It is the latest version of the famous Thai smile – motorcycle policemen with a bright red goofy grin painted onto their white anti-pollution masks.
For the first week of the year – and longer if people seem to be smiling back – highway policemen in Thailand will wear the masks “to lift the mood of motorists,” according to police officials.
“For our highway policemen, we have the policy that the police must be friendly and smiling all the time, but the problem is, when we’re tired, it’s hard to keep smiling,” said Colonel Somyos Promnim, the Highway Police commander.
It has been a rough year in Thailand, with revolving governments, restless mobs and a weeklong takeover of Bangkok’s airports that frightened away tourists from the country that keeps on calling itself “The Land of Smiles.”
“They have to put on a mask because a smile doesn’t come naturally anymore,” said Ammar Siamwalla, an economist who keeps a close eye on the mores of his countrymen. “Normally people smile. You don’t have to put on a smiley mask.
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“But these past few years that smile has worn thin because we are all angry at each other and willing to show it.”
It is a complicated thing, the Thai smile, as varied, nuanced and eloquent as the bow in Japan, and apparently requiring just as many muscles.
Foreign visitors are charmed, but the truth is, it can often be as difficult to know what is behind the Thai smile as it is to guess the real expression of a police officer hiding behind a smiley mask.
Happiness or sadness, regret or anticipation, triumph or embarrassment, warmth or wickedness, the important thing – and apparently sometimes the hardest thing nowadays – is just to keep on smiling.
Earlier this month a leading polling agency, Abac, spent three days questioning 2,079 people in the Bangkok area and found that on a scale of 1 to 10, people gave Thailand only 5.77 points for being the Land of Smiles.
“People forget to smile, you know,” said Kritika Kongsompong, a professor of business who for a year was Thailand’s public curmudgeon as the grim host of the television import The Weakest Link.
“I think with better training we can do a better job,” she said, noting that one customer service company had given its employees mirrors in which to practice their smiles. “Training should always be one of the top categories for anybody.”
In dour Singapore, where social engineering is often attempted by fiat, people walked around smiling for a while a few years back in response to a campaign called Smile Singapore.
In Japan, where people can sometimes get carried away by the seriousness of life, workers have been trained to hold a chopstick in their teeth to produce the living equivalent of a smiling emoticon.
Now Thailand is attempting to live up once again to what might be a national motto, by way of the musical “Bye Bye Birdie” – “Just put on a happy face! Put on a happy face. Put on a happy face.”
Starting out his new administration, the already embattled prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva – the fourth prime minister this year – made a promise to his people this month: “I will prove that once again Thailand can be the land of the free, the land of opportunities, and the land of smiles.”
The highway police seem to be as good a place to start as any.
The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help “reduce the stress from drivers when they see the police,” said Somyos, the Highway Police commander.
To that end, he said, some 200 police booths would also distribute holy water, chewing gum and mints.
He defended his force when asked why drivers needed smiley masks and gum and holy water to calm down when approached by a patrolman.
“The police are not that scary,” he said. “When I was in the United States, their highway police seemed to be more fierce than Thai police. I was scared of them.”
