Roots of the Tsinoys
Although I am one-eighth Chinese and consider myself Tsinoy, we did not celebrate Chinese New Year growing up. Before it was declared a non-working holiday, Chinese New Year was confined to Chinese and Tsinoy communities, but it has caught on in the past two decades thanks to the internet. Chinese New Year in my neighborhood used to be celebrated in the old Mandarin Hotel, encouraged by the late Paul Lau whose career was built on helping people achieve prosperity. The old Mandarin was the place for a lion dance and fireworks, but this year we have a lion dance in our barangay, and I will be having a Chinese lunch in a hotel with a lion dance.
Chinese New Year in the Philippines caught on, thanks to online tips on what to have in your home for good luck in the coming year. Add to that malls decorated with red lanterns and signs with the Cantonese “Kung hei fat choy!” That means “Wish you enlarge your wealth,” with the subliminal message that you spend this good fortune in the mall. In 2018, an upscale mall leased out a space for a bazaar to someone who obviously did not know or care to do some research on Chinese customs. The organizer thought that hanging Chinese paper money made the bazaar more festive, except that they used paper money to burn for the Gods or funerals!
Of late I noticed that the Cantonese “Kung hei fat choy!” is slowly being replaced by the Mandarin “Gong Xi Fa Cai!” Most Tsinoys trace their roots to Fujian and I wonder if they use the Hokkien “Kiong Hee Huat Tsai!” instead of the Mandarin or Cantonese greeting. I remember how an elegant Tsinoy friend politely hid a frown when I greeted her with “Kung hei fat choy!” She gently advised me not to use the crass Cantonese greeting about money and instead wish for other things like: good health, a long life, or at least be generic, because prosperity is not always about money. I forgot the polite greeting she taught me and some years ago, I went through a long list of Chinese New Year greetings online and settled on: “Xiao kou chang kai!” literally, “may you smile/laugh openly.” Those who receive “angpao” from me receive a polite, more meaningful, greeting because in our troubled world, people should find occasion to smile or laugh openly and often.
Anyone who wants to know about Tsinoys and how they came to be should look up the pioneering work by Edgar Wickberg, “The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850-1898” originally published by Yale University in 1965. If you want to dip into primary sources but can’t read Spanish or Chinese, your best bet is to browse through the 55-volume “The Philippine Islands 1493-1898. Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and their Peoples, their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as related in contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, showing the Political, Economic, Commercial, and Religious Conditions of those Islands from their earliest relations with European Nations to the close of the Nineteenth Century.” It is known to Filipino historians in short as “Blair and Robertson” or “BR” for the duo who translated and annotated from the originals: Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson.
Originally published in the United States from 1903 to 1907, BR sets were quite rare so to make them more accessible Domingo Abella had 300 sets printed in Taipei in 1962. Contrary to popular belief, this was not a “pirated” edition because Abella obtained permission to reprint from James Robertson’s widow. In 1973, Cacho Hermanos, under Fred and Ben Ramos, reprinted the sets compressing the original slim 55 into 19 hefty volumes. In the late 1990s, the Bank of the Philippine Islands distributed a scanned set of CDs that probably cannot be read by our computers today. Fortunately, all is not lost because the BR is now available online for free.
Browsing the index of BR to cobble a Chinese New Year column, I was floored to find over 18 pages describing Chinese in the Philippines, of course, seen from the racist eyes of Spanish friars and military and government personnel. Sources say that in general, the Chinese were an old and peculiar people. Physically, they were well-built, strong, have small eyes, wear beards, and let their nails grow long. They were “great eaters” as well as being “wretched” and “filthy.” Their positive traits were described as being civilized, humble, modest, intelligent, and shrewd (generally in trade). They were: generous, honorable, kind, peaceable, sober, patient, respectful, and industrious. They “possess industry in place of capital.” Their negative traits outnumbered the positive: barbarous, mean, importunate, cowardly, avaricious, and greedy. They were ignorant, superstitious, “addicted to sodomy and secret sins,” intemperate, lustful and sensuous, polygamous, disloyal and faithless, evil-minded, wicked, treacherous, addicted to gambling and bribery, shameless, unscrupulous, conscienceless, and fond of litigation.
This long list of bad traits is proof that the racist views of the Chinese we carry today, go back to the Spanish period. Uncovering this history will lead to a deeper understanding of the Tsinoys.
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Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu
