Rama III and the Chinese Taste: The Origins of the Sino-Thai Style in Bangkok

Under the reign of Rama III, commonly placed between 1824 and 1851, several of Bangkok's royal temples were clad in ceramics and filled with stone statues brought from China. Some even dispensed with the roof finials of the Siamese tradition. People readily speak of a 'Sino-Thai style'. Yet this taste was no royal whim. It was rooted in a Chinese community settled before the capital was even founded, in the junk trade and in the patronage of merchant elites. Here we look back at a birth better known through its monuments than its archives, separating what is established from what belongs to storytelling.

A Chinese town before the royal city

The history of Chinese taste in Bangkok does not begin with Rama III. It begins with its inhabitants. In 1995 the historian Chuimei Ho published a study in the Journal of the Siam Society based on long-neglected archives: the city's Chinese temples and the dated plaques they preserve. Her conclusion is clear. By the end of the eighteenth century, Chinese people were already living in large numbers in Thonburi, on the west bank of the Chao Phraya. They had also settled on the site that would become Rattanakosin Island, the heart of the capital founded by Rama I. The oldest of the shrines she records is the temple numbered 36 in her inventory. Located on the Thonburi bank, near the river, it preserves a plaque dated 1781, a year before the accession of the first king of the Chakri dynasty.

This detour through Chinese temples answers a gap in the research. Ho points out that Thailand's Chinese communities have been studied extensively for the twentieth century: Landon in 1941, Purcell in 1951, Skinner in 1957 and 1958, Coughlin in 1960. The nineteenth century has received far less attention. For that period, the buildings themselves, their inscriptions and the memory of their donors become historical documents. It is a useful lesson in method for our subject: the Sino-Thai style can be read in stone before it can be read in texts.

A Chinese shrine within the royal walls

One case particularly caught Ho's attention. The shrine of San Chao Pho Suea, the 'shrine of the Tiger God', is transcribed as 'Sanchao Poseau' in her article. A dated plaque proves that it existed by 1824 at the latest. According to the commonly accepted chronology, that was the very year of Rama III's accession. Above all, it is the only Chinese temple located inside the walls of Rattanakosin.

Ho sees this as an anomaly. The area within the walls was reserved for the administration, official residences and the rites of the monarchy. One would not expect the authorities to tolerate a Chinese place of worship there, still less a large temple of the kind that draws crowds of worshippers. Its presence suggests a closeness between the court and part of the Chinese population that the capital's official urban planning gives no hint of.

The present building does not reflect that early state. According to its encyclopaedic entry, the shrine originally stood on Bamrung Mueang Road. It is said to have been moved to Tanao Road under Rama V, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it is built in the southern Chinese style. Today's visitor is therefore looking at a rebuilt monument, a witness to a presence older than its walls.

Junks, carriers of a taste

How did Chinese taste pass from the merchant quarters to the royal temples? The first channel was maritime. Thailand NOW, the Thai government's information platform, stresses that the importance of junks, and of ships in general, first left its mark on the exterior of Thai buildings. A curved base imitating a ship's hull thus became a common motif in temples and palaces. The same source places this motif in the eighteenth century, and therefore before Rama III. The dialogue between architecture and seafaring is thus older than his reign. Rama III did not invent it; he gave it a new scale and visibility.

The second channel was objects. Again according to Thailand NOW, Chinese reverse glass paintings were imported in the early nineteenth century, during what the platform calls the 'golden age' of Sino-Siamese trade. They are found in Thai temples. They are said to have played an important role in the development of Thai art, even though most visitors today walk past them without noticing.

There remains the question of the economic framework. A frequently advanced reading holds that most of these exchanges passed through tribute missions between the Chinese court and the King of Siam. According to this reading, the trade helped rebuild the kingdom's wealth after the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767. The hypothesis is plausible and widely held. Among the documents gathered for this article, however, it is supported only by a source of low authority; it needs to be confirmed by the work of economic historians.

What is better documented is the visible result in the temples. Several of Bangkok's royal monasteries preserve Chinese porcelain and stone statues of Chinese workmanship: Wat Thepthidaram, Wat Pho, Wat Suthat, Wat Ratchaorasaram. The entries describing them link these objects to the prosperity of Sino-Siamese trade.

