The owners of a Chiang Mai cafe housed in an old tobacco factory, where patrons can watch workers sorting tobacco leaves, has hit back at criticism that they were staging a “human zoo”.
A social media storm erupted after a customer posted a picture of herself enjoying her time in the Yen.CNX cafe. Behind her on the other side of a glass wall sat workers sorting tobacco leaves on the ground.
The café was once a tobacco factory and the owner wanted to portray its story and the traditional ways of tobacco manufacturing, she wrote.
The photo appeared on Wednesday on the Facebook account of Suwadee Punpanich, CEO of Thonburi Sermrath, a medical clinic operator based in Bangkok.
By Friday it had attracted over 7,000 comments, many of which lamented the huge gap between social classes, with some branding the presentation as a “human zoo”.
“I’m a café hopper. However, seeing people working outside in hot weather as a display would not make me enjoy my visit at all,” one comment reads.
After the picture became the talk of social media, Ms Suwadee responded on Friday that she respected local ways of living and was thankful that places such as the café helped to show off traditional practices.
“I do not agree with the expression ‘human zoo’. It showed that the commenters exhibit shallow thinking and insult the workers who have their honour and dignity,” she said.
The café also posted a response on its Facebook page, observing that the interpretation had “shifted from what we intended to show”.
The tobacco factory was a family business that had been passed on through generations, it said. The owner wanted to tell the story of the family heritage but present it in a new, accessible form.
The space was designed to show the old structures of the factory with real workers displaying their skills, they said.
“The presentation was not for entertainment. During the season from January to May every year, this is how the actual sorting of leaves is done,” the café owners wrote.
“They were not hired for a show and they were paid fairly.”