Thailand is the most popular southeast Asian tourist destination in Chinese, full of exotic landscapes, countless Buddhist attractions, coupled with the popularity of "Tai Chi" in previous years, making Thailand the first choice for Chinese Southeast Asian tourism.
All over the world, Bangkok, Thailand is also the most open and international city in Southeast Asia, attracting countless European and American tourists every year. Thailand was once one of the four tigers in Asia, and its economic development is one of the best in the Southeast Asian peninsula.
Many people know that the main ethnic group in Thailand, the Thai ethnic group, and the Dai ethnic group in China are the same ethnic group, and the most obvious feature is the Songkran Festival. The Thai people are the largest ethnic group in Southeast Asia, in addition to Thailand, they are also the main ethnic group of Laos, the second largest ethnic group in Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Vietnam and other countries are also distributed.
Not many people may know the history of the Tai people, but they actually originated in China and were once brothers with us. A thousand years ago, the ancestors of the Tai people migrated from China to Southeast Asia, and the earliest country in Yunnan called Nanzhao was the ancestors of the Tai people.
The Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau has long been inhabited by ancestors, but it is difficult to form a strong civilization in the special terrain. Huge mountains cut the plateau to pieces, and humans live in mountain valleys, known locally as dams. Until the Tang Dynasty, six small-scale regimes finally appeared here, the Mengwei Zhao, the Yue Jie Zhao, the Lang Qiong Zhao, the Xiao Zhao, the Shi Lang Zhao, and the Mengshe Zhao.
The Six Edicts of Yunnan are divided into white and black according to the degree of sinicization. Among them, the Mengshe Zhao, which is the most southern, although it belongs to the Wuman with a low degree of Sinicization, the relationship with the Tang Dynasty is the best. After receiving the support of the Tang Dynasty, Mengshe Zhao destroyed the other five edicts and established the State of Nanzhao in 738 AD, and Piluoge was crowned by the Tang Dynasty as the King of Yunnan.
Nanzhao is not the Dali state we are familiar with, it predates Dali hundreds of years. Nanzhao was deeply influenced by Han culture, and Nanzhao Wang Xunge was not only good at Chinese classics, but also a famous poet. The works of him and other Nanzhao poets were later included in the Quan Tang Poems.
After the unification of the Nanzhao state, the various ethnic groups in Yunnan began to integrate, and the Tai also took shape during this period. Nanzhao's national style is fierce, and there are specialties such as tea and salt, and the national strength was once very strong. The territory extended to present-day Burma, Laos and other countries, and the north reached the junction of Guizhou and Sichuan, dominating almost the entire southwest region.
Unfortunately, the State of Nanzhao was between the two great powers, the Tang Dynasty and Tibet, and it was impossible to stay out of the matter. After the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty lost control of the frontier, resulting in frequent border disputes and frequent wars.
For more than 160 years since the founding of the Southern Zhao Dynasty, it has been subject to both the Tang Dynasty and Tubo, and has wavered. Around 754 AD, Nanzhao united with Tubo to defeat the Tang Dynasty's expeditionary forces many times, and more than 100,000 Tang troops lost their armor and most of them were buried in the lofty mountains of Yunnan.
In 779, Tubo and Nanzhao jointly attacked Sichuan, and Nanzhao raised hundreds of thousands of troops across the country. Although Datang is no longer the prosperous era of Zhenguan and Kaiyuan, it is not something that Nanzhao can resist when it is serious.
Li Sheng, a famous general of the Tang Army, used only nine thousand Central Forbidden Troops and Fan Yang soldiers to break the Nanzhao Army and behead tens of thousands. The elite cavalry from the north still had a great advantage in facing the infantry of the Southern Zhao. In the territory of the Tang Dynasty, the Tubo army was not necessarily the opponent of the Tang army, let alone the Nanzhao.
In the end of the tug-of-war, men over the age of 15 in the Nanzhao state were conscripted into the army, and only the elderly and women were left in the country to give birth, and the national strength was declining day by day. In 902, the power of the Nanzhao royal family fell, and the powerful minister Zheng Maisi not only controlled the entire imperial court, but also killed the nanzhao king and more than 800 royal families, completely destroying the Nanzhao state.
After the fall of Nanzhao, the Tai people moved south and settled on the Southeast Asian peninsula. Those who remain in China are called Dai, those who live in Laos are called Lao, those who run to Burma become Shan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia are called Thai, and further afield in India call them Ahong. In fact, they are all of the same ethnic group, but the names are different.
The main ethnic groups in Thailand and Laos are the Thais, who account for 75% and more than 40% of the total population, respectively. There are 47 million Thais in Thailand and more than 4 million in Laos. Some sources divide the Lao and Tai into two different ethnic groups, which are actually divided according to the state.
There are 8.5 million Shan people in Myanmar, and the Burmese government divides them into ethnic groups, but the Shan do not recognize them. It is not surprising that the Tai have multiple branches of the group in various countries, such as the Chinese Dai, which also have differences such as water Dai, dry Dai, and huawaist Dai.
There are about 2 million Akhons in India, and there are also many Thais in Cambodia, Vietnam and other countries. In this way, there are at least 60 million Thai people in the world, which can be called the first ethnic group in Southeast Asia.
[References: New Book of Tang, Old Book of Tang]