Full Version: ChinatownS
LMAO @ education. I didn't know that someone would find this topic offensive its not that offensive is it?? well what i thought was ridiculous is when you catogorize food. I often hear americans/aussies saying lets buy chinese food but you never hear philos or chinese people say lets go buy american food it just doesnt make sense. It just reminds me of when people say lets buy dog food see the similarities dog food is for dogs and chinese food is for chinese?? and shao pao I eat that alot when I eat yum cha i love yum cha its the best meal of the day. In china town theres alot of places that serve morning tea and its damn expensive but its all you can eat... mmmmmmmmmmmmm
chinese business men do pretty well in aussie but Japanese ppl are the best beucause if you ever visit Queensland most of the buildings are owned bye the Japanese haha which is why aussies in Queensland are rpetty much racist, I think they are just jealous that asians can make money faster lol. Though I havent seen many filo businesses i have seen a filo bakery but its not that yummy i prefer the original stuff form the phils lol the pandasal i tried here is disgusting... taste like normal bread lol the pandasal in philis sooo much better .
LOL all I know is Binondo...question how come the chinese in the Philippines look really different from the chinese from China???
maybe because those chinese men are not full blooded chinese?? im not full blooded chinese im only half
^Or maybe they came from a regions in China where its people have distinct facial features [does this make any sense? 
]?
Another article for you guys to get bored [just read this this morning
] 
Metro Manila's dragon
By Michael Tan
I WAS driving along Wilson Street in San Juan town, in Metro Manila, at around 9 in the morning on Sunday, when I spotted the bright red dragon, at least 5 meters long, dancing with two lions.
Actually, it was a Lunar New Year celebration, with about a dozen men doing a dragon-and-lion dance. I'd been asking around about the schedules of dragon dances on Ongpin Street and Binondo district in Manila's Chinatown area, but it looked like the dragon decided to prance over to San Juan.
And why not? San Juan has turned into another Chinatown. The dragon dance that morning alternated between North Park, a Chinese restaurant, and Diao Eng Chay, a popular grocery store where you can get everything from "siopao" and "siomai" dumplings to black "gulaman" gelatin and canned abalone. Around that area, I've counted at least 10 Chinese restaurants, three other Chinese specialty groceries (including the quaint Little Store, which also serves food), assorted shops and even a Chan Buddhist temple that teaches meditation.
Chinatowns
Yet that morning as I watched the dragon dance, I felt the ambience was very different from Metro Manila's other Chinatowns. Yes, there are now at least three Chinatowns in Metro Manila: the original one in the Ongpin/Binondo area, the one along Banawe Street in Quezon City, and San Juan.
The original Chinatown in Ongpin and Binondo is still more Chinese than Filipino. The sounds are distinct here with more of Chinese languages. The smells are a bewildering combination of incense and five-star anise and herbal medicines. There's also a wider assortment of goods: foods, crafts, books and magazines, gold jewelry, to name a few.
The Banawe and San Juan Chinatowns are different, now more "Tsinoy" (Chinese-Filipino) than Chinese. San Juan is probably the most Filipinized of the three Chinatowns. You hear Minnan Hokkien Chinese occasionally, but more often it's Taglish with almost no Chinese accent, especially when spoken by the young. And the shops and restaurants aren't exclusively Chinese, being interspersed with McDonald's and Alex III and Mercury drugstore.
Ateneo de Chino
San Juan's Chinatown has a colorful history, brought into being by a multinational team. I'm referring to the way its development is so intertwined with that of Xavier School, a Jesuit boys' school.
Xavier started out as Kuang Chi in 1956, set up by Jesuits who had been expelled from China by the communists. The Jesuits, a mixed band of French-Canadians, Basques, Americans, Chinese and one Hungarian, were determined to continue their ministry with the Chinese, even if they were overseas. There was already an Immaculate Conception Anglo-Chinese Academy (ICACA) in downtown Manila, founded in 1936 and serving male and female Chinese students, but the Jesuits decided to put up a boys' school, egged on by Ambrose Chiu and Basilio King, two Chinese businessmen who had graduated from the Ateneo and wanted to see an Ateneo de Chino as well. Ateneo de Manila denied permission to use that name, so the Jesuits went on to use Kuang Chi, after a 16th-century Chinese magistrate converted to Catholicism by Jesuits.
