My grandfathers are Chinese.
My father enjoys narrating the tale of how my brother and I were the first homeless people.
Back then, when we were young children, in the late 1960s, San Fernando, La Union, didn't have any beggars on its streets. Dad told us that one of my Chinese grandfathers came with us as he begged his rich friends for money so he could continue to indulge in his drug, opium.
Yes, I had a Chinese grandfather who was addicted to opium. He went by Ashok Ah Kong. He wasn't actually a blood relative; rather, he was the brother-in-law of my paternal lolo.
Back then, when we were young children, in the late 1960s, San Fernando, La Union, didn't have any beggars on its streets. Dad told us that one of my Chinese grandfathers came with us as he begged his rich friends for money so he could continue to indulge in his drug, opium.
Yes, I had a Chinese grandfather who was addicted to opium. He went by Ashok Ah Kong. He wasn't actually a blood relative; rather, he was the brother-in-law of my paternal lolo.
When the public market caught fire in 1969, our family, along with everyone else in the neighborhood, fled to the neighboring seashore. Ashok Ah Kong was left behind in the confusion and was subsequently discovered dead in his cot, shrouded under a black mosquito net. I suppose Ashok Ah Kong must have been "high" till his passing, when the public market burnt and everyone panicked.
On Good Friday, my birthday, I recall going to a modest funeral parlor with my mother and brother to pay our respects. During Pista ti Natay, or All Saints' Day, Ashok Ah Kong would visit the tombs of the wealthy Chinese people in our town to assist himself to the food and fruit offerings left behind. His remains were interred in a Chinese cemetery not far from these tombs.
As my dad's mother, Lola Cion, used to say, "Ashok Ah Kong was kind and generous despite his opium addiction." According to legend, Ashok Ah Kong was descended from a prosperous family that lived in the opium-trade hub of the province of Canton (now Guangdong). However, his family was unable to break him of his terrible habit, so somewhere in the 1930s, they asked my lolo to take him with them when they traveled to the Philippines, and that is how he was banished.
Sadly, no one in our village in Guangdong recalls Ashok Ah Kong. This was my attempt to find his family when I had the opportunity to visit our village in 2007 and trace our ancestry.
My dad's father, my lolo, is from a little village southwest of the Pearl River, close to the city of Kaiping. The larger and more well-known metropolis, Guangzhou, is two hours' drive away. The tower homes, also known as diaolous, that UNESCO has designated as world historic monuments are located in Kaiping.
Every student at this institution goes by our family name exclusively. Depending on the province, Soho, Szeto, Seto, Situ, and other terms are pronounced differently even if they are written with the same Chinese characters. Many of the previous villagers had moved to Canada, Australia, Southeast Asia, and the United States, and these locations were tracked by a village library and museum. Some of the people who had emigrated to America reportedly contributed to the construction of railroads.
The remote Chinese village where my grandfather grew up is a tranquil, agrarian community. There's a welcoming arch, a fishpond with some ducks and geese playing around, and plots filled with what appeared to be familiar vegetables—flowering Chinese pechay, a favorite vegetable of Ashok Ah Wing, another of my Chinese grandfathers.
My lolo's sibling was Ashok Ah Wing. In the late 1960s, he worked as the head chef at Gold City, the well-known eatery in our community. Kung fu expert Ashok Ah Wing was a Shaolin monk in China. It's said that his kung fu skills were useful in the kitchens and restaurants where he worked as a server.
After Lolo passed away, Ashok Ah Wing helped provide for our family. He was never wed. He appeared to be well-read since he routinely read Chinese publications that he obtained from his buddies. He told me tales about Chairman Mao Tse Tung and the last nationalist president of China, Chiang Kai Shek.
He taught me the Cantonese count from one to ten. The words for chicken, fish, matchsticks, and yes, even foul language are included. I speak Cantonese fluently.
