນ fai Vientiane), referring to the anti-communist, royalist regime. “When the communists took over,” he continued, “people couldn’t make their own choices where to study and what work to do.” In 1968, when he was 11 years old, his parents fled with him to the area near Huay Xai, located in Hua Khong province, renamed Bokeo province since 1983. He could go to school there and studied until the second lower-secondary grade. In 1976, one year after the communist takeover and the establishment of the Lao PDR, they returned to Luang Namtha. However, his parents soon sent him to Xam Nuea in the northeastern province

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Upon his return to Luang Namtha in 1982, after stays in Vientiane and Phongsaly province, he married Hiang and started to work in the state commerce sector until 1995, when state industries were gradually liberalized and privatized in the course of the “New Economic Mechanism” (ກົນໄກ ເສດຖະກິດໃໝ່ konkai setthakhit mai) under the larger economic, social, and political market-oriented reform package of “New Thinking” (ຈິນຕະນາການ ໃຫມ່ jintanakan mai), introduced in 1986 by the Lao government. “Many people had to leave the state sector and thus became their own small-scale businessmen,” Amnuay explained. From then on, he tried out numerous different businesses. For a certain period, he also sold Chinese goods (such as agricultural vehicles and car equipment) in Luang Namtha. However, he had to give up this trade as he could not compete with Chinese merchants who sold the goods at much lower prices. The latter were already well-organized and specialized in selling and repairing cars and motorbikes, agricultural machines, and mobile phones in one area near the provincial market, very close to Amnuay’s and Hiang’s current place. Hiang often stressed that they both were basically “moving with the market” (ໄປກັັບຕະຫຼຼາດ pai kap talat), aligning their livelihood with the proximity to the marketplace. They had built a house near the former location of the provincial market. Illustrating the household dynamics of their economic endeavours, Hiang gradually intervened in Amnuay’s remarks, stressing her contributions to their emerging transnational business. She jokingly told me that she would be responsible for thinking about new ideas whereas her husband would oversee the logistics of realizing them, drawing from his experience and expertise. When Amnuay was still working for the state commerce sector, Hiang mainly focused on purchasing Thai goods to distribute to several traders at the market. Later, she started selling Thai shoes and fashion in their own home, which turned out to be especially successful during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, this supply was provided by only a few traders. After Amnuay’s retirement from the state sector in 1995, they both started to regularly cross the border to Thailand to supply Luang Namtha with a broader range of highly sought-after Thai of Houaphan as the opportunities for further education in Luang Namtha were limited. In Xam Nuea, he studied commerce at a vocational school until 1978, when he had to move to Vientiane to continue his studies, which he explained as a result of the centralization of administrative authorities in Vientiane. Upon his graduation in 1980, he started to work in the state commerce sector. He kept stressing that the state monitored and controlled everything, including trade and commerce. As there was no company for him to choose, he explained, he had no option but to work where the state decided he should work. Hence, he was first positioned in Phongsaly province, where he worked until 1982, before being able to occupy a post back in Luang Namtha.

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consumer products, mainly selling at their home, but also directly to several market stalls. When the provincial market moved to its current location in 2005, following large Chinese investment in a new market infrastructure in Muang Sing, Luang Namtha and Oudomxai (see also Tan 2014, p. 442), they also moved and established a new house in front of the present market. With the new larger and more centrally located market, paired with much improved cross-border transportation infrastructure, traders rose in numbers: “People now could get everything in the market; there was no need for them to buy something outside of the market [i.e., at their home] anymore.” Consequently, they needed to think about selling other goods that were not available at the market. Amidst a surge in house construction reflecting the general improvement in living standards, especially in urban areas of Luang Namtha province, they both started to sell construction material, roof tiles, paint, and some tools—mainly Thai brands, which they ordered from Vientiane. However, after several years, another change occurred. The number of people buying ready-made paint dropped significantly as more and more people would rather buy utensils to mix paints by themselves. Again, the demand pattern changed, and not in their favour. Additionally, some four years ago, the rapidly expanding Joint Development Bank (JDB) was highly interested in their property due to its prime market location, asking whether they could rent a part of it to open their new Luang Namtha branch. After some consideration, Amnuay and Hiang eventually agreed to enter an initial five-year contract. In return, besides paying the rent, the bank also renovated their space where their (now much smaller) shop was now located. With the newly earned income from the rental agreement with JDB, they fully renovated the back side of the shophouse as their new two-storey flat. The bank had also asked for renting their remaining present shop, mainly to erect a small accommodation for their security guards, but they both refused. However, by now, the question, on which Hiang was pondering throughout my stays, was how and what to sell successfully in the future. This concern, also caused by the smaller size of their shop, was one of several factors which led to their interest in going to trade fairs in China. Therefore, as their attendance of Chinese trade fairs only started after the rental agreement with JDB, I got to know Amnuay and Hiang through their most recent commercial activity in Jinghong. Their biography clearly illustrates their resilience of continually taking risks in trying out new commercial activities due to rapid economic changes. Chapter 4 will further embed their story within a generally emerging

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willingness among numerous newcomers in Luang Namtha to experiment with new transnational economic opportunities. Always trying to keep up with favourable circumstances and to accommodate economic change, while continuously focusing on market dynamics, Amnuay and Hiang have been living and experiencing, on the ground, the official vision of Luang Namtha as an important regional trading hub, which was articulated much later by the provincial governor as follows: Luang Namtha Province (LNT) [is] located in [a] strategic location and bordered [sic] with China (157 km) and Myanmar (130 km). The road R3 connects China and Thailand via Borkeo [sic] and Luang Namtha Provinces. We can say that LNT is [a] strategic connecting point to three nearby countries that are big markets for LNT goods. This strategic location will turn LNT to become [a] logistics hub and center of trans-border transportation of goods and services in [the] near future. (Department of Planning and Investment (DPI) 2013)

This recently formulated role of Luang Namtha as an emerging major regional trading hub is embedded in a longer commercial history. For instance, witnessing the Yunnanese trade caravans criss-crossing Southeast Asia (see also the introduction chapter), British and French colonial travellers testified the regional importance of the trading route running from Chiang Khong to Sipsongpanna through Luang Namtha for the 19th century (Walker 1999, pp. 30-32).3 The ADB (2013) makes use of large historical references to advertise the Kunming–Chiang Rai section (Route 3) of the “Kunming–Bangkok Highway” within the history of the “Tea Horse Road”:4 During the Tang Dynasty, approximately 1200 years ago, a major travel and trade path was created—carrying tea and other goods across several Asian countries. It was named Chamadao—The Tea Horse Road. Travelling across the People’s Republic of China, Lao PDR, and Thailand, the modern road that follows part of the old route is called Route 3. 3 Walker mainly relies here on the travelogues of W. C. McLeod, Pierre Lefèvre-Pontalis, and Auguste Pavie. 4 However, this enthusiastic reference to the “Tea Horse Road” should be treated with caution as it was more accurately a route mainly connecting Yunnan with Tibet (through northwestern Yunnan or through Burma and India) along which Pu’er tea from Sipsongpanna was traded for Tibetan horses. Studies on this historical overland tea trade do not mention present Lao territories at all (Hill 1989) or only mention in passing some trade dynamics with Luang Prabang (Giersch 2006, pp. 159-186).

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These plans to “revive” this history of regional connectivity have been lying in the off ices of the ADB since 1993, with “local off icials and entrepreneurs [being] keen to promote [Luang Namtha] as the northern Lao transport hub in the Economic Quadrangle [as] [t]hey see the road south to Thailand and north into China as the key to the province’s future prosperity” (Walker 1999, p. 84).5 Besides being developed into a regional hub, Luang Namtha can look back at a history of accommodating different periods of voluntary and forced migration (Badenoch and Shinsuke 2013; Evrard and Chiemsisouraj 2013) and resettlement, most recently carried out as part of state-sanctioned resettlement programs relocating highland villages down to lowland areas under the guise of development policies since the late 1990s (Evrard and Goudineau 2004; Kusakabe and Vongphakdy 2014). These developments have contributed to complex inter-ethnic social relations facilitated through a high degree of multilingualism, whose traits are still visible at the marketplaces. Badenoch and Shinsuke (2013) interestingly provide an alternative local history of the emergence of the muang of Luang Namtha largely shaped by non-Tai actors from the Lanten, Hmong-Mien, and Sida ethnic groups. They critically argue that Luang Namtha’s historical “striking continuity one observes here is not of a Lao (Tai) cultural core encoded in the muang, but rather of a cosmopolitan space of cultural contention” (Badenoch and Shinsuke 2013, p. 60). This historically rooted cosmopolitan feature of ever-changing demographic patterns, constantly leading to new forms of social, inter-ethnic encounters due to larger economic and political dynamics, qualifies Luang Namtha to join the ranks of Harper’s and Amrith’s (2014) “sites of Asian interaction,” displaying “cosmopolitan histories—or histories of Asian cosmopolitanism” (p. 8). Shifting the focus to the present, I will in the following sections trace present traits of a “cosmopolitanism that was messy, inconsistent, lived rather than theorized” (Ibid.), in the marketplaces of Luang Namtha and Muang Sing town, arguably the two briskest market towns of Luang Namtha province.

5 Interestingly, Walker (1999, pp. 80-81; 85-86) outlines how this ADB-favoured route stood in competition with upgrading the existing and much-used route linking the northern Thai province of Nan to Yunnan through Hongsa, Pakbeng, and Oudomxai in Laos. Before the recent shift towards Luang Namtha, Oudomxai had been the trading and transportation hub between northern Thailand and Yunnan since the late 1960s, when Chinese road constructions linked it strategically to the Chinese border in Boten and to Pakbeng at the Mekong River (see also Godley and Goar 1991).

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Tracing “Banal Cosmopolitanism” at Marketplaces As sites of myriad instances of social, economic, cultural, and also political encounters, involving different forms and degrees of mobility and f ixity of traders and consumers (cf. Harris 2013), local marketplaces in northern Laos, along with individual market-oriented biographies, can be understood as material, spatial, and performative manifestations of abstract visions and concrete individual biographies of transnational and cross-border economic connectivity. They inevitably express a high degree of “internationality” as most of the products sold there are imported goods. Thus, the locally specif ic, historically constituted ethnic diversity of market traders and consumers is further embedded in the everyday handling (i.e., selling, buying, watching, consuming) of commodities of international, or nationally “foreign,” origin, creating an overall “banal cosmopolitan” setting in a sense of enabling, at least materially and symbolically, a daily lived exposure to the larger economies, and by extension to consumer cultures, of adjacent Thailand and China. Put it another way, these marketplaces constitute “marginal hubs,” understood as “sites that appear geographically or politically marginal, but which emerge as areas of intense and often volatile sociability” (Marsden and Reeves 2019, p. 755). They importantly “straddle the often taken-forgranted boundary between the rural and the urban, the modern and the historic, the marginal and the central” (Ibid, p. 757). Although the cosmopolitan notion might indeed be overly debased and overloaded, like Magnus Marsden and Madeleine Reeves (2019) I still consider it a helpful starting point for better thinking through and articulating my empirical material, if meaningfully enhanced and applied through a critical lens. I will in the following conceptualize the local markets in Luang Namtha province as sites of a “banal cosmopolitanism” as it is in the “banal” realm of everyday commodities, and consumption in general (e.g., food or television), mostly concentrated in numerous stalls selling Thai and Chinese consumer goods, in which the cosmopolitan capacity to mentally conceive and practically manoeuvre the overall transnational dimension of local social and economic life emerges most visibly. I am aware of my inevitable scholarly appropriation, (mis)translation, and (mis) representation of complex and contradicting local realities that are hard to grasp. As I already explained in the introduction, my suggestion of a “banal cosmopolitanism” is merely a conceptual orientation, which in this chapter I will further enrich ethnographically.

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Taking Issues with Cosmopolitanism Taking cosmopolitanism as “the capacity to relate to and ‘consume’ other cultures” (Vathi 2013, p. 903), I do not refer to the philosophical stance of cherishing it as an ethical and normative project or to a certain lifestyle or attitude mainly reserved for Western, primarily urban, liberal-minded elites. This image of cosmopolitanism as a project of a privileged global elite of travellers (Hannerz 1996, pp. 102-111) has been already much challenged, starting with James Clifford’s (1992) “discrepant cosmopolitanism.”6 Thus, I am similarly building on the idea of an “actually existing cosmopolitanism” (Malcomson 1998) on the ground and the associated increasing body of intentionally oxymoronic combinations such as “vernacular cosmopolitanism” (Bhabha 1996), suggesting a “cosmopolitan community envisaged in marginality” (1996, pp. 195-6), “local cosmopolitanisms” (Assche and Teampău 2015), “subaltern cosmopolitanism” (e.g., Gidwani 2006; Yeh 2009), “cosmopolitanism at the periphery” (Taylor 2007), “cosmopolitanism at the borderlands” (Notar 2008), “rural cosmopolitanism” (e.g., see for India, Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003), “cosmopolitan villagers” (Keyes 2012), or “remote cosmopolitans” (Saxer 2012). They all question in one way or another the established conceptual divide between “global cosmopolitanism” on the one hand and the local residual on the other hand. Equally central to my work, these concepts provide new ways of studying remoteness in its connectivity and productivity (cf. Saxer and Andersson 2019; Luo, Oakes, and Schein 2019), thereby questioning whether the global–local divide still makes sense at all.7 I concretely refer to cosmopolitanism as a spatially and temporarily situational— “local”—social condition of daily lived and (not necessarily consciously) practiced experience of differently encountering and negotiating cultural (e.g., ethnically or nationally conceived) differences. I highlight deliberately the local dimension of this condition as, in my research, it is in the particular localities of market towns in northern Laos where processes 6 However, Dick Hebdige (1990, p. 20) was already writing in 1990: “[W]e’re living in a world where ‘mundane’ cosmopolitanism is part of ‘ordinary’ experience. All cultures, however remote temporally and geographically, are becoming accessible today as signs and/or commodities. […] Nobody has to be ‘design conscious’, educated, well-off or adventurous to be a world traveller at this level. It’s all part of the uneven experience of being ‘taken for a ride’ in and through late-20th century consumer culture. In the 1990s everybody—willingly or otherwise, whether consciously or not—is more or less cosmopolitan.” 7 For a comprehensive overview of recent trends of studying cosmopolitanism in anthropology, see Werbner (2008).

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of everyday cosmopolitan encounters are unfolding. This need not entail an exaggerated, normative, and ideological sense of an openness to a shared world, but rather means, in a more pragmatic and quotidian sense, a locally inherent awareness of, and engagement with, the transnational dimension of market or market-related activities. However, as Jacqueline H. Fewkes (2014, p. 59) rightly argues in her ethnohistory of cosmopolitan trade practices in the early 20th century in Ladakh, a historical trading hub connecting Central Asia, South Asia and Tibet, “[t]he presence of material culture suggests that cosmopolitan attitudes may have existed, but merely being in the presence of such material culture is not enough to make one cosmopolitan.” Thus, I likewise use the market sites in their material transnationality, “suggest[ing] the presence of cosmopolitanism,” as “a starting point of research rather than an end point” (Fewkes 2014, p. 59). In a second step, I will further analyse various market-related actors’ concrete behaviours, practices, and utterances of engaging with cultural differences. Fewkes (2014) illustrates the cosmopolitan capacity of historical Ladakhi traders who flexibly navigate, and traverse boundaries of, different systems of languages, currencies, and calendrics tied to different national economies, which was also visible (except in the last case) in the present marketplaces in Luang Namtha and Muang Sing. Foregrounding the “Banal” When looking at the very basic spatial structure shared by the local markets of Luang Namtha and Muang Sing, it becomes obvious how this thoroughly transnational material dimension of incoming, outgoing, and transiting commodities is reflected on the ground by the ethnic mosaic of vendors. The fresh market area, partly located in the open, mainly consists of nonTai-speaking “upland” people (commonly called ລາວເທິງ lao thoeng) (mainly Khmu) and “highland” people (commonly called ລາວສູງ lao sung, mainly consisting of Akha, Sida and Hmong)8 who sell locally grown vegetables, fruits (mostly bananas and imported small pineapples), and herbs as well as some “forest products” (ຂອງໃນປ ່າ khong nai pa) alongside a large number of 8 In 2002 the government officially abandoned the threefold Lao categorization of “lowland Lao” (ລາວລຸ່່�ມ lao lum), Mon-Khmer speaking “upland Lao” (ລາວເທິິງ lao thoeng), comprising mainly Khmu in northern Laos and various Mon-Khmer groups in the south, and “highland Lao” (ລາວສູູງ lao sung), composed of Hmong-Mien, Iu-Mien and several Tibeto-Burman groups such as the Akha and Lahu (Ovesen 2008, p. 224). This decision was preceded by calls to replace it with a specific classification of every single ethnic group, which dated back to the early 1980s. However, it is still widely used in academic, popular, and official political discourse (e.g., Pholsena 2002, 2006), as I could also observe in numerous conversations with my interlocutors.

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15  Open fresh market area, Muang Sing market

Photo taken by author, 2017

16  Small shop selling Thai and Chinese commodities at the edge of the fresh market area, Muang Sing market

Photo taken by author, 2017

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Haw Chinese selling Chinese vegetables and both Chinese and Thai fruits. At the edge of the fresh market, several Tai-speaking vendors (mainly Tai Dam, as well as Tai Nuea and Tai Lue) mostly sell Thai fruits. The fresh market in Luang Namtha town is surrounded by numerous small shops trading both Chinese and Thai daily consumer goods (e.g., household items, cosmetics, food products, and beverages), which are run by a diverse community of traders including Tai Dam, Tai Yuan, Haw, and a significant number of Phunoy who have migrated from Phongsaly. In Muang Sing, these shops are mainly run by Tai Nuea and Tai Lue, some Haw, and again a high number of Phunoy, originally from Phongsaly.9 This outdoor area is in both marketplaces supplemented by a large indoor section containing clothes originating from Thailand, China, and occasionally from Vietnam, and the only locally produced goods, consisting of silver and gold jewellery, Lao silk and fabrics, and basketwork (although the latter two are mostly ordered from Vientiane). Locals commonly call this combination of outdoor and indoor areas the “Lao market” (ຕະຫຼາດລາວ talat lao) to distinguish it from the large “Chinese market” (ຕະຫຼາດຈີນ talat jin) next to the “Lao market” indoor area where all sorts of Chinese products (e.g., clothes, bags, bed sheets and mattresses, tools, electric appliances, DVDs and VCDs, agricultural equipment, kitchen utensils, knives) are sold, mainly by relatively newly arrived Chinese migrants, alongside several Haw vendors. As this short description shows, local market practices of purchasing, consuming, trading or simply browsing10 (which is I what mostly did) are, across ethnic boundaries, inevitably embedded spatially in the transnational 9 However, any attempt to clearly categorize the local ethnic diversity faces the actually existing ambiguity and complexity of ethnonyms on the ground, particularly prevalent in this region and Southeast Asia in general (e.g., Culas and Robinne 2010). For instance, Pa Saeng was convinced that most fruit sellers at the Muang Sing market are Phunoy from Phongsaly. She first referred to them as “Tai Haw” from Phongsaly. Realizing my bewilderment, she tried other references to make me understand. Beginning with “Haw Lolo” (Lolo standing for a Sino-Tibetan language family), she further specified them as “Haw Phongsaly,” eventually stating that “Haw Phongsaly” were in fact Phunoy. Sticking to Phunoy, she repeatedly assured me that they were indeed Phunoy, only to leave me baffled again when later, throughout our conversation, she again referred to “Haw Phongsaly.” That Pa Saeng linked the Phunoy inextricably with references to Haw and Tai could be also interpreted as an indicator of the former’s history of acculturation to, or socio-political mirroring of, neighbouring Tai societies, which in turn, however, still bolstered a distinct Phunoy identity (Bouté 2006, 2018). Given that, in general, Tai peoples traditionally refer to people through using a combination of “Tai” (literally meaning person or human being) and place of settlement, Pa Saeng’s usage of “Tai Haw” could also be understood as referring to people originally coming from China or from Phongsaly, considering that many associate Phongsaly with large populations of Haw Chinese. 10 Compare Louisa Schein’s (2005) notion of “browsing the commodity space.”

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dimension of incoming commodities, arguably leading to forms of everyday “banal transnationalism” (Aksoy and Robins 2003) or “banal cosmopolitanism” (Beck 2003). Another possible term would be “ordinary cosmopolitanism” (Lamont and Aksartova 2002),11 or we might refer to the advancement of Hebdige’s (1990) “mundane cosmopolitanism” by Pramod K. Nayar (2009, pp. 182, emphasis in original): “Mundane cosmopolitanism” is the agglomeration of the global within our reach through the mobility of products and services from across the world. It is the routine mobility of images, services and products within an affordable [sic] (at least in metropolises) in our everyday life. It is important to see this cosmopolitanism as being a routine because the routine is often invisible. It is integrated into the everyday life and rhythms of an individual or family’s cycles of consumption and pleasures.

I have opted to use “banal cosmopolitanism” because of its direct correspondence to Michael Billig’s (1995, p. 8) notion of a ubiquitous “banal nationalism”: In so many little ways, the citizenry are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations. However, this reminding is so familiar, so continual, that it is not consciously registered as reminding. The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building.

However, Ulrich Beck (2003, pp. 21-23; 2006, pp. 40-44) conceptualizes his “banal cosmopolitanism” as the direct opposite of Billig’s “banal nationalism.” By focusing chiefly on the realm of increasingly globalized everyday consumption patterns that make it already almost impossible to discern distinct national components, Beck (2003, p. 22) argues that “banal nationalism is being constantly eroded by this torrent of banal cosmopolitanism.” However, instead of considering national and cosmopolitan tendencies as working against each other, I suggest that the continual national flagging by incoming commodities—most banally through Thai and Chinese letters printed on the packages—largely impacts on transnationally oriented, cosmopolitan practices. Recalling aforementioned Jacqueline Fewkes’s (2014) 11 Michèle Lamont and Sada Aksartova (2002) use this term for non-college-educated workers’ handling of racial boundaries (white/black) in the United States and in France; Zlatko Skrbis and Ian Woodward (2007) have developed it further.

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conception of “cosmopolitanism” as the ability to traverse multiple cultural boundaries, I argue that those very same boundaries are, in the world of mainly imported commodities in northern Lao markets, predominantly and inevitably framed along banal national lines. The everyday visible assemblage of displayed, bought, sold, and consumed Thai and Chinese commodities are in their banality and omnipresence deeply ingrained in local daily lives, much the same as the local visual landscape of Chinese and Thai advertisement signs or TV broadcasts, continuously reminding people of, or “flagging,” the transnational orientation and dimension of their locality. Again, at the core of this transnational dimension lies the simultaneous juxtaposition of mainly Chinese and Thai commodities, which inescapably leads to the practice of comparing, relating, and negotiating differences that are couched in national terms, according to the respective national origin of the commodities. To avoid any confusion amidst all these conceptual labels, I want to make it clear again how I deploy the conceptual triangle of national, transnational, and cosmopolitan. By “transnational” I mean the overall local setting of a multiplicity of different national influences—both materially and symbolically—which are facilitated by high degrees of cross-border connectivity and mobility, most visibly at and beyond marketplaces. This transnationality, anchored in different arrays of its national components, is skilfully navigated by cosmopolitan practices of comprehending, traversing, and reproducing these boundaries. In a nutshell, I attempt to trace cosmopolitan practices of adaptably handling the nationally woven transnational borderland economy, with its marketplaces as central socio-economic nodes. I thereby work with the premise that cosmopolitanism as a practical skill, rather than an attitude or an ideology, of handling transnationality through negotiating national differences, appears most visibly in the banal realm of everyday consumer products. A common banality of my fieldwork might better illustrate my hitherto abstract conceptual discussion—namely my “cosmopolitan routine” of starting the day in northern Laos with a “transnational” breakfast.

