Where Chingchoks Chirp My Childhood Days in Bangkok
by
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Going to the Movies
The Thai word for “going to the movies” is pai doo nang, which literally means “to go see leather”.
Before the days of cinema, the closest thing to seeing moving objects on a screen was to watch a leather puppet shadow play.
In Thailand, such puppets are carved out of thin leather into caricatures of popular folk heroes and heroines, kings, queens, and gods.
The puppets are about several feet tall, with strings attached to their arms and legs, and are held up by bamboo sticks tied to the center of the puppet.
Puppet shows were held on fairgrounds, public open areas, and temple grounds.
A large white cotton sheet was raised as a screen. Several lamps illuminated the screen on the same side where puppeteers moved the leather puppets around.
Sound and music were provided by narrators, singers, and a small ensemble of instruments that included a bamboo xylophone, a flute, a drum, and a circle of gongs.
After sunset, crowds gathered in front of the sheet to watch the shadows of the leather puppets as folk tales and stories from the Ramayana epic were told and sung.
Such performances were free to the general public at the temple grounds, their expenses paid for by sponsors of events such as funerals or tonsure ceremonies.
When electricity became widely available, puppet shadow plays made way for cinema - those “electric shadows” as the Chinese called motion pictures.
For the Thais, however, the term pai doo nang, or “go to see leather”, prevailed.
During the 60s, television was just beginning.
There were only two channels, one privately owned, and one belonging to the Thai Army.
Both were broadcasted only in the evening, blurry images in black and white, and other than imported programs from the U.S. and England, their programs were similar.
The cinema was by far the preferred form of entertainment.
There were dozens of movie theaters all over town that showed Western, Chinese, and Thai films.
Some were grand theaters that screened first-run films.
The best seats in these grand theaters were on the balcony and cost 16 baht while seats behind them cost 12.5 baht.
Seats on the ground floor cost 7 and 10 Baht.
Seats in the first two rows of the ground floor only cost 5 baht, popular among the budget-minded viewers who did not mind sore necks after the picture is finished.
They were clean and air-conditioned, attractive venues for audiences to spend a little more to cool off for a couple of hours in hot and steamy Bangkok.
The theaters that showed second-run films were smaller structures, usually located in busy shopping areas, hidden behind rows of shophouses where rents were cheaper.
They did not have air conditioning, and the seats were less comfortable.
But they were clean and airy, and ticket prices were lower.
Every film had Thai and Chinese subtitles, written by hand and crudely overlaid onto the film negatives.
For first-run films and especially for blockbusters, reservations for the balcony seats were a must and they were taken well in advance.
There were 5 showtimes per day, beginning with the noon showtime, with the 7 pm showtime being the most popular for people who, after office hours, could hurriedly take their families to a quick meal followed by the movies.
Whenever my mother asked me what reward I would like after I did well in school, my go-to response was to be taken to the movies.
I became quite adept at moviegoing.
I roamed the entertainment sections of Chinese and English papers every day for movie ads.
Regardless of the language of the paper, whether Thai, Chinese, or English, the ads were all alike.
On top of each ad was the theater logo.
The ads themselves were crowded with information.
There were prints of the movie poster that included the title of the movie, the name of the stars in three languages, photos of the stars, and a paragraph or two describing the genre of the film, and the showtimes.
For our family, the favorite showtime was the 7 pm showing, after a quick dinner and taxi ride to the theater.
It was important for most viewers to arrive early to buy snacks and watch the entire program which included commercials and previews of coming attractions.
The snack counters inside the theaters sold a large variety of goodies.
Aside from fresh popcorn and sodas, there was an assortment of Western, Chinese, and Thai snacks.
For one baht and 50 satangs, one bought the most popular snack - a yellow box of Chiclets peppermint chewing gum, an enduring snack for the whole family that lasted the entire movie.
Chiclets were so popular that the distributor decided to sell different varieties of flavor-coated gum.
There were multi-color fruit flavors, such as strawberry, orange, and lemon.
Among these was a strange flavor with a green color coating.
But none of them sold better than good old peppermint that helped to cool the mouths in tropical Thailand.
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About the Book
Bangkok in the 1950s and early 1960s was a relatively small city consisting of exotic temples and palaces built in bygone days surrounded by rows of commercial and residential shophouses. Author Kim Pao Yu, a child born into a traditional Northern Chinese family, writes about his parents, their origins in Shandong, and how they escaped the war and communism in China to settle in Bangkok.
In Where Chingchoks Chirp, a collection of essays, he shares his parents’ beliefs and values, their hopes and joys, and their struggles to ensure a better life for their children. Raised in a shophouse where his parents owned an antique and furniture store, situated in a compound inhabited by immigrant Chinese from Swatow, Kim describes everyday activities—the myriad vendors who sold their goods and services, the neighborhood children and the games they played, and how they celebrated holidays and festivals. The selections also cover the food and recipes his mother left as a legacy; his memories of people and experiences encountered while growing up; and his adventures at an American school as a local Chinese boy attending with the children of American expatriate and military families that shaped his thinking as he left Bangkok for higher learning in the United States.
Where Chingchoks Chirp shares the sights, sounds, and smells of the bygone days of Bangkok, now a modern, bustling city that still retains much of its past.
About the Author
Kim Pao Yu was born in Bangkok, Thailand where he spent his childhood days. He left Thailand for college in the United States, earning his BS degree at Lowell Technological Institute, and his master and doctoral degrees at the University of California, Berkeley. His professional career spanned across several multinational power and IT corporations, where he held various engineering, sales, and general management positions in the United States, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. Retired, he lives in Mountain View, California.