Scientists have suggested various origins for the human smile. Some behaviourists argue that the smile in each of its many expressions may be related, at basis, back to the relaxation of the muscles in a baby’s face after he’s glutted himself on his mother’s milk. (I’ve seen that same nice, uncomplicated smile on my pal Stack Jackson, just after he’s drained his first glass of Kloster beer on a Friday night.) Other researchers look for even earlier origins, tracing the urge to smile back to snarls and open-mouthed treats among the apes, our evolutionary relations. (Stack says he’s seen this kind of smile on his mother-in-law, though Stack’s wife says her mum means well.)

Even with apes, however, studies show that different smiles can convey different messages. Chimpanzees, for example, have a "fear grin", or smile of appeasement. Confronted by a superior member of the species, the ape performs a silent, bare-toothed display. (It looks like a smile, anyway.) This signifies something like, "Hey, I’m an okay guy; don’t do anything rash. I wasn’t winking at your mate. Dearie me, no. I merely had a mote in my eye." And there’s another smile in the chimp’s repertoire – this one a soothing expression directed by a superior to an inferior, as if to say, "Don’t panic, man. Relax. You go ahead and wink all you want …"

Step on someone’s toe in the press of people on a Bangkok bus, and the chances are you’ll be confronted with a beaming smile, even as your victim blinks back tears of pain, and just as though he had thought his day couldn’t possibly have been any better unless, of course, some great klutz stepped on his foot. In fact, the smile is routinely used to defuse the potentially violent situations. It’s a culturally imprinted first reaction, and a valuable buffer against ill-considered conflict. It doesn’t mean your average Thai enjoys pain.

Smiles, laughter, weeping, back-slapping, kissing, raising various configurations may indeed have some universal bases, but in different cultural and social contexts they can express very different things. Whatever their actual physiological or emotional origins, smiles have evolved into social actions that are a form of nonverbal communication.

Eleven different muscles are involved in facial expression, and several or all of these together may be involved in shaping any one smile. A smile can express quiet joy or sadness, admiration or malicious pleasure, pride or embarrassment, approval or scorn, even threat or fear. There is the leer of avarice and the quiet rapture of the ascetic. There are smirks and sneers. You may mistake a grimace for a smile: "Look, the baby's smiling!" Sure. Maybe. Or maybe he’s just got gas. There is a medical condition known as Bell’s palsy, where a swollen nerve can cause facial paralysis resulting in a characteristic smile much like that of the Mona Lisa. There’s even a type of behaviour psychiatrists call "smiling depression"; should the doctor fail to recognize the syndrome, he might have a suicide on his hands. The list could go on and on.

A "smile" can represent all of these things within one and the same community. What potential, then, for misunderstanding between cultures? Once I went into a travel agency in Bangkok. It was a narrow little room, and I sat across the counter from three pleasant young ladies. A gentleman sat at a desk to one side. I pulled out my cigarettes and offered them around. Everyone declined, smiling big, almost joyful smiles. Judging by their expressions, the only thing marring their joy at my generosity was the fact that they didn't smoke so that they could please me by taking a cigarette. I asked whether they minded if I smoked. "Not at all." They beamed at me some more. I didn’t see an ashtray, so I asked if I could have one. "Of course." More smiles, and an ashtray appeared as though by magic.

I had puffed away at a cigarette and a half, as we negotiated a trip to Malaysia, before I suddenly became aware of the notices on the wall behind the girls. They came in various sizes, all large, and in various colours, all bright. They were written in Thai and English, the ones which didn’t have the international no-smoking symbols on them. "Please do not smoke." "We ask you not to smoke; some of our staff have allergies." "Please, please don’t smoke." And so on. There were more of them on the inside of the door through which I’d entered.

To my way of thinking at the time, it would’ve been far more courteous for them to tell me directly they would prefer I didn’t smoke, and thereby spare me the acute embarrassment I suffered when I discovered what a boor I was being.

Do smiles mean the same thing from one culture to another? Not necessarily. Between two very different languages, there is no reason at all to expect the same word to mean the same thing. (Khee ray means "not beautiful" in Thai, for example, while in Japanese it means the exact opposite. "Maniac" in English is "madman"; in Gulf Arabic it means "habitual abuser of oneself", and has an entirely different force if one hollers the expression at a careless driver.) What did the smiles of those lovely people in the travel agency mean? Perhaps it was appeasement behaviour – this uncouth farang had already disregarded the basic social niceties; what further atrocities might he not be capable of if he weren’t propitiated? Or could it be they were merely reformed smokers glad at the chance to breathe smoke without actually smoking?

A case could be for any or all of these theories. In fact, however, I suspect those smiles simply reflected the typical warmth and tolerance of the Thai people.

Some observers have felt that the width and frequency of the average Thai’s smile seem to diminish in direct proportion to the enthusiasm with which this beautiful country is being promoted as the "Land of Smiles". Nevertheless, you will still find more smiles per square metre here than just about anywhere else in the world except perhaps at a wet T-shirt contest. Thailand really is the Land of Smiles.

Many Thais are blessed with a capacity to live in the moment, and to treat that moment as something to be savoured. The smaller slings and arrows of existence can be shrugged off with a mai pen rai–"never mind". Though the stranger to this country should be cautious in his interpretation of situations and reactions, allowing for the danger of cultural misunderstandings, to a great extent the Thai smile speaks in quite uncomplicated terms of a secure self-confidence, a native joie de vivre, and a pleased interest in anyone who finds Thailand worthy of a visit.

Adapted from Bangkok Old Hand,
by Collin Piprell
Post Books, 1994