ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to give a comprehensive introduction, based on the information gathered by some scholars earlier and the field work done by the author in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, with regard to the past and the present of this special immigrant group in Thailand and Laos. Some scholars hold that the word ‘haw’ is the transliteration of Chinese character – ‘huo’ is the Yunnanese pronunciation, while in Mandarin it is pronounced ‘he’, meaning ‘who’. In 1873, the Yunnanese Muslim rebels in Dali were defeated by the troops of the Qing government of China. That year and in later years, a lot of Yunnanese Muslims escaped from Dali and other places of Yunnan to South-East Asia. The Yunnanese in Thailand and Laos represent an unbreakable link between Yunnan and Thailand and Laos through time.