I used to watch him cook a lot too. He taught me the Chinese medicine concept of which foods are hot or cold to the body, as well as how to flip pancakes without using a sandok (ladle). I can make his sweet soy pork liempo, his beef or pig watercress soup, his basic stir-fried veggies, and his pork pata with tausi and aromatic gabi or taro. I wish I knew the recipe for his lomi (pork ears instead of noodles) and white or steamed chicken as well. When he was preparing something he liked, he would sing; when not, he would grumble to himself. I've retained one of Ashok Ah Wing's wooden cupboards; he was also a woodworker.
Cantonese people are well known for their culinary prowess. Cantonese food is without a doubt the best in Chinese cuisine. And the reason for that, according to my dad's second cousin Uncle William Szeto, is that they teach children to be cooks and chefs at a young age by just letting them work alone in the kitchen.
According to my dad, his father, my Lolo Pedro, opened the first Chinese restaurant in San Fernando, called Far Eastern Restaurant. Over time, it became the meeting spot for Cantonese people, including those who had recently arrived from China by boat. Before they could find housing of their own, my lolo supported them by providing free board and lodging.
Nevertheless, during the conflict, Lolo's restaurant was damaged. He was employed by the American liberators as a baker after the war. My memories of our old house in the middle of town include two large, robust drums. My father explained that those drums held flour. Lolo filed a claim for war damages for his eatery. The funds were meant to be used as startup financing for a bakery, but they quickly ran out before the business could open. My lolo passed away penniless after a stroke in 1966.
Lolo signed his name on school cards as So Ho Lee Yang and occasionally as So Ho Mok, according to my aunt Mely (dad's sister), but they were never aware of his true identity. When he passed away, the Catholic priest sanctified his bones and gave him the name Pedro. We learned out last year that he was actually Situ Shang Xuan, according to a Chinese niece who located me on the internet.
Even though I was only two years old when Lolo passed away, oddly, I can still vaguely recall him holding me as a newborn and how we all stood for a photo outside the church on his last day. He was kind and loving and would try to protect them from my lola's pamalo, scratch their backs, or fan them to sleep, according to my uncles and aunts. When one of my uncles was locked in a lavatory because he was falling behind in his academics, he battled the Chinese school in the area.
Dad told me that lolo was a traveling merchant in China who traveled from village to village selling different kinds of products. He fled poverty in China with his family, like many other Chinese immigrants of his generation, in the hopes of finding better opportunities abroad. That China was once even impoverished than the Philippines is difficult to comprehend now.
Three of my Chinese grandfathers indulged in vices: gambling for Ashok Ah Wing and my lolo, and opium for Ashok Ah Kong. In order to conduct business, my dad recalls taking the train from San Fernando to Manila with my lolo. They eventually arrived at one of the gaming establishments on Misericordia (now Tomas Mapua) Street. My dad would doze off on lolo's lap while he gambled until it was time to catch the train back to La Union.
The exception was Ah Wah Sok, my lolo's first cousin and my fourth Chinese grandfather. His sole vice was his work. Ah Wah Sok would be outdoors doing carpenter work while my lolo was at the gaming tables. After a while, he made his home in Baguio and wed an Ibaloi woman. Along Soliman Street, then along Magsaysay Road and close to the Baguio Dangwa Terminal, he farmed and constructed the New Canton Restaurant.
Though I was a child when I woke up one chilly morning on Ah Wah Sok's farm, I didn't realize until lately what an incredible item I had found.
My team and I spent ten hours last year traveling from Manila to Baguio and Benguet in order to follow up on an exclusive investigative piece that was published by none other than The Washington Post. about how American colonists transported native Americans from the Philippines, notably Igorots from the Cordilleras, to the US as "human zoo exhibits" in the early 1900s.
We located and spoke with some of their remaining relatives in the town of Mancayan. I informed them off-camera about my grandfathers, who are Cantonese, and how they used to farm cabbage in the neighborhood. A local official I spoke with claimed that the Cantonese were the ones who taught them how to cultivate upland foods like cabbage. Thus, I suppose we owe our chopsuey and salad vegetables to my grandfathers and their fellow Cantonese in Benguet.
Despite having little more than the clothes on their backs when they left China, my grandfathers were able to make a life for themselves here. I hope that one of them became a Taipan. Even while they may not have left us much wealth, we still have a ton of lovely tales to tell about them. — Philstarlife