The Chinese in the Philippines

January 21, 2009 at 2:36 am (Food and Drink, Philippine History, Places)
Tags: Philippine Inquirer

Breakfast this morning:  daing, fried rice, Bacolod chorizo, boiled saba bananas with muscovado.  Oh God, can self ever stop eating???

Since today self has no car (Dear Bro mumbled something about “color coding” being in effect) self has to content herself with roaming the thickets of her imagination, perusing newspaper articles and imagining herself at the place being described.  (Of course, National Museum is open today, the day when self has no car.  Such is the very unfortunate timing that seems to be one of the hallmarks of this entire trip. But, once again, I digress.)

In yesterday’s Inquirer was an article on an interesting museum in Intramuros:  Bahay Tsinoy.

Among the many interesting things self learns from reading the article, which is by Queena N. Lee-Chua:

• “The Chinese found the Philippines trustworthy . . .  The Chinese would often leave the goods with the village chief, who guaranteed that his people would pay for them.  Then the Chinese would go to other shores for more trade and come back after many months, assured that the Filipinos would give back native goods in exchange.”
• “The Chinese helped build many churches, foremost among them San Agustin Church, which still stands today.  The arms on the chairs are of Chinese design, and there are dragons on the roof . . . “
• “Many leading personalities in politics, religion, business, media and the arts are of Chinese descent like Corazon Aquino, the late Jaime Cardinal Sin, Henry Sy, John Gokongwei, Lucio Tan, Julie Yap Daza, and Jose Mari Chan.”
• “There is no such thing as pansit Canton or lumpiang Shanghai . . .  in Canton or in Shanghai.  Since Philippine society was so open to Chinese influences, particularly in food, perhaps the pansit done here was tagged Canton because it was served by a Chinese cook . . .  all vegetables with tsay and taw –  petsay, kintsay, kuchay, tawge, sitaw, bataw –  were introduced by the Chinese.”

It’s a very, very interesting article.  Bahay Tsinoy is at Anda St., corner Cabildo, Intramuros, Manila.