“Banal Cosmopolitanism” in Practice During my longer stays in northern Laos, I quickly took the habit of having a hearty bowl of khao soi (ເຂົ້້�າຊອຍ, a local rice noodle soup specialty, also see chapter 1) in the early mornings, usually at municipal and provincial markets, but on some occasions in other noodle shops downtown in

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Luang Namtha and Muang Sing. Viewed from the material angle alone, my nascent breakfast routine already constituted a truly transnational setting. I seasoned my soup with Thai chili and fish sauce, Chinese soy sauce, and some locally grown fresh vegetables, thus literally assembling a transnational local specialty. Interesting in this regard is that one of the noodle soup vendors claimed that he could tell where each customer was from based on his or her seasoning habits. Thus, for instance, Chinese or Lao citizens with Chinese descent (Haw) would tend to use more soy sauce; Lao, Vietnamese, and Thai would probably apply much more fish sauce, which Western (ຝຣັ່່ງ� falang) tourists would largely avoid. Indeed, a study dedicated solely to khao soi in its transnationality would already be tempting and insightful. In Laos, khao soi is often regarded as a local Tai Lue specialty, for which Muang Sing is especially famous. Luang Prabang also advertises its khao soi as a must-eat to tourists. In Xishuangbanna, khao soi is sold as “Tai-style rice noodles” (傣味米干 daiwei migan) alongside other Yunnanese rice noodle dishes. Rice noodles are in Yunnan a fundamental staple food commonly shared by its numerous ethnic groups, including the Han, leading to a high diversity of “ethnically shaped” rice noodle versions, daiwei migan being only one of them. In parts of northern Thailand with significant Tai Lue populations, what is called khao soi in Laos cannot be simply called khao soi as this is the name of the much more prominent “northern Thai” dish, which is said to be closely influenced by Burmese (Shan) cuisine. This variant, most famously found in Chiang Mai, does not consist of rice noodles, but of egg noodles in a curry-based soup. There is also certainly an influence from Muslim Yunnanese merchants who travelled from Yunnan through present-day Myanmar and northern Thailand. Therefore, adding even more confusion, the version common in northern Laos is, in northern Thailand, called khao soi ho (ข้้าวฃอยฮ่่อ “Haw rice noodles”), or sometimes also khao soi sipsongpanna (ข้้าวฃอยสิิ บสองปัันนา, “Sipsongpanna rice noodles”), hence referring interchangeably to its Chinese/Yunnanese and Tai Lue origins. In short, already constituting a truly transnational ethnic dish, it is also differently labelled and prepared in its various national contexts. As I practised my morning ritual of eating a bowl of rice noodles in all three national contexts concerned, I could somehow eat through the national differences and nuances, embedded in diverse morning encounters and conversations. At local marketplaces in Laos, I often had a Thai instant coffee along with my transnationally seasoned soup, watched Thai news on TV (my regular haunt in Luang Namtha had a television set always screening Thai programmes), and was exposed to a multilingual mixture of Lao, Chinese (both Mandarin and Yunnanese dialect), several Tai dialects, and

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17  Breakfast routine at khao soi stalls, Luang Namtha market

Photo taken by author, 2015

non-Tai languages that were, to me, incomprehensible and their number therefore indeterminable. In my eyes, this by itself conveyed a certain “cosmopolitan” feeling, probably comparable to sipping a coffee at an international airport where one is made to feel part of the broader world, through the consumption of internationally marked and advertised brand-name products and the exposure to a symbolic materiality and vocabulary of globality (cf. Skrbis and Woodward 2013, pp. 64-68) or “choreography of global space” (Pearson 2018, p. 3), simultaneously observing and constituting global flows of a diverse range of travellers. Strikingly, this feeling of being part of and moving through a broader world materializes in a locality more often associated with its remoteness and marginality. My, admittedly very much subjective and naïve, excitement about this multi-sensory experience of a “cosmopolitan feeling” was certainly due to my status as a newcomer being overwhelmed by the clearly displayed, locally ingrained transnationality, which residents merely took as a regular, banal feature of their daily life. To compare it again to the cosmopolitan sites of international airports, I acted and felt as a first-time traveller newly exposed to a previously unseen (or in its scale unexpected) display of internationality, which other more

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informed actors have grown accustomed to with routines accumulated over time. Returning to the polyglot soundscape at the markets in northern Laos, it is not only its evident multilingualism, but also the actual content and pattern of market chatter and gossip that is noteworthy. Both in Luang Namtha and Muang Sing, I frequently overheard the Lao phrases “going up” (ຂືນ້ khuen) and “going down” (ລົງ long), either asking whether or saying that one would, or did, go up or down. As I learned later, having been asked these questions often by market vendors, “going up” refers to crossing the border into China, “going down” to crossing the border into Thailand. Roughly mirroring the cartographic reality of the overland link between China and Thailand (following the course of the Kunming–Bangkok Highway), this continually reiterated mental mapping of everyday cross-border mobility is integral part of local life—of market vendors, traders, and local consumers in general. Greetings, stories, rumours, gossip, jokes—they all largely revolve around previous or planned trips, or commodities and people from “up” and “down,” and thus constitute local lifeworlds of perpetual transnational land-linkedness. This initial, rather superficial sense of a cosmopolitan atmosphere, based merely on the immediate material visibility and sonic environment of transnationality, was over the course of my fieldwork substantially enriched by observing concrete cosmopolitan practices and skills of my interlocutors in the marketplaces. In addition to their linguistic dexterity, I was struck by the widespread practice of simultaneously trading and calculating in multiple currencies (Lao kip, Chinese yuan, Thai baht, and occasionally US dollars), although large banners in Lao and Chinese language, posted at the entrances of the marketplaces by state authorities, continuously warn people only to trade in the national currency, as a result of a Presidential Decree issued in 2008 (see Huijsmans 2020). Within this “monetary pluralism” of the Lao economy in general (Huijsmans 2020, pp. 247-248), prices are quoted interchangeably in different currencies, even allowing single payments to be composed of more than one currency. I was impressed at the speed and ease with which the traders, vendors, and customers managed to navigate different currencies. Their ability to easily recall exchange rates and manage their multi-currency wallets overwhelmed me in the beginning, as I found it difficult to follow their commonplace practices of quoting prices in Thai baht and, in some cases, also in Chinese yuan, while giving change systematically in Lao kip, no matter which currency was used for payment. Again, on a materialsymbolic level, the national composition of the transnationally connected

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borderland economy is processed, and therefore re-enacted, through these daily practices of calculating, converting, and switching between different currencies. Those practices constantly remind of the inter-national economic discrepancies, especially because of the low international value of the Lao currency. Not unfrequently, traders mocked Lao money, taking out bank notes simply to stress that those were just pieces of paper, almost worthless. They defied outright attempts by the state to tie moral discourses on Lao national identity and citizenship to the dutiful usage of the national currency (Huijsmans 2020, pp. 248-250). Apart from monetary value, they would also compare Lao bank notes to the allegedly much better material quality of Chinese or Thai bank notes. In their multi-currency wallets, traders and consumers carry with them small replicas of the national economic hierarchy of this borderland region, navigating transnational monetary spaces by simultaneously handling different national currencies. Besides these observable skills in traversing transnational interconnectedness in its national boundedness, market actors also displayed through their conversations a high degree of knowledge and engagement with the transnational positioning of their local lives. I particularly recall one longer conversation at a khao soi stall at the Muang Sing market one very early, misty morning, f ive months into my f ieldwork (July 2015). The Tai Lue stall owner, a man in his 50s, was quite delighted, or rather amused, by my attempts to order in Tai Lue, although I probably sounded closer to Lao with a tinge of northern Thai accent (I had learned some ค�ำเมือง kham muang, or Tai Yuan, during my previous stays in northern Thailand). Learning that I was interested in trade and marketplaces, he instantly started a longer monologue on the transnational interconnectedness of Muang Sing’s local economy while I was slurping a hot bowl of khao soi. As if confirming the relevance of the previous chapter, he started off by repeatedly emphasizing that most of the fruits available at the local markets originated from Thailand, while there were also some Chinese fruits, such as apples and plums, and Chinese vegetables. Extending his remarks to the overall commodityscape of Muang Sing, he reiterated the common mantra that, generally speaking, Thai commodities would be of higher quality whereas Chinese commodities would be of lower quality and therefore also sell at lower prices. From this seemingly banal statement, which however underlines again the locally rooted transnational—or nationally comparing—mindset of daily commerce and consumption, he eventually arrived at a discussion of large-scale agriculture in Muang Sing and northern Laos in general, which is increasingly in Chinese hands. He touched on the emerging trend of renting land to Chinese investors for rubber and banana cultivation

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while at the same time highlighting the insecurity of the rubber market. Although these comments were rather familiar and widely heard throughout my subsequent fieldwork, this local noodle soup vendor, who was one of my earlier interlocutors in Muang Sing, already clearly demonstrated his knowledge and awareness of the transnational connectedness of the local economic landscape. However, what was even more remarkable than this casual yet extensive talk on the transnational embeddedness of local economic life was the vendor’s initial and genuine puzzlement about my research interest in cross-border trade and marketplaces. Normally, foreign researchers like me would go to remote upland villages to study ethnic minority cultures such as the Khmu, Hmong, or the Lanten, he explained to me. Apart from these ethnic uplands worthy of further study, Luang Namtha would not yield anything of particular interest. The markets in lowland towns would instead be rather ordinary (ທໍາມະດາ thammada) and boring (ໜ້າເບືອ ່ na buea; or ບມີໍ່ ຫຍັງພິ ເສດ bo mi yang phiset, literally “there is nothing special”). Thus, the sheer banality of everyday transnationalism, which I deemed over the course of my research increasingly extraordinary and fascinating, would not be worthy of further research—a statement that accompanied me throughout my fieldwork, uttered by numerous informants and also propounded by travellers, workers from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and fellow researchers I met on my way. Strikingly, this mapping of the touristic and academic significance of Luang Namtha, and, for that matter of Laos in general, is reflected in the official national and provincial touristic advertisement of Laos and the current state of academic scholarship on Laos (see introduction). The latter, together with a long-established presence of external development aid focusing on remote upland margins, might have already created certain local expectations towards external researchers. Reiterating my breakfast routine in Muang Sing amidst beautiful morning sceneries of red sunrises clearing the misty shroud—this alone might indeed create a sense of romantic and mystic remoteness, as often described in travel guides12—over time, I could witness a vivid convergence of various 12 For instance, this is how the latest edition of Lonely Planet for Laos describes Muang Sing: “Bordering Myanmar and within grasp of the green hills of China, Muang Sing is a rural backwater in the heart of the Golden Triangle. Formerly on the once infamous opium trail, it’s a sleepy town of wilting, Tai Lü-style houses where trekking has overtaken smuggling contraband. Hmong, Tai Lü, Akha and Tai Dam are all seen here in traditional dress at the old market (arrive at dawn), giving the town a frontier feel.” See http://www.lonelyplanet.com/laos/northern-laos/muang-sing/introduction (accessed 15 November 2021).

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anecdotes, experiences, stories, and references through which my interlocutors illustrated, yet at the same time banalized, their everyday lived positioning within a broader transnational world, whether this was conscious or not. This transnational awareness, quickly boiled down (almost literally in the case of my breakfast) to the national components of Thailand, Laos, and China, was always present—materially, mentally, and rhetorically—leading to cosmopolitan practices which largely rely on essentializations of the national “Other,” very much reminiscent of the “nationalized” transnational flows of Thai fruits described in the previous chapter. The “Banal National” Lens in Cosmopolitan Practice Coming from ethnically diverse backgrounds, shopkeepers in Luang Namtha and Muang Sing marketplaces often mentioned that they had some acquaintances (ຄົນຮູຈ້ ກ ັ khon hujak), friends (ເພື່ ອນ phuean), or close friends (ສ່ຽວ seo) across the border in Thailand or China. When I asked about their acquaintances’ ethnicities, just as stubbornly as in the case of Ban Huay Meng in the previous chapter, and whether they might even be of their own ethnicity, they often simply framed them as Chinese (ຄົນຈີນ khon jin) or Thai (ຄົນໄທ khon thai), often conceding with a laugh that they did not really know about this. In the case of the few Tai Lue vendors in Muang Sing, for instance, they stressed they did not have any Lue relatives, but “many Chinese friends” in Xishuangbanna. When I asked again, apparently not giving up on my presumed significance of transnational ethnicity, whether their Chinese friends were Lue, they responded that they were simply “Sipsongpanna Chinese” (ຄົນຈີນສິບສອງພັນນາ khon jin sipsongpanna). Confirming my observations in the previous chapter, cross-border trade, it seems, at least in Luang Namtha, does not predominantly necessitate ethnic bonds or, at least, is not exclusively reserved to certain ethnic networks which are otherwise central, and often rightly so, to numerous studies on Sino-Southeast Asian cross-border trade (e.g., Diana 2013; Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015; Turner 2013; Siriphon 2007; Toyota 2000). In other words, shopkeepers in Luang Namtha did not stress cross-border ethnic ties as a significant way of facilitating their transnational retail business. In fact, they often de-emphasized such ties and emphasized instead the convenience (ຄວາມສະດວກ khwamsaduak) and ordinariness (ທໍາມະດາ thammada) of conducting cross-border trade “in modern times” ( ໃນຍຸກສະໄໝໃໝ່ nai yuksamai mai). Sparked by this widely held notion of cross-border convenience, a wide range of actors, differently transcending, perceiving, challenging, and

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probably even ignoring notions of ethnic boundaries, similarly aim to have a stake in new transnational business opportunities. Amidst this growing pool of socially, economically, and ethnically diverse market participants, resorting to national labels can be a more accessible and practical way of explicating cross-border difference and familiarity than notions of (shared or not shared) cross-border ethnicity. Recalling the previous chapter, it appeared important to Pa Saeng and Mai Kaeo, the mobile fruit traders in Muang Sing, and to Tai Lue villagers of Ban Huay Meng in Chiang Khong, to speak of their ethnic brothers (phi nong) across the border as the national “Other” in the f irst place. On the other hand, at the markets of Muang Sing and Luang Namtha, numerous sellers, whether they were Tai Lue, Tai Dam, Tai Nuea, Tai Yuan, Phunoy, or Haw, spoke of their familiarity with “the Chinese” and “the Thai” in general, always highlighting how uncomplicated it was nowadays for them to handle, and directly cross over to, the Thai and the Chinese side. Instead of long-established ethnic ties, they cited recently emerging mobile communication channels, which even included translation applications, as the main facilitator of their increasingly convenient cross-border social and economic interactions. Defying any notion of remoteness, inaccessibility, and backwardness, they framed the Yunnan–Laos–Thailand borderland as centrally connected through modern physical as well as virtual online infrastructures. The latter importantly include the simultaneous management of different online communication channels across different borders.13 The nationally marked character of this borderland economy is also clearly reflected in the different usage of mobile communication applications. Whereas within and between Thailand and Laos Line is mainly used, and to a lesser extent WhatsApp and Facebook, cross-border communication with the Chinese side is almost exclusively achieved by the Chinese application WeChat (in Chinese 微信 weixin). Again, transnational commodity spaces as well as transnational virtual spaces are nationally flagged and bounded. This national flagging in turn finds expression in practices of attenuating ethno-cultural complexity by re-invoking national boundaries and differences, even within allegedly transnational ethnic groups, which then can be easily overcome through a plethora of new convenient means. Taken together, along social and material lines, the transnational worlds of local marketplaces in northern Laos are nationally assembled. Clearly defined and simplified national boundaries are not only deployed to make 13 Likewise, my cross-border fieldwork was essentially facilitated by the simultaneous handling of numerous mobile applications and three phone numbers as well.

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sense of cross-border contacts and relations, but also to generally conceive the local socio-economic texture. This became apparent to me when I witnessed how the market vendors engaged with different product qualities and consumer preferences along essentially national lines. The first point of reference was often not the commodity itself, but its country of origin. For instance, one day as I was sitting and chatting at a small shop run by a Haw woman originally from Phongsaly who moved to Luang Namtha some 20 years ago, a young couple entered and asked for diapers. The first question the shop owner asked them was whether they wanted Thai or Haw (i.e., Chinese) ones.14 She implied a nationally comparative mindset in their customers’ purchasing behaviour, which she in turn was marketing to them. I was asked that very “banal,” yet transnational, question (“Thai or Chinese?”) numerous times as well, when I was browsing curiously through these shops. Market sellers in Muang Sing and Luang Namtha do indeed have decided opinions about the national (i.e., Chinese and Thai) attributes of their goods, which they also link to differing success in sales. While numerous retailers stated that both Thai and Chinese products sold equally well or badly, others made more pronounced assessments about which goods sold better due to which reasons. To put it crudely, most of them believed that Thai products would sell better because of their better quality and general familiarity and popularity among their customers. At the same time, many conceded that this quality-based popularity of Thai products was also often compensated by the generally lower prices of Chinese products. The traders also often used this common practice of nationally grading product qualities, very much reminiscent of the transnational trade in Thai fruits described in the previous chapter, to make sense of their customers’ purchasing behaviour, leading to their social classification based on whether they mainly bought Chinese or Thai consumer goods. This is best illustrated by the remarks made by Kamphaeng, a Tai Dam shopkeeper in her 50s living in Luang Namtha: It’s the special feature of this borderland region (ເຂດຊາຍແດນ khet saidaen), of Luang Namtha: it’s close to China and close to Thailand. So, customers can always choose between Thai and Chinese products. People who buy Chinese products are mainly people from the countryside (ຄົົນ ບ້້ານນອກ khon ban nok)—you know, also some highland people (ລາວສູູງ lao sung)—as these goods are cheaper. People from the city (ຄົົນໃນວຽງ 14 Again, the Lao ethnonym “Haw” for citizens of Yunnanese descent is used to refer to Chinese people and commodities in general.

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khon nai wiang) don’t buy that many Chinese goods, but rather Thai products. They can afford higher quality.

Although she eventually admitted that this classification might not always be so clearly bounded, notably citing the example of the general popularity of Chinese noodles (ຫມີຫ ່ ໍ້ mi ho, “Haw noodles”), or even Chinese instant noodles (ມາມ່າຈີນ mama jin15), the general tendency of her statement still fascinatingly illustrates how the transnational dimension of local retail trade, here manifested by sharply comparing attributes of Chinese and Thai commodities, can be evoked to structure the local socio-economic landscape as well. Local dichotomies of urban/rural and lowland/highland are (re-) formulated by referring to the national origin of imported commodities sold, bought, and consumed at local markets. In sum, the locally situated cosmopolitanism comes to terms with the transnational commodity economy through (un)wittingly navigating along its national boundaries. Mentally or physically crossing, and rhetorically and conceptually reproducing them, market actors employ national boundaries to make sense of differences both across and within borders. In the realm of commodities, this naturally takes the form of comparison—a comparison exclusively between foreign consumer products due to the almost nonexistence of equivalent Lao products, with the notable exception of Beer Lao, which is often seen as being strongly tied to efforts of creating a proudly framed Lao national identity (e.g., Schopohl 2011). There is thus no room for comparing quality among Lao products. Consequently, making sense of differences in quality, price, and consumer preferences in the local Lao consumer economy always entails comparative references to external Chinese and Thai categories, impacting on local and cross-border social relations.

Conclusion This chapter has aimed to contextualize the role of Lao fruit traders as flexible middlemen between Chinese and Thai customers (as outlined in the previous chapter) within the general cosmopolitan character of Luang Namtha province, a historically rooted and presently thriving regional hub. Its marketplaces are sites where a “banal cosmopolitanism,” materially 15 With “Mama,” Kamphaeng referred to the biggest and most popular Thai producer of instant noodles, thus notably explaining a Chinese product via a Thai brand, a “Chinese version of Mama,” and thereby underscoring again the lack of an equivalent Lao product.

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entrenched in transnational assemblages of commonplace commodities, is most visibly fleshed out, in discourse and practice. Through observing and participating in everyday market goings-on, often starting with breakfasts during vivid early mornings, I could appreciate the local routine of everyday lived cosmopolitanism—eating, listening, talking, calculating, consuming, and selling through transnational commodity spaces. As I have shown, the daily navigation of transnational localness of an ethnically diverse range of market actors largely rests on a decidedly national lens, making sense of the local positioning of their cross-border contacts and themselves mainly through essentialized national stereotypes. They therefore fit into the logics of marketplaces as material and symbolic replicas of the overall tri-national China–Laos–Thailand economic hierarchical relation, nationally flagged through commodities, currencies, signs, symbols, and scripts. In other words, the tri-national discourse of economic power differentials articulated through commodities in cross-border motion, as observed for the transnational trade of Thai fruits, is also carried out at local Lao marketplaces where different associations and qualities tied to the national (i.e., mainly Chinese and Thai) origin of commodities are negotiated and conversed about on a daily basis, and also impact on the perception of local consumer choices and socio-economic backgrounds. Thus, whereas Lao traders of Thai fruits are middlemen between different fruit-related quality spheres of Thai suppliers and Chinese customers, Lao markets serve as spatially f ixed middle grounds for daily negotiations and comparisons of Thai and Chinese commodity quality, where people re-enact, in discourse and practice, Laos’s “inferior” positioning between its neighbouring economies. These marketplaces do not only banally flag transnational linkedness, but also continually remind others of Laos’s relative smallness, revealing unambiguously the overreliance on foreign goods and the virtually non-existent domestic production of consumer goods. This, I argue, constitutes the variety of cosmopolitanism I have sought to delineate in this chapter: a locally practiced cosmopolitanism in which a pronounced awareness and knowledge of one’s locality’s transnational embeddedness is paired with its continuous restructuring and reproducing of national boundaries and associated stereotyped attributes and differences. Serious attention to market traders’ quotidian utterances and practices allows us, conceptually, to advance into otherwise disregarded realms of banality and triviality, or smallness. Moreover, it reveals local transnational worlds, which query notions of ethnicity, kinship, or community as the prevailing or sole parameters for social and economic mobilities, relations, and networks in (Southeast Asian) borderlands. In my studied cases, at

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least, it was rather the practice to scale down each market actor’s complex ethnic, cultural, social, and geographical backgrounds, and to reframe them along simplified national lines that determined their understanding and navigation of their transnational worlds in everyday social and economic life. This commodity-related reduction of transnational social and ethnic complexity is also key to Lao traders’ skilful mediations of possible frictions (as observed for fruit traders in the previous chapter). These frictions are, irrespective of the involved actors’ socio-ethnic identities, primarily assigned to national quality attributes of commodities. As Amnuay and Hiang’s commercial biography has shown, this “banal cosmopolitanism” seen through a national lens is matched in its openness by a willingness to try and to experiment, to “move with the market.” Along with improved cross-border transport infrastructure, an increasing number of actors aspires to experiment with newly arising transnational economic opportunities, thereby sustaining Luang Namtha’s cosmopolitan outlook. In the following chapter, I will attend in more detail to these narratives of cross-border experimentation at the marketplaces in Luang Namtha province and beyond, which are again largely framed in the language of smallness— downplaying the scale of their trade activities, while stressing their lack of professional trading skills and their concomitant economic irrelevance.

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Bhabha, Homi. 1996. “Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.” In Text and Nation: Cross-disciplinary Essays on Cultural and National Identities, edited by Laura Garcia-Morena and Peter C. Pfeifer, 191-207. London: Camden House. Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: SAGE. Bouté, Vanina. 2006. “Empowerment Through Acculturation: Forgetting and Contesting the Past among the Phunoy in Northern Laos.” South East Asia Research 14 (3): 431-443. Bouté, Vanina. 2018. Mirroring Power: Ethnogenesis and Integration among the Phunoy of Northern Laos. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Brown, Alan. 2018. “Laos’s Peripheral Centrality in Southeast Asia: Mobility, Labour, and Regional Integration.” European Journal of East Asian Studies 17: 228-262. Clifford, James. 1992. “Traveling Cultures.” In Cultural Studies, edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, 96-116. New York: Routledge. Culas, Christian, and François Robinne, eds. 2010. Inter-Ethnic Dynamics in Asia: Considering the Other through Ethnonyms, Territories and Rituals. London: Routledge Department of Planning and Investment (DPI). 2013. Investment Potentials and Opportunities: Luang Namtha Province. Luang Namtha: Department of Planning and Investment of Luang Namtha. Diana, Antonella. 2013. “The Experimental Governing of Mobility and Trade on the China-Laos Frontier: The Tai Lue Case.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 34 (1): 25-39. Evrard, Olivier, and Chanthaphilith Chiemsisouraj. 2013. “The Ruins, the ‘Savages’ and the Princess: Myths, Migrations and Belonging in Viang Phu Kha, Laos.” In Mobility and Heritage in Northern Thailand and Laos: Past and Present: Proceedings of the Chiang Mai Conference, 1-2 December 2011, edited by Olivier Evrard, 55-73. Chiang Mai: Center for Ethnic Studies and Development, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University. Evrard, Olivier, and Yves Goudineau. 2004. “Planned Resettlement, Unexpected Migrations and Cultural Trauma in Laos.” Development and Change 35 (5): 937-962. Fewkes, Jacqueline H. 2014. “Living in the Material World: Cosmopolitanism and Trade in Early Twentieth Century Ladakh.” In Sites of Asian Interaction: Ideas, Networks and Mobility, edited by Tim Harper and Sunil Amrith, 38-59. Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Gidwani, Vinay. 2006. “Subaltern Cosmopolitanism as Politics.” Antipode 38 (1): 7-21. Gidwani, Vinay, and K. Sivaramakrishnan. 2003. “Circular Migration and Rural Cosmopolitanism in India.” Contributions to Indian Sciology 37 (1-2): 339-367. Giersch, C. Patterson. 2006. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Godley, G. McMurtrie, and Jinny St Goar. 1991. “The Chinese Road in Northwest Laos, 1961-73: An American Perspective.” In Laos: Beyond the Revolution, edited by Joseph J. Zasloff and Leonard Unger, 285-314. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Harper, Tim, and Sunil Amrith, eds. 2014. Sites of Asian Interaction: Ideas, Networks and Mobility. Dehli: Cambridge University Press. Harris, Tina. 2013. Geographical Diversions: Tibetan Trade, Global Transactions. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Hebdige, Dick. 1990. “Fax to the Future.” Marxism Today 34: 18-23. Hill, Ann Maxwell. 1989. “Chinese Dominance of the Xishuangbanna Tea Trade: An Interregional Perspective.” Modern China 15 (3): 321-345. Huijsmans, Roy. 2020. “Cash, Women, and the Nation: Tales of Morality about Lao Banknotes in Times of Rapid Change.” In Money and Moralities in Contemporary Asia, edited by Lan Anh Hoang and Cheryll Alipio, 241-265. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Keyes, Charles F. 2012. “‘Cosmopolitan’ Villagers and Populist Democracy in Thailand.” South East Asia Research 20 (3): 343-360. Kusakabe, Kyoko, and Sengkham Vongphakdy. 2014. “Gender Vulnerabilities of Resettlement and Restricted Mobility of Ethnic Groups in Northern Laos.” In Gender, Mobilities, and Livelihood Transformations: Comparing Indigenous People in China, India, and Laos, edited by Ragnhild Lund, Kyoko Kusakabe, Smita Mishra Panda, and Yunxian Wang, 134-165. London and New York: Routledge. Lamont, Michèle, and Sada Aksartova. 2002. “Ordinary Cosmopolitanisms: Strategies for Bridging Racial Boundaries among Working-Class Men.” Theory, Culture & Society 19 (4): 1-25. Luo, Yu, Tim Oakes, and Louisa Schein. 2019. “Resourcing Remoteness and the ‘Post-Alteric’ Imaginary in China.” Social Anthropology 27 (2): 270-285. Malcomson, Scott L. 1998. “The Varieties of Cosmopolitan Experience.” In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, edited by Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 233-245. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marsden, Magnus, and Madeleine Reeves. 2019. “Marginal Hubs: On Conviviality beyond the Urban in Asia: Introduction.” Modern Asian Studies 53 (3): 755-775. Nayar, Pramod K. 2009. Packaging Life: Cultures of the Everyday. New Delhi: SAGE India. Notar, Beth. E. 2008. “Producing Cosmopolitanism at the Borderlands: Lonely Planeteers and “Local” Cosmopolitans in Southwest China.” Anthropological Quarterly 81 (3): 615-650. Ovesen, Jan. 2008. “All Lao? Minorities in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.” In Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities, edited by Christopher R Duncan, 214-240. Singapore: NUS Press.

