A gate called Paifang was built at the entrance of Yaowarat Road

Paifang on Yaowarat Road — Shot at Chinatown in Bangkok, Thailand

I was standing at the entrance to a street called Yaowarat. This street is one of the busiest streets in Chinatown and a tourist attraction in Bangkok. It was also very crowded when I arrived. A lot of people were coming and going under the gate called Paifang at the entrance of the street, and tuk-tuks were busily crossing in front of it. Like Yokohama, I wondered why the entrance to Chinatown has a gate called a Paifang. Like the torii gate at a Shinto shrine, the gate may have been erected to clearly indicate that the world of the overseas Chinese is different from the normal world.

There was something written in Thai on the gate. I don't know what it says, but from the Chinese characters written next to it, I guessed that this street, commonly called Yaowarat Road, is called Zhongshan Street in Chinese. Zhongshan is another name for Sun Yat-sen, who led the Xinhai Revolution. I don't know what kind of relationship the overseas Chinese living here has with Taiwan or mainland China. But they seem to have the same respect for the revolutionaries who defeated the Qing Dynasty as the people of Taiwan and mainland China.

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