Kuang Chi was first set up in an old lumberyard in Echague, Quiapo, but the school's forward-looking Jesuit founders realized early on that the campus site was going to be problematic, with congested populations, flooding and other problems.
Its French-Canadian rector, Fr. Jean Desautels, began to look for another site. The search is described in Fr. Santos G. Mena's "Luceat Lux," a history (or story, as Father Mena prefers) of Xavier School that has just been published. Father Desautels was driving along Highway 54 (now Edsa) with Basilio King, when the rector noticed, in the distance, a huge mango tree on a "lonely, breezy hill." Father Desautels and King had to drive back into San Juan to get back to that "Mango Hill" across "rice fields and carabao ponds."
"My God, Basilio, this is the place," Father Desautels is quoted as saying. "Right here, on top of the hill, I will build the Jesuit Residence; to the west, the school; to the north, the sports fields."
Xavier
And indeed that was how Xavier School was built. Father Desautels wanted 10 hectares, but got permission for only five. It helped that there were Basque Jesuits among them to negotiate with the Spanish-Filipino Ortigas family. On Sept. 12, 1958, the Jesuits signed an agreement to purchase three parcels of land totaling 52,674 square meters for P421,392. That comes out to P8 per sq. m.
The Jesuits and the Ortigases knew it was "buena mano," a good first deal that would set off more sales. Although there were already Chinese families in San Juan long before Kuang Chi-Xavier was put up, the school was a turning point, drawing in a major exodus of the Chinese away from the old Chinatown. That sent real estate values soaring in San Juan. When my father bought, in 1962, a piece of land in Little Baguio, a stone's throw away from Xavier, the price was P30 per sq. m. Today, you have to pay at least P20,000 per sq. m.
Father Desautels was able to persuade the Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception, who were mostly Canadian, to move to San Juan as well. ICACA became ICA; Kuang Chi became Xavier. A church, Mary the Queen, was built between the two campuses, almost as if to ensure a segregation of the boys from the girls. Gone are the rice fields and carabao ponds.
Integration
San Juan's Chinatown offers us a model for cultural integration. San Juan's Tsinoy residents have not formed ghettos; instead, they're distributed throughout the municipality. It's not surprising that Diao Eng Chay has two branches, one on Wilson Street and another on Anapolis Street, near the Greenhills Shopping Center, catering to the rather dispersed Tsinoy residents.
The town is actually home now to people from all over the country, of different ethnicities, classes, even faiths. The Greenhills Shopping Center in San Juan has large numbers of Muslim traders and they have their own prayer room within the commercial complex. When that was first proposed, a few unenlightened residents tried to block the construction, claiming this would attract terrorists. Rational minds prevailed and the Muslims got their prayer room.
San Juan is an economic dragon within Metro Manila, and it owes its dynamism to its multiculturalism. I do worry though about the reckless speed with which development is taking place. There are far too many businesses being put up, some lasting only a few weeks because there's little thought to how much can be absorbed. Traffic is horrendous now (thanks in part, as well, to Xavier and ICA), with businesses using the streets as their parking lots. One day, we'll have to pay for all this social and environmental deterioration.
The businesses set up by the Tsinoy have generated employment, but it may be time as well for the Tsinoy to think of social responsibility, of other ways to help besides building more malls and arcades. We need to keep San Juan a dragon, for more generations to come, Tsinoy or Pinoy.
LINK
]?Another article for you guys to get bored [just read this this morning
] Metro Manila's dragon
By Michael Tan
I WAS driving along Wilson Street in San Juan town, in Metro Manila, at around 9 in the morning on Sunday, when I spotted the bright red dragon, at least 5 meters long, dancing with two lions.
Actually, it was a Lunar New Year celebration, with about a dozen men doing a dragon-and-lion dance. I'd been asking around about the schedules of dragon dances on Ongpin Street and Binondo district in Manila's Chinatown area, but it looked like the dragon decided to prance over to San Juan.
And why not? San Juan has turned into another Chinatown. The dragon dance that morning alternated between North Park, a Chinese restaurant, and Diao Eng Chay, a popular grocery store where you can get everything from "siopao" and "siomai" dumplings to black "gulaman" gelatin and canned abalone. Around that area, I've counted at least 10 Chinese restaurants, three other Chinese specialty groceries (including the quaint Little Store, which also serves food), assorted shops and even a Chan Buddhist temple that teaches meditation.
