Global Tour|I am in Cambodia - Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat, which means "temple capital" in Sanskrit, is the largest religious temple in the world and the largest and best-preserved building in Angkor's monuments, located in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The shape of Angkor Wat has become the pattern of the national flag as the national symbol of Cambodia.
01
Visit Angkor Wat
Reminiscing about the experience of visiting Angkor Wat in Cambodia:
When visiting Angkor Wat, if you don't read the guide beforehand, you will feel tired of "looking at the stones all day". Because after arriving at Angkor Wat, in addition to the temples of the stones, it is the reliefs of the stones, except for the stones and stones.
But if you're interested in Hinduism, you'll find that many of the Indian scriptures are engraved on the reliefs, and there are a lot of beautiful reliefs on the walls.
It also includes a record of the livelihood of the people during the Angkor Dynasty, including the war with the Thais, a tour guide introducing the reliefs, and even a record of China.
It is enough to see the glory of Cambodia in those years.
Every temple or church or religious building is a classic in itself.
In the past, when writing was not yet widespread, knowledge (information) was transformed into mythology and passed down from generation to generation through carvings, reliefs, stained glass, and so on.
Or in the most primitive way of word of mouth.
In particular, countries such as Cambodia and Indonesia, which do not have written language, rely more on architecture to obtain information about ancient times.
South Korea, the region where Chinese characters were used in Vietnam, has been fortunate enough to preserve a lot of their country's history by borrowing Chinese characters.
In a country like Cambodia, his history has not been recorded in writing at all, only a travelogue of Chinese who once went to Cambodia, recording the style of Cambodia at that time, and this travelogue has become an important document in Cambodia.
02
The loss of territory has left Cambodians with nostalgia
When we went to Angkor Wat, the tour guide gave us an impassioned account of the history of Angkor Wat, while googling some maps.
He told me that Cambodia used to be a super-dynasty that spanned almost the entire Indochina Peninsula (including all of present-day Thailand, all of Laos, and southern Vietnam).
He excitedly showed the territory of the Angkor Dynasty in its heyday, and the British female tourist next to him asked maliciously, "This means that you have lost more than 70% of your original territory." ”
The tour guide nodded sharply, far more than 70%, we are now so small in Cambodia!
The tour guide said, I hate Vietnam, which occupied our Phu Quoc Island in the 70s.
This history is probably that Vietnam invaded the Khmer Rouge with lightning at that time, China knocked Vietnam from North Vietnam, and Vietnam hastily withdrew its troops from Cambodia, leaving a hand, and they did not withdraw troops from Phu Quoc, resulting in Phu Quoc Island has been under the actual control of Vietnam, and then Vietnam has not returned the island to Phu Quoc Island for a long time, but it was only under Cambodian jurisdiction for a short time for some reasons, and the island has been a problem in Cambodian-Vietnamese relations now.
The loss of the island means that Cambodia has lost half of its access to the sea, leaving only Sihanoukville.
03
A Burmese Dai who can speak Chinese
I met this Burmese brother on the day of the newspaper.
There were about a dozen people in this one-day group, each from Italy, Australia, the United States, England, France, and me, and a Burmese.
The Burmese man wore a long skirt worn by Burmese men, and at first I wasn't sure the country he was from.
Our first conversation was like this, in English first.
He asked me, "Where are you from?"
I said, China, what about you?
He said, hello (in Chinese), Myanmar.
I thought he knew a word or two in Chinese, and he told me that he went to Chinese school as a child.
His hometown is in a village in northern Myanmar where 30 percent of the population is Chinese. And he is not Burmese, he is Dai.
The school he attended when he was a child was a Chinese school, and from primary school to the third year of junior high school, his medium of instruction was Chinese, which led to his fluency in Chinese even if he did not speak it for 20 years.
I asked him if he knew the different provinces in China?
He told me about some provinces where Burmese Chinese often come from, such as Yunnan, Fujian, and Guangdong.
In Myanmar, Chinese is a narrower definition, referring to the Chinese language that comes from China.
The Burmese brother told me that "Kokang" in Myanmar means Han or Chinese, especially referring to the Han race, and there are more than 100 ethnic groups in Myanmar.
In addition to the Chinese, there are also Wa, Dai and other ethnic groups in Myanmar that belong to the cross-border ethnic groups shared with China, and these ethnic groups are not counted as Chinese.
My brother told me that many Burmese people can speak Chinese, not just Chinese.
But when I arrived in Myanmar, I learned about the real situation of the Chinese in Myanmar, and the Chinese in Lower Myanmar (southern Burma, the core area of the Burmese ethnic group) basically do not speak Chinese.
In Upper Myanmar (close to the Chinese border, with many autonomous regions and weak military control), a large number of Chinese still speak Chinese with a Yunnan accent, and even many ethnic groups in northern Myanmar speak fluent Chinese.