Wat Ratchaorasaram, the king's temple

If any monument embodies the personal taste of Rama III, whose reign name was Nangklao, it is Wat Ratchaorasaram, in Chom Thong district. The site was not created from nothing. The wat (monastery) dates back to the Ayutthaya period and stands beside Khlong Dan, formerly Khlong Sanam Chai (khlong means a canal). It became Rama III's royal temple. The sources agree on one point: the king's attachment to the Chinese style can be read there in the buildings and the interiors alike.

It is here that one can observe the features historiography usually attributes to the style of the reign, subject to verification monument by monument. The roofs lose their traditional finials. The pediments are no longer of carved and gilded wood: they are built in masonry, then covered in stucco inlaid with ceramics in floral patterns. Finally, the decoration borrows from the Chinese repertoire.

Two claims circulate about this temple and must be set aside as things stand. One sometimes reads that it was the 'first' temple to blend Chinese and Thai art. One also reads that the king's ashes rest in the base of the principal statue. No reliable source consulted allows either to be confirmed. An article in the Thai cultural press, moreover, presents the principal statue as authentically dating from Rama III's time; it has yet to be consulted.

Wat Thepthidaram, porcelain and the White Buddha

Wat Thepthidaram, near Mahakan Fort, was founded by Rama III and completed in 1839. It is now classed as a third-class royal temple. Its principal statue, in white stone, is housed in a small mondop, a square pavilion designed to shelter an image or a relic. The king had it brought from the Grand Palace, which earned it the popular nickname 'Luang Pho Khao', the 'Venerable White Father'. In 1971 it was given the name Phra Phuttha Thewavilas.

The temple preserves Chinese porcelain and statues, as do the other foundations of the reign. It is often said to have been dedicated to one of the king's daughters. The tradition is widespread, but the sources gathered here do not document it.

Wat Yannawa, a junk in remembrance

The most spectacular case is that of Wat Yannawa, on the riverbank. The monastery was formerly called Wat Krabue. Under Rama III, a structure in the shape of a Chinese junk was built there, which local people nickname sampao chedi, the 'junk with chedi' (a chedi is a reliquary monument with a circular or polygonal plan). One secondary source dates this work to 1844, after a renovation of the ubosot (ordination hall). The temple is said to have taken its present name on that occasion, which can be linked to the word nawa, 'boat'. This chronology remains to be confirmed.

The very nature of the building is disputed in our sources. The encyclopaedic entry speaks of a viharn, a hall where worshippers gather. Another source refers to a junk-shaped chedi. The popular nickname might reconcile the two: a masonry hull bearing chedi in place of masts. Only a survey by the Fine Arts Department, Thailand's heritage authority, could settle the matter. The stern houses four Buddha statues and replicas of the Buddha's footprints, accompanied by inscriptions in Thai and Chinese. That bilingualism alone speaks of the audience the monument was meant for.

Two explanations, no contemporary proof

Why a junk of stone? Two accounts coexist.

• A technical memory. According to the first, the king wished to preserve the image of a vessel he saw becoming obsolete beside Western ships.
• A commercial tribute. The second sees it as a tribute to the ships that had made Siam rich.

Some authors connect the construction with China's defeat by Britain in 1842, at the end of the First Opium War. It is said to have struck the Siamese and hastened the shift from tributary trade with China to exchanges with Europe. These explanations are not mutually exclusive, but they belong to reported tradition and interpretation. No contemporary document citing the king's intentions has been identified.

Wat Arun and the porcelain story

No monument is more closely associated with Chinese ceramics than Wat Arun, on the Thonburi bank. Its central prang (a slender sanctuary tower derived from Khmer models) is clad in shards of Chinese porcelain and coloured earthenware, arranged in flowers and patterns. It is the very image of the taste of the age.

It is also a perfect example of a palimpsest. According to sources of low authority, Rama II raised the prang to roughly its present height. Its completion is generally attributed to Rama III, without the division of building campaigns between the two reigns being specified. The figures themselves diverge. The height given for the central prang varies by several metres from one source to another. The number of ceramic fragments, often put in the 'millions', rests on no published count. These data await confirmation from the Fine Arts Department.

The story of the ceramics' origin calls for the same caution. According to a very widespread tradition, the porcelain arrived as ballast in Chinese junks. It was then supplemented by broken crockery donated by local people. The tale elegantly ties the monument to trade and popular piety. Yet for this article it was found only in secondary sources; it should be read as a tradition.

