Cambodian Culture

When we talk about development, we often mention about changes in people's behaviors and practice. Why do we need to do that? Are their behaviors and practice not good or not supportive to development? What are social-cultural factors underlying those behaviors?

In this section, we attempt to highlight the important aspects of the Cambodian cultural and social factors that influence Cambodian ways of thinking and patterns, which leads to certain behaviors in their daily life.

What are important aspects about Cambodian culture?

When talking about culture, there are a range of related issues to be explained. Many Cambodian people are serious about the culture as they have conservative perspectives to that, in which they worry about the possible disappearance of the Cambodian Nation as result of dissolved culture. Khmer people used to state:

When the culture extinguishes, the Nation will disappear.

When the culture is magnificent, the Nation is prosperous.

Khmer proverb

The Khmer people define culture in a meaning of some things that represent the Khmer identity, and distinguish Cambodia from others. The important aspects of Cambodian culture should include:

Tradition and customs/patterns

Cambodian beliefs and religion

Khmer letters and language

Khmer literatures

Khmer arts

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. A practice can be developed to a tradition, and later on a tradition can just remain a pattern when it was not valued by the whole society anymore.

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 will be always many people coming to join the time.

Time of Birth

Before birth

Take care with food (no chili).
Dress in bigger cloths – make space for child to grow
Do not take some things from the high/top
With a range of abstinences (e.g. don’t sleep at day; don’t take shower at night; don’t sit in front of a door or step etc.

During birth

Call traditional nurse to help with the birth
Pray to god and the village spirit to help

After birth

Mother needs to warm up with fire for up to one week
Ask Achar (a Cambodian priest) to help praying that no ghosts will be around the child
One month: reception party. Celebrate to the grand father and grand mother spirit to recognize the child. Invite friends and relatives to come and join a party. First kid – big party.

Time of Marriage

Before the wedding

Match making (Che Chov): parent of the groom ask someone (should be a lucky women) to act as match maker to make a survey to the bride, including her marital status, birthday, birth animal, age etc., then that women goes officially to the bride’s parent. The process needs three times.

Asking for marriage (Sdey Dan Doeng): It is the Cambodian tradition that a man has to ask women for marriage (not vice versa). When the bride’s parent gives a green light to the match maker, the process of asking for marriage can be started, in which representatives from both parties are needed. The process can take three times. When they formally agreed, they start to talk about the arrangement of the wedding. The most important thing here is the wedding date because it can bring bad luck to the couple when a wrong date is chosen. The Achar or a fortune teller can determine a good day for wedding.

Note: In the former Cambodian society, before a wedding process can be started, the groom needs to live with and work for the bride’s parent for a period of time to demonstrate his ability in performing the work. If he get past this probation period, he will get married, otherwise he will be dismissed.

Based on Khmer tradition, the wedding will be organized at the house of the bride. The ceremony takes three days. Currently, times for wedding reduced, and people can marriage from ½ to one full day. There are several sequential steps in the wedding procedures, guided by a wise man called Achar.

Important steps at the wedding day (s) include:

Groom procession
Parents discussions (approving the process)
Sampeah and matching
Tie the hands
Hair cut
Ring exchange
Wedding reception (party)

After the wedding

Three days after wedding: go to pagoda get best wishes from the monks.
Married couple go visit relatives and friends
Couple goes to commune to register and get marriage certificate.
From that point of time: both persons are formally husband and wife.
In a modern Cambodian wedding, some people also go on honeymoon.

Some observations of Khmer wedding

In the current Cambodian society, when people get married, they hire wedding cloths from the shop. During the ceremony, the bride and groom need to change costumes many times according to the specific step of the process.

When a wedding ceremony takes place, the whole village or even other neighbor villages will certainly know as they will play music very loud from early morning to late night. This tradition (loudness) has now tensions with some people who need to rest.

During the wedding reception (party), people can have it at home or in a restaurant. When the party start, they also play music very loud so that no one can discuss or hear some things else. Some times, the music was very sad during a party.

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.

It is observed that during the wedding party, instead of giving gifts, people give money to contribute to party expenses.

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 (a really waste of money I think).

Not every case, but often I observed that during the wedding party, people dress very smart, wear expense jewelry, drive very expensive car (if available), to show their wealth and status. When I show that I don’t like this, people think that I am crazy because I don’t follow the "Cambodian river".

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Time of Death

When a person dies, all family members including extended family come to the ceremony. Important processes include:

Before death: monks pray many times until the person becomes to his/her end.

After death: many steps of ceremony will take place. Call Achar for helping with everything. Death music plays all the time. A white flag is hanging outside the house indicating that someone is death.

Body procession: many people will come including monks, either to the pagoda for burring or to somewhere for bury. There will be a different music during the body procession.

Observation:

Here again, it’s about the music. It is worse than the wedding because the type of music is very different, and often goes until late night or throughout the night. The music attempts to make good things for the death person, but the people living in the village and around the area, especially the children, were so afraid of such music. As result, children experienced trouble sleeping over night. Many Cambodians believe that when people die, s/he becomes a ghost, and the ghost will haunt others.

Cambodian traditional ceremonies

Visak Bochea

Meak Bochea

Khmer New Year

Phchum Ben

Water festival

(Content will be written at a later stage)

Other key Cambodian Practices / Patterns

Some patterns presented here have just developed from the regime changes, especially from the past lessons learned such as Khmer Rouge. Many of them were seen as negative consequences from the past fearful history rather than just from the old Cambodian society. However, there are patterns from the very former society that seem not helpful anymore to the current development. As all of those were conscious or unconscious practiced by Cambodians, they become part of the Cambodian culture.

Greeting

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). Some people also shake hands, but it seems Cambodians rarely hug each other except some couples that they miss each other so much.

Politeness and safety first

Cambodians used to be polite all of the time. Challenges or disagreements are not common behaviors. The communication happens in a way that the harmony between people can be maintained. Politeness is the key, and sometimes people just keep quiet. 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.

Gratefulness

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. This also applied with other people who had helped or provided assistances to another persons.

Saving face

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 addition to that, Cambodians seem not like anyone who does not take care of or kill their feeling.

Power and status

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. People used to say “I am poor, so I have no power or I am powerless”, “they are rich, so they have power”. On the other hand, people get rich through power, i.e. if they have power, they can do everything (including illegal activities) to become rich. The efforts for getting the power have shown many decates through different ways such as military force, violent activity (threaten or kill), buying the position (corruption or bribe), and any other businesses. So, power leads to high status and richness.

“Egg should not hit with stone”

(Khmer: Pong muan kom chul ning thmor)

Khmer saying about power

Foreigner influence

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.

Relationships

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.

A person, who has sex before marriage, was seen as not good. 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).

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

Food

The worst period in life was the Khmer Rouge regime, in which most people were hungry. Cambodians learned to eat most of the things that can move, either from inside the water or from forest (worms, various insects, snails, frogs, snakes, crickets, grasshoppers etc.). Most of them still are eaten in Cambodia and they are very delicious.

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 smells “stinky”, but Cambodians say “it smells so delicious”.

Common Cambodian chronic social diseases

developed during the old Cambodian society, especially

from the last four decades.

The author would not disagree with anyone, who calls them as part of the Cambodian culture, but he would prefer to call or emphasize them as " social diseases" rather than culture in order not to make the readers to have a negative view towards Cambodian (good) culture. Those social Cambodian disease are for examples:

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
Etc.

How can these social diseases be cured?