PHNOM PENH：WATERSIDE DEVELOPMENT

Many fashionable young girls who participate in the religious ceremonies wear red-dyed hairs or listen to the songs on the phone over the earphones. They have no distinction from those of Beijing, Seoul or Kuala Lumpur.

Drinking water from the same river

Probably no other capital city in Southeast Asia is like Phnom Penn, which has the crystal-clear historical context and the simplex city legend. Legend has it that an old woman named "Penh" discovered four Buddha statues along the Mekong Riverfront. Seemingly led by the deities, she consecrated the Buddha statues on the hill nearby and the town called Phnom Penh gradually came into being below the Penh Mountain.

City formed along river

The Mekong River zigzagging through the city might revive the severely-devastated country. Phnom Penh, the new capital city which was once called "the City in All Directions", can take in such abundant products as the fishes yielded from the Tonlé Sap Lake and the porcelain, control the trade to the upstream Laos and easily receive the commodities imported from China and transferred from the Vietnamese Delta.

Agriculture cannot stand as the economic pillar of the country any more, although the water resources of the new capital have improved by a myriad of times than the past. If you set foot in Cambodia from Vietnam through the convenient land route, you may spot the marked gap between the agricultural development levels of the two countries. The farmland of Vietnam can see two or three harvests a year and mechanization does fuel the export of the good rice of Southeast Asia; however, both sides of the roads in Phnom Penh feature desolating white yellow most of the time and the emaciated cattle walk in the field to forage rather than plough. The scenes meeting your eyes have nothing to do with the climate and territory. The national boundary is like a gate cutting off the contact between two neighboring pieces of land nurtured by the Mekong River.

The healing pains

The present Phnom Penh is regarded as a “fashionable and modern metropolis". From my viewpoint, this is mostly because at the very beginning the people of Phnom Penh gave up the Angkor-style construction pattern featuring pagodas whose panorama could be overlooked only on high mountains, temples built with boulders, relief walls recording the national history and the feats of the monarchs and moats of running water blessed by Buddha statues. Only the Tonlé Lake and the Mekong River converging here is enough.

After 600 years of ups and downs, the people of Phnom Penh are still genuinely devout to their religion; their prayer and worship along the Mekong River incessantly kindle the blazing ardor of the city. The repeated invasions from Thailand and Vietnam into Phnom Penh in the past still bring the people of Phnom Penh extremely unpleasant feelings for its two neighbors today. The scope of "patron" of the French over "Indochina" also included Cambodia and the French once strangled the only economic outlet (timber felling) of Cambodia. Nonetheless, at least they left the present city pattern of Phnom Penh. The "Khmer Rouge" almost destroyed all the ancient glories of the country including their spiritual beliefs. Such destruction similar to burying the whole world was bitterer than any revolution in the Angkor Empire. Now the people of Phnom Penh would rather choose to forget it or make no mention of it. Their pains are healing, just like the folding waves on the Mekong River after the steamers roll by.

Prayer at the riverside

No luxury high-rises stand in Phnom Penh, even in the prime Riverside Road. Tall coconut trees and hotels in the style of the colonial period guard on both sides of the streets and deck chairs for sun bath are arranged on the terraces of the roofs of the hotels, which are especially popular with the European visitors before the rainy season who come to enjoy the graceful travel along the Mekong River free from insanity. The motorbikes roar by and stir the hot wind over the river blowing large cars of the bigwigs and the feet-driven three-wheel vehicles of "the poor in Phnom Penh". The ferryboats traveling on the vast watercourse are not utilized for sightseeing but are simply indispensable traffic tools in the city.

When the sun went slightly westwards and gave off the golden brilliance, the river banks were crowded with people waiting for a praying ceremony to begin. All the people with distinct labels belonged to different social classes, had diverse occupations, played different roles for different purposes, lived in different mental states and enjoyed different quality of life, each of whom was an indispensable part composing Phnom Penh in the new era. The farmers or petty dealers bundled up pink or white flowers in bud together with a peeled coconut and a bunch of three incenses. The emaciated children with dirt all over were mostly homeless beggars who sold palm wax lamps at a low price (indeed cheap) for supper.

"One dollar, let them free!" A woman carrying a cage recommended her goods to me, with the encaged sparrows thumping in it. The people of Phnom Penh hold it that buying two engaged sparrows and setting them free in the sky could remove the evil creatures from them or realize their dreams thanks to their kind practice of "saving the life" and it works only when the worshippers put their palms together devoutly and pray with their eyes closed. No matter how the actual effects would be, it is really not a big deal for the urbanites to spend one dollar seeking psychological comfort. Nevertheless, basically no foreign visitors join in the game of "freeing captive animals".

The worship was held in the riverside pavilion. Numerous flowers and incenses were inserted into the altar and then put into the dustbins outside the pavilion by the clergies. What a waste it seems to be! After kneeling and praying, the people got an uncertain number of fruit offerings (chiefly bananas or longans) as returns. The participants of the religious ceremony included fashionable young girls wearing red-dyed hairs or listening to the music on the phones over the earphones. After "freeing the sparrows", they noted down their wishes on FACEBOOK just like writing diaries. They were not different from the young counterparts in Beijing, Seoul or Kuala Lumpur.

On the periphery of the ceremony, the casual "pursuit for the profound meaning of life" came up. A woman with a wide hat covering her head and face was practicing divination with cards. Her customers were also pretty ladies in the city of Phnom Penh who were especially fond of changing their unsatisfactory living conditions in the seemingly traditional manner.

Heartwarming smiles

The children coming along with their parents did not pray. The empty riverside grassland seemed to be their playing ground. They wore clothes, trousers and skirts of bright colors and did not mind the matching of red and green. With a balloon, the children could cheerfully play till the dusk fell and the streetlights lengthened the shadows in the gathering darkness. When was the happy-go-lucky nature changed? How did praying to an unseen world develop to be a habit? Maybe the mind was related with the field of vision. If the world turned bigger, the mind would tiptoe after the change.

Many old and dilapidated residential quarters in Phnom Penh exist like the villages in the Chinese cities. The random construction for a long time turn the roads between the buildings as narrow as lanes to be the labyrinths lacking outlets; the reliefs of Buddha statues seeming to have a long history erect at the entrance to the quarters and it looks as if you might enter a temple. Strange object composition can be seen everywhere; the distribution boxes are arranged upwards along the telegraph poles; the cactuses grow sturdily and the blue glass windows in the brick walls have never been opened. Nonetheless, the door is always left open because doorstep is the best place where the local people would like to spend a boring day. The ruined unfinished Buddha statues are scattered here and there in the courtyard. Many families are engaged in restoring the Buddha statues in the traditional way with governmental support. Motorbikes, the most convenient transport tools, are also piled up there.

Everyone there warmly welcome the arrival of visitors, especially Chinese tourists because the two nations have never been on bad terms before. The "victory" gesture and smiles are the universal languages and both the adults and the children do not spare their enthusiasm. There is no fraud or harassment in the old city of Phnom Penh, which is different from the present situation in many other Southeast Asian countries.

Tips：

Amok is one of the most popular traditional Cambodian delicacies served in almost all the Cambodian restaurants. The common cooking practice is to roast the meat or other materials in banana leaves, add coconut juice, coconut milk, lemon leaves, local vegetables and various spices, cook the main ingredients with all the seasonings and finally put them in the coconut shells or porcelain bowls. It is a signature dish with local characteristics. A variety of flavors such as fish, chicken and beef can be served for your choice.
(Words & Photos / Yu Tianjiu)