Exclusive | Shinawatras out, Lee Kuan Yew in: Asian leaders’ differing treatment by China’s ancestry tourism
- Pilgrimages by former Thai leaders Thaksin and Yingluck to Guangdong village where they have roots are no longer as celebrated
- Nearby village generates tourism from tenuous link to Singapore’s founding father Lee, who never visited it
Inside an ordinary ancestral shrine in a village in southern China, where locals pay respects to their forebears, hang photographs of two unusual figures: former Thailand prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra.
“Everyone here knows about their ties to this place, for sure,” said Xie Yimin, a home supplies shop owner in Taxia village in Guangdong province, four hours’ drive from Guangzhou.
Brother and sister Thaksin and Yingluck are fourth-generation Chinese immigrants in Thailand and descended from a family of Hakkas. Their great-grandfather Seng Saekhu, like many others from the Guangdong cities of Meizhou and Chaozhou, left China in the late 19th century for what was then Siam, where he grew wealthy from trading and taxation businesses.
Before each went into self-imposed exile after being ousted as Thai leader by military governments in 2006 and 2014 respectively, Thaksin and Yingluck had become familiar to Taxia. With the help of the Chinese government during his term as leader, Thaksin was able to trace their ancestral roots to the village. He first visited it in 2005, before returning with his sister in 2014.
The siblings’ portraits were placed in the centre of an array of photos of prominent descendants of the village with the clan surname Qiu.
“Being distant relatives [of the Shinawatras] was something people liked to talk about,” Xie said.