Rice Culture in Southeast Asia - Traditions

So far, we've seen how a simple food like rice has evolved into a staple so indispensable to Southeast Asia that it has become an item to which we identify the region as a whole by. Such is the importance of rice that it has found its way into the traditions of Southeast Asians.

With a heritage that dates so far back, it is no wonder that countless traditions have been interwoven into rice culture throughout the region. Since harvesting is of utmost importance to the farmers' survival, both economically and more directly, to fill his stomach, traditional ceremonies such as the Royal Ploughing Ceremony and beliefs (traditional measure of planting time) continue to distinctly characterise SEA. Another important aspect of traditional rice culture is arts and handicraft. Many cultural objects such as the pua (also known as a woven blanket from Sarawak) are not made from rice. Instead, they reflect the importance of rice either with patterns alluding to various stages of planting or are tools used directly in rice celebrations or ceremonies.

For example, the pua holds dual purporse as both a ceremonial tool and "as screens to mark off an area of the Iban longhouse reserved for special occasions". (Piper, 1993) However the essence of rice culture lies in the pua motifs, many of which through patterns illustrate either tools used in planting rice or of rice itself. In fact, basket weaving is another traditional art form which draws influence directly from the rice fields for motif designs. Even popular Thai Bencharong bowl designs are inspired by the "translucency of cooked rice". (Piper, 1993) Of course, it goes without saying that Southeast Asian painters refer to and reflect rice traditions and farming in their distinctly regional paintings.

While we sit back and marvel at the way rice has managed to infiltrate our lifestyles through the form of traditional art, it is also important to ponder over the extensive variety of certain traditional rice tools such as rice servers and their implications of the existence of class divide within the Southeast Asian region. The silver, aluminium or plastic rice servers we use in our daily lives seem commonplace to the half of us living in globalized cities but rice servers made of wooden handle and coconut shell bowls like those in Java are near impossible to find in more developed areas in the region. The sad reality is that well-educated people living in cities most probably find such hand-made objects unclean and unsafe to use while at the same time failing to recognize the irony that these are the very tools used by those who have a hand in manufacturing our “bacteria-free” rice servers today. Therefore, rice identifies the Southeast Asian region as a single entity yet at the same time clearly indicates the economic divide between the village poor and the financially sufficient. Perhaps rice culture has shown us it would not be too incorrect to say that modern day SEA is no longer one divided by geographical boundaries but instead split between the haves and the have-nots.

References

Piper, Jacqueline M. (1993). Rice in South-East Asia: Cultures and Landscapes.UK: Oxford University Press.