Lampang Legends (and other interesting things about Lampang)

The chicken is ubiquitous throughout Lampang. It is found artistically rendered on nearly every dish in most restaurants in town. Even my own collection of dishes is graced by the presence of the Lampang chicken. It is impossible for you to go a single day without using a chicken dish. The chicken is also found throughout town in several forms. What I would defined as the center of town is an intersection where five rather important roads converge. At the center of this intersection is a clock tower. Off to the side, prominently displayed near the portrait of the much revered King, is a large statue of a chicken. A short distance from there, at the center of a roundabout, is another statue of a chicken. Drive a little further and you will hit one of the most beautiful roads in Lampang. This road had been built using tiles and other ceramic products. Lampang is very well-known for their ceramics and thus has used this road to showcase their work. This road is lined with not only super-sized chicken bowls, but also chickens placed atop poles. The easiest way to describe it is to have you picture a streetlight. These are essentially streetlights, except in this case, the light has been replaced with a chicken. Lastly, one encounters the chicken on the official seal of Lampang. This seal is placed on every official document that comes out of there government office.

After noticing the significant presence of the chicken (or more accurately, the white rooster) here, I decided to make several inquiries as to the reason why this rather unassuming animal was raised to the position of "Mascot of Lampang". According to the local legend Buddha visited the province in his lifetime. The god Indra worried that the people would not get up in time by themselves to show respect to Buddha. So he took it upon himself to wake them up and thus transformed himself into a white rooster. It was also noted that during the Buddha's visit, he planted a tree in the temple he visited. This tree, supposedly the kachao (กระเชา) tree or jute plant (Holoptelea integrifolia), was planted in the temple gardens and has since become the provincial tree. On a similar note, the provincial flower is the Heliconia (Heliconia sp.).

The Great Seal of Lampang
This is a rendition of the front of Wat Phra That Lampang Luang (one of the more famous temples in Lampang with the white rooster in the doorway. The text on the bottom is 'Lampang' in Thai.

This is a picture of the chicken "street light". There is a whole row of these down the middle of the road stretching for a good 500 m. If you look closely, you can see a small chicken bowl underneath the chicken.

This is a close up shot of the chicken "street lights"

This is the White Chicken Games Mascot. The White Chicken Games are an annual sporting event held in Lampang every January. It's like the Olympics but for Lampang and the mascot is a chicken.

This is one of the chicken statues, however, this one is located in a temple.

Here are some real, live chickens running around a temple in Lampang.

This is the larger statue of the chicken in the center of town near the portrait of the King.

Here is a just a closer shot of that chicken. It's an odd-looking chicken, but it is in fact a chicken.

This is me in front of the super-sized chicken bowls along the Ceramics Road in Lampang. My bowls are just miniature versions of this. Can you picture it?

This is a picture of the provincial flower. It looks like a bird-of-paradise, but in reality it is just a relative.

And finally, this is a picture of the jute tree which was supposedly planted by the Buddha during his visit to Lampang.

I hope you enjoyed that entry as much as I enjoyed writing it and figuring the whole story out.

RM