INTRODUCTION

Enjoying history

If you watch Thai television, you probably know about the series, Mook Mangkorn (The Dragon’s Pearl) that began about two weeks ago on Channel 7. Perhaps you have even seen the first two episodes. What makes this series particularly interesting is that, unlike most Thai television dramas, it is based on actual history.

If you are like me, television dramas are more interesting if you have some background about the subject or about the people involved in its production – the actors, directors, etc. The Outlook section of the Bangkok Post obviously had people like me in mind last January 7th when it had a big feature on Mook Mangkorn. Below I have summarised part of it for you and I have included another part in its original form.

Mook Mangkorn is based on the real-life experiences of Sirin Phathanothai which she described in her historical novel originally written in English under the title The Dragon’s Pearl. Since it is a novel, parts of it must be fiction, but there is no question that Sirin herself experienced much of what happened in the book.

The story begins in 1956 during the Cold War. At that time that Thailand, under the leadership of Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsongkram, was a close ally of the United States and therefore aligned against Communist China. Anti-communist policies were rigorously enforced and even Thais who visited China were likely to be arrested.

Not all of Field Marshal Pibulsongkram’s advisors agreed with this policy. Some, like Sang Phathanothai, Sirin’s father, felt strongly that a small Asian country like Thailand needed to have good relations with China. He was able to convince Field Marshal Pibulsongkram to try an unusual way of establishing better relations with China without angering the United States. He would send two of his own children to live in China as a goodwill gesture.

Here, in Sirin’s words, is how he explained the novel idea to his children:

In the old days, children of the leaders of small nations were often sent as gifts to the emperor of a big nation to show their goodwill and to learn the habits and thinking of the emperor and the big nation. That is what you will do in China.

Thus, on August 19, 1956, 8-year-old Sirin and her 12-year-old brother Warnwai left for China. On that fateful day, she had no idea that political changes in both Thailand and China would mean that she would not return to her own country for 14 years. And she could never imagine that while in China she would be raised as a child of Chinese Premier Zhou En Lai himself, only to be forced to flee for her life to the countryside in 1966 to escape the violence of the Cultural Revolution.

Clearly this is exciting material for a novel and I won’t spoil it for you by telling you the whole story. It will be much more entertaining for you to find out what happened to Sirin and her brother by watching the series on television. One thing you might be interested in finding out, however, is that Sirin is now living in France with her husband, Ambassador Anton Smitsendonk of the Netherlands. She has two sons, Joe and Leo, and they can each speak five languages including Thai and Chinese.

I have chosen the part of the feature that explains how the series was made. As you will see, that is an interesting story in itself because it involved two production teams, one Thai and one Chinese, and it was filmed in both Thailand and China. Here is some vocabulary to help you as you read.

With the background you have obtained from this lesson, one of the best things you can do is to have some fun by watching an episode or two of Mook Mangkorn. Your next opportunity is this Thursday at 10:15 p.m. on Channel 7. And if you enjoy it, there is no reason why you can’t watch it every week until it finishes – except to study for final examinations, of course.

Teacher’s Note

There is a lot you can do with this lesson besides simply having your students read it. The most obvious activity is to have at least some of your students watch an episode of the television series it is based on. You might, for example, assign groups of students to give a brief report on each episode – in English, of course. Or you could also assign your class to watch an episode and to look for examples of points brought up in the lesson. You could even assign students to do a written or oral review of the series.

I only included part of the January 7th feature that I referred to in the introduction. In fact, I left out the main part which deals with Sirin and her story. If you still have a copy of the January 7th Bangkok Post available, I suggest you refer to it for additional background information. You might even want to make this a group assignment for members of your class. If you don’t have a copy, you can still obtain the story from the Internet. Just go to the homepage of the Bangkok Post site at http://www.bangkokpost.net and click on "back issues" where you will see a calendar for the last two months. Choose January 7th and go to the first news page. Scroll down the page almost to the bottom where you will find the introduction to the Outlook story. Click on it and you will have the story. From there you can copy it and even print it out if you want to.

This week my introduction was designed mainly to catch the students’ interest. You can use it as a basis for an opening discussion. Before you start, you might want to find out if any of your students have seen an episode of Mook Mangkorn. It should be easy to help your students to see that Sirin Phathanothai had a childhood worthy of a novel.

Here are some things you might want to have your students consider as they read:

• How did the idea of transforming the novel to a TV show come about?
• What are some of the unusual aspects of this production, particularly for a production in China?
• Who directed the production, where was it shot, and how long did it take to shot?
• When was the shooting finished?
• Why did it take so long before it was ready to be shown on TV?
• What were some of the difficulties involved in such an ambitious project?
• Is Thailand the first country to show the series?

Notice that to fully answer some of the above questions, students will have to use information from several parts of the story.

A note about last week’s lesson. Last week was a good week for those of you who assigned your students to follow the letters in the Postbag section. There were several interesting and conflicting letters from foreigners. There are sure to be many more in the coming weeks.

•This lesson was prepared by Acharn Terry Fredrickson, BA Stanford, MA (TESL) University of Minnesota, Manager of the Educational Services Department at the Bangkok Post and general editor of this programme. This week Acharn Terry also had the help of an energetic group of university teachers plus a group of university students.