Summer Jobs

Yesterday I learned something which really cut to the heart of my study here, and which I think will certainly impact the way I see Thailand for the rest of my stay, and may well remain permanently as one more subtle lens for the 6th-grade science project telescope that is my regard for the world in general.

As most of those reading this are surely aware by now, I've been hoping to get some idea of how the study and preservation of Muay Thai as a martial art is related to a sense of cultural identity for the Thai. It has been my theory that martial arts represent more than antiquated military techniques, and much like a dance or a dialect of language can represent a great deal of history for the nation that created it. As mentioned in previous postings, my notion of a nation has been (and is being) somewhat complicated, but in the slow broiler of my contemplation, that thought is still medium-rare, and I try to serve my hypotheses well-done.

Since I've been studying here in Thailand, I have realized very quickly that there is a completely different attitude toward training on this side of the Pacific. My instructors never ask if my limbs or joints are hurting, and while the select few Westerners who teach supplementary classes here have made suggestions about body maintenance, the vastly more numerous Thai instructors respond to complaints of potential injury with the zeal of Iron Chefs tenderizing rebellious fillets of some undecipherable sea creature.

In short, a new student such as myself quickly realizes that in order to maintain a healthy body, and in particular to assure one's full and continued use of that body after the next five years, it is often necessary to shrug off the heckling of one's instructors and take an unscheduled day or two off. I have often wondered not only how my trainers have survived as long as they have, but also why they seem to have such a single-minded focus on training, such that they seem to either not understand––or just deliberately not acknowledge––any reason why a student would not be practicing at every possible opportunity.

Up until yesterday, I answered the question of my trainers' Herculean motivation with a rather naïve supposition that Thai people just took Muay Thai training seriously, and beyond that I just slipped comfortably into the lukewarm oatmeal-like assurance that non-Westerners just do intense things to preserve their cultural traditions. In hindsight, I think I was somewhat borne out by a long line of lightly accented English-speaking samurai from the silver screens of my childhood, and a blurry amalgamation of many Buddhist and Taoist soundbites which inevitably saturates the career of any American juvenile martial-artist.

Fortunately, I was jarred out of this sunnily enthnocentric attitude rather suddenly near the end of my last training session, due, to no one's surprise I'm sure, to a conversation with Dang (as his name is actually spelled, I recently learned). Just before the end of class, and the head-scarved and bamboo-shaft carrying trainer's final exhaustive torments, Dang usually gives us a break for between three and five minutes. This time allows us to take off shin pads, hand-wraps, and any other equipment that we've donned in the course of class, and to recuperate for a moment before the final charge. During this time, Dang usually sits on the large black medicine ball which will soon become one of his sinister instruments, and alternately stares out at the camp or idly examines his heavily-taped stick.

Yesterday, as is sometimes our habit, we the students collapsed onto the mats in front of Dang, either leaning on our elbows or lying altogether prostrate, catching our collective breath one last time. From time to time Dang takes this opportunity to formulaicly heckle a student or two, or perhaps say something brief to another trainer passing by. On this day, however, Dang looked down at us from his spherical perch, and pointed his switch at an Australian man named Tim.

"Tim. Why you come learn Muay Thai?" Dang asked quickly.
"Ah, why am I learning Muay Thai?" Tim repeated, puzzled.
Dang nodded.
"Well, to learn to fight I suppose." Tim responded.
Dang smiled and nodded, muttering, "learn to fight, ah? Okay..." And I couldn't help but detect a note of condescension in his manner. He looked around, and we all perked up, mentally rehearsing our own profound and credible answers to the same question, which would surely leave this small Thai man feeling a distinct sense of respect and camaraderie with a kindred spirit who fights for all the right reasons, but after a few seconds, Dang just nodded again and resumed his study of the rubber trees on a hill beyond the camp.

After class, when I was collecting my regular mess of empty water-bottles, gloves, and sweat-soaked handwraps, I saw Dang pacing slowly around the mats, and I decided, at the risk of yet another cultural misstep with the oldest of my trainers, to satisfy my curiosity. After picking up my things, I walked over to Dang, and when he glanced up at me, I spoke plainly, keeping my sentences simple in English, as I know he prefers.

"Dang. How long have you done Muay Thai?"
He grunted. "Me? Oh, I do Muay Thai when very leettle, like this," and he held his hand out perhaps three feet off the ground.
I raised my eyebrows, insightfully musing, "long time."
Dang nodded, grunting again. "Seven yeer old."
At this, I was very much startled, though I had heard some stories from other fighters about children fighting professionally around that age. "You wanted to fight at seven years old?" I asked, trying to demonstrate my surprise.
Dang, eyes still scanning the mats, shrugged, tossing his head to the side casually. "Have to. Make money, my family."

I didn't really know what to say in response to that, so I decided to say nothing. I nodded, lingered for a moment, and then said a quick goodbye, to which Dang responded silently. I should point out that he did not seem embarrassed to have shared this with me, and he didn't have the air of one sharing a parable or any sort of valuable lesson. What he said, in that short moment, was, I came to realize, the simple reality of his life.

I found out this morning that Dang fought professionally from the age of seven until he was twenty, when he retired. I don't know that he has been a Muay Thai trainer since then, but it seems likely, and either way, as he is now 43, he has almost certainly been practicing this art for longer than I have been alive. What's more, I understand that stories like his are not at all uncommon, and that many, if not most fighters in Thailand retire around their early twenties, primarily because their bodies are no longer capable of the required level of physical endurance.

Though I do not think for a moment that I have more than scratched the surface of my trainers' attitudes toward Muay Thai, I have gotten a brief and illuminating glimpse into a different life. These men have always lived in a world in which days off are as foreign as McDonalds, and perceived as equally unhealthy. They seem not to acknowledge joint pain or bruising, and to regard such things in their students as amusing and petty excuses. For these men, their bodies are like an American farmer's F-150, meant for work, and not much good to anyone if you're going to worry about it getting scratched up. The only difference, I suppose, is how little an American would think about buying a new one.

Also, I cannot discount the sheer courage and tenacity which would have been necessary for Dang, at seven years old, to step into a ring knowing that either he or his opponent was going to leave on his feet. It is nothing short of staggering for me to consider a seven-year-old doing something which so seriously intimidates me even now, and then, win or lose, getting up, going home to eat (or not), and preparing to do the same thing again in a week or less.

I wonder how many times the gloves landed on Dang's chin or nose, and how many times he was flung to the mat in blood-soaked oblivion. I wonder if he felt that fabled fighter's spirit, felt the rush of competition and the drive for victory, or if he felt only the slow gnawing of hunger, and the knowledge that he wasn't the only one who could be hurt by his opponent. I think it reasonable to suppose that there were enough times when he enjoyed his work, or was proud of it, but it isn't hard to see by his quiet and melancholy demeanor outside of class, his sudden and unexplained questions of his students, and his awkward and abbreviated hemorrhaging of personal details that he has lost something that perhaps he would have back.

I think that on Monday I will try to get a picture of Dang, as the lines of his face are something that I think I would do well not to forget.