Dress and Cultural Strategy: Tai Peddlers in Transnational Trade along the Burma – Yunnan Frontier

Abstract

This paper explores transnational trade carried out by the Tai, an ethnic nationality spread across the border area between Shan State in Myanmar and Dehong Prefecture in Yunnan province in China. The Tai who live in this border region belong to a linguistic group that has long shared cultural and linguistic traits with the Thai in Thailand and other Tai-speaking groups in Vietnam, Laos and other parts of Southeast Asia. This paper focuses on the Tai peddlers who conduct trade between Thailand and Shan state in commodities such as Thai and Tai traditional clothing and entertainment VCDs featuring Shan and Thai songs. The focus is on peddling in traditional Thai dress styles that are popular with Dehong Tai customers. The author contends that dress practices have gained a meaning and status in displaying acquired wealth, and this has resulted in shifting status hierarchy among members of Dehong Tai society. Wearing certain clothes becomes a self-identification that the Dehong Tai use to manifest their social position in public. This in turn helps them to destabilize both their lower-status position in the Han-dominated Chinese society and the cultural imbalance between themselves and the Chinese.