| Among overseas Chinese literature, Thai-Sino literature has a very long and vicissitudinous history. As it is influenced by both ancient Chinese literature and modern Chinese literature, it includes not only descriptions of Chinese society and culture, but also represents Thai society and customs, providing us with a vast visual overview of the history and life of Thailand and overseas Chinese people. Therefore, Thai-Sino literature is very special with regards to both history and regional culture, and thereby a worthy choice to research.At the beginning of 20th century, Chinese schools and newspapers were very popular in Thailand. This marked the beginning of Thai-Sino literature which has been developing for almost one century to the present. Realism is the main theme of Thai-Sino Literature, and there are a large variety of aspects related to this feature. Firstly, "writings are for conveying truth" is a very important tradition of ancient Chinese literature, whereby intellectuals focused on themes such as reality and present life, sympathy for the weak and fights for justice. Secondly, the ethnic Chinese who decided to immigrate to Thailand endured many hardships, such as dangerous sea trips and becoming drudges, which caused many deaths. They had to make a living in the complex international and internal environment of the 20th century, even though they were victims of cruel wars and ideological confrontation. This led Chinese immigrants in Thailand to pay great attention to the societies of both China and Thailand, and care a lot for common people’s life conditions.Another important reason for Thai-Sino literature’s focus was the influence of the May Fourth Movement of China. Many modern writers like Luxun and Bajin emerged from this movement, and their works all focus on realism, further shaping the direction of Thai-Sino Literature.During nearly a century of development, Thai-Sino literature offers us a variety of works which criticize reality from many different facets of society. They reveal the damage which people suffered by all kinds of war; they show mercy to all kinds of marginal people; they give criticism on mass culture of Thailand in which contains only the gospel of mammon; they give evidence of the rise and decline of the business empire of Chinese immigrants in Thailand; they show political views from both Thailand and China, and moreover, some works consider the relationship between humans and nature.The contents of Thai-Sino literature not only reveal and criticize society, but it also possesses a deep cultural connotation. First is the problem of ethnic identification, as Chinese immigrants in Thailand have been oppressed by Thailand’s ethnic policy for a long time and they are very proud of their own cultural origins. Therefore, ethnic identification is considered a feature of nationalism. Second is that Thailand is strongly Buddhist, whereas Chinese immigrants had their own kinds of belief from China too, so their works always shows spirit of religions. Third is as Chinese immigrants blended into Thai society, the generation gap question deepened, whereby the old generation of writers showed great anxiety about the problem of Chinese culture gradually vanishing with the onset of newer generations. The above constitute the deep cultural connotation of Thai-Sino literature.In the 20th century, although Thai-Sino literature has survived through all kinds of difficulties and still offers us a huge amount of good works, it was almost completely ignored historically by Thai literature. One reason is a lack of available translations, and another regards artistic value. Nowadays, as only academics from mainland China have paid attention to Thai-Sino literature, a problem that has become more obvious is that Thai-Sino literature has received recognition mainly only from non-Thais. Therefore, we have chosen the full-length and middle-length novels as examples, try to view the achievements and limitations of the Thai-Sino literature objectively.As integration of the world economy is accelerating, all kinds of communication between Thailand and China is increasing in strength. Thai-Sino literature is a kind of cultural power and a way to glimpse into and understand Thai history, society, and Chinese immigrants. There is a necessity for textual analyses, a listing of the advantages and limitations, a discussion of which works from Thai-Sino literature can be canonized, which can be branded as classics, and this can provide both good and bad examples for the future development of Thai-Sino Literature. |