Chinatowns
Yet that morning as I watched the dragon dance, I felt the ambience was very different from Metro Manila's other Chinatowns. Yes, there are now at least three Chinatowns in Metro Manila: the original one in the Ongpin/Binondo area, the one along Banawe Street in Quezon City, and San Juan.
The original Chinatown in Ongpin and Binondo is still more Chinese than Filipino. The sounds are distinct here with more of Chinese languages. The smells are a bewildering combination of incense and five-star anise and herbal medicines. There's also a wider assortment of goods: foods, crafts, books and magazines, gold jewelry, to name a few.
The Banawe and San Juan Chinatowns are different, now more "Tsinoy" (Chinese-Filipino) than Chinese. San Juan is probably the most Filipinized of the three Chinatowns. You hear Minnan Hokkien Chinese occasionally, but more often it's Taglish with almost no Chinese accent, especially when spoken by the young. And the shops and restaurants aren't exclusively Chinese, being interspersed with McDonald's and Alex III and Mercury drugstore.
Ateneo de Chino
San Juan's Chinatown has a colorful history, brought into being by a multinational team. I'm referring to the way its development is so intertwined with that of Xavier School, a Jesuit boys' school.
Xavier started out as Kuang Chi in 1956, set up by Jesuits who had been expelled from China by the communists. The Jesuits, a mixed band of French-Canadians, Basques, Americans, Chinese and one Hungarian, were determined to continue their ministry with the Chinese, even if they were overseas. There was already an Immaculate Conception Anglo-Chinese Academy (ICACA) in downtown Manila, founded in 1936 and serving male and female Chinese students, but the Jesuits decided to put up a boys' school, egged on by Ambrose Chiu and Basilio King, two Chinese businessmen who had graduated from the Ateneo and wanted to see an Ateneo de Chino as well. Ateneo de Manila denied permission to use that name, so the Jesuits went on to use Kuang Chi, after a 16th-century Chinese magistrate converted to Catholicism by Jesuits.
Kuang Chi was first set up in an old lumberyard in Echague, Quiapo, but the school's forward-looking Jesuit founders realized early on that the campus site was going to be problematic, with congested populations, flooding and other problems.
Its French-Canadian rector, Fr. Jean Desautels, began to look for another site. The search is described in Fr. Santos G. Mena's "Luceat Lux," a history (or story, as Father Mena prefers) of Xavier School that has just been published. Father Desautels was driving along Highway 54 (now Edsa) with Basilio King, when the rector noticed, in the distance, a huge mango tree on a "lonely, breezy hill." Father Desautels and King had to drive back into San Juan to get back to that "Mango Hill" across "rice fields and carabao ponds."
"My God, Basilio, this is the place," Father Desautels is quoted as saying. "Right here, on top of the hill, I will build the Jesuit Residence; to the west, the school; to the north, the sports fields."
Xavier
And indeed that was how Xavier School was built. Father Desautels wanted 10 hectares, but got permission for only five. It helped that there were Basque Jesuits among them to negotiate with the Spanish-Filipino Ortigas family. On Sept. 12, 1958, the Jesuits signed an agreement to purchase three parcels of land totaling 52,674 square meters for P421,392. That comes out to P8 per sq. m.
The Jesuits and the Ortigases knew it was "buena mano," a good first deal that would set off more sales. Although there were already Chinese families in San Juan long before Kuang Chi-Xavier was put up, the school was a turning point, drawing in a major exodus of the Chinese away from the old Chinatown. That sent real estate values soaring in San Juan. When my father bought, in 1962, a piece of land in Little Baguio, a stone's throw away from Xavier, the price was P30 per sq. m. Today, you have to pay at least P20,000 per sq. m.
Father Desautels was able to persuade the Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception, who were mostly Canadian, to move to San Juan as well. ICACA became ICA; Kuang Chi became Xavier. A church, Mary the Queen, was built between the two campuses, almost as if to ensure a segregation of the boys from the girls. Gone are the rice fields and carabao ponds.
Integration
San Juan's Chinatown offers us a model for cultural integration. San Juan's Tsinoy residents have not formed ghettos; instead, they're distributed throughout the municipality. It's not surprising that Diao Eng Chay has two branches, one on Wilson Street and another on Anapolis Street, near the Greenhills Shopping Center, catering to the rather dispersed Tsinoy residents.