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Pearson, Justine Shih. 2018. Choreographing the Airport: Field Notes from the Transit Spaces of Global Mobility. Cham: Palgrave Pivot. Pholsena, Vatthana. 2002. “Nation/Representation: Ethnic Classif ication and Mapping Nationhood in Contemporary Laos.” Asian Ethnicity 3 (2): 175-197. Pholsena, Vatthana. 2006. Post-war Laos: The Politics of Culture, History and Identity. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Saxer, Martin. 2012. “Remote Cosmopolitans: Rethinking Trans-Himalayan Trade.” The Art of Neighboring Workshop, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 1 March 2012. Saxer, Martin, and Ruben Andersson. 2019. “The Return of Remoteness: Insecurity, Isolation and Connectivity in the New World Disorder.” Social Anthropology 27 (2): 140-155. Schein, Louisa. 2005. “Market Mentalities, Iron Satellite Dishes, and Contested Cultural Developmentalism.” In The Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism, edited by Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud, 216-223. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Schopohl, Andrea. 2011. “Processes of Social Differentiation and (Re-)Integration in Northern Laos.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 26 (2): 248-276. Siriphon, Aranya. 2007. “Dress and Cultural Strategy: Tai Peddlers in Transnational Trade along the Burma-Yunnan Frontier.” Asian Ethnicity 8 (3): 219-234. Skrbis, Zlatko, and Ian Woodward. 2007. “The Ambivalence of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism: Investigating the Limits of Cosmopolitan Openness.” The Sociological Review 55 (4): 1-25. Skrbis, Zlatko, and Ian Woodward. 2013. Cosmopolitanism: Uses of the Idea. London: SAGE. Tan, Danielle. 2014. “Chinese Networks, Economic and Territorial Redefinitions in Northern Lao PDR.” In Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia: The Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits Economic Corridor, edited by Nathalie Fau, Sirivanh Khonthapane and Christian Taillard, 421-452. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Taylor, Philip. 2007. Cham Muslims of the Mekong Delta: Place and Mobility in the Cosmopolitan Periphery. Singapore: Asian Studies Association of Australia in Association with NUS Press and NIAS Press. Toyota, Mika. 2000. “Cross-Border Mobility and Social Networks: Akha Caravan Traders.” In Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social and Cultural Change in the Border Regions, edited by Grant Evans, Christopher Hutton and Kuah Khun Eng, 204-221. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Turner, Sarah. 2013. “Under the State’s Gaze: Upland Trading-Scapes on the SinoVietnamese Border.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 34 (1): 9-24.

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4

“I Didn’t Learn Any Occupation, so I Trade” Narratives of Insignificance Abstract This chapter attends to individual traders’ narratives that lie behind the cosmopolitan outlook of local marketplaces in Luang Namtha province. They reveal instances of entrepreneurial experimentation and accomplishments rooted in notable degrees of transnational knowledge, experience, and skills. Yet, closer examination is needed to render those visible as these narratives are not formulated as success stories, but instead framed in a markedly self-deprecating manner, downplaying the scale and professionalism of their economic activities. Moreover, many traders outline their involvement in trade as non-occupational as they have not learned any proper occupation. This narrated weakness and insignificance, which nonetheless allows in practice for successful entrepreneurial trajectories, might be one reason for their virtual invisibility in scholarship on contemporary socio-economic issues in Laos. Keywords: Luang Namtha; small-scale traders; narratives of insignificance; entrepreneurial experimentation

The marketplaces of Luang Namtha and Muang Sing are not only sites of a locally rooted “banal cosmopolitanism,” but also venues of narratives and practices of experimentation—born out of newly arising transnational opportunities and with the occupation of trade itself. Alongside more experienced shopkeepers, a larger number of newcomers, all aspiring to be engaged in some form of cross-border trade, dominates the market scene. Adopting Holly High’s (2013, p. 491) notion of an “experimentarian ethic,” I argue that it is the propensity to experiment which is to some degree behind the phenomenon of the unceasing opening of numerous small retail shops at the markets, and generally throughout the towns of Luang

Rowedder, Simon, Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos. Mastering Smallness. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722360_ch04

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Namtha and Muang Sing, selling almost identical assortments of Thai and Chinese commodities. Originally used to explain and describe the manoeuvrability of rural populations to handle (i.e., adopt, reverse, revise, or abandon) development policies prescribed by the state, High’s (2013) concept of “experimental consensus” entails her observation of a widespread “try and see” approach (ລອງເບິງ່ long boeng)1 (2013, pp. 503-504), which is to some extent also applicable to the phenomenon of the rising number of market newcomers. However, in the case of the market, this experimental “trying out” is not targeted at a particular state policy or a newly prescribed form of agricultural technique (in High’s case, irrigation), but more broadly aims to gain benefits from a newly emerging structural opportunity, namely, the intensifying and (allegedly) more accessible transnational commodity flows traversing northern Laos. This lens of experimentarian agency is more helpful than Boike Rehbein’s (2007, p. 54) attribution of this “copycat business” phenomenon—opening identical shops in the same location—to the continued prevalence of subsistence ethics within the traditional Lao peasant economy, with its allegedly lacking sense of profitability and competitiveness (see also the discussion of Lao traders’ economic rationale at Chinese trade fairs in chapter 1).2 Instead of asking “if and how Lao may develop a spirit of capitalism” or claiming that most traders do not “behave like capitalists” (Rehbein 2007, pp. 63, 66), I attend to the traders’ own individual narratives of their experimental engagement in cross-border trade activities. They indeed reveal instances of entrepreneurial accomplishments rooted in notable degrees of transnational knowledge, experience, mobility, and skills. Yet, closer examination is needed to render the former visible as these narratives are not explicitly formulated as success stories, but rather framed in a markedly self-deprecating language of smallness, downplaying the scale and professionalism of their activities. As I already hinted at in my discussion of a “banal cosmopolitanism,” they dismissed their transnational economic standing as merely ordinary (ທໍາມະດາ thammada). Besides this 1 Holly High transliterates it as long beung. 2 Besides his adoption of James Scott’s (1976) concept of the peasant moral economy revolving around subsistence ethics, Rehbein (2007, pp. 54-55) lists for Laos three additional “main economic cultures” apart from market economy, making up his Bourdieusian conceptualization of the Lao “economic field”: patrimonialism among the bureaucracy and the elites, a “taking culture” of people having access to foreign capital (mainly civil servants responsible for the distribution of foreign aid and investment and people working for foreign companies and development organizations), and “occasionalism” among petty traders and producers, meaning a selective, often economically irrational practice of selling and price-making.

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articulated ordinariness and implied insignificance, many traders outlined their involvement in trade as non-occupational, stressing that they were simply “selling things” (ຂາຍເຄືອ່ ງ khai khueang) because they had not learned any proper occupation (ອາຊີບ asip).3 One the one hand, cross-border traders euphorically stress the new convenience and practicality of handling transnational connectivity; on the other hand, they often explain their involvement in trade rather negatively as a result of various constraints and limitations, most often in terms of lacking education. This narrated smallness, in the sense of weakness and insignificance, yet allowing in practice for successful experimentations, might be one reason for their virtual invisibility in scholarship on contemporary socio-economic issues in Laos, which I alluded to in the introduction. In this chapter, I seek to further foreground and comprehend Lao cross-border traders’ narratives in their articulated triviality, which lie behind all transnational trade practices and skills as described in the previous chapters.

Tracing Narratives of Entrepreneurial Smallness My extended focus on narratives is rooted in Margaret Somers’s (1994) conceptualization of the “narrative construction of identity.” She argues that “[n]arrative identities are constituted by a person’s temporally and spatially variable place in culturally constructed stories composed of (breakable) rules, (variable) practices, binding (and unbinding) institutions, and the multiple plots of family, nation, or economic life” (Somers 1994, p. 625). For Ruth Behar (1990, p. 225), “[a] life history narrative should allow one to see the subjective mapping of experience, the working out of a culture and a social system that is often obscured in a typified account.” I likewise intend to elucidate otherwise obscured instances of Lao cross-border traders’ individual subjective mapping of their (non-)occupational experiences. Smallness is the main device of the narrative identity, uniting this otherwise ethnically and socially highly diverse group of new and old small-scale traders. As I mentioned in the introduction, entrepreneurial smallness has been largely studied in post-socialist contexts. For the case of female petty traders in Ho Chi Minh City, Ann Marie Leshkowich (2014) traces their trajectories 3 Asip can also be translated as “professional” or “career.” Therefore, engagement in trade might be also understood as not following a proper career path or as lacking professionalism, which hinders one from being engaged in a full-fledged occupation.

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back to the immediate post-war context of 1975, against which she understands their present practices of downplaying their success and essentializing their gender, all “in dialogue with postwar economic, political, and historical processes” (Leshkowich 2014, p. 192). I do not intend to simply transfer this post-socialist trope of smallness to previously neglected dynamics of Laos. While my study is set against a similar backdrop of controlled market liberalization policies in Laos, where trade occupies an ambivalent role, the traders’ narrative identities of smallness do not necessarily “reflect a coherent and conscious strategy of classing down” (Ibid, p. 185). For my part, I mostly examine a group of newcomers who have only recently emerged and who have been experimenting with cross-border trade opportunities amidst rapidly developing cross-border infrastructures of regional connectivity from the mid-1990s onwards, again more intensely over the last ten years thanks to the opening of new roads (e.g., the “Kunming–Bangkok Highway”) and markets. While keeping the political economic context of post-socialist Laos in mind, I argue that the traders’ ambiguous framing and downplaying of their commercial activities is an expression of their struggle to locate and occupationally define their experimental skills in cross-border trade (or their confusion about doing so) within the prevailing occupational environment of Laos, as reflected by the latest 2015 country-wide population census. This distinguishes between “government employee” (10%), “employee in state cooperatives” (1.1%), “private sector employee” (7.5%), “employer” (0.6%), “own account worker” (37.8%), and “unpaid family worker” (43%) (Lao Statistics Bureau 2015, pp. 77–79). Thus, more than 80% of the officially employed population falls into the latter two rather vaguely def ined categories of self-made entrepreneurship, into which traders seem to disappear. By definition, the “own account worker” “operates an economic activity without a regular paid employee,” whereas the “unpaid family worker” “works on a farm or in a business owned and operated by another person who is related and lives in the same household” (Lao Statistics Bureau 2015, p. 78). Although these two large employment categories account for 59.2% of the urban working population and 89.9% of employment in rural areas (95% in “rural without roads”) (Lao Statistics Bureau 2015, p. 79),4 the census notably leaves out further details on actual labour activities. It does provide a detailed 4 The much higher proportion of own “account workers” and “unpaid family workers” in rural areas is attributed to the prevalence of subsistence farming (Ibid, p. 79). Agricultural work still accounts for 72% of the overall working population (Ibid, p. 80).

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breakdown of employment by industry but fails to allocate them to the respective employment categories (i.e., “private sector employee,” “employer,” “own account worker,” and “unpaid family worker”). Besides agriculture, forestry, and f ishery, subsumed under one category and constituting 72% of the employed population, the census lists 20 further types of industry, among them: construction (8%), public administration and defence (6%), wholesale and retail trade, including repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (5%), manufacturing (4%), and education (2%) (Lao Statistics Bureau 2015, p. 80). This chapter attempts to shed more light on this somewhat obscure and oddly composed five percent of “wholesale and retail trade, including repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles.” Perhaps paradoxically, it is the narrated and performed smallness of cross-border traders that serves as the main analytical entry point as we aim to foreground their significance and dynamism. The latter might otherwise be easily lost in vaguely def ined categorizations of employment and work—somehow reflecting their invisibility in academic scholarship on contemporary developments in Laos.

Trading at the Marketplace: Between (Non-)Occupation, Professionalism and Amateurism Throughout my stays in northern Laos, I often came across situations in which the activity of trade was not clearly articulated or defined. To begin with, there was a linguistic ambiguity. When initially approaching vendors at marketplaces or owners of shops selling imported goods, whose activities thus in my perspective clearly constituted transnational trade, I was often corrected in my reference to their activity as “trade” (ການຄ້າ kankha). They flatly denied that they were engaged in real “trade,” citing their lacking or limited knowledge, or explaining that their activities did not amount to a proper occupation (ບ ໍ່ເປ ັນມືອາຊີບ bo pen mue asip, or ບ ໍ່ເປ ັນອາຊີບ bo pen asip). They did not trade; they were simply “selling things” (ຂາຍເຄືອ່ ງ khai khueang). Even more knowledgeable or experienced merchants, sometimes formally educated in commerce and trade, likewise dissociated themselves from the idea of proper trade—in their case because of the perceived small scale of their operations. If I wanted to seriously talk about trade, I was told, I should get in touch with larger companies or “real businessmen” (ນັກທຸລະ ກິດແທ້ໆ nak thulakit thae thae). Their mantra is reminiscent of Carolyn L. Hsu’s (2007, pp. 129-132) observed distinction in China between “real”

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businesspeople and low status small peddlers (个体户getihu) who do not meet the definition of entrepreneur. From Other Occupations to the Marketplace One reason for this non-occupational perception of trade may be that it often constitutes an additional income channel, complementing other “proper,” full-value occupations. Most of the vendors in Luang Namtha and Muang Sing are women, fitting the well-studied significant role of women in local marketplaces in Southeast Asia (Reid 1988; Brenner 1995, 1998; Leshkowich 2014) and beyond (Seligmann 2001).5 Many of them are married to men who are involved in other, often (notably) non-agricultural occupations—working as civil servants, being involved in commercial activities, or working as electrical engineers or drivers. In the view of female vendors, their work at market stalls is only a petty channel of income supplementary to their husbands’ full-fledged occupations. From a gendered perspective, this discourse could be interpreted as moving the non-occupational notion of housewives out of the private sphere of home into the public domain of the marketplace, invariably staying in the shadow of fully employed husbands. For instance, a Tai Yuan saleswoman in her forties, who had been selling consumer goods at the Luang Namtha market for about five years, reiterated that she never did anything but stay at home. Her husband was a skilled carpenter, producing and selling wooden furniture. She explained that she, unlike her husband, did not have any specific, professional job skills, let alone a proper education, that would be needed to carry out more complex work. However, selling at the market would still be better than staying at home, she added. In practice, however, a specifically gendered perspective would belie more complex household dynamics of small-scale cross-border trade businesses at marketplaces and beyond, with wives and husbands drawing on their respective skills in an organized division of labour. In this division, women were often at the front, talking to customers, which might lead us to take 5 Notably, there is a significant body of literature examining the role of women in trade in Africa, rendering visible their central role in economic development (for an early, but excellent overview, see House-Midamba and Ekechi 1995). Recent scholarship has also focused more on female cross-border traders. Manishai Desai (2009, p. 378), for example, studying cross-border trade in Southern and Western Africa, “look[s] at women cross-border traders as innovators and important global actors responding to structural adjustment programmes and global economic restructuring,” building on Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s (2006) agenda of an emerging “emancipatory cosmopolitanism.”

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this as evidence of trade being a female domain. Of equal importance, traders come from highly diverse socio-cultural backgrounds, covering a wide spectrum in terms of age (mid-20s to late 50s), ethnicity, migratory background, mobility, former (non-)occupation, spouse’s occupation, and professional experience. Thus, while some shopkeepers told me that they had not done anything else than selling, others explained to me that they had retired from local administrative positions, with the latter hinting at the usefulness of their maintained connections to the authorities for their business operations. Equipped with those connections or not, retired civil servants shared the assumption that selling goods at the market would provide better incomes, even though—or even because—it did not constitute a regular occupation. Kamphaeng, whom I already briefly introduced in the previous chapter, had worked in the local administration, but decided to retire early in 1993 as she considered the salary too low. She admitted that there were benefits to steady and secure employment in the public service. However, given her low rank, she could not have earned much, she quickly added—unlike her husband, who occupied a higher-ranking position, once acting as the head of the provincial education department.6 Apparently, cross-border trade does not contain this sort of ranked hierarchy based on levels of experience and education. However, she downplayed her in fact higher earnings: “It’s enough to eat, but you can’t get rich with this.” For her, the notion of being rich was solely tied to education. She often joked that “if I had knowledge, if I had higher education, I would just sign documents and be rich,” referring to the allegedly convenient paperwork of high-level officials who delegate work to others. Several traders were indeed former civil servants as similarly observed by Vanina Bouté (2017) for northern Laos in general, but quite a significant number stated farming as their previous activity. One Tai Nuea trader in Muang Sing told me that her household was not directly involved in farming any more as they simply rented out their land; this is a widespread trend in the region, and land is not uncommonly leased to Chinese investors (e.g., Santasombat 2019). Other traders, or their spouses, were still actively involved in farming. Some older traders considered their current trading activity as their retirement from farming, which they now assigned to their children. In most of the cases, this transition from agriculture to 6 After his recent regular retirement, he began to help his wife with her trading activities. He started to drive between Luang Namtha and Huay Xai to obtain Thai commodities, sometimes also crossing to Chiang Khong—all using his staff car, which he was able to keep after his retirement.

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trade, due to various causes or motivations, was often framed along the lines of increased comfort and convenience (ຄວາມສະດວກ khwamsaduak). Compared to peasant work, selling things at the market would be physically less demanding, “not tiring” (ບ ໍ່ເຫນືອ່ ຍ bo nueai). The cited absence of (physical) difficulty could also be translated as advancement in the promise of urban modernity, of development towards a more “civilized,” less rural lifestyle with all its amenities. However, many traders still often used their agricultural background to discount the sophistication of their more recent non-agricultural experimentations, as if they were still claiming a certain unpreparedness for, or incompatibility with, their depeasantized working lives—again working in the mode of smallness. From No Occupation to the Marketplace Apart from referring to their previous occupations or to the other current occupations of their spouses, most shopkeepers at the marketplaces of Luang Namtha and Muang Sing explained their involvement in retail of transnational commodities as being due to not having obtained any skills that would qualify them for a proper occupation. In these accounts they described cross-border trade as the only employment option left to them because of a lack of alternatives. This point was, for instance, echoed by a Phunoy saleswoman in her early 40s who had been selling in Luang Namtha for over 15 years: “I hadn’t done anything else before. I also don’t have any education, no particular skills. So, I don’t have any other choice.” This notion of limited occupational choices led to the increasing orientation towards marketplaces, not only in Luang Namtha, but also across the border on the Chinese side, as the story of Waeng demonstrates. Waeng, a Tai Dam man in his late 30s and originally from Luang Namtha, had been selling chiefly Thai commodities in Mohan on the Chinese side of the China–Laos border. He had been doing so with his Tai Lue wife from Muang Sing for about eight years at the time of our encounter. When I asked what induced him to cross over to China to sell daily consumer goods, Waeng explained that it had become difficult in Luang Namtha for unlearned people like him to find any sort of employment, which he needed as he did not own any land there. However, his negative and belittling description contrasts with his repertoire of experimentation, involving high degrees of cross-border mobility and risk-taking to embrace new opportunities. Thus, their decision in 2009 to take their chance on the Chinese side coincided with Yunnan’s policy of granting incentives to interested traders and entrepreneurs from Laos and other neighbouring Southeast Asian countries (see chapter 1). In

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addition, Chinese authorities, together with private business actors, also established the Southeast Asian cross-border fair in Mohan in 2008, which later turned into a regular marketplace where Waeng and his wife also settled. In the beginning, they were selling Thai fruits at the Mohan market, which they brought from Bokeo province. However, Waeng explained to me that they soon needed to give up on this trade due to high competition from other, larger Lao fruit traders (I instantly thought of Pa Saeng, whom he also knew), as well as from an increasing number of Chinese traders capable of bringing in Thai fruits by themselves. Demonstrating their resilience in the face of change, Waeng and his wife gamely shifted to a broader range of everyday consumer goods from Thailand. Waeng’s self-description as just an ordinary petty trader owing to his inability to have a “real occupation” (ອາຊີບແທ້ໆ asip thae thae) does not diminish his cross-border trajectory of entrepreneurial experimentation, constantly daring to jump on newly arising opportunities in Mohan. He can look back at more than eight years of adapting to the Chinese market setting. He managed to familiarize himself with the often unpredictably changing border-crossing modalities and to continually adjust his product assortment to shifts in the organization, logistics, price situation, and composition of the actors of a rapidly growing and risky Chinese market saturated with Thai and Lao goods. In the end, Waeng was convinced that he was better off there than in Laos. He expressed his concern about an overabundance of retail traders selling a very similar assortment of Thai and Chinese commodities in Luang Namtha, which conf irmed his perception of the lack of non-agricultural occupational alternatives: “There are many people who don’t know what else to do, so they just try retailing goods.” His assessment was also shared by more established traders like Amnuay.

From muan to thammada: Pioneers and Newcomers Towards the end of my fieldwork, I asked Amnuay—who was certainly one of the earlier trade actors in Luang Namtha, and who together with his wife could draw on more than 20 years of cross-border trading experience—why so many retail shops were perpetually popping up in the market and in the town of Luang Namtha, all offering very similar consumer goods from China and Thailand. Apart from the all-too-familiar reference to the overall convenience in terms of transportation and cross-border formalities, like Waeng, Amnuay also argued that there was not much occupational choice. In particular, he pointed out the steadily increasing inflow of upland migrants

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into Luang Namtha town—partly imposed by state policies of resettlement, partly led by individual aspirations to partake in lowland development that probably resulted from the “paradoxical attitude” (Bouté 2014, pp. 408-409) of migrating to lowland areas close to roads “despite any economic rationality” (Ibid, p. 408). While boosting the demand for consumer goods, Amnuay said, many of them would have no recourse but to work on the supply side of identical commodities: More and more people come in [into town], so there is not much available land left. It is already owned by more established urban residents. Otherwise, there is not much to work in Luang Namtha. Not much production is located here; there are only a few factories. Several companies have already gone bankrupt as well. Civil servant positions, much sought-after, are also limited. So, many people, especially newcomers, simply decide to run their own small retail business. After all, many prefer having their own business (ທຸລະກິດສ່ວນຕົວ thulakit suantua) over providing labour (ອອກແຮງງານ ok haengngan) [to an employer].

Amnuay related this situation to a general development of trying to get out of agricultural work, half joking that “in agriculture, 80 percent is suffering (ຄວາມທຸກ khwamthuk), 20 percent is happiness (ຄວາມສຸກ khwamsuk)—in trade, 80 percent is happiness, 20 percent is suffering.” His remarks concisely sum up the major urban dynamics of Luang Namtha, and probably beyond, including urban–rural migration, situation of land ownership, occupational shift towards waged labour, and aspirations to strive towards non-agricultural work. Besides Amnuay, other experienced traders look at the present stage of mushrooming cross-border trade in similar ways. A Tai Nuea female trader in her 40s at the Muang Sing market, having sold Thai commodities at different markets for more than 20 years, described the current market situation as just “normal” (ທໍາມະດາ thammada), in the sense of being unspectacular, whereas it was “fun” (ມ່ວນ muan) in the past: “Now, they enlarged the market; with a bigger market, there are also many more traders selling the same things.” Or, as a 40-year-old female Tai Dam trader in Luang Namtha said: “In the past, selling was much better, but now, due to the better road, more and more people just go to Thailand or China by themselves to buy goods. It’s very easy now.” Kamphaeng contrasted this highlighted convenience of rapidly improved cross-border transport and market infrastructure with vivid memories of what it meant to travel between Luang Namtha and Huay Xai in the past. The road was in such a bad condition, especially during the wet season when it

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became inaccessible, that they even resorted to airplanes to transport Thai goods from Huay Xai to Luang Namtha. Despite the obvious arduousness, including physical exhaustion, and their highly experimentarian character, involving significant temporal and monetary risks, Kamphaeng likewise concluded that those times were, after all, quite fun (ມ່ວນ muan). Hiang, Amnuay’s wife, equally associated their past trading endeavours with muan: In the past, people were simply much more excited when new goods from Thailand arrived, it was celebrated as an event which would not occur every day: our great efforts were eventually fully rewarded as our goods sold extremely well. Nowadays, it is the most common occurrence, anybody can try this out.

