The Thai are part of a larger ethno-linguistic group known as the Tai, a group which includes the Lao, the people of the Shan region of north-eastern Burma, the Zhuang people of Guangxi province in China and the Thổ people and Nùng people of northern Vietnam.
Various groups of people migrated south into the Irrawaddy- Chindwin, Sittang and Salween valleys from the China-Tibet region in the latter part of the first millennium, the Mon followed by the Tibeto-Burman and Tai - Shan races.
Here he visited the Rangoon region, ascended the Irrawaddy some distance, acquired a remarkable acquaintance with inland Pegu, and even penetrated to the Tai Shan states and the Tai kingdom of Lanna (December 1586 and January 1587).
The name comes from a Tai language of Vietnam, but the meaning is the same in the Lao language.
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In addition, the mission founded a station in 1903 to work with the Tai peoples of eastern Burma in Kengtung, which was closed in 1907; and it founded another station, the Chiang Rung Station, in Yunnan Province, southern China in 1917.
The Tai Phuan or Phuan people are a Buddhist Tai-Lao ethnic group that migrated to Laos from southern China, and had by the 13th century formed the independent principality of Muang Phuan at the Plain of Jars, with Xieng Khouang (contemporary Muang Khoun) as the capital.