Thai Chinese Memorial

The Thai Chinese Memorial in Chiang Rai is a small museum on Doi Mae Salong that tells one specific, verifiable story: how the KMT’s 93rd Division ended up farming tea on a Thai mountainside. Entry costs 20 THB and it’s open daily 08:00-17:00. It’s also known as the Chinese Martyrs’ Memorial Museum, and the “memorial” half of the name refers to the shrine hall inside honouring soldiers killed in action.

The 93rd Division were Republican Chinese soldiers who lost to Mao’s forces at the end of the civil war and retreated into Burma’s Shan State with their families. After more than a decade moving through the hills, they settled at what’s now Doi Mae Salong. Thailand granted them refuge in exchange for military service: in 1971 they fought communist insurgents at Doi Luang, Doi Yao, and Doi Pha Mon in Chiang Rai, and in 1981 at Khao Ya in Phetchabun. That service is the basis for the citizenship and land rights their descendants hold today — the same community that turned this hillside into one of Thailand’s main tea-growing regions.

The museum itself is modest and split into three parts. One building lays out the KMT’s political and military history with photographs and period documents; the central hall is a shrine honouring the men who died in the anti-insurgency campaigns; a second hall traces the social and economic side — how a displaced army became a farming community. None of this is dressed up with elaborate architecture. It’s a straightforward local-history museum, and the value is in the specificity of the story rather than the setting.

Insider Tip: Read the English-language panels in the first building before the shrine hall — the shrine makes more sense once you know the 1971 and 1981 campaigns it’s commemorating.

Visit in the morning if you’re combining it with the tea plantations nearby, since Mae Salong’s hillside roads get warm and hazy by midday in the dry season. Dress is casual but respectful — it’s a memorial hall, not a temple, so there’s no strict clothing rule beyond common sense. Parking is available on-site. Pair a visit here with Phrathat Chedi Srinagarindra on the same hill, or a stop at Choui Fong Tea Plantation to see the crop the community’s descendants still grow.