Girls

There's something unsettling about children performing. To some degree, in America we encourage children to be performers. Kids these days grow up watching American Idol or America's Got Talent, the get the idea that entertainment is the pinnacle of society. While growing up in that kind of environment isn't exactly the healthiest thing for a child, it seems fairly normal. Maybe I don't understand the culture here well enough, but watching child performers in Chiang Mai feels different. Feels a little sad and wrong.

At the Sunday Night Walking Street market, you can find anything Thai. If you want a t-shirt that says "Chiang Mai" on it, that's the place to go. If you want to buy a giant bug under glass, you're in luck. If you want to eat fried grasshoppers, the market is where you need to be. There is also entertainment to be had as far as the eye can see. Singing and dancing seem to be the performance-styles of choice. From large stage productions with ear-piercing music to the groups of blind men singing and playing instruments, there is a near-overwhelming amount of entertainment to be had. However, amidst the cacophony of sound, the performers that made the biggest impact on me were the two little girls performing in the center of the walkway. I'm certain these girls have been performing at the market for a while, as they seemed very polished from their spotless tribal garb to their mastery of their craft. So poised, so collected, and so much older in demeanor than their years on earth would belie. Jason and I parked ourselves in front of the girl playing some sort of hammer dulcimer, I with my large video camera and enormous tripod, and Jason with his huge camera and giant lens. We created quite a spectacle, causing people who wouldn't otherwise have noticed this girl to stop and listen. With that much attention, she had to try very hard not to smirk, but kept right on playing throughout. I can only assume the woman sitting nearby was her mother, the one dictating when she could take a break. While the show was enjoyable, it made me think about what we were doing, filming and photographing a little girl for show. Granted, we plan to use our footage for noble purposes, but it made me think a lot about the exploitation of little girls like this, pushed to perform in one way or another when they should be just kids.

Behind the girl playing the hammer dulcimer, another girl, possibly a relative of the first girl, was dancing for passers by. She really was quite graceful, showing incredibly poise and maturity. She had a CD player behind her and was dancing to the music dressed to the nines in tribal garb like they wear in nearby Hmong villages. Fringe and tassels flew as she spun and moved to the music. She was very good. A little too good, perhaps. Some of her dance moves bordered on the provocative, perhaps moves she had learned watching western television. And while I have no evidence that she was involved in an abusive family environment, it certainly made me think about the implications in my own culture of dancing for money. I mentioned to Jason that filming this little girl was a little creepy, a bit unsettling. As we drew crowds, it helped these girls make more money than they would have, and we both donated generously to each of the girls as we had parked ourselves in front of each of them for much longer than we felt we could have for free. We talked about the fact that we have the opportunity to help others in the world fall in love with the Thai people, and to bring Jesus to a lost and hurting nation. But that kind of help is potentially far off, not nearly as immediate as throwing Thai Baht into her bowl. We want to support people, not necessarily their activities. It was a difficult moment knowing we were getting powerful footage, but that we were in essence supporting something we didn't entirely agree with. All in all it was a sobering moment, the kind of moment I suspect Jason and I will have many of in the coming years. We want to help others help these girls on a longer-term basis than we can in the moment, and we have to believe God will be faithful in people's hearts to move.

(All of these pictures are from the video footage I took that night. It's powerful stuff when there's motion, but internet being what it is here, this'll have to do.)

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