How has life changed for our ethnic Chinese minority through the centuries? In particular, how many years has our family been here in the Philippines? These were some of the questions asked by my paternal cousin the 54-year-old Alliance Select Food International founder Jonathan Y. Dee at a lunch in the Manila Polo Club in Makati City just a week before Chinese New Year.
Thanks to a symbol of Philippine society’s acceptance of our minority and our culture, the ancient Chinese New Year is now a non-working holiday nationwide on February 19 — the first day of the lunar New Year. Families of the global Chinese diaspora will gather for New Year’s Eve reunion dinners on February 18.
200 years of faith, grit and endurance
I told Jonathan that our clan has been celebrating the Chinese New Year under starkly different socio-economic and political circumstances for about 200 years in the Philippines. It is a remarkable saga of faith, survival and indomitable grit.
We were discussing the history of our clan surnamed Li — pronounced “Lee” in Mandarin, “Dy” or “Dee” in Hokkien (not all who share this surname are our kin). I told Jonathan that he and I are part of our clan’s seventh generation in the Philippines, that we shouldn’t forget our forebears’ arduous struggles and Confucian values.
When I mentioned to business leader John Gokongwei, Jr. that I did interviews of many elders and researched our genealogical book, he suggested that I someday write a column on the unique Chinese tradition of maintaining detailed “chok-pho” or genealogical book, which in Europe only royal families do.
In the Spanish era, the Chinese had to pay the highest taxes. Whether under the apartheid-like Spanish colonial era, or in the half century American colonial era of better economic growth, or three years of bloody Japanese military occupation, our clan elders kept faith with and endured in the Philippines.
From pogroms to Parians, the past should be our inspiration
In the dark age of Spanish colonial misrule, our forebears endured persecutions similar to those of the Jews in medieval Europe. They suffered Southeast Asia’s earliest pogroms starting in 1603 to segregated ghettos called the “Parian” which only ended in 1790 — coincidentally the time when our paternal ancestor first arrived in Manila from Fujian province of south China.
The first “Hua-chiao” or sojourner of our clan was our great-great-great-granduncle Dy Pi-Phay, who was similar to our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) now in the Middle East just seeking economic survival and no plans to migrate.
Our family’s second-generation sojourner from our Chiochun Village in Fujian to Manila was our great-great-great-grandfather Dy Siu-Gam, who survived a perilous sea voyage that saw his three other cousins die in the stormy sea. The house he and his brother built upon retirement in Chiochun Village still stands.
The third-generation sojourner was my great-great-grandfather Dy Han Kia, our clan’s first rags-to-riches lumber tycoon and philanthropist. He toiled 18 years as a lumber shop laborer before going into business. He later brought six brothers and also cousins to 19th-century Manila.
Dy Han Kia also built the si-te-chu or four mansions in Chiochun Village for him and his six brothers, after a construction shopkeeper in Quanzhou City had insulted the simple self-made Manila entrepreneur if he could afford to buy.
From ostracized Quiroga to the admired Richard Yap & Kim Chiu
Remember how the stereotypical Chinese entrepreneur was depicted in Dr. Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere novel as the Quiroga character, a generous host to various political VIPs and social elites of 19th century who enjoyed the trader’s hospitality and gifts but privately hated him?
Nowadays, the social status of the ethnic Chinese has generally changed for the better.
Not only do we have so many popular and admired pop culture stars with openly Chinese-sounding surnames like Richard Yap, Jose Mari Chan, Richard Poon, Kim Chiu, Xian Lim and Enchong Dee, it’s amazing that in the last 2010 national elections the good leader ex-Senator Jun Magsaysay elicited support from Hokkien and Mandarin-speaking actor Richard Yap as his celebrity endorser.
From lumber tycoons to war heroes, doctors, social workers, athletes
Not all our kin became tycoons, but a disproportionately high number became top entrepreneurs, civic and community leaders, fearless activists, war heroes and many others in diverse vocations.
