Signboards

When our car came close to the city center, we saw many more new modern shops intermingled with old dingy ones. The notable thing was I found Chinese signboards outside many of the shops.

That’s hardly surprising; there is a huge population of Chinese immigrants in Bangkok, and I was once told over 90% of the Thai people have a certain degree of genetic trait from Chinese.

But, something was remarkable: All Chinese characters should be read from right to left.

Seasoned visitors may recognize this is, in fact, the traditional way of writing Chinese. Before 1980s, most of the Chinese signboards in Hong Kong went from right to left. Our habit of reading gradually changed in the past 30 years because we put more and more English words into our formal Chinese writings, so much so Chinese newspapers and books are forced to print horizontally and from left to right. Once we get use to this direction, signboards naturally follow.

Once again, I am forced to think about the old sayings of asking the barbarians for a lost tradition (禮失求諸野).

The apparently unexplainable phenomenon is: Thai scripts are also written form left to right. Why didn’t the people here change their direction of writing Chinese?

Alas, I suppose Thai scripts do not often mix with Chinese ones. In fact, like most of the other southeast Asian countries,  Chinese emigrants may not mix all that well with the local people.