6 THE RELATION OF CHINESE AND SIAMESE 



original migration from western Asia. This was before Moses 

 was born, or Troy or Athens had been founded, not to speak 

 of the founding of Rome, some eight hundred years later. 



It is worthy of note that this wide home of the race was 

 in what has been so aptly termed "the belt of power." In 

 that rugged clime this hardy, virile race not Only solved its 

 own problems and wrought out its own destiny, but both 

 then and later it furnished, as Mr. Holt Hallett says, "one 

 of the chief ingredients that compose the so-called Chinese 

 race." 



No mention is made in any of the authorities I have 

 consulted — Chinese, Burmese and Siamese — of the cause or 

 the exact date of the first great southward migration of the 

 Tai race, then known as the Ai-lao. Speaking in general 

 terms, the cause was the constant feuds, often amounting 

 to real warfare, between the Ai-Lao and the growing power 

 of the Chinese. Lacouperie says that under the Shang-yin 

 and Chou dynasties, 1766-255 B.C., the Chinese 



"dominion, though not extending more than midway between 

 the Huangho and Yangtze-kiang, was an area much too large for 

 their own race ; it was in fact interspersed with the aborigines 

 who were kept in check by the higher culture which the new- 

 comers endeavoured to impart to them" . . . "When the 

 yoke happened to be heavier under the pressure of the extra- 

 ordinary growth of the Suzerain people, who required a more 

 positive territorial extension, the feudal states had to yield, and 

 their population was mixed with and absorbed by the Chinese, 

 or else they objected to the complete assimilation. In the latter 

 case they either migrated, or, if strong enough, resisted bodily." 



The first great migration from China southward was 

 undoubtedly caused by an armed "objection" to< assimilation 

 — which proved ineffectual : hence the migration. Any one- 

 who has travelled extensively in southern China with open 

 eyes and ears must have seen this double process of assimila- 

 tion and migration going on still. Only this last year I found 

 Tai people, calling themselves Tai, living on the southern 

 bank of the Yangtze in northern Hunan, who well illustrate 

 the process of assimilation. They told us tha,t a few genera- 

 tions ago all their women wore the characteristic Tai skirt. 

 A few of the older women among them do> so still, but 

 the younger women had all adopted the Chinese trousers. 

 All the older people were bilingual, although they spoke the* 

 Chinese possibly a little more purely than they did their own 

 Tai. But in one village we visited, several of the young 

 people could speak only Chinese. We were given the names 

 of several villages and towns in that region whose inhabitants 

 were Tai by race but who had left off all attempts at keeping 

 up their Tai speech, and were passing as Chinese. Lest it be 

 thought that all the Tai in China will soon be absorbed and 