They somehow positioned themselves as one of the few (Amnuay put their number at about ten) self-organized cross-border trading pioneers directly purchasing Thai commodities in the early 1990s, when state companies were gradually shut down. Kaen Kaeo, a Tai Dam saleswoman in her late 50s working at the Luang Namtha market, who had worked alongside Amnuay in the commercial sector of the state, stressed that they were essential in supplying northern Laos with highly demanded goods at a critical time of otherwise limited commodity supply. Nowadays, critical shortages of the past have turned into critical oversupplies, with goods flooding the markets through a wide range of supply channels. Aware of the need to adjust to this oversupply of Thai goods, Kaen Kaeo shifted towards selling Chinese goods. Besides contending that the border to China would be much closer, she also added that regularly crossing over to the Chinese side would always give her the opportunity to explore new goods for introducing to the Luang Namtha market, thereby still implying the pioneering spirit of the past. Both Kaen Kaeo and Amnuay often indulged in reminiscences about their previous adventurous and laborious trade journeys to Thailand more than two decades ago, reminiscent of Andrew Walker’s (1999) description of overland trade in this region in those times. Now, 20 years later, they are surrounded by a vast number of stalls largely run by newcomers who do not share their long-term commercial background, nor have they undergone commercial education; however, they are similarly involved in operating transnational small-scale businesses. Their experience, knowledge, skills, and competences, though only recently gained, should not be discounted only simply because they do not share Amnuay’s or Kaen Kaeo’s pioneer status. In fact, they display a similar pioneering spirit, now in the mode of experimenting with the new normality and convenience of cross-border

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trade; this still involves risk-taking, but operates in a different economic environment comprising higher numbers of competitors and broader ranges of commodities, prone to rapid and unpredictable change. Sitting with me one hot afternoon, in his small shop directly facing the marketplace with its stories of new cross-border convenience, Amnuay acknowledged grimly that nowadays virtually anybody who had some money could start running his or her own cross-border trade business. Refilling our plate of roasted sunflower and melon seeds, Amnuay was quick to establish the boundary between more professional and knowledgeable traders (i.e., pioneers) and newcomers: Nowadays, you don’t need much advanced knowledge (ຄວາມຮູ້້�ສູູງ khwamhu sung) to carry out this type of business. It’s very easy to acquire. That’s why so many people are trying it. But what makes the difference is that many of them still might not have a more profound knowledge (ຄວາມຮູ້້� ລຶຶກຊຶ້້�ງ khwamhu luek sueng) and long-term understanding (ບໍ່່ໄດ້້ເບິ່່�ງໄກ bo dai bueng kai, literally: “not looking far”) of business. For example, many might have a rather basic understanding of profit (ກໍາາໄລ kamlai).

Gradually moving into gear, Amnuay then took a bundle of keys out of his trouser pocket to illustrate his point about the absence of understanding profitability: They think: “OK, I bought this key for 10,000 [kip], but would sell it for 12,000—so I’ll make a prof it of 2,000!” But they might easily oversee whether this number of 2,000 really covers all associated costs. They just don’t understand the difference between real profit (ກໍາໄລ kamlai) and revenue (ລາຍໄດ້ laidai).

He further added that small-scale retail in general was often based on rather simple calculations, following the naïve premise of “buy for 5 [thousand kip7], sell for 10 [thousand kip]” (ຊືຫ ້ າ້ ຂາຍສິບ sue ha khai sip).8 With these remarks, 7 Due to the low value of the Lao currency, kip, prices are quoted in multiples of a thousand, rarely going below one thousand, given that one US dollar equals about 8,000 Lao kip. In colloquial speech, “thousand” is often omitted. 8 This reminds me of another rather derogatory term he once jokingly used for female traders, mostly of Sida ethnicity, who seasonally walk along the streets of Luang Namtha carrying tubers in their hands, which they take out of their baskets on their backs. He referred to them as being involved in talat mue thue (ຕະຫຼາດມືຖ)ື . Playing with the double meaning of mue thue— which literally means “hand-carrying,” but in common language refers to

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he seemed to be trying to gradually distance himself from the suggested crowd of economically inept small-scale traders, often highlighting that he had been engaged in cross-border trade early on and passed through formal, commerce-specific education. In Amnuay’s view, knowledge and skills constitute the decisive boundary markers. He listed the core skills that in his eyes make a good trader, implying that he should be counted as one as well: First and foremost, you need starting capital. But maybe even more important, you need to have a lot of thoughts and ideas, capabilities, talent, and economic knowledge. Also, you need to be good in managing costumer relations, you really need to know your customers.

He also stressed the importance of building trust with customers, as they would pay great attention to the character (ນິິດໃສ nitsai) and personality (ບົົກຄະລິິກ bokkhalik) of their merchant of choice, assessing whether she or he was trustworthy and not just playing around. Amnuay’s list of the ideal trader’s virtues stands in stark contrast with the self-descriptions of newer trade actors. However, the latter’s eventual success in establishing customer loyalty still pointed to these very ideals in practice. Amnuay’s projection of an ideal trader as a person of integrity might also be understood as an attempt to make sense of his own situation. Recently struggling with the massively reduced size of his shop due to the rental agreement with the adjacent bank (see chapter 3), while witnessing the seemingly more successful cross-border trade trajectories of recent newcomers, Amnuay appeared to retain def initional authority over the occupation of trade, based on his professional background and claimed pioneer status. While drawing on his extensive experience and knowledge, which was of great help and central importance for my f ieldwork, Amnuay was, at the time of my visits, mainly speaking for traders and not so much acting as one any more. Given to a certain reflectiveness and a nostalgic idealization of the pioneering trade past, he eventually implied that his way of going through professional education and accumulating plenty of experience in the state and private sector, as well as in self-employment, was an appropriate path for the ideal trader he had outlined. mobile phones—these Sida traders thus represent “hand-carrying” or mobile markets (by carrying tubers in their hands), or display a “backward” version of a modern mobile phone market.

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Stories of Success Beyond the Marketplace: From Experimentation Towards Cross-Border Entrepreneurship Obviously, Amnuay’s idealized professional trade career is by no means the only path towards (successful) engagement in cross-border trade. In the following sections, I will present narratives by other, supposedly less experienced, newcomers, that nonetheless in practice come close to the trader’s profile described and idealized by Amnuay. Framed in language of ordinary smallness, they reveal remarkable trajectories from initial experimentation towards established and renowned cross-border entrepreneurs, as Somli’s case demonstrates. Somli: From Teacher to Cross-Border Trader If you run your own business, there is much more risk involved; your performance also very much depends on the general economic situation. For example, recently, there have been too many people selling so that it is quite difficult to make money.

Somli abruptly paused our conversation to take care of another group of customers at her shop selling Chinese and Thai commodities, somehow suggesting that, at least in her case, business was going smoothly despite her portrayal of some recent difficulties. However, unlike in the cases of Kamphaeng, Amnuay and Hiang, and Kaen Kaeo, she did not contrast these difficulties with the “fun” (ມ່ວນ muan) of a pioneering trading past, but with her own occupational past as a state-employed kindergarten teacher, that job that she “still enjoyed the most.” Moreover, she was still convinced that the best occupation would be to work for the state administration. The salary would not be the highest, but it would be a steady one: “You know for sure that, whatever might happen, you will still receive a monthly salary.”9 9 Many of my informants did indeed look up to the work of civil servants. Although they were aware of their low salaries, they enthusiastically listed the benefits of predictable stability, attractive and steady working hours, and “light work” (ວຽກເບ າົ wiak bao), often joking that they would rather be paid for simply sitting in an air-conditioned off ice. However, despite their positive and optimistic appraisal of regularly paid salaries in the public service, there have been reports of signif icant delays in paying salaries to state employees, including teachers, most recently in February 2019. See, for example, a news article by Radio Free Asia Lao Service: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/lao-state-workers-go-without-salaries-02142019141431. html (accessed 15 November 2021). On the seemingly perennial problem of paying state teachers proper and prompt salaries in Laos, see Phetsiriseng (2009).

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Somli’s teaching career ended some seven years ago when she got married. Her husband Tuy, who like Somli was in his early 30s and of Phunoy ethnicity, originally came from Phongsaly province. As Tuy preferred to stay in the background, always referring me to his wife when I showed up at their shop, I will here largely focus on Somli’s narrative. However, this should not belie Tuy’s equally significant contribution to their cross-border trade business. Somli, who was more talkative, appeared to be the “boss” (in Tuy’s own words) and the public voice of their business. She displayed a continuous air of restless bustle, always giving Tuy clear instructions, keeping the accounts, counter-checking their stocks with their purchase receipts, and managing customer orders made by phone (both by call and online communication applications). Tuy was responsible for the logistics, mainly driving their small truck to collect or send ordered goods. This division of labour between husband and wife, which I alluded to at the beginning of this chapter, creates a dynamic and flexible family business, in which skills and competences are efficiently assigned. Somli and Tuy got to know each other in the neighbouring Oudomxay province as their parents both moved there to work, with Tuy’s parents leaving behind their agricultural life in Phongsaly to start a retail shop, selling and supplying marketplaces with mainly Chinese commodities. Shortly after their marriage, Somli and Tuy moved to Luang Namtha town as Tuy’s parents decided to continue their trading activities there, due to rapidly increasing competitive pressures in Oudomxay, particularly from the influx of Chinese entrepreneurs. Upon their move to Luang Namtha, Somli gave up her profession as a kindergarten teacher to devote all her time and energy to establishing their own trading business, thereby following the lead of Tuy’s parents. For Somli, this was only a natural development. Although she frequently referred to her joyous (ມ່ວນ muan) time being a teacher, of which she was reminded by raising her own two young children, for her it was beyond dispute that she made the right decision to join her husband and continue his family’s tradition, albeit recently established, of trade. Over the last seven years, Somli had acquired commercial knowledge and skills from her husband and his parents. Echoing others at the marketplace, she framed her occupational reorientation in the familiar language of triviality, convenience, and straightforwardness, as already observed in chapter 3. Although her parents-in-law once took her and Tuy to China (first to the border town of Mohan, but also to Mengla, further inland) to introduce them to several sellers already known to them, Somli insisted that they did not depend on long-established relations based on kinship or ethnicity. She frequently made the point that they could make new Chinese contacts on

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their own—independent of any help of relatives or friends—because many Chinese vendors were already able to communicate in Lao language. In Somli’s account, Chinese sellers readily became well-acquainted partners (ຄົນຮູຈ້ ກ ັ khon hujak) from whom she and Tuy could purchase a wide range of household goods to sell in their shop, but mostly to supply other market vendors, retail shop owners, and individual customers throughout Luang Namtha province. Somli consistently turned down my attempts to further find out how they established firm trading relations with the Chinese side, saying that she would simply browse for their desired commodities und eventually pick them directly from Chinese shops, simple as that. However, Somli’s language of simplicity and banality could not obscure her underlying transnational experience, expertise and skills rooted in the willingness to learn, experiment, and readily adjust to changes. For instance, a few years ago, they extended their operations to the Thai side. While they had been complementing their major business in Chinese commodities with some Thai goods ordered from Vientiane, they recently moved towards handling the Thai supply directly through the nearer border crossing of Huay Xai and Chiang Khong. Somli reasoned that their move to involve a second border-crossing was justified by the need to catch up with other traders in meeting the rising local demand for the fastest possible supply of Thai consumer goods, although this approach was costlier than ordering from Vientiane. She demonstrated her accrued transnational expertise by detailing their different handling of Lao-Thai and Lao-Chinese border-crossings. They would not need to cross over to Thailand very often as they usually picked up goods in Huay Xai, previously ordered online through mobile communication applications, whereas they would regularly cross over to China: “There [in China] are always new products available, so we need to be up to date with their latest offers—to see what kind of new products we could introduce to Luang Namtha.” Although they had been focusing on the Chinese side for longer than the Thai side, it was the former that still held greater potential for experimentation. While extending their operations to the direct purchase of Thai goods seemed necessary for satisfying a growing demand for already-familiar products, purchasing Chinese goods served as the major channel for continually introducing new products to the local market. As I have shown above, the Chinese side also attracted more established traders like Kaen Kaeo, who had previously relied on providing critical supply of Thai goods. Thus, Kaen Kaeo and Somli took opposing paths of experimenting with old and new opportunities. Over time, Somli professionalized her transnational commerce. However, she still contrasted this with her original training as a kindergarten teacher.

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Nevertheless, her and Tuy’s newly achieved material wealth attests to their entrepreneurial success, to which she contributed decisively. When I first visited their new house, located slightly outside town but close to the provincial bus station leading directly to the R3A highway (Kunming–Bangkok Highway), they had just moved in. Before relocating, they had been selling commodities in a rented house in town. Now, Somli proudly announced to me that they finally had a house and their own land. During my visits, an impressive number of customers frequented their still-provisory shop, often asking for specific goods. Noticing my astonishment, Somli explained that these people were regular customers from their previous location in town. That customers followed them loyally to their new location only demonstrated their well-established standing and renown as reliable and trustworthy providers of Thai and Chinese consumer goods; this recalls Amnuay’s remarks on the importance of building trust with customers through establishing a personality based on integrity. Steadily following the path to prosperity over the last seven years had eventually culminated in a large, newly built house with a spacious shop located on the main road. During each of my subsequent visits, I witnessed further upgrades to their new home, from the installation of a new satellite dish to the delivery of a new flat-screen TV. “To watch many TV channels—Thai channels, Chinese channels, international channels,” Somli proudly told me. This new material wealth, paired with extended transnational mobility across two borders, also fuelled new transnational lifestyles revolving around leisure, healthcare, and education. Somli told me about her frequent travels to both China and Thailand. Particularly knowledgeable about Chiang Rai province, she went into much detail about specific temples, parks, restaurants, and cafes. She furthermore stressed that she intended to have regular health checks in hospitals in Chiang Rai rather than in Laos. For her two children, Somli was painting a picture of a transnational future as well, contemplating education possibilities both in China and Thailand while clearly preferring the former because of her perception of the importance of Chinese-language education. Somli and Tuy’s case can indeed be read as an entrepreneurial success story. They managed to establish themselves as well-known suppliers of Chinese and Thai commodities and achieved a certain degree of affluence, which increasingly enabled them to look for opportunities beyond the borders that now determine their daily work and life. It is success stories such as theirs—which imply that a lack of education is not a liability (despite them maintaining the contrary)—that inspire a growing number of newcomers to engage in cross-border trade and retail. While Somli explained her trade trajectory by the circumstance of marrying into a trading family and

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contrasted it with her previous occupation, Nom, an equally well-known Tai Yuan female supplier of Thai and Chinese commodities in Luang Namtha town, framed her current trade activity as a consequence of previous failures. Nom: From Occupational Failure to Cross-Border Trade I studied only until pathom hok (ປະຖົົມຫົົກ, grade six of primary school). I even got the opportunity to apply for some basic work for the state, but I failed. Since then, I have been focusing only on cross-border trade activities to make a living.

Failure to obtain a proper occupation was Nom’s primary explanation for her involvement in trade activities. She emphasized with striking frequency that she even could apply for some basic work in the state sector, despite her educational limitations, but always failed to be recruited. There was not much left for her to do but embark on petty trade, she continued with a sigh, adding that she did not want to lead an agricultural working life like her parents. Thus, right after school, Nom opened a small shop selling clothes, which she mostly ordered from Thailand, but also from China and Vietnam. From time to time, she experimented with other goods such as Thai groceries, therefore constantly adjusting to changing customers’ tastes and demands. Nom summed up her first few years of retailing as continually trying out new commodities to make ends meet. In these early years, she would always browse around the marketplace and simply ask for potential suppliers’ phone numbers when she spotted goods she deemed worth trying. Upon her marriage, her financial situation improved. At present, Nom, now in her late 30s, along with her husband (in his late 50s and like her of Tai Yuan ethnicity), has been supplying mainly Thai goods to numerous locations in Luang Namtha province, including the provincial and district markets and several retail shops in Luang Namtha town. However, she recounted the story of their presently thriving business against the backdrop of previous failure. Shortly after their marriage, having accumulated a considerable starting capital and motivated by her husband’s knowledge in car engineering, they ventured to invest in a car repair shop. Yet their aspirations to establish their own business were marred by several issues, primarily several employees who betrayed their trust. Obviously, Nom felt uncomfortable talking about it in more detail. She tersely concluded that in the end they had to give up this new business. Her repeated emphasis on how much they had invested in this promising venture just illustrates how painful this failure still was to her.

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After this business failure, they re-oriented more towards cross-border trade, which they had already been conducting but only as a sideline business, at a rather small scale. They could build on her husband’s previous experience of occasionally working as a bus driver between Luang Namtha and Bokeo provinces, where he had managed to establish numerous contacts, and also across the border to Thailand.10 This sideline business, which they had initially planned to further reduce or even abandon in favour of the more settled business of running a car repair shop, then had to be revamped and extended to serve as their main business. To mark this new start, they had recently moved from Luang Namtha town to Ban Khone, some seven kilometres outside of town, where her parents already owned land. The newly built house, in which I could eventually interview her, was impressively large although still provisionally furnished at that time. Noticing my careful inspection of their new house, Nom could not hide her pride and satisfaction with the current developments, admitting that better times had finally come. Anyhow, she concluded, her humble entrepreneurial journey had been always a journey of ups and downs. As it seems, these ups and downs were all connected by trade activities—or, more precisely, her downs (failing to secure regular employment after school, giving up the car repair shop) were each followed by periods of resorting to different experimentations with cross-border trade activities. Engagement in trade can here be understood as a compensation for failure, revealing a potential path back to success—success which ended up with me, as I had with Somli, conducting an interview in a brand-new house. Moreover, several years ago, again like Somli, they had expanded to another venue of experimentation. While Somli and Tuy decided to experiment with a new supply channel of Thai commodities through Huay Xai/Chiang Khong, Nom and her husband had recently joined other traders in selling Thai commodities at regional trade fairs in Xishuangbanna (see chapter 1), and now similarly extended their commercial reach across two border-crossings. Sharing the willingness to experiment commercially while accepting certain risks, Somli’s and Nom’s individual success stories and tales of achievement, although framed in a downplaying and belittling manner, were also noted by Amnuay. He knew Nom, and assured me that “she is 10 Here, a striking parallel exists with the fruit trade success story of Pa Saeng in Muang Sing. Her self-taught engagement in cross-border trade was likewise initially rooted in her husband’s occupation as a bus driver plying the route between Bokeo and Luang Namtha provinces, since she often accompanied him (see chapter 2).

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very capable and knows a lot of people.” Therefore, he ascribed to her a certain sense of professional skills, which she herself rather denied or at least talked down, and which Amnuay also seemed to deny were possessed by most of the market newcomers, when talking about his ideal trader. Amnuay’s attempted boundary between professional and inexperienced traders became blurred. On a related note, he often pondered about the possibility of opening a larger shop with a warehouse, preferably inside the marketplace or at another strategic location, near a main road or a bus station, for instance. In a sense, he was pursuing a goal that newcomers, such as Somli and Tuy, had recently achieved, but for which he himself still lacked the necessary starting capital. Over time, I realized that Nom and her husband’s accumulation of different trade experimentations led to their present skilful handling of several parallel cross-border commercial activities, fully utilizing and further facilitating transnational commodity flows between Thailand, Laos, and China. Besides their main business of supplying Luang Namtha markets with Thai consumer goods, which they then sold at trade fairs in China, they were occasionally involved in the trade of Thai fruits. They knew Pa Oy in Ban Huay Meng and Pa Saeng in Muang Sing well. Most recently, during their trips to Chinese trade fairs, they had started to purchase Chinese commodities to resell to market vendors back in Luang Namtha. Crossing to Thailand three to four times a month and to China (mainly for trade fairs) four to five times a year, their transnational world fully covers all the different trade dynamics and settings of the Yunnan–Laos–Thailand borderland economy as outlined in the previous chapters, again underlining the central regional role of Luang Namtha. Importantly, trajectories of continued experimentation with expanding transnational mobility are not only to be found in (academically neglected) urban areas of northern Laos. While they might indeed be most visible in newly developing urban spaces such as Luang Namtha town, clearly manifested in constantly newly erected marketplaces and opened retail shops, aspirations of benefiting from new transnational economic connectivity also extend into rural areas, again suggesting the increasing irrelevance of the urban–rural divide. From Peasant to Cross-Border Trader Towards the end of my fieldwork in Laos, I randomly got into a conversation with a female trader who sold fruits in front of a very recently opened

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agricultural market11 in Ban Viangthong, Luang Namtha town. The woman, of Lanten ethnicity,12 had started selling Thai fruits at the market only a few months ago, as a sideline activity of her husband’s recent main business of transporting Thai fruits from Thai suppliers (indeed, mainly from Ban Huay Meng) to Chinese customers in Mengla and Jinghong, crossing the border to China and back. Her husband’s highly transnational endeavour, which occasionally involved border-crossings into Thailand and China within one day, significantly changed her lifestyle as well. While she made the familiar point that she had previously only stayed at home with nothing to do, she now travelled daily between her village Ban Namdi and Luang Namtha town, a round-trip of about 12 kilometres, mainly over narrow sandy paths through which this hilly village is connected to the main road. Before engaging in fruit trade, they had cultivated their small plot of land (mostly rice and corn) chiefly for their own consumption, though they were also able to sell some surplus. However, their earnings were not enough to save up for the envisioned future higher education of their only daughter (ideally in China), who at the time of our conversation was eight years old. Thus, they decided to rent out their land and invested in a small truck to make use of the Sino-Lao cross-border connectivity through her husband’s family contacts with Mengla; he often emphasized his Chinese roots, which also included mastery of the Chinese language. Going there, he soon realized the rapidly increasing Chinese demand for Thai fruits, which needed to pass through Laos, and decided to give this business opportunity a try. Asking around at the markets in Luang Namtha, he soon managed to contact Thai and Lao suppliers of Thai fruits, in Chiang Khong and Huay Xai respectively; along with his friend and immediate neighbour in Ban Namdi, he started to transport the suppliers’ fruits to their Chinese customers at wholesale markets in Mengla and Jinghong, while also selling a certain amount himself through his wife in Luang Namtha. And indeed, when visiting Ban Namdi, a village that, with its difficult access routes and simple, tiny wooden huts, could easily qualify as a characteristically remote and poor minority village 11 Although this newly opened market is officially named “Farm and Industry Market Number Two of Ban Viangthong,” I could only spot agricultural produce such as live chicken, fish, fresh meat, vegetables, and fruits. With the support of several German NGOs, a local association growing organic farm produce is selling there every Wednesday and Saturday morning. However, common market vendors would usually joke that this association might label their produce as organic, but in fact sell cheap and “beautiful” (ງົດງາມ ngotnam) vegetables from China, allegedly full of chemicals, just as they themselves would be doing. 12 She herself used the Lao ethnonym “Lao Huay,” which can be translated as “Lao of the streams”; see, for example, Estevez (2016).

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(and in part this would be right), I could quickly spot Thai fruit baskets piled high at two directly opposing houses. They stood out like colourful towers, signalling an immediate linkage to the wider world of transnational mobility and commercial opportunity, possibly leading to, or at least promising, new scales of improvement and prosperity—at a locality where one might expect it the least, if one succumbed to the aforementioned “myth of Lao isolation” (Walker 1999, p. 25). And again, their activities did not go unnoticed by Amnuay. When I mentioned my encounter with Lao Huay (Lanten) middlemen involved in the trade of Thai fruits to China, Amnuay instantly made the point that their role might potentially increase, given that many could speak some Chinese. He admiringly described them as working hard, handling everything on the Chinese side, including facilitating payments, which required knowing a large number of different Chinese customers. They also made good money, Amnuay added approvingly—then jokingly asking me when it would once again be his turn to earn a lot of money as well.