Sino-Thai patrons, the forgotten makers of the style

To reduce the Sino-Thai style to the taste of a single sovereign would be inaccurate. Merchant elites of Chinese origin, absorbed into the Siamese nobility, also commissioned it.

Wat Thong Nopphakhun, in Thonburi, illustrates this well. Under Rama III, a wealthy Sino-Thai nobleman, Phraya Choduek Ratchasetthi, named Thongchin, restored it extensively (phraya is a high title of the Siamese nobility). He then presented it to the Crown, which earned the monastery the status of royal temple. According to its entry, the complex is registered as an ancient monument by the Fine Arts Department, a status that remains to be confirmed in the official inventories. The gesture is eloquent: to restore a temple and then give it to the king was to convert a commercial fortune into religious merit and political recognition.

Wat Ratchada Thitthan offers an earlier example of such alliances. It is linked to Ngoen, a Sino-Siamese magnate and husband of an elder sister of Rama I. Its ubosot is in the Chinese style and lacks chofa, the hook-shaped finials that crown traditional Thai roofs. The date of this ubosot is not established. It cannot therefore be attributed to the reign of Rama III, but it shows that Sino-Siamese elites moved in court circles from the very start of the dynasty.

A style born of a society, not a whim

Thai historiography readily refers to the aesthetic of Rama III's reign as phra ratcha niyom, the style 'according to royal taste'. The term is convenient, but it has its limits. Its precise definition and the list of features it covers have yet to be established from Thai academic research. Above all, it places the king at the centre of a phenomenon larger than himself. The sources gathered here point rather to a convergence of factors:

• a Chinese community settled before the capital, present even within the royal walls;
• a maritime trade bringing objects, materials and models;
• a naval imagery already present in Thai architecture;
• a nobility of merchant origin that funded, restored and donated temples;
• and finally, a sovereign who turned this taste into an official language.

Chinese influence was not the only one at work in early Rattanakosin. Rama III's reign also saw the first trade agreements with Britain, notably the so-called Burney Treaty, commonly dated to 1826. European forms, however, would not take hold in Bangkok's architecture and urban planning until later. The San Chao Pho Suea neighbourhood is today described as a group of shophouses (two-storey merchant units) in the so-called Sino-Portuguese style. It is a reminder that styles are layered: the early nineteenth-century shrine, moved under Rama V, now stands alongside façades from another era.

The chronology itself remains fluid. The founding date of Wat Mangkon Kamalawat, the great Chinese temple of Yaowarat, is given sometimes as under Rama III, sometimes under Rama V, with no decisive source to settle it. To tell the story of the birth of the Sino-Thai style is therefore to accept working with monuments that have been restored, moved and reinterpreted, drawing on oral traditions as much as on inscriptions. Chuimei Ho showed as much: in the absence of written archives, it is the plaques, the statues and the ceramics that speak. Listening to them rigorously remains the best way to restore to this style its true origin: a city where Chinese and Siamese shared far more than trade.

Sources and further reading

1. Chuimei Ho, Chinese Temples in Bangkok: Sources of Data for 19th-Century Sino-Thai Communities, Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 83, 1995.
2. non indiqué, Why Do Thai Temples Have Chinese Paintings?, Thailand NOW (plateforme gouvernementale thaïlandaise), non indiqué.
3. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Wat Ratchaorasaram, Wikipedia (en), consulté 2025.
4. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Wat Thong Nopphakhun, Wikipedia (en), consulté 2025.
5. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Wat Ratchada Thitthan, Wikipedia (en), consulté 2025.
6. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Wat Thepthidaram, Wikipedia (en), consulté 2025.
7. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Wat Yannawa, Wikipedia (en), consulté 2025.
8. Contributeurs Wikipédia, San Chaopho Suea subdistrict, Wikipedia (en), consulté 2025.
9. Contributeurs Wikipédia, Wat Mangkon Kamalawat, Wikipedia (en), consulté 2025.
10. non indiqué, The Chinese Junk Temple, siamrat.blog (blog), 2018.
11. non indiqué, Wat Arun Explained – Complete Guide, thai-aec.com, non indiqué.
12. non indiqué, Wat Arun — Temple of Dawn Bangkok, Thai Temple Archive, non indiqué.
13. non indiqué, Wat Arun: The Porcelain Temple-Mountain on the Chao Phraya, studiomatrx.org, non indiqué.