Our clan’s fourth generation produced lumber tycoons and philanthropists like the brothers Calixto Dyyco (a pre-war street in Paco, Manila is now wrongly spelled as “Calixto Dyco”) and Dy Pac (jailed by the Japanese invaders in Fort Santiago), also my great-grandfather’s younger brother the community leader and Buddhist philanthropist Dee Tian.
Among the fifth generation’s achievers included the genius Dee C. Chuan who was nine-term Chinese Chamber of Commerce president, China Bank founder, the “Lumber King,” founder of the Fookien Times who handpicked talented Jimmy Go Puan Seng as publisher/editor and Dee was also founder of Chinese Commercial News. He chose educator Yu Yi Tung as publisher/editor (his sons were Quintin and Rizal Yuyitung). Central Bank founder Miguel Cuaderno said his inspiration to become a banker to help spur Philippine development was Dee C. Chuan, his classmate at St. Joseph College in Hong Kong.
Others of the fifth generation were lumber tycoon and community leader Dee Hong Lue who was first EVP of the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Inc. (FFCCCII), sawmill operator and philanthropist Lee Tay, banker Dee K. Chiong, lumber tycoon Dy Bun Chin (Dy Uh-Bong) whose post-war protégé was a young self-made guy named Emilio Yap of the future Philtrust Bank.
Others of the fifth generation were my grandfather’s first cousins, the siblings Dy Hok Siu and Dy Hok Khe were martyrs of the anti-Japanese resistance in Manila. Their brother Dy Hok Bieng was also World War II guerrilla.
Among our sixth generation included the late Bonifacio Sawmill boss Samuel Dee, a Protestant philanthropist who donated lands for Grace Christian High School in Quezon City. Another uncle of ours of this generation told me he’s “a social worker,” the idealistic Ambassador Howard Q. Dee of the Assisi Foundation.
Apart from me and Jonathan Dee, some of the many other seventh-generation cousins include newly-retired China Bank president Peter SyCip Dee, the famed medical board topnotcher cardiologist Dr. Dy Bun Yok, Metrobank president Fabian Dee, the “condiments king” Joselito “Butch” Dee Campos, Jr. of Del Monte Pacific and Nutri Asia, United Laboratories (Unilab) chairperson Jocelyn “Joy” Dee Campos-Hess, Greenfield Development Corp. chairman Jeffrey Dee Campos, businessman Richard Joseph “Dodo” Dee (whose son Kiko Dee graduated magna cum laude from UP in 2013), Ateneo educator and Inquirer columnist Dr. Queena Lee-Chua, the 2013 US Kids World Gold Championship in the nine-year-old category Jed Dy (whose father Bobby Dy is Ayala Land, Inc. president and whose uncle Alfred Dy of CLSA has been cited by Institutional Investor and AsiaMoney as the country’s stock analyst), contractor Lucio Lee Rodriguez (eldest son-in-law of the late Pacific Bank founder Antonio Roxas-Chua), Mushroomburger founder the late Alberto Dy, etc.
The eighth generation of our clan includes National University (NU) dentistry college dean the brilliant Dr. Joseph Dy Lim of Dr. Smile clinic at Podium mall (his clientele include many of the Philippines’ top billionaires in the Forbes list) and my nephew Cardinal Santos Medical Center top cardiologist Dr. Timothy Dy.
Another eighth-generation achiever of our clan is my late nephew, the idealistic social worker Lawrence Dy Ong, whom Xavier School last year conferred posthumously the “2014 Xavier-Kuangchi Award for Exemplary Alumni.” He founded Kanawan Elementary School for Aeta children at Sitio Kanawan, Sabang, Morong, Bataan. He conducted adventure-based counseling with impoverished Filipino Amerasian youth at Subic Bay Freeport Zone and trained the founders of Adventure-Based Counseling Inc.
When I told tuna exporter Jonathan Dee that among our clan’s ninth generation kin include Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Rain or Shine team’s “rags-to-riches” Paul Lee, he replied: “He’s the heir of my late father then, contractor Edward Dee Sekiao, who was in the ROC basketball team that competed in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and the FIBA basketball World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.”
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