Conclusion Cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, and national boundaries, the newly emerging post-socialist population of small-scale traders in northern Laos cannot be reduced to one single variable such as age, gender, or ethnicity or structured into clearly bounded groups or distinct classes, “habitus groups” or “sociocultural milieus” (Rehbein 2017, p. 83). However, if focusing on their practices and narrative discourses, instead of (imagined) fixed traits, this diverse range of individuals is held together by a significant commonality—namely, the framing of their trade activities in the self-deprecating manner of smallness. Their articulated insignificance must not be misunderstood as their economic and scholarly insignificance. Managing to be located outside of or at the interstices of the conventional occupational structure of Laos—which is often reduced to the dichotomy of civil servants (ລັດຖະກອນ lattakon) and peasants/common people (ປະຊາຊົນ pasason)—their self-organized trading activities are predestined for flexible experimentation, neither tied socially to a hierarchy nor spatially to farming land. Seriously taking up their rhetorical smallness as an analytical entry point reveals their unvoiced, and thus unheard and unread, transnational trading skills and their trajectories involving high levels of risk-taking, aspiration, flexibility, pragmatism, and mobility that often lead to tangible success (but also, at times, to stinging

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failures). It is this self-articulated smallness, corresponding remarkably to Laos’s geographical, economic, and indeed academic interstitial standing between the larger realms of China and Thailand, that constitutes the local foundation of their centrality in tying together the transnational commodity space across Yunnan, northern Laos and northern Thailand. Moving away from larger borderland representations, from Thailand’s and Yunnan’s ends of the “Thai–Yunnan Borderlands,” and zooming in on northern Laos (Luang Namtha province), this chapter and the previous chapter have established the locally inherent cosmopolitan and experimentarian condition that is, in its common banalization—its smallness—central to transnational trade skills and practices. Equally central to this local Lao dimension of everyday experience of and experiments with transnational connectivity is the condition, or routinization, of uncertainty (cf. Hoang 2020), especially with regards to an increasing Chinese influence in the region, which the next chapter will reflect on.

Works Cited Behar, Ruth. 1990. “Rage and Redemption: Reading the Life Story of a Mexican Marketing Woman.” Feminist Studies 16 (2): 223-258. Bouté, Vanina. 2014. “Population’s Mobility in Northern Laotian Transborder Areas.” In Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia: The Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits Economic Corridors, edited by Nathalie Fau, Sirivanh Khonthapane, and Christian Taillard, 399-420. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Bouté, Vanina. 2017. “Reaching the Cities: New Forms of Network and Social Differentiation in Northern Laos.” In Changing Lives in Laos: Society, Politics, and Culture in a Post-Socialist State, edited by Vanina Bouté and Vatthana Pholsena, 221-247. Singapore: NUS Press. Brenner, Suzanne A. 1995. “Why Women Rule the Roost: Rethinking Javanese Ideologies of Gender and Self-Control.” In Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia, edited by Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz, 19-50. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brenner, Suzanne A. 1998. The Domestication of Desire: Women, Wealth, and Modernity in Java. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Desai, Manishai. 2009. “Women Cross-Border Traders in Africa: Rethinking Global Trade.” Development 52 (3): 377-386. Estevez, Joseba. 2016. “Healing Rituals and Sorcery among the Lanten of Laos.” In Parts and Wholes: Essays on Social Morphology, Cosmology, and Exchange

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in Honour of J. D. M. Platenkamp, edited by Laila Prager, Michael Prager, and Guido Sprenger, 181-192. Zurich: LIT Verlag. High, Holly. 2013. “Experimental Consensus: Negotiating with the Irrigating State in the South of Laos.” Asian Studies Review 37 (4): 491-508. Hoang, Lan Anh. 2020. “Mobility and Flexible Moralities: Insights from the Case Study of Vietnamese Market Traders in Moscow.” In Money and Moralities in Contemporary Asia, edited by Lan Anh Hoang and Cheryll Alipio, 59-84. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. House-Midamba, Bessie, and Felix K. Ekechi. 1995. African Market Women and Economic Power: The Role of Women in African Economic Development. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hsu, Carolyn L. 2007. Creating Market Socialism: How Ordinary People Are Shaping Class and Status in China. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Lao Statistics Bureau. 2015. Results of Population and Housing Census 2015 (English Version). Vientiane: Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), Lao Statistics Bureau. Leshkowich, Ann Marie. 2014. Essential Trade: Vietnamese Women in a Changing Marketplace. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. 2006. “Emancipatory Cosmopolitanism: Towards an Agenda.” Development and Change 37 (6): 1247-1257. Phetsiriseng, Inthasone. 2009. “Education Reform Context and Process in Lao PDR: Focusing on Basic Education.” In The Political Economy of Educational Reforms and Capacity Development in Southeast Asia: Cases of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, edited by Yasushi Hirosato and Yuto Kitamura, 265-282. Dordrecht and London: Springer. Rehbein, Boike. 2007. Globalization, Culture and Society in Laos. London and New York: Routledge. Rehbein, Boike. 2017. Society in Contemporary Laos: Capitalism, Habitus and Belief. London and New York: Routledge. Reid, Anthony. 1988. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680. Vol. I. The Land Below the Winds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Santasombat, Yos. 2019. “ Rent Capitalism and Shifting Plantations in the Mekong Borderlands.” Southeast Asian Affairs: 177-191. Scott, James C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Seligmann, Linda J., ed. 2001. Women Traders in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Mediating Identities, Marketing Wares. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Somers, Margaret R. 1994. “The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach.” Theory and Society 23 (5): 605-649. Walker, Andrew. 1999. The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.

5

“No Matter What, We’ll Find a Way” Uncertain (Chinese?) Futures Abstract In this chapter, I critically reflect on the inescapable expectation to write first and foremost on China’s assertive infrastructure push under the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) label when studying current developments in (northern) Laos. I start instead by considering uncertainty and change as integral parts of northern Lao traders’ transnational worlds. Their engagement with the intensified, but not unprecedented, Chinese impact in the region needs to be understood against the backdrop of their resilience, versatility, and resourcefulness in continually finding new venues for economic experimentation—and in living with, and actively impacting on, China-driven developments. I flesh out how they translate, reproduce, or challenge larger Chinese visions of modernity, development, and infrastructural connectivity as aspirations, hopes, dreams, and fears. Keywords: Northern Laos; China; Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); infrastructure; development; uncertainty; resilience

So far, it might seem as if I have merely uncritically and naively praised Lao cross-border traders’ skilfully deployed smallness, through which they blend in with and actively sustain the larger transnational dynamics of a rapidly changing borderland, and that I have thereby mainly focused on success stories. However, my argument should not be misunderstood as painting an exclusively rosy picture of national and regional neoliberal policies of economic opening-up and cross-border integration, uncritically endorsing external visions of regional connectivity such as the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) or China’s BRI. I agree with Antonella Diana (2013, p. 27) “that despite claims of deregulation, trans-border trade and mobility of ethnic minority border dwellers remain conditional on an unpredictable state mechanism of loosening and tightening.” Diana’s study on China’s Tai Lue traders at the Sino-Lao

Rowedder, Simon, Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos. Mastering Smallness. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722360_ch05

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border demonstrates that their “border strategies” are contingent on a “governing pattern of experimentation” (Ibid.), enabling but also disabling flexible cross-border mobility. Consequently, Diana explains the traders’ rather short-lived success in the cross-border trade of rice and corn, from 2004 until mid-2005, through beneficial border policies within which their strategies could fully unfold. Hence, with the imposition of stricter border regulations and protectionist measures on the Chinese side in July 2005, which worsened in June 2006, the Tai Lue-specific border strategies she described were ultimately to no avail, prompting numerous traders to give up their trade activities. Diana (2013, p. 36) therefore concludes that “[t]heir success as flexible border citizens had been inhibited by a new wave of state authoritarianism entangled with corporate accumulation.”

Uncertainty, Resilience, and the Shadow of the BRI Unsurprisingly, it is in the nature of (small-scale) cross-border trade activities and experimentations to eventually rely on the often unpredictable, opaque, and abruptly changing regulatory regimes of border formalities and procedures, which are not uncommonly the direct result of inscrutably entangled alliances of powerful state and large-scale corporate actors. The previous chapters have already provided snippets of the continual need to face change and associated uncertainty—be it the relocation of marketplaces, shifting patterns of commodity supply and demand, rising stall rents at markets, higher fees and taxes at border checkpoints, changing border policies of restricting certain commodities, or stricter surveillance mechanisms and technologies for thoroughly screening commodities. Amidst frequent complaints, and still more rumours, about arbitrarily applied adverse cross-border policies and chicaneries, Luang Namtha-based small-scale traders still demonstrated high levels of resilience, flexibility, creativity, and staunch pragmatism, leading to both success and failure. One of the rumours I overheard most often was that Muang Sing’s local China–Laos border crossing at Panghai/Chahe would be upgraded to an international checkpoint (ດ່ານສາກົນ dan sakon) although nobody, including border officers, could confirm this to me. As in the case of the already existing international checkpoint at Mohan/Boten, this would mean upgraded, standardized screening and surveillance technology, including “annoying” X-ray machines, which Luang Namtha traders who transport Thai commodities to Chinese trade fairs managed to circumvent precisely by travelling through Muang Sing. However, when I asked Lao traders about

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these rumours during my most recent visit to a trade fair in Jinghong in February 2017, most reacted with a relaxed smile, optimistically assuring me that “no matter what, we will find a way.” Without intending to overromanticize their inherent pragmatic and resilient attitude, I want, at least, to point to the possibly productive and creative dimension of uncertainty that Elizabeth Cooper and David Pratten (2015, p. 2) have demonstrated in African contexts: “Uncertainty is a social resource and can be used to negotiate insecurity, conduct and create relationships, and act as a source for imagining the future with the hopes and fears this entails.” Returning to the emerging number of small-scale traders in Luang Namtha province: if we take the productive aspect of uncertainty and associated resilience seriously, their continually adjusted trade experimentations should not be narrowly understood through the lens of informality, in binary opposition to formally organized and regulated trade activities. Tak-Wing Ngo’s and Eva P. W. Hung’s (2019) formulation of “organised informality,” which they applied to the study of suitcase traders in China’s Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region, might be useful in this regard, combining both “organisational competence and informal networks” (p. 234). Elsewhere, in the introduction to their edited volume Shadow Exchanges along the New Silk Roads, Ngo and Hung (2020) similarly attempt to transgress the binaries of formal and informal trade and state and non-state actors through their concept of “informal connectivity,” of which resilience is one of the key characteristics. However, they eventually conclude (2020, p. 25): In sum, informal connectivity has a distinct logic and set of rules in terms of its organization, operation, and transactions. It justifies our claim to consider informal connectivity along the shadow silk roads as a third way of globalization, alongside market-driven neoliberalism and state-led regionalism under OBOR [China’s One Belt One Road, or now officially changed to Belt and Road Initiative, BRI].

In the end, the informal exchanges of transnational connectivity they describe are merely shadow activities of China’s newly envisioned, highly visible silk roads. Although the editors point to the historicity of preceding exchanges across Asian and Eurasian borders, it seems that those take again on greater significance, and scholarly attention, only because of the emergence of the BRI, “the highest profile politico-spatial project […] put forward by the Chinese government, which seeks to re-define the historical geography of contemporary global capitalism” (Ngo and Hung 2020, pp. 15-16).

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Justifying their re-examination of informal cross-border connectivity, this underlying assumption that the BRI constitutes a clear strategy or project is itself debatable. Tim Oakes (2021), for instance, comments that [t]he Belt & Road was only ever meant to be a vague idea, a notion, a gesture, the beginning of a sentence waiting to be completed by someone else. It was an invitation. And perhaps this is why it has generated such an exuberant response. We all love filling in the blank. The BRI is not a policy. It’s not even a ‘soft policy’ (Holbig 2004), that is, a policy written with enough vagueness to accommodate the highly diverse, and often competing, agendas and instruments that will drive its implementation. It’s barely even a framework. Instead, it’s an aspirational statement of evolutionary principles that invite imaginary cartographies of lines and corridors. Rather than viewing the BRI as a grand scheme formulated by Xi Jinping—a view that continues to dominate most popular media and commentaries from the punditariat—we are on safer ground approaching it as an evolutionary discourse, perhaps even a performance, a kind of ‘development theater.’

Indeed, the established and popularized view in academic and public discourse of BRI as a somehow defined grand strategy or programme— producing a rapidly growing academic landscape of scholarship, institutions, and research collaborations largely dedicated to the BRI—paves the way for certain research directions, agendas, and expectations, already rather fixed, that all endorse and reinforce the overall BRI lens through which subsequent case studies are filtered in different disciplines. Although the official cartography of BRI is highly ambiguous and vague, with any officially sanctioned map prominently absent (cf. Narins and Agnew 2020), current social, economic, and political developments in certain target areas, including Southeast Asia, are already clearly mapped in reference to the “vague idea” (Oakes 2021) of the BRI. Mirroring the inevitable expectation of writing about the BRI and Chinese infrastructural push and encroachment, given the specific research area of this study, I deliberately started off this book by addressing the inflationary scholarly interest in these issues—only to return to them again in more detail in this chapter towards the end of the book. In the chapters in between, I have instead sketched small-scale traders’ everyday lived worlds of transnational connectivity in their own right. My ethnographic attention to their vernacular discourse and practices on the ground, constituting different facets of smallness, is not from the outset superimposed by, and

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therefore does not solely respond to, the BRI prism. This appears to be in line with recent calls for more empirically grounded studies of the BRI, with a special issue in Political Geography boldly claiming to “comprise one of the first collections of theoretically robust and empirically grounded work on the BRI” (Oliveira et al. 2020, p. 2). Rightly acknowledging “how global initiatives like the BRI are messy, contingent, and uneven in their outcomes, even as Chinese and global elites benefit from presenting it as a unified framework and strategy” (Ibid.), the editors importantly complicate “the BRI as a process of co-construction, involving not just state and business elites from China, but also local officials, financiers, firm operatives, middlemen, and community members” (Ibid, p. 1). Similarly, in a special issue in Eurasian Geography and Economics on China’s borderlands, Max D. Woodworth and Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthie (2020, p. 3) assert “to avoid performing the ideological work of ascribing coherence and purposiveness to the BRI, and instead to focus on the locally specific processes of muddling through and local adaptations to continuously emergent constraints and possibilities, some of them related to the BRI, others having much longer histories.” However, after all, the resulting scholarship is first and foremost framed and branded as directly addressing issues related to the BRI, ultimately meant to thereby (re-)claim a certain significance by conveniently filling in the blanks of BRI’s “useful fuzziness” (Narins and Agnew 2020, p. 810). One might ask (rather polemically, I admit) whether it only needed something like the appealing notion of the BRI—the “invitation” (Oakes 2021)—to initiate a resurgence in ethnographic research in the respective regional contexts of infrastructure development and change. These have ultimately been studied as shadows, or as being in the shadow, of the BRI (Hung and Ngo 2020)—just as Southeast Asia is said to be ‘in the dragon’s shadow’ (Strangio 2020), or ‘under Bejing’s shadow’ (Hiebert 2020).

Contextualizing Local Engagement with China-Induced Changes Undoubtedly, the rising infrastructural, economic, political, social, and cultural presence of China was always, either directly or indirectly, also present in my conversations and observations in northern Laos. Nonetheless, the traders’ local engagements and encounters with a regionally assertive China are only one part—albeit a growing one—of their broader transnational worlds and are embedded in a much longer history of appropriating and engaging politically and economically larger (precolonial, colonial, national) powers. Here they operate in what C. Patterson Giersch

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(2006, pp. 3-4), in his Qing history of the Yunnan-Southeast Asian frontier, describes as a “middle ground” of “fluid cultural and economic exchange where acculturation and the creation of hybrid political institutions were contingent on local conditions.” By no means downplaying or denying the rising local impact of Chinese-induced change, I share Woodworth’s and Joniak-Lüthie’s (2020, p. 4) overall research interest in “how […] local people navigate the complex institutional and cultural terrains of China’s rapidly changing borderlands.” However, more importantly, I have unveiled the key role of northern Lao small-scale traders in the Yunnan–Laos–Thailand borderland economy, who crucially enable and shape the everyday workings of the borderland infrastructures of transnational flows and vibrant marketplaces, thereby also actively contributing to, and not just passively affected by, China-induced change. Establishing their regional centrality and demonstrating their resilience and versatility, I do not fully subscribe to unidirectional conclusions that local small-scale traders have been increasingly marginalized and excluded from (Chinese) large-scale infrastructure development and associated heightened border securitization, which Alessandro Rippa (2020a, 2020b) observes for the borderlands of Xinjiang–Pakistan and Yunnan–Myanmar, both officially constituting integral parts of China’s BRI. The inexorable cleavage between (Chinese) large-scale actors and local small-scale actors implied therein is difficult to apply in the case of overland trade between Thailand and China, as northern Lao small-scale traders master a resource that is also interesting for larger actors: cheap and uncomplicated connectivity—that is, land-linkedness. Mastering the Resource of Connectivity As I have mentioned for the case of transnational trade in Thai fruits in chapter 2, Thai large-scale companies were highly interested in Ban Huay Meng’s own informal cross-border port facilities and its rich networks for mobile Lao middlemen. Across the Mekong on the Lao side, in Huay Xai, Kaeo, the ethnic Chinese (Haw) broker initially “wrongly” introduced as Tai Lue by Ban Huay Meng’s kamnan (see chapter 2), also mentioned frequent enquiries from numerous larger Chinese companies about this locally organized and facilitated flow of Thai fruits. In Luang Namtha, Nom, the Tai Yuan self-made cross-border entrepreneur introduced in chapter 4, often joked that larger companies would always follow their actions to learn how to properly conduct cross-border trade—looking at them with respect for, interest in, and fear and jealousy of their flexibility and agility. Pa Saeng,

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the well-connected fruit trader in Muang Sing, made no secret of her close and familiar (ຄຸນ ້ ເຄີຍ khunkhoey) ties with local border officials on both the Lao and Chinese sides. Normally, they just would wave her through. They occasionally asked for rather large amounts of Thai fruits, which she could provide for them without any problems. Kaeo also talked openly about her arrangement with border and customs officials in Huay Xai: If officials invite me for some meals or other activities, I’d better go there. Well, inviting: I actually need to pay for their meals. Or I take some beers to these meetings, this always works. It’s all about doing some small favours, to satisfy them so that you as a trader won’t have any trouble.

Once, when I walked with Kaeo to the Khonekeo port on a late afternoon in July (in the middle of the peak season for fruit trade), she turned to me with a meaningful glance: That guy who just greeted me was one of the customs officials. He just finished work. Although I am not involved in ‘big business’ (大生意da shengyi),1 everybody at customs knows me very well. I just always try to maintain a good relationship with them. You know, customs officials are actually quite rich, as they have the authority to arbitrarily receive benefits. Traders and entrepreneurs merely rely on their goodwill. This is Laos. Nothing will change soon. You can’t do anything about it.

In fact, it is not in Kaeo’s and other traders’ interest that anything will change. This reciprocal arrangement, framed as an inevitable result of Laos’s lacking legal certainty, is part and parcel of “collaborative borders” that reveal “complex and subtle collaborations between local initiative and state power” (Walker 1999, pp. 111, 112). More than 20 years ago, Andrew Walker (1999, p. 112) observed for the borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Myanmar that state officials on the borderline […] are embedded—often quite literally—in the social networks of frontier communities and are busy doing deals, making compromises and extracting favours. Their coercion and harassment can, indeed, be bitterly resented but their presence also creates opportunities for profit and legitimacy. 1 As I have already pointed out in chapter 2, my conversations with Kaeo were mainly in Chinese.

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Not much has changed in Laos in this regard, it seems. Another continued necessity for the traders, which locally creates and sustains this transnational borderland economy, is unabating high demand for their traded commodities. And indeed, while fruits, household goods, and food products from Thailand are still much sought-after in China, everyday Thai and Chinese commodities are an integral part of local marketplaces in Laos. Lao small-scale traders’ local capacity to provide connectivity—or handle landlinkedness—between highly favoured Chinese and Thai commodityscapes builds on the unchanged economic smallness of Laos, which they actively reproduce and re-enact. In other words, seemingly ironically, small-scale traders’ thriving transnational economic experiments rely on Laos’s status quo as regionally linked, but domestically underdeveloped country, lacking agricultural, industrial, and manufacturing output and capabilities. Luang Namtha’s traders thus pragmatically capitalize on this resulting frontier of uneven development, which further advances, and is in turn perpetuated by, regional connectedness. Extending the notion of “frontier capitalism” beyond its conventional focus on top-down enclosure, commodification, and dispossession of land and natural resources (e.g., Laungaramsri 2012; Einzenberger 2018), resulting in land-use frontiers and extractive frontiers (cf. Joseph 2019), Lao small-scale actors are thus likewise engaged in a variant of “frontier capitalism” from the bottom up, turning the interstitial geography of being an inferior transit venue between powerful economies of China and Thailand into capital. Aside from the usual, often unpredictable, changes in border policies impacting on the day-to-day operations, this trade frontier faces fundamental challenges from the land resource frontier dynamics pushed by China as the case of overland trade of Thai fruits to China shows. Facing the “China Challenge” in the Case of Transnational Thai Fruit Trade The local workings of the overland flow of Thai fruits to China via Laos largely relies on China’s dependence on Thailand (among other Southeast Asian countries) to satisfy its ever-rising demand for tropical fruits. This structurally necessary dependence might dwindle in the future as China has been heavily investing in agricultural research on domestic tropical fruit cultivation, propelled by the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (CATA). Currently, tropical fruits—including mango, longan, lychee, dragon fruit, and avocado—are already cultivated in China’s southern provinces, primarily Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan, and to a lesser extent Yunnan, Fujian, Sichuan, and Chongqing (GIZ 2020, pp. 3-28). There has

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even been news of successful cultivation of tropical fruits in greenhouses in the Gobi desert (Xinhua 2020). Moreover, regarding what would be quite a symbolic achievement if China could master the most valued and highly demanded tropical fruit, there have been promising experiments in cultivating durian in Hainan province, which have already put Thailand’s trade authorities on alert, urging Thai agriculturalists to remain competitive (e.g., The Straits Times 2019). Besides pushing the tropical fruit frontier domestically, China could also build on its already established extraterritorial plantation economy in northern Laos, the classical “frontier capitalism,” going beyond rubber (e.g., Dwyer and Vongvisouk 2017; Lyttleton and Li 2017; Li 2018; Sturgeon 2013; Cohen 2009) and also focusing on banana (e.g., Friis and Nielsen 2016; Santasombat 2019) and watermelon (e.g., Lyttleton et al. 2004; Nolintha 2018)—all for exclusive export to China. Recently, there have been reports that Chinese companies plan to cultivate durian in Laos, intending to lease 3,200 to 4,800 hectares of land near Vientiane.2 If the Chinese-backed, concession-like fruit plantation model advances further in Laos, the tri-national cross-border trade of Thai fruits, with Lao traders as its central actors, might diminish in consequence. Thus, at least for the case of Lao small-scale cross-border (Thai) fruit traders, these two highly interrelated dynamics of frontier capitalism, as concrete manifestations of the Lao governmental mantras of “transforming from a land-locked to a land-linked country” and “turning land into capital,” might work against each other in the long term. It thus remains to be seen how this possible agrarian shift, largely shaped by agro-economic competition between Thailand and China, and combined with already observable cross-border protectionism, mainly on the Chinese side, will impact local livelihoods that previously depended on an unchanged, unrestricted, and unlimited flow of Thai fruits into the Chinese market. During my latest visit to Luang Namtha in August 2019, I could already witness instances of resilience and pragmatic creativity, grounded in continual willingness to experiment and to explore new possible venues of demand, and thus always looking for new forms of “resourcefulness” (Tsing 2005, pp. 30-32) which can be turned into frontier capital. For example, in Muang Sing, Mai Kaeo, close friends (seo) with Pa Saeng, abandoned fruit trade altogether and shifted to trading textiles. Together with his wife he is now specializing in the trade of traditional Tai Lue textiles, which 2 See, for example, this 2021 publication by Produce Report, a leading China-based online portal examining China’s agricultural market: https://www.producereport.com/article/chinesecompanies-set-sights-laos-durian-production (accessed 15 November 2021).

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they buy from the Thailand–Myanmar border in Mae Sai-Tachilek. They sell those mainly in Tai Lue villages throughout Luang Namtha province, especially during larger festivities. Once, I met them in Ban Natham, Muang Sing district, during bun than tham (ບຸນທານທຳ�), one of the most important annual Buddhist village festivities, dedicated to ancestral worship.3 They sold their textiles directly out of the pick-up truck in which they had previously transported Thai fruits between Thailand and China. Now, they parked their car at a strategic location next to the village temple where the main festivities took place. Suddenly, in stark contrast to transnational fruit trade, strong notions of Tai Lue ethnicity became important. “Tai Lue textiles from Tachilek are some of the best you can find in the whole region. They are still using traditional methods, all handmade. Their patterns are authentic, truly Tai Lue, really appropriate to be worn at a festival like this (bun than tham),” Mai Kaeo explained to me, enthusiastically. No longer stereotyped national quality difference of fruits, but transnational ethnicity, woven into textiles, was what they marketed now, again proving their deftness in creating ethnically or nationally framed trading environments. As was previously the case with Thai fruits, Mai Kaeo envisioned himself as one of the first traders of Burmese Tai Lue textiles in Muang Sing. This “pioneering spirit” (see chapter 4) was embedded in his routinized, well-established cross-border geography between Thailand, Laos, and China. He got to know his contacts in Mae Sai (Chiang Rai province), from whom he purchases the textiles from Tachilek (he does not cross over to Myanmar by himself), while he was still engaged in fruit trade. Back then, he would combine his frequent trips to Bokeo and Chiang Khong with travel around Chiang Rai province, both for leisure (ໄປຫຼິ້ນ pai rin, literally “go to play” or “go for fun”) and for research (ໄປຄົ້ນຄ້ວາ pai khon khua) into other opportunities in the borderland economy. Unsurprisingly, Mai Kaeo made clear that he already planned beyond selling locally in Luang Namtha province, very much convinced that his Tachilek textiles would also sell well in Xishuangbanna, on the Chinese side of the border. “After all, we are all Tai Lue,” he beamed at me, finishing off with the statement with which I began the first chapter of this book—back then made by a Tai Dam trader from Luang Namtha selling Thai household products at a trade fair in Jinghong. Whether fictively, “authentically,” or simply not at all Tai Lue, and whether trading mundane or ethnic commodities, in the end, there is an unabating confidence in local (Tai Lue) demand on the Chinese side. 3 See Cohen (2000b, pp. 51-52) for the specific context of Tai Lue ancestral rituals in Muang Sing, which might not be found to this degree in other Tai Lue localities.

