Cambodian Culture

When the culture extinguishes, the Nation will disappear.

When the culture is magnificent, the Nation is prosperous.

Khmer proverb

When we talk about development, we often mention about changes in people's behaviors and practice. A culture of a Nation determines a range of people's behaviors and practice.

Cambodian culture is characterized by:

Cambodian Traditional practices

Tradition (in Khmer: Propeyni) is the set of common practice in Cambodia, which valued by most Khmer people as a good thing to be maintained. Habits/patterns (in Khmer: Tumneam tumLap) are set of norms or behaviors that were practiced by many Cambodians in the past, but they lost their values and are currently being practiced partly by the Cambodian society. Tradition has higher status than a pattern.

The common greeting to each other is Sampeah (putting palms together as in prayer). The high of the bow determines the level of greeting, examples (from low high): a lower status person – friends and colleagues - higher status person- parents – King – monks – god (god is the highest).

The most traditional Cambodian food is rice and fish. From rice, Cambodians produce many other foods such as noodle, wine, desserts (sticky rice), sweet foods etc. The most typical Khmer soup is “KorKo”, a soup of fish, meat, and a range of combination from vegetables. Khmer noodle (soft noodle) is eaten everywhere in Cambodia. Cambodians now also try to eat western foods, and discovered an fascinated experience. Another most popular food is Cambodia fish cheese “Prohok”. Foreigners say Prohok “stinks”, but Cambodians say “it is delicious”.

There are Cambodian common practices in their every day life based on the Khmer traditions and patterns. These include practices during the life cycle (from birth to death) and the traditional Khmer ceremonies.

With regards to the life cycle, Cambodian tradition indicates three main significant times in people’s life: time of Birth, time of wedding and time of death. All the three times, there are certain norms to be complied.

When people become adult, they will be married. It is the Cambodian tradition that men need to ask women for marriage. Often, the parents are mediators for their children. Parents look for a suitable girl, and then propose to their son to marry her. There are many steps to follow during a wedding ceremony. Most of the steps and activities are very interesting and they are valued by the many people in the Khmer society. However, we observed some activities show imbalance between men and women's rights. When they get married, the husband has the responsibility to do the work outside the house to earn incomes to support the family, and women generally take care of children and do all household tasks (this differentiation of work has changed a bit from time to time).

Some observations - not sure if they are helpful or troubles:

The wedding ceremony is celebrated at groom's house, and people often use half of the road or even block the whole road to build the wedding hall. The traffic was always terrible, caused by wedding.
During a wedding ceremony, loud wedding music was turned on since early morning. The whole village can hear. This applied the same volume for a death ceremony.
In the capital or in some cities, when people organize wedding ceremony, they used to block the roads to make space for the ceremony and to show their power and status.
When participating in a wedding ceremony, people especially women need many hours to make up and dress well. Furthermore, I observed that some times one cloth is designated to one wedding only (really waste of money???).
During the wedding party, it is not uncommon that Cambodians dress very smart, wear expense jewelry, drive very expensive car (if available), to show their wealth and status.

Some key practices and patterns

Cambodians used to be polite all of the time. Challenges or disagreements are not common behaviors. Every behavior is associated with a reason of safety. Cambodians are not daring to do anything that leads them to feel unsafe. This does not mean that they do not have anything to express or to do in a certain way, but as they are afraid of taking risks, they prefer to keep inside their heart.

People in the Cambodia society are educated to thank someone, who have done good thing for them. Children were educated to be grateful to their parents as people used to articulate “mother’s goodness is big like a mountain”. Children, who do not listen to parents are perceived as “bad born” children.

Like other people, Cambodians are very encouraged when they are respected and their faces are well maintained in the public. The top leaders do not like criticism or negative feedback as they might feel they lose their reputation because of such actions. Often, feedback were seen as blames, and as anyone in the world, people don’t like blame.

In Cambodia, usually people are classified into different classes, the most common are three: high class (rich people), middle class (middle), and lower class (poor people). There are not many high and middle classes, but many poor people especially those who live in the rural communities. The gap or the differences between the rich and poor is so big, and represents unfairness in income distributions. The status underlies sources of power in it.

“Egg should not hit with stone”

(Khmer: Pong muan kom chul ning thmor)

Khmer saying about power

It becomes a culture that Cambodians perceive foreigner as source of influence. White "long nose" foreigners are automatically associated with power what we call “Barang power” and Cambodian behaviors are very much influenced by this, e.g. “I am afraid of the Barang”, “Hey, Barang is coming now, let do the work…”; “don’t worry, Barang is not here” etc. In addition to that, many Cambodians tend to depend on foreigners.

The relationships in the family are often dominated by parents, in which the parents make decisions on behalf of their children. In the past culture, children had no right to debate or reject parents’ proposal, and this culture has changed for some extend, but still exists in some parts of the society.

“A cake is never bigger than its basket”.

(Khmer: Num min thom cheang Neal)

A Khmer old saying about parents’ control over children

Common Cambodian chronic social diseases

Power differences
Status and classes (rich and poor)
FEARS (Never daring to do something again)
Lack of trust
No self-confidence
Not able to unlearn
Resistance to change
Egoistic, jealousy
Short-term thinking (not strategic)
Expatriates favoritism and dependency
Not valuing Cambodians
Corruption
Violence and impunity

How can these social diseases be cured?