Older Cambodians say there was a time, many years ago, when their country was peaceful and prosperous under the strong but benevolent hand of Norodom Sihanouk, the 81-year-old king who gave up his throne just over a week ago.
The parents of motorbike taxi driver Yien Lion, 40, used to tell him how popular Sihanouk was in the 1960s, which they recalled as "the good old days."
But such nostalgia doesn't exist for Cambodians of Yien Lion's age or younger. And that could mean bad news for the future of the country's centuries-old monarchy.
Calamity rocked Cambodia after Sihanouk was deposed as the supreme political leader in 1970: civil war, genocide under the Khmer Rouge, and more war, wreaking destruction that left the country, in Sihanouk's words, a "beggar state."
Asked his reaction to Sihanouk's abdication, Yien Lion said coolly he had "no impression" about the matter: "I don't think he is extraordinary at all."
Sihanouk, one of Asia's most extraordinary postwar leaders, may have left his mark on history, but perhaps not on the generation that will steer Cambodia into the future.
His controversial life has fascinated observers abroad, but many ordinary Cambodians seem unmoved that the man who has been central to their country's affairs for more than six decades may be fading from the scene.
Politicians as well as Sihanouk had warned darkly of possible unrest if the succession was not accomplished smoothly. But Sihanouk's replacement on Thursday by a son, Norodom Sihamoni, who has spent most of his life abroad, inspired mainly mild curiosity among people interviewed in the Cambodian capital.
"What's most striking is the lack of a spontaneous public reaction to the news of the abdication," said Steve Heder, a Cambodia expert from London's School of Oriental and African Studies.
Sambo Manara, a college history professor, found "very little reaction" among his students. He attributes that indifference to not having lived at a time when Sihanouk wielded great power.
Young people today "are more interested in the direction of development for the country, be it a monarchy or a republic," he said.
However, Sihamoni's accession may represent a turn toward recovery of the monarchy's popularity, he said.
After he became king in 1941, Sihanouk led the country to independence from France in 1953. Two years later, he handed the throne to his father so he could become actively involved in politics.
As the country's supreme political leader, he was adept at quashing challengers, with the result that most Cambodians enjoyed relatively untroubled lives until the country was caught up in the maelstrom of the Vietnam War.
In 1970, he was toppled by a pro-American Cambodian elite who accused him of sympathizing with the Vietnamese communists and declared a republic, plunging the country into a disastrous civil war.
First allied with the Khmer Rouge, Sihanouk was later confined to his palace during their 1975-79 rule, when the radical communist movement was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians.
A long struggle to oust the Vietnamese-installed regime that replaced the Khmer Rouge ended with a U.N.-supervised election in 1993 and Sihanouk's reinstallation as a constitutional monarch.
The last decade saw Sihanouk largely relegated to the sidelines while corrupt, incompetent and bickering politicians failed to solve mounting social and economic problems.
Sihanouk has been receiving medical treatment in the Chinese capital, an absence he has also used to register his disapproval of his country's political leadership.
Sao Sopheap, a 24-year-old employee of the nonprofit group Family Health International, said Sihamoni's accession establishes an important link between young people and a royal tradition dating back to the 13th-century Angkor empire.
"Monarchy is indispensable for us," he said. "I would be so sad if it disappears one day."
Heder said Sihamoni _ a former ballet dancer with little political experience _ must play a leading role if he is to revive the monarchy's popularity.
If he fails to challenge what the Cambodians see as injustices of the current regime, then "the monarchy will be further reduced to just a kind of curiosity," he said.