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Dreaming the “Chinese Dream” in Northern Laos This brings us back again to the undeniable growth of the Chinese dimension of northern Laos’s borderland economy. However, this economy is not merely in the shadow of China’s large-scale BRI dreams, or a passive and helpless venue— it is also a fertile ground for Chinese-oriented life plans and livelihoods, in terms of education, entrepreneurial experiments, and urban aspiration, which all lead to a growing number of direct experiences in and encounters with neighbouring China. The quotidian mental mapping of cross-border mobility of “going up” (ຂືນ້ khuen) to China and “going down” (ລົງ long) to Thailand (see chapter 3) has already increasingly shifted towards “going up” for diverse reasons, in addition to cross-border trade for education, healthcare, employment, and leisure and amusement. Increasingly “going up,” people also bring back down their impressions, experiences, and stories of displayed, and also partly consumed, Chinese modernity. Thus, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s frequently envisioned “dream” (中国梦 zhongguo meng, “Chinese dream,” coined in 2013, and 亚太梦 yatai meng, “Asia-Pacific dream,” coined in 2014) of national and regional infrastructural development is translated on the ground into concrete ideas, aspirations, ambitions, emotions, and actions that articulate views on China that might not usually find their way into external observations on China’s impact. Building on chapter 3, local marketplaces, as sites of a “banal cosmopolitanism,” constitute central venues where these local “Chinese dreams”—or dreams of China—are vividly articulated and exchanged among and between vendors and customers. Their shared stories, rumours, and gossip from “above” or “up in China” reveal a wide and intricate spectrum of inspiration, admiration, pragmatic choices, disillusion, envy, resentment, and contempt. These ambivalent and seemingly contradictory repertoires of emotions and perceptions of both the opportunities and perils of Chinese development, witnessed on both sides of the border, often revolve around current and planned infrastructure. The China–Laos Railway, for instance, is emblematic of this awkward coexistence of euphoria and scepticism (see also Rowedder 2020). Opened on schedule on 3 December 2021, despite the Covid-19 crisis, this BRI flagship project displays Chinese state-of-art engineering skills, which have mastered difficult mountainous terrain with 72 tunnels and 170 bridges. Although Laos has not seen any substantive railway infrastructure before, many residents of Luang Namtha are already familiar with China’s rapid railway development, especially the growing number of vocational students who study in China (not only in adjacent Yunnan province, but also further away in Guizhou, Guangxi, or Sichuan).

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During one of the numerous mornings I spent having a bowl of khao soi (ເຂົ້້�າຊອຍ) at the Muang Sing market, I happened to listen to a young male customer sitting next to me, talking in Lao about his recent trips to China and describing the trains there. Unable to contain my curiosity, I took the chance to ask him where exactly he went to in China. I chose to ask him in Chinese to test his claimed familiarity with China. And indeed, he instantly responded in Chinese, showing again the linguistic dexterity characteristic of this borderland region, in which I was able to participate by constantly switching between Thai, Lao, and Chinese language. He explained to me that he had studied Chinese language in Guiyang in Guizhou province. What followed was his very detailed description of how to get there from Muang Sing, carefully mapping the district’s connections to its Chinese neighbour. He became even more enthusiastic upon learning that I also figured in his transnational map: Kunming, where I had studied Chinese language, was also a focal gateway for his further travels into China. He would first travel by bus to Kunming (via Luang Namtha and Boten)4 to catch the 10-hour train ride to Guiyang, which would round off almost two full days of travelling.5 This prompted him to express his great admiration of the Chinese train system, as it combined an impressive rail network with high standards of comfort, technology, and engineering skills. He had no end of praise for the engineering craftsmanship of the exemplary Kunming–Guiyang route, conquering challenging mountainous terrain through several tunnels and bridges, which he subsequently set against the current condition of the transportation infrastructure in Laos. He was not the last person I encountered during my fieldwork in Laos who jokingly told me that while in Laos, they were building heavily winding and zigzagging 4 Although Muang Sing is only about 10 kilometres away from the Chinese border, he had to detour more than 100 kilometres to Boten where the only international border crossing is located. The crossing in Panghai/Chahe near Muang Sing is only open to border-pass holders who are entitled to travel within Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and Pu’er Prefecture. I was also operating under this restriction whenever I wanted to cross to China while staying in Muang Sing, since, as a third-country citizen, I am not entitled to hold a China–Laos border pass. 5 This timeframe, explained to me in 2015, has already changed significantly as Kunming has in the meantime become connected to China’s rapidly emerging network of high-speed railways. Since 5 January 2017, travellers have been able to reach Shanghai in about eight hours and Guangzhou in about six hours. The latter train connection also dramatically reduces the travel time from Kunming to Guiyang, which is now only two hours. See, for example, Wu Xiaoxi’s (2017) article in the English Yunnan news portal Go Kunming. Additionally, the Chinese section of the ‘China-Laos Railway’, opened in December 2021, drastically reduces the travel time between the Chinese-Lao border in Mohan to Kunming to only about four hours. Hence, it would now take only six hours, and not two days, to travel from the China-Laos border to Guiyang.

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18  Construction of the China-Laos Railway near Nateuy , Luang Namtha province

Photo taken by author, 2019

roads, the Chinese simply drew a straight line, no matter what obstacle was to be overcome. This well reflects the extent to which increasing contact with Chinese progress and modernity informs perceptions and (re-)evaluations of local living conditions, and the current economic state and performance in Laos in general. Seeing Laos as in serious need of catching up with China’s economic development—again underlining smallness vis-à-vis China—my interlocutor repeatedly highlighted that he would readily welcome the China–Laos Railway, which would bring the very same Chinese engineering excellence and impressive structures of tunnels, bridges and railway stations that he had excitedly witnessed during his stays in China. Revisiting Luang Namtha at least once a year between 2017 and 2019, after construction eventually started at the end of 2016, no small number of my interlocutors embraced the China–Laos Railway as a logical, timely, and necessary project. No doubt, at the same time, their expectations were paired with scepticism, mistrust, and also fear, questioning the long-term benefits and possible consequences. However, regarding sensitive issues such as imminent resettlement and opaque, often delayed compensation, with at least 4,411 households affected (DiCarlo 2020), the reaction of people not directly affected by the construction was striking. In Luang Namtha town, for instance, many told me jokingly that they were fine with the planned railway, as long as it would not run through their own houses or

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lands. While living a safe distance from the railway, many residents in and around Luang Namtha town nevertheless complained that the rail route would be too far away, expressing their disbelief that the capital of Luang Namtha province would not have its own train station. In fact, the nearest train station would be in Nateuy, about 40 kilometres away and near Boten and the Chinese border. Seemingly already constituting neoliberal subjects, they openly embrace visions of regional connectivity and the underlying “infrastructural fetishism” (cf. Namba 2017) of economic belts or corridors, roads, and railways, as long as those do not harm them individually—or better yet, as long as they somehow benefit them. This is reminiscent of Erik Harms’s observation (2013, p. 355; emphasis in original) on the construction of a new urban zone in Ho Chi Minh City: that most residents, directly affected by imminent demolition, “do not regret the idea of the project, which they generally consider to be beautiful. They resent the way it has been carried out.” As with the residents of Ho Chi Minh City, subscribing in principle to the state rhetoric of urban improvement and beautification, residents in Luang Namtha expect the state to properly deliver and implement the promise of infrastructural connectedness and development. Thus, the foundational narrative and overall political system of state-delivered development at large is not much challenged; instead of asking for less state intervention, many called for a better, more efficient state with stronger leadership. Notably, they pitted their display of “desiring return to the state and its promises” (High 2014, p. 108) against the capabilities of Chinese state leadership. In this regard, more than a few expressed their admiration of China’s strong, resolute leadership under Xi Jinping. Interestingly, again reflecting their everyday lived and imagined world of transnational connectedness, they often juxtaposed their perception of an efficiently led, stable China with political instability and turmoil in their other large neighbour, Thailand. Instead of political power struggles and intrigues, enduring coup after coup, Xi Jinping came up with a clear vision, his “Chinese dream,” as their common mantra went; they also praised his alleged fight against corruption, which they hoped would happen someday in Laos as well. Consequently, potential negative feelings about the China–Laos Railway were not directed at “China” and “the Chinese,” but rather at the perceived incapability of the Lao state to fully comprehend and handle Chinese-led infrastructural projects. One of the concerns expressed most often was short-sightedness of the Lao government, lacking any long-term strategy for potential sustainable development benefits. A “Study on Benefits of China-Laos High Speed Railway Construction,” published in 2017 by the newly founded “Research Center on China” at the

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National University of Laos (Phommasorn et al. 2017), might back their concerns. While serving the centre’s mission “to draw lessons from China to develop Laos” (my translation), the study merely lists several short-term benefits. Enhanced connectivity between China and Thailand is ranked first, with income generated from transit fees as the main benefit, whereas sustainable long-term development benefits are not mentioned, prompting the question of whether Laos rather remains a “pass-through country” instead of developing into a land-linked country (Sun 2017). On the other hand, the previous chapters have demonstrated that Luang Namtha’s well-connected and highly mobile small-scale cross-border traders have already rebutted similar concerns related to the Kunming–Bangkok Highway, that Laos would risk “limit[ing] itself to ‘watching the trucks go by’” (Tan 2014, p. 427). In the case of the lucrative overland fruit trade, for instance, the activities of Lao middlemen refute macro-level observations that the road is plied almost exclusively by Thai and Chinese logistics companies (e.g., GIZ 2020, p. 33). The opening of the Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge between Chiang Khong and Huay Xai in 2013, which in Laos is practically a part of Chinese infrastructure as it was funded by a Chinese loan, also failed to displace local riverine cross-border transport and trade as officially improved connectivity did not translate into convenience on the ground. As mentioned in chapter 2, the new bridge is rather perceived to stand for troublesome bureaucracy, stricter screening, and higher fees, on which Ban Huay Meng (with its own river port) could capitalize by attracting Lao small-scale traders and even some larger Chinese and Thai companies who were interested in diverting from the bridge. In sum, the local reality of the governmental land-linked vision has been based on (and this seems set to continue, for the time being) the status of a transit country—that is, cashing in on transit fees. A look at route 3A, the Lao section of the Kunming–Bangkok Highway, clearly illustrates this unchanged priority: as I could see during my most recent trip on the highway in September 2019, toll gates had only just been installed, although it was more than 11 years since the opening of the highway in 2008. Applying this to the railway, local sentiment in Luang Namtha also revolved around the anticipation that the practice of arbitrarily imposing transit and other fees would somehow prevail, and they often pointed the finger at larger underlying issues of deep-seated corruption, clientelism, and cronyism, which are not only confined to the railway project, but extend to other related development projects. The China–Laos Railway does not only connect China with the capital of Laos, but also links together China-backed SEZs. While the first station in Laos is located within the Mohan–Boten Economic Cooperation Zone, run by Yunnan Haicheng Industrial Group

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Holdings (see also introduction), Vientiane’s terminal station is 1.5 kilometres away from the Saysettha Development Zone, jointly funded by the municipal government of Vientiane and the Yunnan Provincial Overseas Investment Company. In this regard, instead of understanding the emergence of these “Chinese enclaves” in northern Laos as the “absence of the state in SEZ border governmentality” (Laungaramsri 2019, p. 200), Danielle Tan (2017, p. 141) notes “that, far from eroding the power of the Lao communist regime, the new Chinese transnational networks […] play a key role in the production of a neoliberal governmentality, that allows the Lao state to consolidate its grip over its territorial margins.” Moreover, she argues that devised by the Lao government to meet the challenges of globalization and to maintain its power at the same [sic]. This new technique of governing need not be read as a withdrawal of the Lao state from economic affairs and an incapacity to regulate or control Chinese private actors; rather, it illustrates an extension of indirect rule methods through which elements of Lao sovereignty are vested in private corporations for the state to have access to development. (Tan 2017, p. 142, emphasis in original)

In other words, Luang Namtha’s small-scale traders, and other local actors, know they cannot rely on the Lao state to realize their “Chinese dreams” or China-oriented aspirations of improved livelihoods promised in infrastructures of land-linkedness. To sum up the local sentiment in yet another way: instead of properly and responsibly delivering to its citizens the “Chinese dream”—a notion most of my interlocutors endorsed with admiration, assuming that China would indeed be capable of realizing the “Chinese dream” for its citizens—the Lao party-state elites would merely aim to get rich on the “Chinese dream,” dreaming it at the expense of its citizens. Thus, small-scale traders need to rely on their entrepreneurial experimentations and ingenuity, adaptably drawing on their repertoires of smallness.

Marketplaces in Luang Namtha: Material, Discursive, and Social Sites of Chinese Infrastructure and Modernity If we shift the focus away from the railway—the most recent and spectacular, and therefore already seemingly over-reported, Chinese infrastructure project in Laos—we see that Luang Namtha’s small-scale traders have already been engaging with Chinese infrastructures. As already mentioned in chapter 3, most of the current landscape of marketplaces in Luang Namtha

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19  New Chinese-funded marketplace in Nateuy, Luang Namtha province

Photo taken by author, 2019

province is the result of larger Chinese investment in building new markets and extending or refurbishing old markets across northern Laos. Apart from Luang Namtha town and Muang Sing district, new Chinese-funded marketplaces have also popped up in Nateuy (near Boten) and in the districts of Viang Phuka and Long. Increasingly displaying everyday Chinese commodities and accommodating growing numbers of Chinese vendors, they are part of a larger, rapidly emerging Chinese urban infrastructure of regional bus stations, hospitals, clinics, barbers, supermarkets, hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, and diverse entertainment venues observable in northern Laos and beyond (Tan 2012, 2014, 2015). Initially catering mainly to new inflows of Chinese entrepreneurial migrants, these urban amenities are now also frequented more and more by local residents, primarily the younger generations, especially the restaurants, bars, karaoke establishments, and nightclubs. Apart from the symbolic omnipresence of Chinese characters written on signboards and advertisements, this unfolding Chinese urbanity also finds its way into everyday Lao vocabulary, thereby demonstrating its integration into local lifeworlds. For instance, one finds references to Chinese-run hotels (宾馆binguan), restaurants (饭馆fanguan), supermarkets (超市chaoshi), or specific Chinese food such as hotpot (火锅huoguo), Chinese-style barbeque (烧烤shaokao), and noodles (面条miantiao). Notably, these instances of

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20  New conviviality: joint Chinese-Lao BBQ bar in Nateuy, Luang Namtha province

Photo taken by author, 2019

Chinese urban lifestyle and consumption are not only brought in by Chinese migrants, but also by emergent Lao entrepreneurs who want to bring their experiences in China (as students, workers, or just as curious travellers) back to the local economy. For example, at Luang Namtha’s night market, frequented by locals, (Chinese) businessmen and tourists alike, a young Tai Dam couple started to sell Sichuan-style Malatang (麻辣烫)6 which became highly popular among local Lao and Chinese residents. Interestingly, in English, they advertise their food as “Chinese-style mixed fresh vegetable and noodle soup” while they label it in Lao as “Haw hot pot” (ຈຸມ ່ ຫໍ້ jum ho), again demonstrating the common practice of using the local Lao ethnonym, initially reserved for Lao citizens of Yunnanese descent, to refer to “China” (ເມືອງຫໍ້ muang ho) and “the Chinese” (ຄົນຫໍ້ khon ho) in general (see also chapter 1). Similarly, Chinese-style barbeque (烧烤shaokao) is being increasingly sold on the streets both by Chinese newcomers and Lao residents, attracting mostly younger crowds as a popular nightlife activity. 6 Literally translatable as “numbing spicy soup,” Malatang is a common street food throughout China, said to originate from Sichuan province. At street stalls, customers can choose from a variety of vegetables, meat, and noodles, which then will be cooked together in a spicy broth, with the mala (“numbing spicy”) flavour resulting from a combination of Sichuan pepper and dried chilli.

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Thus, Chinese-induced infrastructural development and change also bring newly emerging social infrastructures of conviviality, entailing “the intrinsic ambivalence of living together across local differences” (Marsden and Reeves 2019, p. 758). These have not received much attention in established scholarship, which focuses instead on Chinese “enclaves” or “instant cities” in the “exceptional spaces” of SEZs in northern Laos (e.g., Laungaramsri 2015, 2019; Rippa 2019, 2021; Nyíri 2017, 2012; Tan 2017), implying minimal social interactions between Chinese and Lao residents. These local, on-the-ground realities of socially lived and negotiated Chinese presence and infrastructure—I present here only preliminary sketches for Luang Namtha, as this is not the primary focus of this book—call for further fine-grained studies on everyday encounters and social relations among a wide range of Chinese and Lao actors in more “ordinary,” rather than exceptional, localities. Chris Lyttleton’s and Yunxia Li’s (2017) work on “rubber’s affective economies” is a promising start in this direction, examining personal and intimate relations between Chinese rubber investors and Lao (mainly Akha) rubber plantation workers in the Muang Sing and Muang Long districts of Luang Namtha province.7 Lyttleton and Li (2017, p. 323) conclude that “[t]he influx of Chinese people and goods into Laos has created a spectrum of opportunities based on proliferating personal connections.” It would be particularly fruitful to conduct further research into how the new generation in northern Laos will live alongside a rising number of Chinese, especially against the backdrop of a rapidly growing number of young people already being sent to high schools, vocational colleges, and universities in China, which I could clearly observe among the children of most of my interlocutors. The often-heard, seemingly fatalistic but pragmatic deliberation among my interlocutors to simply “rent land to the Chinese”—provided they themselves, or relatives or friends, did own land—was often coupled with the expectation, or hope, that this could finance their children’s future education in China. Education-driven Lao youth mobility and migration to China has been largely absent in scholarship rather focusing on youth moving to Thailand (Huijsmans 2019; Molland 2017) or Vietnam (Huijsmans and Lan 2015). 7 Nonetheless, I have some reservations regarding their framing of these relations with the Chinese concept of guanxi (关系). While I am fully convinced by their ethnographic descriptions of these relations as based on reciprocal material exchange and interpersonal affection, and therefore understand why they chose guanxi, it risks a certain Sinocentric bias by explaining Chinese entrepreneurs’ performance and success through a key Chinese cultural concept that is often tied to Han Chinese morality. Lyttleton and Li are aware of this point, and justify the usage, arguing that “it encounters other cultural logics and frameworks of understanding as it travels across borders” (Lyttleton and Li 2017, p. 304).

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Returning to Luang Namtha’s local marketplaces, the intricate and at times contradictory ways that cross-border traders, market vendors, and consumers frame their increased contact with Chinese actors reveal “agonistic intimacies” (Singh 2011), entailing “the copresence of conflict and cohabitation” (p. 430) that leads to “a picture of relatedness, whose coordinates are not predisposed entirely toward either oppositional negation or communitarian affirmation” (p. 431). Directly relevant to my study, Juan Zhang and Martin Saxer (2017) apply the notion of “agonistic intimacies” to the “experiences and realities of everyday neighbouring” (p. 11) across China’s borderlands. Their described “art of neighbouring” entails “[n] eighbourly agonism [that] operates at both local and transnational scales, activating antagonism and inspiration at the same time” (Ibid, p. 17). Thus, at the marketplace, seemingly trivial discussions among market vendors and customers about Chinese commodities often ended in heated remarks invoking mainly negative Chinese stereotypes, relating the allegedly low quality of Chinese products to a general Chinese character of cheating, greed, and rudeness. At the same time, they expressed admiration for Chinese smartness and hard-working attitude, ultimately relating it to the larger picture of China’s successful rapid development and modernization, living up to the “Chinese dream,” against which they essentialized and mocked themselves, in the language of smallness, as foolish and lazy. Similarly, a rising number of new Lao cross-border traders coupled their assertions about the convenience and ease of crossing the border to China and directly interacting with Chinese traders with pejorative complaints about their misbehaviour and “troublesome” (ຫນ້າລໍາຄານ nalamkhan) character (see also chapter 2). It somehow seemed as if my Lao interlocutors relied on the overly negative framing of their Chinese counterparts to make sense of, and thereby underline, their own skills in successfully overcoming the difficult character and constant chicaneries of their Chinese trading partners, which is all again articulated in the downplaying language of smallness and ordinariness (see chapter 4)—stressing their relative smallness vis-à-vis their Chinese neighbours and the triviality of cross-border mobility. As the previous chapters have shown, their articulated weakness and insignificance, in practice, translate into strength.

Conclusion As with the language of smallness, China-sceptical or even anti-Chinese sentiments should not be readily and hastily taken at face value, but must be

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closely examined and nuanced in the actually lived, intrinsically ambivalent social contexts, livelihoods, and lifeworlds of the people who utter them. It is against the backdrop of the complex, seemingly counterintuitive, and messy everyday realities of “neighbouring China” (Saxer and Zhang 2017), or “being-with” (cf. Al-Mohammad 2010) China and the Chinese, that one of Amnuay’s favourite lines needs to be read. He often said to with me, with a mischievous, meaningful smile: “Soon, northern Laos will be part of southern China.” Instead of pointing to the simple narrative of pure fear of Chinese neo-colonial ambitions, which other scholars see in similar local quotes (e.g., Eyler 2019, p. 134), this statement might refer to a simple joke, anger, uncertainty, fear, worry, fatalism, resilience, pragmatism, and aspiration at the same time. Seemingly only a trivial remark and not at all serious, and not infrequently accompanied by some Beer Lao, Amnuay’s quote brilliantly summarizes, in its form, ambiguity, and the way it was expressed, the essence of the intricate nature of uncertain—but not necessarily doomed—Chinainduced or China-oriented futures in northern Laos, both challenging and promising at the same time. Complaining about the ongoing Chinese-funded extension of Luang Namtha’s municipal marketplace, allegedly mainly catering to Chinese retailers, he openly entertained the idea of opening a stall there—after all, the stalls were more spacious, “modern” (ທັນສະໄຫມ than samai), and “beautiful” (ງາມ ngam). On top of that, it was in China where I first met him, witnessing at trade fairs in Jinghong how he and his fellows had already successfully oriented their livelihoods towards the Chinese market. In this chapter I set out to reflect on the inescapable expectations of writing on China’s growing influence in Laos, following the recent inflation of scholarship on China’s impact and power in Southeast Asia in general (Han 2019; Emmerson 2020; Hiebert 2020; Strangio 2020). As the previous chapters clearly demonstrate, actively engaging with the Chinese neighbour has been already an integral part of Lao small-scale traders’ transnational worlds. Instead of foregrounding the lens of Chinese infrastructural development and BRI ambitions as an epistemological and conceptual starting point, I have decided to let these chapters speak for themselves. While not clearly flagged as such, the resulting ethnographic account has brought to light the multifarious, probably unexpected or seemingly contradictory, ways of adjusting to, capitalizing on, aspiring to, or mistrusting the growth of Chinese economic (infrastructural, agricultural), political, and social (demographic) presence. Engaging, or “neighbouring,” China is part of their larger transnational worlds, simultaneously building on long-established cross-border mobility oriented towards Thailand. “Soon, northern Laos

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will be part of southern China”: the emphasis should be on northern Laos, understood as a locally and historically rooted cosmopolitan intersection. While their locally anchored transnational worlds inevitably gravitate more towards China, small-scale traders, and other local actors, still can rely on their skilfully mastered smallness, entrepreneurial experimentation, versatility, and resilience to live with, and actively impact on, China-driven developments. While northern Laos, or for that matter Southeast Asia, might be seen as “both a testing ground for China’s development as a great power and as a gateway for its global expansion in the future” (Stromseth 2019, p. 1), China will also be a testing ground for aspiring traders and entrepreneurs in northern Laos and beyond, willing to experiment and always “finding a way, no matter what.”

