Turning the Tables

Miguel Evangelista R-50 English 11 August 13

"Turning the Table"

Passing thru the huge pillars that serve as an entrance gate to Chinatown, I saw an unfamiliar sight - an old Chinese man selling taho. " I haven't seen this for more than thirty years. Brings back old memories," said my dad. He grew up being teased by his schoolmates for being singkit. "They would often chant, 'Intsik beho, tulo laway.' That was a grave insult for me back then," he added.

Being a Chinese Filipino, or much often referred to as Tsinoy, was not a thing to brag about from the time when Spain ruled our country. In the novel Noli me Tangere, Father Damaso insulted Crisostomo Ibarra's deceased father by ordering his burial inside a Chinese cemetery. By the late fifties, a huge number of Chinese people fled to our country to escape from the great revolution in their homeland. They made a living here by selling taho, shining shoes, and selling fish in a market to name a few. But, the situation changed by the early eighties. The shoe shiner became the owner of several malls scattered all over the region, while the taho vendor founded one of the biggest banks in our country. These rags to riches stories were experienced by most of the Tsinoys. Suddenly, Chinese blood seemed to be blue. Chinitas and Chinitos became the new "crush ng bayan." Being singkit today is not something to be ashamed of.

The success of the Chinese Filipino people in our country is only a part of the rise of the whole Chinese race across the globe. The wave started in Taiwan. In the late 1950s, industries in this small island located north of the Philippines flourished ten years after the Chiang Kai-Shek led Kuomintang party escaped from the mainland, declaring this small island as a country divided from communist China. Presently, it remains to be one of the wealthiest countries in Asia. As a symbol of its economic success, Taipei 101, the world's highest skyscraper, stands tall at its capital.

Singapore, a country with Chinese people forming seventy-eight percent of its population, followed next. After its unsuccessful merger with Malaya, it suffered a brief period of turmoil in the mid-sixties. But through its strong government and industrious people, the country jumped from the third world to the first in less than a decade. Singapore is now Southeast Asia's center for business, trade and commerce.

At present, the motherland too is starting to join the party. China is beginning to exchange its Communist ideologies for economic prosperity. The country is deemed to replace the United States of America as the world's greatest superpower. As a result, people all around the world are starting to swap their English for Mandarin.

" The key to success is hard work and proper handling of resources. These are Chinese values. These are the secrets to their achievements," my mom told me. She witnessed these Chinese values put into action thru her first hand experiences with her father, Feliciano Lim.

Feliciano Lim was a Chinese immigrant from Fujian. He arrived in the Philippines sixty years ago as a merchant trading goods from China. He later worked as a gasoline boy before deciding to put up a business in Masangkay Street, a few blocks away from Chinatown. His business, a small hardware store, was run entirely by him with the help of his wife and seven children.

"He was very hardworking. Our hardware store was open even on Sundays. We lived inside a small room just above our store, which makes it easier to open up early in the morning. We only had two workers when our business started. That is why he handled