Friday, January 31^st marked the Lunar New Year and the beginning of the Year of the Horse. In the Philippines, Chinese New Year is an official holiday and is celebrated similarly to how it is across Asia and the rest of the world, with fireworks, lion dances and red envelopes all seen during the festivities. While ethnic Chinese make up only around 1.5% of the Philippine population, the widespread celebration of the holiday is a testament to the centuries of influence the Chinese, or Chinoys (a combination of Chinese and Pinoy) have had on Philippine culture and society.

 

History

As stated above, the Chinese officially make up only a very small percentage of the Philippine population. However, this number only counts pure Chinese. When you take into consideration the number of Filipinos who are part Chinese, the number shoots up considerably. In a press release commemorating 2013’s Chinese New Year, Philippine Senator Edgardo Angara said 22.8 million Filipinos were of Chinese descent. Out of a population of around 99 million, this means that about 23% of Filipinos are part Chinese, which is not really surprising when you consider the history between the two countries.

 

The Chinese merchants came to the Philippines long before Magellan, and traded with the local kingdoms extensively. After the Spanish took over the islands, contact increased as Manila became Spain’s main outpost for trade in Asia. Many of the Chinese traders decided to stay in the Philippines instead of going home, and throughout Philippine history the Chinese remained the most populous non-native group in the country, surpassing even the Spanish. Spanish attitudes to the Chinese were mixed. While they provided a source of cheap labor and a means to trade with the lucrative Chinese Empire, Spanish authorities were concerned the immigrants would help their homeland take over the islands, and combined with their strange customs and beliefs, were subject to suspicion and occasionally, violence.

 

Due to discrimination, Chinese were barred from many professions, prevented from owning land and were charged higher taxes than the rest of the population. In order to improve their lot, most Chinese decided to convert to Catholicism, which the Spanish actively encouraged, and marry Filipino women. The decision to intermarry was both practical and somewhat necessary. Because the vast majority of Chinese had come to the Philippines as traders, their population was entirely male. In order to marry, a Chinese would have to marry a Filipino woman, and in order to do that, they would have to become Catholic, as was the law. The children that resulted from these marriages became the first Chinese mestizos, or people of mixed blood, whose descendants make up a significant portion of the modern Philippines.

 

Thanks to their mixed heritage, the mestizos were not subject to the same amount of discrimination as their fathers and were able to use their merchant ancestors’ business sense to their advantage. The mestizos became moneylenders, retailers and landowners, and by the 1800s, had made up a very large portion of the Filipino middle and upper class. Thanks to their wealth, many of the mestizo families were able to educate their children, and it is from this class of wealthy, illustrados (the enlightened or educated) that many of the Philippine’s founding fathers came from. Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, and Emilio Aguinaldo, the country’s first president and the leader of the wars against Spain and the United States, were both of Chinese ancestry. However, by this time, years of living in the Philippines had assimilated most mestizo families, and though both men may have been Chinese mestizos on paper, they probably considered themselves culturally just Filipino. In fact, in one of his novels, Rizal actually shows a degree of distaste for the pure-blooded Chinese, and had wanted to be reclassified by the government as an indio or unmixed Filipino. Today, the descendants of these colonial-era Chinese are part of the Filipino mainstream, especially in the cities, and can usually only be distinguished by perhaps their appearance or last names (more on that later).

 

During the 20^th Century, a new wave of Chinese began immigrating to the Philippines, constituting what is usually seen as the modern “Chinese Filipino” population. Unlike the merchants of the Spanish era, the new Chinese immigrants consisted of men, women and families, many leaving China to escape the country’s Communist Revolution. Free from Spanish pressure to assimilate, the new Chinese Filipino community has maintained much of its culture and traditions, with many private schools offering classes in Chinese. As with their predecessors, the newer Chinese Filipinos have been extremely successful in commerce, with a very disproportional percent of the economy controlled by businesses owned by them. Two of the Philippines’ most iconic businesses, SM and Jollibee were founded by Chinese immigrants, Henry Sy and Tony Tan, respectively.

 

Famous Chinese Filipinos

In addition to those mentioned above, here are some other famous Chinese Filipinos.

Lorenzo Ruiz- The first Filipino saint had a Chinese father and a Filipino mother. Ruiz served as a Catholic missionary in Japan and was martyred there after he refused to renounce his faith.

Cory Aquino- The first female president of the Philippines, Aquino led the People Power movement that led to the resignation of President Ferdinand Marcos and the end of martial law in 1986.

Benigno Aquino III- The current president of the Philippines and the son of Cory Aquino. “Noynoy,” as he is usually called, visited China in 2011 and met some of his distant relatives in his ancestors’ hometown.

Kim Chiu- An actress famous for appearing in many ABS-CBN teleseyres such as My Girl.

Richard Yap- The star of the hit teleseyre Be Careful With My Heart, where he plays “Sir Chief.” In an interview, Yap said he was surprised he became so popular because “the standards of being handsome before was (Spanish) mestizo and Chinese-looking men were never in demand.”

 

Chinese Filipino Names

Chinese Filipinos can sometimes be distinguished by their names. While many have Spanish surnames like most other Filipinos, others have kept their Chinese names.

 

Traditional Chinese surnames consist of one syllable and include Chan, Li, Lim, Yap, Go, Tan and Uy. People with these surnames usually had ancestors who came to the Philippines relatively recently.

 

Other surnames are derived from Chinese words, but are names found only among Filipinos. People with these names are most likely descended from Chinese who came over during the Spanish period.

 

Surnames ending with –co or –ko are derived from the name of a Chinese ancestor. For example, Cojuangco, Cory Aquino’s maiden name, comes from one of her ancestors, who was named Co Kuan Co, with Co being a term of respect. Eventually, Co Kuan Co’s descendants took his whole name as their last name, which in Spanish was spelled out as Cojuangco.

 

Names with the suffix –son, or some variant of it come from the Chinese word 孫 (sun) which means grandchild or descendant. Tuazon means eldest grandchild, Dizon second grandchild, Samson third, Sison fourth, Gozon (or Gozun) fifth and Lacson sixth. It is not known if people with these last names are somehow related to each other.

 

Food

Lastly, perhaps the most important contribution to Filipino culture by the Chinese has been in the form of food. Filipino cuisine would not be the same without pancit (便食) which in Chinese means “convenient food,” or lumpia (潤餅). Arroz caldo, though Spanish in name, is actually a variation of Chinese rice porridge. Siopao, siomai and even the infamous balut are all said to have been brought over by Chinese immigrants, and like with the previously mentioned dishes, were adapted to fit Filipino tastes.