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utoronto.ca/beltandroad/article/the-bri-as-an-exercise-in-infrastructuralthinking/#more-156 (accessed 7 May 2021). Oliveira, Gustavo, Galen Murton, Alessandro Rippa, Tyler Harlan, and Yang Yang. 2020. “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the Ground.” Political Geography 82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102225. Phommasorn, Sunthorn, Khammun Sitthilat, Somkhit Bulidam, Saiphorn Thongmanila, Sonsana Misaibua, and Monthong Buasaengthong. 2017. Kansueksa phonpayod khong kansang thang lodfai khwamwaisung jin-lao [A Study on Benefits of China-Laos High Speed Railway Construction]. Vol. 4. Vientiane: Research Center on China, National University of Laos. Rippa, Alessandro. 2019. “Zomia 2.0: Branding Remoteness and Neoliberal Connectivity in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, Laos.” Social Anthropology 27 (2): 253-269. Rippa, Alessandro. 2020a. Borderland Infrastructures: Trade, Development, and Control in Western China. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Rippa, Alessandro. 2020b. “Mapping the Margins of China’s Global Ambitions: Economic Corridors, Silk Roads, and the End of Proximity in the Borderlands.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 61 (1): 55-76. Rippa, Alessandro. 2021. “From Boom to Bust – to Boom Again? Infrastructural Suspension and the Making of a Development Zone at the China-Laos Borderlands.” In Development Zones in Asian Borderlands, edited by Mona Chettri and Michael Eilenberg, 231-251. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Rowedder, Simon. 2020. “Railroading Land-linked Laos: China’s Regional Profits, Laos’ Domestic Costs?” Eurasian Geography and Economics 61 (2): 152-161. Santasombat, Yos. 2019. “ Rent Capitalism and Shifting Plantations in the Mekong Borderlands.” Southeast Asian Affairs: 177-191. Saxer, Martin, and Juan Zhang, eds. 2017. The Art of Neighbouring: Making Relations Across China’s Borders. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Singh, Bhrigupati. 2011. “Agonistic Intimacy and Moral Aspiration in Popular Hinduism: A Study in the Political Theology of the Neighbor.” American Ethnologist 38 (3): 430-450. Strangio, Sebastian. 2020. In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Stromseth, Jonathan. 2019. The Testing Ground: China’s Rising Influence in Southeast Asia and Regional Responses. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Sturgeon, Janet C. 2013. “Cross-Border Rubber Cultivation between China and Laos: Regionalization by Akha and Tai Rubber Farmers.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 34 (1): 70-85. Sun, Yun. 2017. Winning Projects and Hearts? Three Cases of Chinese MegaInfrastructure Projects in Southeast Asia. The Asan Forum Special Forum

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September-October 2017. https://theasanforum.org/winning-projects-andhearts-three-cases-of-chinese-mega-infrastructure-projects-in-southeast-asia (accessed 1 October 2021). Tan, Danielle. 2012. “‘Small is Beautiful’: Lessons from Laos for the Study of Chinese Overseas.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 41 (2): 61-94. Tan, Danielle. 2014. “Chinese Networks, Economic and Territorial Redefinitions in Northern Lao PDR.” In Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia: The Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits Economic Corridor, edited by Nathalie Fau, Sirivanh Khonthapane, and Christian Taillard, 421-452. Singapore: Institute of South East Asian Studies. Tan, Danielle. 2015. Chinese Engagement in Laos: Past, Present, and Uncertain Future. Trends in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Tan, Danielle. 2017. “Chinese Enclaves in the Golden Triangle Borderlands: An Alternative Account of State Formation in Laos.” In Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia: How People, Money, and Ideas from China are Changing a Region, edited by Pál Nyíri and Danielle Tan, 136-156. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. The Straits Times. 2019. “‘Made-in-China’ Durians: Thailand’s Trade Office Warns of Future Competition.” 7 September 2019. https://www.straitstimes.com/ asia/se-asia/made-in-china-durians-thailands-trade-office-warns-of-futurecompetition (accessed 1 October 2021). Tsing, Anna L. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Walker, Andrew. 1999. The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation, Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Woodworth, Max D., and Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi. 2020. “Exploring China’s Borderlands in an Era of BRI-Induced Change.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 61 (1): 1-12. Wu, Xiaoxi. 2017. “Dual High-Speed Railways Usher in New Era for Yunnan.” Go Kunming, 4 January 2017. https://www.gokunming.com/en/blog/item/3871/dual_ high_speed_railways_usher_in_new_era_for_yunnan (accessed 5 January 2018). Xinhua. 2020. “Across China: Tropical Fruits Grow Ripe on Arid Land.” 6 July 2020. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-07/06/c_139192155.htm (accessed 1 October 2021). Zhang, Juan, and Martin Saxer. 2017. “Introduction: Neighbouring in the Borderworlds along China’s Frontiers.” In The Art of Neighbouring: Making Relations Across China’s Borders, edited by Martin Saxer and Juan Zhang, 11-29. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.



Conclusion: Large Insights from Smallness Abstract The concluding chapter once more wraps up northern Lao cross-border traders’ different facets and repertoires of conscious strategies and interiorized habits of smallness. It reflects on how an ethnography of the allegedly banal and trivial can shed significant light on larger dynamics of globalization, neoliberal development, geopolitics, and infrastructure intersecting in the borderlands of China, Laos, and Thailand. I discuss how this lens of smallness can contribute to new understandings of, and research agendas for, conventionally ethnicized hinterlands, uplands, or borderlands in Southeast Asia and beyond. Keywords: smallness; contribution; research agenda; borderlands; Southeast Asia

In the early days of my stay in Ban Huay Meng, in June 2015, the kamnan assigned his daughter-in-law to take me to their own village port. Before we could arrive there, she kept asking me why I even bothered to go to their tiny and messy port. She seemed even more bewildered when I stated my interest in cross-border trade as the main reason. She asked me plainly why I was not looking at the larger, official border crossing at the Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, where all the significant import-export companies would be located. There, I would be able to obtain a “picture” (ภาพ phap) of the entire cross-border trade, which would be “much clearer” (ชัดกว่าเยอะ chat kwa yoe) than their “confusing” (สับสน sabson) operations out of rather chaotic circumstances at the local village level. She thus persistently expressed her puzzlement as to why I would take on the burden of trying to decipher their complicated, if not incomprehensible, trading situation, while the allegedly much more obvious, clearer, better organized, more professional and, most importantly, larger picture of cross-border trade would await me just a few

Rowedder, Simon, Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos. Mastering Smallness. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722360_conc

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kilometres away from their village. Her concern is somehow representative of the overall research climate I was operating in on the ground during fieldwork and later in different conversations in the academe during the writing of this book, where I was often asked why I would bother to attend to these trivial and unpretentious instances of small-scale trade. As I have pointed out in chapter 3, these trade activities, as part of the banality of everyday transnationalism, were thus deemed not worth mentioning or researching both by the traders themselves and by external observers such as scholars. Lao cross-border traders’ mapping of their activities within the realm of ordinariness (ທໍາມະດາ thammada) has been translated into insignificance within scholarly mappings of this borderland, which in turn hinder fresh ethnographic research from foregrounding their central role in the everyday workings of transnational trade flows. This book has made a difference through its openness and patience in paying serious attention to the little world of the ordinary and trivial—as an alternative entry point, and subsequent analytical lens, for studying and understanding the largeness and sophistication of transnational economic skills and cross-border mobility among small-scale traders in Luang Namtha province. Methodologically, the fundamental prerequisite, and probably the challenge, was to let oneself into the conversational mode of smallness—of alleged frivolity and banal details. Instead of dismissing the resulting conversations as irrelevant small talk, merely standing in the way of deeper engagement with otherwise well-formulated research questions, they already constitute in their own right meaningful and grounded articulations of the everyday lived transnational worlds of borderland connectivity, trade, and mobility. Entering Lao cross-border traders’ transnational worlds through careful attention to their rhetoric and practices of unpretentiousness thus opened up an ethnography of smallness as borderland discourse and practice, closely embedded in their everyday banal cosmopolitan routine of seeing, moving, buying, selling, and consuming transnational commodities, ranging spatially from trade fairs in Yunnan to a prominent Tai Lue “fruit village” in northern Thailand and to local marketplaces in Laos.

Entering and Exploring Transnational Worlds through Smallness Throughout the book, I have explored local perceptions and productions of transnational movement and connectivity through different observed notions of smallness. In chapter 1, I examined regional cross-border trade fairs in China through the eyes of Luang Namtha’s traders, who approached

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them as small “local markets” (ຕະຫຼາດທ້ອງຖິນ ່ talat thongthin) or “communal markets” (ຕະຫຼາດຊ ມ ຸ ຊົນ talat sumson). Apparently trivial conversations about fruit quality and ostensibly superficial comparisons between Thai and Chinese household commodities shed light on the everyday workings of transnational trade practices and relations, which are constructed along lines of starkly stereotyped national idiosyncrasies and differences (chapters 2 and 3). My “banal” breakfast routine at marketplaces in Luang Namtha province initiated observations and conversations that pointed to a locally ingrained cosmopolitan condition of navigating ubiquitous transnationality (chapter 3). Numerous traders’ self-deprecating practices of dismissing their activities as small and unprofessional, and thus not qualifying as a proper occupation, belied remarkable trading skills and trajectories involving high levels of aspiration, risk, flexibility, and cross-border mobility (chapter 4). Notions and instances of smallness have served not only as the necessary methodological focus to foreground Lao cross-border traders’ indispensable role for the dynamic and rapidly changing borderland economy of China, Laos, and Thailand; smallness is itself part and parcel of the repertoire of practices and discourses through which Lao traders centrally enable and sustain the transnational movement of mainly Chinese and Thai commodities. Putting the locally rooted “banal cosmopolitanism,” spatially fixed and materially manifested in transnationally assembled marketplaces, in crossborder motion, Lao traders translate interiorized habits of smallness into strategies of inconspicuously blending in within different representational contexts of connectivity between Yunnan, Laos, and Thailand. In the case of regional trade fairs in Xishuangbanna, the Lao traders capitalize on economically, politically, and academically produced representations of “a borderless and transnational Tai realm” (Farrelly 2009, p. 68) or of a transnational “cultural zone of Dai-Tai people” (Zheng 2008, p. 39) to target ethnic affinity and intimacy with Chinese Tai Lue customers through employing (more or less successfully) colloquial Tai Lue vocabulary in a casual and cheerful tone, stressing common food customs, and establishing and maintaining long-lasting local networks based on notions of close friendship (ສ່ຽວ seo) and (fictive) kinship (ພີ່ ນອ້ ງ phi nong). These carefully established close relations stand in contrast with their interactions with non-Tai Lue (mainly Han) Chinese customers, which were rather impersonal and characterized by distance. Bypassing the original internationalism of these trade fairs, which would also involve proactively catering to Han Chinese fair visitors, seems to be economically irrational, but is again, on the contrary, the result of the rationality of smallness—of acting locally and experimenting with Xishuangbanna’s “Dainess,” thereby focusing on

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a small but loyal customer base. The Lao traders’ extended local contacts in Jinghong and beyond, their popularity at the fairs, and the recognition of their performance by several Thai participants, who otherwise struggled with the harsh realities of the Chinese market, were all proof of their success, which, however, was again framed by the protagonists themselves in the language of insignificance and ordinariness. In addition, the fact that my initial assumption that they were Tai Lue was shared by numerous Chinese fair visitors (often interchangeably referring to them as Dai or Thai) likewise reflects their success in seamlessly inserting themselves into the commodifiable Tai/Dai World of Xishuangbanna. In the case of transnational Thai fruit trade out of Ban Huay Meng, it is the rigid notion of the national “Other,” and not ethnic relatives, which facilitates cross-border fluidity and mobility. The articulation of difference, of nationally couched asymmetries in commodity quality and associated hierarchies of economic development, effectively enables transnational commodity flows. Lao traders skilfully managed to cater to Thai and Chinese actors by invoking national stereotypes about their respective “Others” while performing their own ascribed role of being economically inferior. They played by the rules of prevailing national differences and the mutual Thai and Chinese stereotyping to achieve a frictionless transnational movement of commodities. The traders’ central role in mediating potential struggles over fruit quality between Thai suppliers and Chinese buyers is a result of the notable lack of Lao commodities at local marketplaces in northern Laos. Local commodityscapes are made up largely of Thai and Chinese commodities. Not directly associated with the commodities they handle and therefore not directly held accountable for their quality (in complete contrast with Ban Huay Meng’s villagers who champion their “premium” Thai fruits, and by extension national identity and pride), Lao cross-border traders are in a sense in a neutral and flexible position. They are accustomed to negotiating different commodity inflows from neighbouring countries. Laos’s lack of consumer industry and its economic dependency on the larger neighbouring economies of Thailand and China is, at least in my study of the emerging group of Lao small-scale cross-border traders, converted on the ground into social and cultural capital.

“Small” Productions of Transnational Connectivity Luang Namtha’s cross-border traders’ skills at flexibly blending in with different representational logics of transnational connectivity and commodity

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flows constitute the on-ground translation, and at the same time the local production, of the officially envisioned land-linkedness of Laos—as advertised by the Lao government, development agencies and, more recently, China, as part of its regional BRI ambitions. This productive aspect is important since it reverses the conventional approach of studying local borderland actors and communities as primarily impacted by large formulations, mappings, and representations of neoliberal development, modernity, and infrastructural advances, which have been recently gravitating towards China (see introduction and chapter 5). This research direction eventually tends to hark back in some form to the underlying, well-established epistemological dichotomy of ethnic, traditional margins on the one hand, and central state and global forces of modernization on the other. This tension between the tried and tested conceptual layers of the state, its imposed development/infrastructure projects, and local ethnic minorities still prevails in (Asian) borderland anthropology, as reflected, for instance, in the research questions that guide Alessandro Rippa’s work on Borderland Infrastructures at western China’s borders with Pakistan and Myanmar: How does infrastructure development affect cross-border livelihood in today’s China? What is the place and role of ethnic minorities in larger processes of development? How are newly envisioned forms of connectivity as part of the BRI agenda affecting pre-existing mobilities and forms of exchange? (2020a, pp. 12-13)

Right at the outset, these questions already imply necessary dichotomies between “infrastructure development” and “cross-border livelihood,” between “ethnic minorities” and “larger processes of development,” and between BRIrelated new forms of connectivity and “pre-existing mobilities and forms of exchange.” Large-scale development and local small-scale livelihoods, ethnic tradition and state modernity, and different temporalities of connectivity all clash in the borderland. Variations of local agency, often from the necessarily ethnic periphery, are therein mostly understood in relation to—that is, in response to or as a result of—larger geopolitical and geoeconomic dynamics of socio-economic change and spatial transformation. I should point out that I am not dismissing the multitude of rapid changes in the region, which have had disastrous consequences for local livelihoods, especially in regard to environmental degradation and land dispossession due to large-scale projects of natural resource extraction (e.g., Sims 2015; Kenney-Lazar 2018; Baird 2014; Kenney-Lazar 2019). Exploring otherwise understudied transnational worlds of cross-border traders in northern

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Laos, I simply want to point to the possibility of local actors in northern Laos not merely being affected by and exposed to change, but actively contributing to the dynamically changing borderland economy. I contend that small-scale cross-border traders in northern Laos have themselves been continually producing borderland infrastructures, centrally enabling on the ground the actual workings of transnational connectivity, and thus becoming an indispensable part of local marketplaces and Chinese trade fairs. Here, AbdouMaliq Simone’s (2004) conceptualization of “people as infrastructure,” originally applied to urban spaces in Johannesburg, can be applied to borderlands. The latter are, like cities, characterized by incessantly flexible, mobile, and provisional intersections of residents that operate without clearly delineated notions of how the city [i.e., borderland] is to be inhabited and used. These intersections […] have depended on the ability of residents to engage complex combinations of objects, spaces, persons, and practices. These conjunctions become an infrastructure—a platform providing for and reproducing life in the city [i.e., borderland]. (Simone 2004, pp. 407-408)

Like Laos on larger regional maps of economic corridors and infrastructural development, Lao cross-border traders constitute on the ground, on a smaller scale, an essential link between the markets of Thailand and China. This vital linkage is not visibly achieved through extraordinary notions of transnational ethnicity or a culturally distinctive “agency ‘to do things differently’ from hegemonic development approaches” (Turner 2013, p. 15), but is embedded in the overall realm of thammada (ທຳ�ມະດາ, ordinary), and thus of smallness. With thammada, cross-border traders and other local actors refer to the mundaneness of traded commodities (fruits, household goods), the commonplaceness of transnationally assembled local marketplaces, and the banal convenience of everyday lived cross-border mobility and connectivity. This empirical tonality of ordinariness might be disillusioning to a scholarly desire to tell extraordinary stories building on potentially tense and conflictual dichotomies, as “[a] focus on hostility or other clear binaries offers easily translated drama” (Jonsson 2014, p. 49). Reflecting on my own research trajectory in writing this book, I had initially followed the desire to construct an ethnographic account corresponding to grand representational narratives of revived transnational ethnic (Tai Lue) trading worlds amidst dynamics of regional cross-border economic opening-up. “Any anthropological representation constitutes a potential intervention regarding what world people can imagine and

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experience,” Hjorleifur Jonsson (2014, p. 149) aptly remarks in this regard. For my own part, I had set out to imagine and experience, and later reproduce and share with my readers, a transnational “Tai World,” inevitably infused with some Zomian undertones of juxtaposing the central state and marginal ethnic subjects in the general study of (Sino-) Southeast Asian uplands and borderlands. Only by insisting on seriously following up on the widespread local discourse of ordinariness—and not dismissing and wilfully neglecting it as merely some trivial side note, potentially disturbing my more meaningful pursuit of “better” knowing und understanding border trade dynamics—I gradually explored the transnational worlds of a highly diverse group of Lao cross-border traders along novel lines of cosmopolitanism and entrepreneurial experimentation. Instead of “going down” to the ground to simply study larger dynamics and representations “from below” (therefore eventually ending up again studying the developments “above”), this book has attempted to study local actors’ transnational worlds from within, tracing their modes of representing and actively shaping the borderlands of China, Laos, and Thailand. Sustaining borderland infrastructures along flexible productions of ethnic spaces (trade fairs in Xishuangbanna) and national frontiers of difference (in the case of handling transnational fruit flows and navigating commodityscapes at local markets), their transnational worlds are not merely a passive venue of, but rather a hidden and invisible engine (at least to scholars) of larger dynamics of globalization, neoliberal development, geopolitics, and infrastructure intersecting in the borderlands. I do not intend this conclusion as a claim to completely re-shape the understanding of local borderland dynamics. Since I have specif ically attended to the case of cross-border traders in northern Laos, I merely want to highlight their role as active agents of transnational economic connectivity, thereby going beyond the ethno-spatial confines otherwise imposed on Southeast Asian borderland particularities. At the very least, their border practices and rhetoric point to “an everyday possibility that has often been made unthinkable by particular structures of knowledge, representation, and inequality” (Jonsson 2014, p. 149).8 The traders’ discursive 8 Hjorleifur Jonsson (2014, p. 149) refers to “precolonial equivalences and to long-standing practices of negotiating difference in the Asian hinterlands,” which has, in his opinion, been made unthinkable by aforementioned “particular structures of knowledge, representation, and inequality” (Ibid.) His Slow Anthropology largely critiques James Scott’s Zomian narrative, which he sees as symptomatic of a state of academic affairs in which “[w]e have irresponsible fantasies of understanding other places, which have profound implications for how we make our own worlds comprehensible” (Jonsson 2014, pp. 19-20). Evidently, Jonsson’s work has also greatly inspired my book.

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and performative versatility in exploiting and making sense of transnational connectivity and mobility defy any scholarly attempt to fix them by means of neat ethno-spatial representations along a clearly contoured state–society divide. This book is intended to provide some thought-provoking impulse to critically reflect on our academic production of borderland dynamics in general. It provides fresh, innovative, and empirically sound insights into the study of Asian borderlands and highlands, going beyond prevailing representational narratives that inevitably engage in some form with Zomia and operate with unchallenged notions of state, ethnicity, marginality, and associated forms of agency. Gradually challenging established claims about area-specific particularities conceptualized along strong, often antagonistic binaries between ethnic, traditional margins on the one hand, and central state and global forces of modernization and development on the other, my ethnography has been open and attentive to cross-border perceptions, practices, relations, and discourses that are probably surprising, initially confusing and disturbing, or sometimes considered too “banal”. These facets might otherwise be overlooked, neglected, hidden by, or arranged to fit rather static puzzles made from heavy epistemological blocks of spatial and ethnic representation, abstraction, and imagination. This book shows that a recalibration of scale and of the top-down hierarchy of ethno-spatial borderland representations (of which “on-theground” views of larger dynamics are still part) might be helpful in this regard. Jumping scales is here not only understood as methodology, but also as a central ethnographic object of this study. Just as Willem van Schendel (2002, p. 665) calls for academics “to jump scale, to break out of the chrysalis of the area dispensation which occurred after World War 2, and to develop new concepts of regional space,” Lao cross-border traders jump scales to produce transnational worlds of everyday cross-border mobilities, social relations, entrepreneurial experimentation, and aspiration. While methodologically, jumping up to trans-area and transnational scales is intended to transgress arbitrary national and area boundaries, it might also create or sustain understudied interstices—“geographical blind fields” (Harris 2013, p. 145)—or lose sight of locally anchored and socially grounded dynamics. Lao cross-border traders jump both up and down scales, locally creating transnational movement and transnationally assembling local marketplaces, zooming in on the interstitial nature and local particularity of northern Laos and zooming out to its transnational connectedness with its Chinese and Thai neighbours, all through the language and practices of smallness.

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Establishing an ethnography of smallness, I have demonstrated that proceeding with the “insignif icant” or “banal”—thereby reflecting the course of conversations on the ground—does indeed allow us to gain extraordinary insights into the Lao small-scale traders’ centrality in larger regional economic dynamics. Amnuay, during one of our last conversations in Luang Namtha, seems to understand this very well: “Knowing the complete picture of small-scale trade benef its bigger companies—and you as a researcher as well.” This is arguably the best answer to the kamnnan’s daughter-in-law’s question as to why I bothered to look at their tiny, insignif icant, and messy village port of Ban Huay Meng in the f irst place.

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Index affinity see also familiarity; intimacy cultural 68, 90, 96 ethnic 46, 62, 98, 223 ethno-cultural 89 linguistic 68, 78 agency culturally embedded 35, 226 ethnic 36, 228 experimentarian 172; see also experimentarian ethic local 225 Agier, Michel 23-24 Akha 150, 159n21, 213 antagonism 74-75, 214 anthropology 37, 111 of cosmopolitanism 149n7; see also cosmopolitanism of (Southeast Asian/Asian) borderlands 33, 225 Slow Anthropology 227n8; see also Jonsson, Hjorleifur Appadurai, Arjun 29, 135 Asian Development Bank (ADB) 16, 146-47, 195 aspirations 30, 31, 37, 44, 49, 83, 180, 188, 190, 195, 205, 210 Ban Huay Meng 41, 44, 103, 130, 132-133, 137, 142, 160, 190, 200, 209, 221 agricultural superiority discourse in 119-24, 224 development as national fruit village 108-13 emergence of cross-border trade in 113-16 strategical border crossing in 116-19 Tai Lue migration history of 103-04 (trade of) Thai fruits from 130-31, 133, 191, 224 (Tai Lue) traders/agriculturalists from 129, 131, 135, 136, 138, 142, 160 village port 124-26, 131, 229 banal cosmopolitanism 23-24, 48, 141, 148, 153-60, 163, 165, 171, 172, 205, 222-23; see also cosmopolitanism, mundane; cosmopolitanism, ordinary banal nationalism 24, 44, 153, 154 and cosmopolitan practices 160-63 banal transnationalism 153 banality 24-25, 45, 154, 159, 164, 186, 222 Beck, Ulrich 153 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 16, 20-21, 30, 49, 63, 195-200, 205, 215, 225 infrastructure see infrastructure label 195 lens of 49, 198-99, 215

Billig, Michael 24, 44, 153 Bokeo province 21, 27, 39, 40, 73, 95, 103n1, 104, 115, 143n1, 179, 189, 204 border and cosmopolitanism see cosmopolitanism and borders casino 20 checkpoints 44, 93, 115, 196 citizens 196 district 108 formalities 43, 44, 136, 179, 196 officers/officials 196, 201 passes 43, 93, 95, 127n22, 206n4 patrol 108 policies 95, 196, 202 practices 24, 31, 41, 227 regime 43, 94, 95, 196 rhetoric 227 security 63, 200 strategies 30n11, 196 town 20, 71, 185 border crossings 91, 189 China-Laos see Boten; Mohan; Muang Sing China-Vietnam see Vietnam local/small 43-44, 93-94, 95n18, 115-17, 127n22, 196 international 43, 93, 95n18, 115-16, 196, 206n4, 221 Thailand-Laos see Chiang Khong; Huay Xai Thailand-Myanmar see Mae Sai; Tachilek borderland(s) 15-16, 23-24, 29 Asian 20n5, 26, 30, 228 economy 31, 41, 47, 95, 99, 137, 142, 154, 158, 161, 190, 200, 202, 204, 205, 223, 226 ethnic conceptualization/representation of 37, 111 (Sino-) Southeast Asian 26, 33, 34-38, 164 Thai-Yunnan 40, 193 see also ThaiYunnan Project Yunnan-Laos-Thailand borderland (economy) 15, 26, 30, 95, 142, 161, 190, 200 borderworlds 38, 49 Boten 20-21, 71, 98, 147n5, 206, 208, 211; see also Mohan Boten Beautiful Land Specific Zone 20; see also Mohan–Boten Economic Cooperation Zone international border crossing/ checkpoint 93-95, 196; see also Mohan, international border crossing/ checkpoint Bouté, Vanina 32-33, 152n9, 177, 180

254  Bridgehead Strategy (Yunnan) 39, 63 Brown, Alan 21, 142 caravan trade (Yunnanese) 27-28, 39, 93 Chiang Khong 10, 39, 73, 103-04, 108, 109n6, 111-12, 115, 118, 119, 146, 161, 177n6, 191, 204 border crossing with Huay Xai 21n6, 127, 186, 189, 209; see also Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge; Huay Xai, border crossing with Chiang Khong customs (office) 115n13, 117n15 district 41, 99, 103, 107, 112, 115n13, 116 municipality/town 109n6, 111n8, 112n8, 117, 127 port; ports in 115, 117 Chiang Mai 27, 40, 68, 90, 91n14, 105, 107, 113, 142, 155 Chiang Mai University 41, 105, 108; see also Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) Chiang Rai province 16, 27, 39-41, 43, 73, 90, 99, 103-04, 106-07, 112-13, 115n13, 146, 187, 204 Chiang Saen 106, 112n8 China-Laos Railway 16, 20, 205, 206n5, 207-09 Chinese dream 205-10, 214 Cohen, Paul T. 29, 104, 106, 203, 204n3 commodityscapes 23, 46, 70, 83, 96, 202, 224, 227 connectivity and remoteness 149; see also remoteness as resource 200-02 between China and Thailand 137, 209, 223 borderland 222 cross-border 24, 29, 148, 154, 191, 198 historical 29, 147 improvement of 22, 209 informal 197; see also Ngo, Tak-Wing and Hung, Eva P. W infrastructural 39, 49, 174, 195 regional 41, 71, 147, 208 transnational 23-24, 30-31, 47-48, 148, 173, 190, 193, 197-98, 222, 224-29 visions of 195, 208 convenience 37, 48, 82, 160, 173, 178-82, 185, 209, 214, 226 conviviality 212-13; see also infrastructure, social cosmopolitanism 24-26, 142, 149-50, 227 and borders 23 anthropology of 149n7; see also anthropology banal see banal cosmopolitanism emancipatory 176n5 local condition/dimension of 23, 149, 163-64, 193, 223 mundane 149n6, 153 ordinary 23, 153 practical understanding of 25, 48, 141, 154 practices of 143-54, 157, 160

Cross-Border Tr aders in Northern L aos

Dai (daizu) 26, 46, 61, 63-64, 66-68, 70, 71n5, 74, 79-80, 83-84, 90, 97, 98-99, 110, 135 Dai-Tai ambiguities 63, 98, 135, 223-24 Dai-Thai ambiguities 64, 67-68, 79, 83-84, 90, 98, 99, 224; see also Tai Lue (ethnicity) and association with Thai Culture (in China)  Dainess/Dai-ness 61, 68, 80, 223 Davis, Sara 29-30, 40, 104 development agencies/organizations/partners 21, 172n2, 225 agricultural development in Thailand 109, 122, 137 agricultural development in Laos 120-21, 123 aid 159  asymmetry of/uneven/unequal national economic development 47, 123, 135, 137, 202, 224 in China 63-64, 207, 214 Chinese/China-driven development 20, 49, 195, 200, 205, 213, 215-16 Chinese modes/visions of 20, 49, 195 lowland 180 neoliberal 16, 49, 221, 225, 227 of infrastructure; see infrastructure policies/schemes 20, 30, 36-37, 117, 147, 172, 178 projects 209, 225 sustainable 208-09 state-delivered 208 underdevelopment 22, 24, 99, 123, 129, 141, 202; see also inferiority upland 36 zones 20; see also Special Economic Zones (SEZs) dexterity, linguistic 44, 75, 157, 206; see also skills, language Diana, Antonella 30n11, 130n23, 133, 160, 195-96 Economic Corridors 16, 30, 226 China–Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor 16 GMS North–South Economic Corridor 16-17 Nanning-Singapore Economic Corridor 16n1 Endres, Kirsten W. 31, 134 epistemology 26, 36, 37, 46, 49, 215, 225, 228 ethnicity ambiguities of 110-11, 133, 135n25, 152n9; see also Dai-Tai ambiguities; Dai-Thai ambiguities and trade 27, 40, 104, 108-11 cross-border 46, 63, 90, 99, 137, 160-61; see also ethnic groups, cross-border fictive 61, 73, 79, 98, 99, 111

255

Index

fluid and situational 35 instrumental notion of 30n11 multi-ethnicity, ethnic diversity 16, 26, 28, 32, 41, 46, 48, 61, 111, 133, 141-42, 160-61, 177, 192 questioning notions of 15, 164, 185, 228 transborder 26, 133 transnational 26, 30, 40, 47, 141, 155, 160-61, 204; see also ethnic groups, transnational ethnic groups 36, 63, 105, 147, 155 cross-border 41, 63; see also ethnicity, cross-border transnational 161; see also ethnicity, transnational ethnic minorities 26, 32, 35, 159, 195, 225 Chinese notion of (shaoshu minzu) 26, 110 ethnography 26, 37-38, 47, 49, 221, 228 in situ and en route 43 multi-sited 38, 40, 43 of smallness 22, 25-26, 222, 229 Evans, Grant 32, 63 Evrard, Olivier 33, 147 experimentation 15-16, 47-49, 165, 171, 178-79, 184, 186, 189-90, 192, 196-97, 210, 216, 227-28 experimentarian ethic 48, 171; see also agency, experimentarian; High, Holly familiarity see also affinity; intimacy cross-border 161, 206 cultural 63, 134 ethnic 74, 134 ethno-cultural 67 linguistic 78 with traded goods 77-78, 87, 89, 128, 162 flexibility 31, 43, 75, 95, 143, 192, 196, 200, 223; see also versatility Forbes, Andrew 27 Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge 21n6, 115, 116, 117n15, 127, 209, 221 friendship, cultural notions of 42, 46, 132-37, 160, 223; see also seo frictions 126, 129, 130, 135, 136, 165 “friction of terrain” 36; see also Scott, James; Zomia productive dimension of 136; see also Tsing, Anna frontier(s) capitalism 202-03 communities 201 ethnic 67, 108 fruit 108-09, 203 of national difference 227 of uneven development 202; see also development, asymmetry of/ uneven/unequal national economic development reproduction of 47, 103 resource 19, 202

Sino-Southeast Asian 11, 46, 63 Southeast Asian 67 town 159n12 trade 202 Yunnan-Southeast Asian 200 Gao Zhuang (in Jinghong, Xishuangbanna) 65-66, 68-69, 83 Giersch, C. Patterson 27, 29, 35, 146n4, 199-200 Golden Triangle 66, 159n12 Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone 20; see also Special Economic Zones (SEZs) Golden Quadrangle 63 Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) 16, 30, 63, 70, 74, 80, 84, 195 Han Chinese 26, 29, 63, 67, 73, 74n6, 110, 115, 133, 135n25, 213n7 customers/visitors at trade fairs 74, 76-79, 83, 85, 88-89, 96-97, 99, 223 Harris, Tina 38, 148, 228 Haw (Chinese) 41, 73-74, 78, 97, 152, 155, 161-63, 200, 212 High, Holly 37, 48, 171-72, 208 highlands 34n13, 36; see also uplands and lowlands 29, 35-36, 163, 180 highland Lao 150; see also lao sung highland minorities 35 highland people 150, 162; see also lao sung relocation of highland villages 147 study of 228 Hill, Ann Maxwell 27-29, 74n6, 146n4 “hill tribes” (chao khao) 113 Hmong 36, 113, 113n12, 147, 150, 159, 159n12 Huay Xai 104, 110, 115, 130-31, 133, 142, 143n2, 177n6, 180-81, 186, 191, 200-01 border crossing with Chiang Khong 21n6, 186, 189, 209; see also Chiang Khong, border crossing with Huay Xai; Fourth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge; Khonekeo port identity ethnic 29, 36, 62, 107-08, 111 Lao national 158, 163 narrative see narrative (construction of) identity occupational 117n15, 119 Phunoy 152n9; see also Phunoy Tai (Lue) 29-30, 40, 104-05, 107-08, 109n6; see also Tai Lue (ethnicity) Thai national 96, 224 inferiority 18, 24-25, 47, 119-20, 123, 129, 137-38, 141, 164, 202, 224; see also development, underdevelopment informality 31, 82, 197 organized 197; see also Ngo, Tak-Wing and Hung, Eva P. W.

256  infrastructure 36, 47, 49 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 49; see also Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) borderland 200, 225-27 Chinese 20, 49, 145, 195, 205, 210-14 cross-border 115, 174, 180 cultural Tai Lue 107, 118 development 174, 199-200, 205, 208, 213, 215, 225-26 fruit market 115 local productions of 30 of land-linkedness 201; see also land-linkedness of Laos people as infrastructure 226; see also Simone, AbdouMaliq social 213 see also conviviality transport 31, 121, 145, 165, 180, 205-06, 209; see also China-Laos Railway; KunmingBangkok Highway virtual 161 insignificance 19, 23, 25, 45, 48, 83, 110, 137, 171, 173, 192, 214, 222, 224, 229; see also narratives of insignificance intimacy see also affinity; familiarity agonistic 214 cultural 46 ethnic (fictive) 61, 73, 79n8, 90, 98, 223 ethno-cultural 64, 88, 96 Lao-Lue 70 Jinghong 61, 64-70, 73, 77, 79-81, 83, 85-86, 91-92, 96-97, 106, 115, 133, 142-43, 145, 191, 197, 204, 215, 224 Jonsson, Hjorleifur 35, 37, 111, 226-227, 227n8 Keyes, Charles 28, 105-06, 149 Khmu 113, 150, 159 Khonekeo port (Huay Xai, Bokeo province) 115, 124-28, 135, 201 kinship 108-09, 115, 137, 164, 185 fictive 46, 223 Kunming 39-41, 44, 73, 85n11, 106, 206 Kunming-Bangkok Highway 16, 21, 39, 71, 146, 157, 174, 187, 209 Kunming-Vientiane Railway see China-Laos Railway land-linkedness of Laos 20, 24, 141, 157, 200, 202, 209-10, 225 from land-locked to land-linked country 16, 19, 203, 209 Lanna as historical kingdom 68, 118 Lanna Cultural and Ethnic Museum 105 Lanna dress 90n13 Lanna style 66, 105 Lanna Thai (culture) 104-08 “Lanna Renaissance” 105 Lanten 147, 159, 191-92

Cross-Border Tr aders in Northern L aos

Laungaramsri, Pinkaew 20, 202, 210, 213 Lao lum 150n8; see also lowland Lao Lao sung 150, 162; see also highland Lao; highland people Lao thoeng 150; see also upland Lao; upland people Leach, Edmund 66 Leshkowich, Ann Marie 31, 173-74, 176 Li, Yunxia 203, 213 livelihoods 23, 30, 32-32, 35-36, 109n6, 113n12, 143-44, 203, 205, 210, 215, 225 lowlands 27-28, 147, 159, 180 and highlands 29, 35-36, 163, 180 and uplands 37 development in see development lowland Lao 150n8; see also lao lum Luang Namtha marketplaces of 25, 47-48, 72, 115, 122, 130, 141, 143, 145, 148, 150, 152, 160-61, 165, 171, 176, 178-79, 181, 190-91, 210, 212, 214-15, 223 province 16, 18, 20-21, 23-24, 27, 30, 33, 39-41, 47, 61-62, 71, 81n9, 86-87, 92, 93n16, 94-95, 110, 142, 145-47, 159, 163, 165, 186, 188-89, 193, 203-09, 213 town 43, 47, 62, 70, 81, 130-31, 142-144, 146, 155, 180, 182n8, 185, 188-91, 207-08, 211, 229 traders from 25, 31, 38, 46, 49, 62, 64, 70, 73-74, 76-80, 92, 94, 96, 103, 162, 196-97, 200, 202, 209-10, 222, 224 Luang Prabang 32, 127, 146n4, 155 Lyttleton, Chris 20, 32, 93, 203, 213 Mae Sai (Thai-Myanmar border crossing) 90n14, 106, 204; see also Tachilek margins ethnic/traditional (upland) margins vs. central (lowland) modern state 36, 38, 159, 225, 227-28; see also uplands; lowlands “marginal hubs” 148; see also Marsden, Magnus and Reeves, Madeleine marginality 21, 149, 156, 228 marginalization 37, 200 Marsden, Magnus and Reeves, Madeleine 148 Mekong River 15, 21n6, 26, 41, 64, 99, 103-04, 108, 110-11, 115, 124-26, 142, 147n5, 200; see also Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Upper Mekong Region 118 Menghai 81 Mengla 44, 73, 81, 95, 131, 133, 185, 191 Menglun 81, 131, 133 Mengman 130, 132 Michaud, Jean 34-36, 160 mental mapping 96, 157, 205 mobility and fixity 38, 148; see also Harris, Tina and migration 32-33, 177, 213

Index

cross-border 23, 30-31, 40-41, 43, 45-46, 91-92, 95, 99, 136-38, 154, 157, 178, 195-96, 205, 214-15, 222-24, 226 high degree of 130-31, 136, 154, 178, 192 restriction of 34 transnational 24-25, 30, 48, 143, 172, 187, 190, 192, 228 Moerman, Michael 28 Mohan 44, 71, 73, 86n12, 91-92, 178-79, 185, 206n5; see also Boten international border crossing/checkpoint 44, 93, 95, 196; see also Boten, international border crossing/checkpoint Mohan–Boten Economic Cooperation Zone 20, 209; see also Boten Beautiful Land Specific Zone; Special Economic Zones (SEZs) Muang Sing 27, 62, 133, 155, 158-59, 204, 206, 213 border crossing (Panghai/Chahe) 44, 93, 196, 206n4 marketplaces of 115-16, 130, 141, 143n1, 145, 147, 150-52, 157-61, 171-72, 178, 180, 206, 211 market vendors in 122, 158-62 mobile traders from 124, 130-31, 142, 161, 204 Myanmar (Burma) 21, 28, 33, 34-35n13, 63, 68, 93, 108, 112, 146, 150n8, 155, 159n12, 200, 201, 204, 225 Nan province 106, 107, 111 narratives grand (larger) narratives 25, 45, 47, 208, 226 of downplaying 18, 48, 73, 165, 171-72, 174, 189, 214 of insignificance 18-19, 23, 25, 45, 48, 17173, 192, 214, 224; see also insignificance of smallness 173, 175; see also smallness representational narratives 37-38, 226, 228 narrative (construction of) identity 173-74 Nateuy 98, 207-08, 211-12 nationalism, banal see banal nationalism New Economic Mechanism (konkai setthakhit mai) 144 New Thinking ( jintanakan mai) 144 Ngo, Tak-Wing and Hung, Eva P. W. 197, 199 Northern Thai language (kam muang) 28, 44, 90, 158 Oakes, Tim 149, 198-99 occupation 23n7, 24, 48, 171, 173, 175, 176-80, 183-85, 188, 189n10, 223 non-occupational framing of 23n7, 48, 171, 173, 176 occupational identity see identity, occupational occupational structure of Laos 33, 174, 192

257 ordinariness 18, 23, 31, 45, 48, 82, 96, 160, 173, 214, 222, 224, 226-27; see also thammada (ordinary) othering, national 24, 74, 77, 96, 134-38, 160-61, 224; see also stereotypes Oudomxai province 33, 95, 110, 115, 145, 147n5 Paasi, Anssi 24 Panyagaew, Wasan 29, 104 periphery 22, 48, 141, 149, 225 peripheral centrality 21, 142; see also Brown, Alan peripheral diplomacy of China 63 Phayao province 27, 91n13, 107, 115n13 Pholsena, Vatthana 21, 32, 35, 150n8 Phongsaly province 74n6, 95, 103, 110, 144, 152, 162, 185 Phunoy 41, 152, 161, 178, 185 post-Socialism 31, 33, 173-74, 192 pragmatism 31, 39, 47, 49, 61, 64, 80, 84, 93, 95, 99, 150, 192, 196-97, 202-03, 205, 213, 215 proximity 21, 24, 46, 61-62, 67, 89, 144 quality and national stereotypes 123, 128, 204, 214, 223; see also othering, national; stereotypes, national comparison between Thai and Chinese commodities 122-23, 158, 162-64, 223-24 contestation of 47, 75, 126, 128-29, 132, 135, 138, 224 discourses of 103, 119-22, 131-32, 137-38, 158, 162-64 national grading of 47, 126, 129, 133, 162, 165 of (Thai) fruits 47, 103, 112, 118-20, 122, 126, 129, 131, 138, 223-24 Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) 41, 108; see also Chiang Mai University Rehbein, Beuke 87, 172, 192 remoteness 156, 159, 161 and connectivity 149; see also connectivity resilience 19, 49, 145, 179, 195-97, 200, 203, 215-16 Rippa, Alessandro 20, 200, 213, 225 satisficing 87-89, 98; see also Simon, Herbert Saxer, Martin 149, 214-215 Scott, James 34-37, 66, 172n2, 227n8; see also Zomia seo, Lao/Lue notion of companionship 133-34, 142, 160, 203, 223; see also friendship Sida 147, 150, 182-83n8 Simon, Herbert 88-89; see also satisficing Simone, AbdouMaliq 226

258  Sipsongpanna 26, 28-29, 62, 68, 78, 81, 103-06, 108, 118, 146, 155, 160; see also Xishuangbanna (Dai Autonomous Prefecture) skills agricultural 119-21, 123, 129, 131, 137-38 Chinese engineering 205-06 cosmopolitan 154, 157-58; see also cosmopolitanism language 44, 76, 110; see also dexterity, linguistic occupational/professional 48, 176, 178, 190 transnational/cross-border economic/trading 19, 23-25, 48, 71-72, 73, 87-88, 91, 165, 171-74, 181, 183, 185-86, 192-93, 214, 222-24 smallness 15-16, 18-19, 31, 43, 141, 143, 164, 195, 198, 216, 222, 226 as analytical lens 30, 38, 45, 49, 192, 221 entrepreneurial 31-32, 173-74 ethnography of 22-26, 222, 229 language (discourse) of 38, 44-45, 47, 70, 110, 123, 165, 172, 192-93, 214, 222-23, 228; see also narratives of smallness of Laos 19-20, 22, 24, 47, 123, 129, 135, 137-38, 164, 202, 207, 214 performances/practices of 31, 38, 47, 70, 99, 175, 178, 184, 223, 228 repertoires of 49, 82, 141, 210, 222 strategies of 64, 99, 221, 223 Southeast Asian Massif 34, 35n13, 38; see also Michaud, Jean; Zomia Special Economic Zones (SEZs) 19, 66, 209-10, 213; see also Boten Beautiful Land Specific Zone; Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone; Mohan–Boten Economic Cooperation Zone stereotypes national 47, 103, 121, 123, 129, 135-38, 164, 204, 223-24; see also othering, national; quality and national stereotypes of China, Chinese 20, 214 self-stereotyping 24, 99, 123 Tachilek (Myanmar-Thai border crossing) 204; see also Mae Sai Tai-speaking groups 26, 105 Tai-speaking peoples 26, 68, 80, 105-06, 133 Tai Dam 41, 46, 62, 70, 130, 142, 152, 159n12, 161-62, 178, 180-81, 204, 212 Tai Lue (ethnicity) 26-29, 30n11, 35, 41, 46, 61-62, 64, 68, 109, 133, 155, 178, 200, 222, 224; see also Dai (daizu) and association with Thai Culture (in China) 64, 98; see also Dai-Thai ambiguities customers at Chinese trade fairs 46, 61-62, 73-74, 77-79, 81-82,85, 88-90, 96, 98-99, 223 heritage 106-09, 118 historical migration 103-04, 109, 137

Cross-Border Tr aders in Northern L aos

language 44, 46, 66, 68, 77n7, 134, 158, 223 market vendors 152, 158, 160-61 New Year (Dai New Year) 61, 64, 70n4, 71n5 performance of 64, 77-80, 96, 98 representation of 64, 98, 104-08, 111, 118 textiles 106-08, 203-04 traders 124, 130, 142, 195 transnational Tai (Lue)/Dai ethnicity 2930, 46, 141, 223 transnational/cross-border Tai (Lue)/Dai ethnic dimension of trade 39-40, 46, 61, 99, 108, 110, 115, 196, 204, 226; see also ethnicity and trade Tai Nuea 41, 152, 161, 177, 180 Tai World 27, 28n9, 29-30, 35, 38-40, 46-47, 137, 224, 226-227 Tai Yuan 28n10, 41, 90, 104n1, 105, 109n6, 152, 158, 161, 176, 188, 200 language see Northern Thai language (kham muang) Tan, Danielle 20, 21, 145, 209-11, 213 Tapp, Nicholas 40 Tappe, Oliver 35 Thainess 64, 67-68, 90, 96 see also Dainess/ Dai-ness; identity, Thai national; Thai-Yunnan Project 40; see also borderlands, Thai-Yunnan thammada (ordinary) 23, 25, 48, 126, 159, 160, 172, 179-80, 222, 226; see also ordinariness “trading-scapes” 36, 40-41, 44, 109, 137; see also Turner, Sarah transnational worlds 15-16, 23, 25, 30, 38, 41, 43, 45, 49, 135, 142-43, 160-61, 164-65, 190, 195, 199, 215-16, 222, 225, 227-28 triviality 18, 45, 164, 173, 185, 214 Tsing, Anna 126, 136, 203 Turner, Sarah 31, 35-36, 40, 109, 137, 160, 226 uncertainty 49, 81n9, 193, 195-97, 215 urbanization in Laos 20, 32-34, 145, 190, 205, 211-12 and the rural 148, 163, 174, 178, 180, 190 uplands 33-37, 49, 66, 159, 179, 221, 227; see also highlands and lowlands see highlands and lowlands; margins, ethnic/traditional (upland) margins vs. central (lowland) modern state upland ethnic minorities 32; see also ethnic minorities; margins, ethnic/ traditional (upland) margins vs. central (lowland) modern state upland Lao 150n8; see also lao thoeng upland people 37; see also lao thoeng van Schendel, Willem 34, 228; see also Zomia versatility 19, 49, 136-37, 195, 200, 216, 228; see also flexibility

Index

Vietnam 15, 23, 31-32, 35, 37, 108, 113n12, 152, 155, 188, 213 China-Vietnam border 31, 36, 134 Sino-Vietnam conflict 93 Walker, Andrew 21, 30, 34, 38, 93, 117n15, 146-47, 181, 192, 201 Wirakunthewan, Sophida 103-04, 111-12, 113n12, 118 Wyatt, David K. 27, 28n9 Xi, Jinping 86n12, 198, 205, 208 Xishuangbanna (Dai Autonomous Prefecture) 26, 27n8, 39, 41, 46, 61-68, 70-75, 79-80, 84-85, 88-90, 95, 98-99, 105-06, 108, 110, 113n12, 115, 123, 130, 133, 135, 137, 155, 160, 189, 204, 206n4, 223-24, 227; see also Sipsongpanna

259 Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences (YASS) 41 Yunnan Haicheng Industrial Group Holdings 20, 209-10 Yunnan language (dialect) 44, 135n25, 155 Yunnan-Laos-Thailand borderland (economy) see borderland(s) Yunnan Minzu University 41 Yunnan province 15-16, 27, 35n13, 36, 38-41, 43, 46, 61-64, 71-73, 74n6, 80, 89, 95, 108, 146n4, 147n5, 155, 178, 193, 200, 202, 205, 206n4, 222-23 Yunnan University 39-40 Zhang, Juan 214-15 Zheng, Xiaoyun 63, 98, 223 Zomia 34-38, 49, 227-28; see also Southeast Asian Massif



Asian Borderlands

Duncan McDuie-Ra: Borderland City in New India. Frontier to Gateway. 2016, isbn 9789089647580 Martin Saxer and Juan Zhang (eds): The Art of Neighbouring. Making Relations Across China’s Borders. 2017, isbn 9789462982581 Mona Chettri: Ethnicity and Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland. Constructing Democracy. 2017, isbn 9789089648860 Dan Smyer Yü and Jean Michaud (eds): Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. 2017, isbn 9789462981928 Hyun Gwi Park: The Displacement of Borders among Russian Koreans in Northeast Asia. 2018, isbn 9789089649980 Caroline Humphrey (ed.): Trust and Mistrust in the Economies of the ChinaRussia Borderlands. 2018, isbn 9789089649829 Reece Jones and Md. Azmeary Ferdoush (eds): Borders and Mobility in South Asia and Beyond. 2018, isbn 9789462984547 Arik Moran: Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland. Rajput Identity during the Early Colonial Encounter. 2019, isbn 9789462985605 Antía Mato Bouzas: Kashmir as a Borderland. The Politics of Space and Belonging across the Line of Control. 2019, isbn 9789463729406 Stéphane Gros (ed.): Frontier Tibet. Patterns of Change in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands. 2019, isbn 9789463728713 Swargajyoti Gohain: Imagined Geographies in the Indo-Tibetan Borderlands. Culture, Politics, Place. 2020, isbn 9789462989320 Alessandro Rippa: Borderland Infrastructures. Trade, Development, and Control in Western China. 2020, isbn 9789463725606 Adam Cathcart, Christopher Green, and Steven Denney (eds): Decoding the Sino-North Korean Borderlands. 2021, isbn 9789462987562 Mona Chettri and Michael Eilenberg (eds): Development Zones in Asian Borderlands. 2021, isbn 9789463726238 Gunnel Cederlöf and Willem van Schendel (eds): Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Spaces. Histories of Networking and Border Crossing. 2022, isbn 9789463724371