Memories of a Chinoy student in the ’70s

If this article is going to sound like a press release for our 25th high school homecoming this November, then I must admit, it is. But this is not a press release as much as a story on how it was to be Chinoy studying in the ’70s in a school that taught Chinese. I would rather call Immaculate Conception Academy (ICA) a Philippine school that taught Chinese than a Chinese school in the Philippines. But for the sake of clarity, I will just refer to it as a Chinese school. You see, at ICA, we had Chinese (as in Mandarin) only an hour each day, unlike most other Chinese schools where lessons were conducted in English in the morning and conducted in Chinese (including Math and History) the whole afternoon.

I suddenly thought of writing this since Chinese New Year has just passed and Mano Po, a film about the life and times of a Chinoy family, romped off with the Best Picture award in the last Metro Manila Film Festival. Many people have asked me how I found the movie, and I tell all of them that I like it. I understand that some Chinoys didn’t like the movie because some of the traditions were not depicted correctly and more important, the film made the Chinoys look like they live their life by bribing people. If you talk about traditions, no one really knows which are correct and which are wrong since there are so many versions, especially with some of the older Chinoys who have to consult the Chinese calendar to see if it is a lucky day for a haircut. I have no idea about traditions myself since I have never followed any of them. All I know is that walking down the stairs backward in an engagement ceremony is such a daunting task for the bride. On the other hand, when you talk about bribing, a Pinoy friend of mine said, "What’s new? Everyone does it." Oops!

Going back to my beloved alma mater. I was a student at the Immaculate Conception Academy from kindergarten all the way to high school, for which I got a loyalty award, the only award I got in my 12 years of stay there. ICA was, and still is, admittedly the most cosmopolitan Chinese school in Manila. How to describe cosmopoiltan? I guess we were more modern, more outward-looking, more fashionable, and we had the best English education among all Chinese schools. It may have been a reflection of our environment as we were located in Greenhills, San Juan, which was not exactly downtown Manila where the most of the Chinese immigrants first settled and put up their businesses. San Juan was as Pinoy as can be (ask Erap). It was only in the ’70s, I think, that the Chinese started moving to Greenhills. Well, the price we paid for being so cosmopolitan was that we never took our Mandarin seriously, and now that China has become an economic powerhouse, most of us ICANs are now grappling with the language and regretting that we never listened to our Chinese teachers.

I entered ICA in 1966, and at that time, we already had Pinoy classmates. Not as many as there are now in ICA, but in the ’60s, having Pinoys in a Chinese school was uncommon. We had about five Pinoys in our graduating class of 112. The good thing about the ICAn environment was that we never saw each other as Pinoy or Chinoy. You were either studious or happy-go-lucky, patient or hot-tempered, noisy or quiet, but never Pinoy or Chinoy. We were just plain ICANs. Said one of my Pinoy classmates recently, "I never thought I was different until I was in high school. And it wasn’t because of ICA. It was because there was this Chinese guy calling me up and I had to pretend to be Chinese over the phone or his mom wouldn’t pass the phone to him. Otherwise, we Pinoys were never treated differently in school." Ironically, it was the Pinoys who did better in Chinese class than most of the Chinoys. They simply tried harder while we Chinoys took our Chinese lessons for granted.

What about our English lessons? Oh, we had the best English teachers in the world. There was Mrs. Luna in kindergarten, Ms. Prepose in grade 1, Ms. Balucanag in grade 2 (quite a terror too), Sr. Lilia in grade 3, Ms. Jaurigue in grade 4, Ms. Lopez in grade 5, Ms. Vargas in grade 6, Ms. Basa in grade 7, Mrs. Fornoles in high 1, Mrs. Briones in high 2, Ms. Molina in high 3 and Ms. Sia in high 4. If you are amazed at my memory, please note my lack of it. I had to get the help of my classmate, San Miguel executive Mae Lapez-Amador, who could easily be our batch chronicler, what with her fantastic memory for names and places and everything of the past.

Mrs. Fornoles was the one who changed the way we viewed English literature. She introduced what she called "SHE" or "Significant Human Experience," which she learned from her literature classes with Fr. Galdon. Instead of us memorizing stories or writing essays on what we did last summer, we were always asked to think of the "SHE" in every story or play we read. This way, we would appreciate the story better. Mrs. Fornoles was also the first one who introduced English literature by Filipino authors, and that’s how we became familiar with names like Nick Joaquin and Leon Ma. Guerrerro. We read "May Day Eve" and "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife." We reenacted short plays like Oli Impan, The World is an Apple and The New Yorker from Tondo. The last is about a woman named Kikay who insisted that she be called Francesca. Twenty-five years later, this scene still looks familiar.

Mrs. Briones was an expert in mythology, and she would fascinate us with stories of Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. I think she had memorized Bulfinch’s Mythology from cover to cover. Ms. Molina, on the other hand, was an expert on Shakespeare, and we analyzed Macbeth to no end. She had read practically every classic in the world, and one day, she assigned each of us a title and asked us to write that a term paper on it. I was assigned Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. My heart broke for those who were asked to do Moby Dick and Old Man and the Sea (incidentally, my husband’s favorite Hemingway piece). I do not know how anyone could do a term paper on catching whales and catching fish – I know, that’s not what the books are all about, how mababaw can I get – but still, they were obviously more difficult to handle than Of Human Bondage. But the point was, we couldn’t invent things in our term paper as Ms. Molina would figure that out right way. With Ms. Sia, she knew the books Without Seeing the Dawn, Cry My Beloved Country, and J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey all by heart.

When recess and dismissal came, we played games like piko and sipa, using a crushed tansan and strips of Japanese paper to make the sipa fly. A few of us had "boston" screwed at the sole of our shoes to improve our kick. We played kickball, which was baseball and soccer rolled into one. We had weird games called "Chinese garter" where we literally jumped on and over a length of garter, and Chinese jackstone, which was played like jackstone but with more variations. Instead of a ball and jackstones, we used five tikoy-sized sacks filled with mongo seeds. Our favorite hang-outs were establishments at the Greenhills Shopping Center – Unimart, Tropical Hut, Ling Nam and if you had a little more cash to spare, House of Minis. Our favorite store was Book Stop, also in Greenhills, which later became Gift Gate. Yes, Hello Kitty has lasted that long.

When it came to entertainment, we were never left behind. We listened to pop AM stations like DWBL and DWBM. We did not sing Chinese songs and most of us were not familiar with Chinese songs. We listened to songs like City of Angels, Terminal, Whispering Waves, Loving You and the remake of There’s a Kind of Hush by the Carpenters. We danced to the tune of El Bimbo and did the hustle with music by Van McCoy. We secretly kept photos of Leif Garrett who sang Surfin’ USA, and Shawn Cassidy and Parker Stevenson of Hardy Boys Fame. We all watched One on One starring No. 1 crush Robbie Benson an average of three times and gushed over the movie’s theme song, My Fair Share by Seals and Crofts. It was our version of The Titanic which was seen by women all over the world many times over. When it came to Filipino movies, it was Christopher de Leon and Hilda Koronel for Mangarap Ka’t Magising. As part of our Filipino class, we were sent off to Ateneo to watch Dulaang Sibol’s Sinta.

Twenty five years, 25 crushes and 25 pounds after, we all look forward to the homecoming of Batch ’78. And when the time comes, we all hope and pray that no one says, "You’re so fat now!"