The town is actually home now to people from all over the country, of different ethnicities, classes, even faiths. The Greenhills Shopping Center in San Juan has large numbers of Muslim traders and they have their own prayer room within the commercial complex. When that was first proposed, a few unenlightened residents tried to block the construction, claiming this would attract terrorists. Rational minds prevailed and the Muslims got their prayer room.
San Juan is an economic dragon within Metro Manila, and it owes its dynamism to its multiculturalism. I do worry though about the reckless speed with which development is taking place. There are far too many businesses being put up, some lasting only a few weeks because there's little thought to how much can be absorbed. Traffic is horrendous now (thanks in part, as well, to Xavier and ICA), with businesses using the streets as their parking lots. One day, we'll have to pay for all this social and environmental deterioration.
The businesses set up by the Tsinoy have generated employment, but it may be time as well for the Tsinoy to think of social responsibility, of other ways to help besides building more malls and arcades. We need to keep San Juan a dragon, for more generations to come, Tsinoy or Pinoy.
LINK
<3 San Juan
<3 Greenhills
<3 Greenhills
QUOTE (BlueSk1es @ Jan 31 2006, 10:38 AM)
LOL all I know is Binondo...question how come the chinese in the Philippines look really different from the chinese from China???
You know in Binondo, everything is chinese, the people, food, establishments, etc... but whats ironic is that there are many kalesas in Binondo which you can only see it in the rural areas in the Philippines.
QUOTE (ham_let @ Feb 2 2006, 03:19 AM)
<3 San Juan
<3 Greenhills
<3 Greenhills
You were from San Juan?
The Chinese outnumbered the Spaniards in the Philippines and noi less than 6 times that the Chinese revolted against the Spanish rule and more than 100,000 Chinese were either killed ,massacred or expelled during the 333 years of the Spanish rule in the Philippines.
QUOTE (redhotchili @ Feb 2 2006, 05:22 AM)
You were from San Juan?
lol, no, but that's where all my relatives live. i've never lived in the philippines longer than a month. lol.
Yeah, there were a lot of Tsinoys in San Juan and Manila , New Manila in Quezon City also Caloocan . I am not so sure in other areas ?
QUOTE (BlueSk1es @ Jan 31 2006, 11:38 PM)
LOL all I know is Binondo...question how come the chinese in the Philippines look really different from the chinese from China???
Maybe those in China are lighter? The Philippines is s sunny country, you know.
QUOTE (BlueSk1es @ Jan 31 2006, 07:38 AM)
LOL all I know is Binondo...question how come the chinese in the Philippines look really different from the chinese from China???
palibhsasa, hinaluan na ng dugong malay. kaya medjo maitim at pango ang ilong. ganyan talaga ang lahing inchik sa mga bansang karamihan ay malay.
QUOTE(bisaya @ Jan 31 2006, 11:52 AM) [snapback]1508646[/snapback]
there is a story about the mayor of cebu being asked why there is no chinatown in cebu, and the mayor replied "because the city is chinatown". there's some truth in it because if you go to the downtown area of cebu, you'll discover that more than 90% of the businesses are owned by ethnic chinese from colon st. to manalili. the only place where you'll find most filipinos businesses would be the carbon market and the wet markets and places like carbon, pasil and taboan but even those places have businesses owned by the ethnic chinese. and in small cities, more than 60% of the the properties at the city centers are mostly owned by the chinese. but it is not true that more than 60% of the land in the philippines are owned by the chinese because the philippines is so big. the etnic chinese are not stupid to buy properties in very remote villages. that's bad investment. and you don't buy propeties in MILF-abu sayaf-CPP NPA war zones.
That is the case in MOST Philippine cities. You go to session road to Bonifacio to Magsaysay to otek to chanum to the city market, most establishments are owned by the Chinese. Even the ones in La Trinidad are owned by the Chinese.
neo chinatown sa manila bay raw
QUOTE(santoloco @ Dec 18 2006, 05:02 PM) [snapback]2580710[/snapback]
neo chinatown sa manila bay raw
Ya see... this is what I mean. For me, I think this is exploitation to the nth degree.
Why is the Chinese culture being warped to look other than what it truly is? I sure as hell be pissed off if I'm a Tsinoy on how the culture is misinterpreted, instead of understood. But then again, Taiwan isn't so keen when it comes to that, compared to Mainlanders...
Just a thought...
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