Beyond ‘Mano Po,’ feng-shui & tikoy

The Chinese culture belongs not only to the Chinese but also to the whole world. –President Hu Jintao

It is ironic that despite over a thousand years of Chinese presence in the Philippines, not much of authentic Chinese high culture has influenced national life beyond smatterings of Hokkien dialect words, the kitschy Mano Po films, feng-shui beliefs or Lunar New Year tikoy. There are Hokkien phrases like "suki" referring to loyal customers, "ampaw" for "empty," "gung-gong" for "stupid," or the Tagalog "lutong Macau," denoting cheating and unfairly referring to a hometown of a small number of Cantonese-speaking local Chinese. There’s also the many delightful Chinese foods like siopao, hopia and lumpia.

300 Years In A Spanish Convent, 50 Years In Hollywood

Despite our community’s numerous socio-economic contributions, Chinese culture and Confucian values have not deeply influenced the Philippine psyche. In contrast, 333 years of Spanish colonial subjugation used religion and the sword to embed their fiesta culture and Latin temperament, while the American colonizers propagated English, their democracy and mores via their public schools. No wonder the country was once described as spending "300 years in a Spanish convent and 50 years in Hollywood."

Is the conundrum of the weak Chinese cultural influence in the Philippines due to migrants like my paternal great-great-great-grandfather Dy Siu-Gam and his uncle coming here as peaceful traders, artisans or Asia’s original overseas workers, not war-like colonial masters or conquerors who forcefully imposed their culture? Is another reason the Filipino national population being only two percent ethnic Chinese and being the smallest proportion among all Asean nations, unlike the Chinese-majority Singapore, or the one-third-Chinese Malaysia, or Thailand with its huge Chinese community producing even national leaders like Prime Ministers Chuan Leekpai and Thaksin Shinawatra?

The Jesuit-led Ateneo de Manila University wants to help rectify Philippine society’s age-old anomalous lack of exposure to the true majesty and wisdom of the world’s oldest continuous 5,000-year-old civilization. On September 1, Ateneo launched the Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies as perhaps the biggest center of its kind and with plans for "the first ever master’s degree in Chinese studies in the Philippines."

Ricardo Leong is a successful industrialist, 1950s Ateneo basketball team captain ball and the father-in-law of JG Summit Holdings, Inc. president Lance Gokongwei. To house the offices of this new center and all the 11 departments of the Ateneo’s School of Social Sciences, the industrialist and his wife, Dr. Rosita Leong, have donated a new building to the university to be known as the Ricardo and Rosita Leong Hall.

Director Dr. Ellen H. Palanca said, "The center will promote Chinese studies through workshops, scholarships, research, and other activities. It will help Filipinos understand and appreciate China in all her aspects, including language, culture, history, politics, business and economics; to help improve Mandarin language teaching at higher educational institutions in the Philippines. "

Next month, the Ricardo Leong Center will help organize an international conference in Manila commemorating the 30th anniversary of Philippine-China diplomatic relations. Another major donor to this conference is John Gokongwei, Jr., who was at the center’s launching rites and who told The Philippine Star: "The Philippines should constructively engage the emerging economic superpower China for the sake of economic progress."

Not Just Economics, But Chinese Cultural Wealth

According to Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, S.J., "The events we celebrate today began with a lunch with Dr. Rosita Leong in September last year. It was inspired by a book entitled Heroic Leadership by Chris Lowney about the leadership legacy of the early Jesuits – in particular, the Jesuits in China. My own first visit to China was in early December 1985. The occasion was the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Mathematical Society and I was a guest of the Academic Sinica as former president of the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society. When I was asked by my hosts what I wanted to see in Beijing – aside from the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs – I said I wanted to visit the tombs of the Jesuits who had served in the imperial court in the late 1500s through the 1600s – Matteo Ricci (known as Li Ma Tou in China), Ferdinand Verbiest, and Adam Schall. A mathematician colleague brought me to their tombs, which were inside a cadet school and not easily accessible in those years, and he told me as he read the inscription on their tombs that these were good men, who brought Western learning to China."

Fr. Nebres continued, "The Jesuit contact with China from the late 1500s to the 1700s was in education, science and culture. They brought Western mathematics and science to the imperial court – together with the technology of clocks and fortifications and casting cannons – and in turn brought to Western Europe the culture of scholarship and learning from China. They gained great renown by accurately predicting eclipses. In turn, Europe was fascinated by the system of Imperial examinations to select government officials – a meritocracy of the mind. France, in particular, set up a whole system of education – the so-called Grandes Ecoles – to select and prepare talent for public leadership and service. Its Chinese inspiration can be seen from the name given to the elite of this system: the Mandarinat."

On his vision for the new center, Fr. Nebres said, "For more than 20 years I have been working to get Ateneo de Manila and other Filipino schools to learn from this Chinese culture and tradition that puts a prize on education and learning. We value, of course, political and economic ties with China. But cultural and educational relationships are perhaps even more important and fundamental. Together, then, with economic ties with China, it is my dream that the Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies will also help us learn from an ancient culture that has prized hard work and learning so much. We hope to make our contribution in this cultural and educational exchange. I look forward to this exchange, bringing to the Ateneo and to the Philippines educational and cultural values that place a high premium on hard work and education as the way to leadership and success. This is a path to an intellectual meritocracy, which I believe can do much to help transform our nation."

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