Everything the old city holds, including the spot the founder was killed on, within a square 1.6 km on a side.
None. This is where the living city started.
What is said to be thereThe crystal Buddha and the stone one in the viharn are older than the city and were carried here from somewhere else. They come out once a year, at Songkran, and go back in. The reasoning behind a locked image is not security. An image with that much handling behind it is held to be awake, and what is awake is let out on a schedule, not on demand.
HereA tray, in the name of whoever in your family came first to a place and started something. (Tan khan khao — the tray of rice, Sweeping)
0.6 km on from the last one, on foot
Shan founders and abbots, in the small stupas around the chedi
What is said to be thereShan founders, Shan abbots, in the small stupas round the chedi, five centuries into a city that still files them under from somewhere else. Northern households feed their own dead — ผีปู่ย่า, the grandparents, danced to and given food so they stay ancestors and do not turn into something hungrier. A community that buried its dead a thousand kilometres from where those dead were born has been doing that work here since the 1400s.
HereA tung, written for someone who died away from where they were born. The Shan community here has been doing exactly that for five hundred years. (Offering a tung, Pouring the water)
1.4 km on from the last one, on foot
Mangrai, founder of Chiang Mai, killed by a lightning strike in the market — B.E. 1854, 1311 CE, aged 72
What is said to be thereHe did not leave. In the northern reckoning a lord who dies in his own town becomes its เสื้อเมือง — the spirit of the place, wearing the office he held — and goes on running it from wherever he was put down. That is why the offerings at this shrine are not requests. People come and tell him things: what has been built, what has been sold off, who is in charge now. Seven hundred years of a city reporting to its founder on a street corner.
HereA khan tang. He is not being asked for a favour so much as reported to — the city's founder, told how his city is doing. Flowers and candles in pairs, set down, then pour the water at the root of the bodhi tree. (Khan tang — the tray for a spirit, Pouring the water)
0.2 km on from the last one, on foot
No one buried. What is kept here is the city's own life.
What is said to be thereIndra sent the pillar down with two kumphan to guard it, on terms: keep up the offering and the guard stays. The Lawa kept it, then a generation did not, and the guardians walked off and took the pillar with them. What is told here is not a haunting but an eviction — the thing that watched the city left because it stopped being fed, and the eight days of flowers every May are the arrears.
HereSweep. The terrace takes leaf fall from the big trees and the brooms are against the wall. In late May, when the bowls are out across the city, flowers go in them here too — this is the ground the pillar came off. (Sweeping, Sai khan dok — flowers in the bowl, Pouring the water)
0.4 km on from the last one, on foot
Mahathera Chan, the monk it was renamed for, and two centuries of nobody
What is said to be thereA wat has its own spirit — ผีเสื้อวัด, the one that holds the ground — and the northern position is that it does not leave when the monks do. Two hundred years of Burmese rule emptied wat after wat inside these walls and left the guardians in them. That is what a วัดร้าง is in Chiang Mai: not an empty building, a building with only the caretaker left in it. This one got its monks back. Most did not.
HereSweep, and light a lamp on the old brick. A wat that spent two centuries with nobody to do either is the place for it. (Sweeping, Lighting a pang pratip, Pouring the water)
A family, by the account Citylife printed
What is said to be thereCitylife printed it: a man built on a plot he was told repeatedly was wrong, moved his family in, and killed all of them. A death like that is ผีตายโหง in the northern classification — died wrong, died violently, did not get the rites — and the class is defined by not going anywhere. The compound has stood empty since apart from people sleeping rough in it, and one building still has a sign on it reading House of Success.
HerePour water for them somewhere else, at any of the wats on this walk. That is the whole of it. (Pouring the water)
1.0 km on from the last one, on foot
Nobody in particular. What is kept here is the office, not the man.
What is said to be thereLords changed their clothes here before going through the gate, and lords riding out to war stopped here on the way. Both directions. What a place like that accumulates, in the northern reckoning, is the office rather than the officers — the ones who came back and the ones who did not are equally present, and equally uninterested in you.
HereA tray, in the name of somebody who held an office and had to hand it on. It is what the place is for. (Tan khan khao — the tray of rice, Khan tang — the tray for a spirit, Pouring the water)
0.9 km on from the last one, on foot
Members of the Mangrai line, in and around the brick chedi
What is said to be thereThe Mangrai line is in and around the brick, and the wall was the reason: royal ash went outside it. The dead were kept on the far side of the line the living lived inside, close enough to be fed and far enough not to be underfoot. Stand here at dusk and the geography is the whole belief, laid out flat.
HereA tung. The poles are along the wall and the wat sells the banners at the office. (Offering a tung, Pouring the water)
1.1 km on from the last one, on foot
Kham Fu, fourth king of the Mangrai line — the chedi was raised for his ashes in 1345
What is said to be thereTwo sets of remains, of different kinds. King Kham Fu's ashes are in the chedi, and his son built it to put them there. The Phra Singh image in the Lai Kham hall is the other kind: an image that old, moved that often and claimed by three cities at once is treated in the north as a resident rather than an object — something that consented to be where it is and could stop consenting.
HereMorning. A tray at the hall behind the chedi, with a name on it. The wat is busy enough that there is always a monk free before eleven. (Tan khan khao — the tray of rice, Pouring the water, Pha bangsukun — the cloth)
1.0 km on from the last one, on foot
Chao Mahotaraprathet, whose residence this was
What is said to be thereThe teak panels are the walls of a dead man's house. Chao Mahotaraprathet lived inside them and they were taken down and put back up as a hall, which in the northern reading does not change whose they are — ผีเจ้านาย, the spirit of a lord, stays with what was his. The peacock over the door and the dog under it are his birth signs, which is to say the building is still signed.
HereLamps. The pond at the back is where the wat floats them, and there are usually some for sale by the door. (Lighting a pang pratip, Pouring the water)
1.3 km on from the last one, on foot
Six centuries of them, all outbound
What is said to be thereExecutions at the gate, by driving a sharpened stake into the stomach, and every corpse in the city carried out through the same arch for six hundred years. Both classes of ผีตายโหง in one doorway, in bulk. It is a traffic junction now with a rebuilt brick face, and the people who cross it on foot at two in the morning are not thinking about it, and the taxi drivers who will not stop there are.
HereNothing here is set up to receive an offering, so leave no food or wax on the brick. Carry the act a few minutes south on Wualai to Wat Muen San and put it in the name of whoever went out through this gate unnamed. (Song khro — sending it away, Lighting a pang pratip)
0.8 km on from the last one, on foot
Not the corpse gate — that is two hundred metres west — but the road beyond it runs to Haiya and the burning grounds
What is said to be thereNot the corpse gate — that is two hundred metres west — but the road that runs out of it goes to Haiya and the burning grounds, and it did that job for centuries. A crossing where the dead went out is where misfortune is still set down and left: a tray at the kerb, a raft, a little figure standing in for somebody. Outward, always. Look down when you cross.
HereThe rescue-foundation station on this side of town keeps a box. Ask for ศพไร้ญาติ. (Paying for the unclaimed dead)