Pen and Ink - China Chronicles

There is an oration piece I remember so well from grade school that still lingers in the deepest hollows of my memory. I was in 4th Grade then at the Iloilo American School when I set out to memorize it and etch it in my mind. When the big day came, I found myself standing onstage in front of a few hundred curious faces and felt like the late UN General Assembly President Carlos P. Romulo beating the podium with a fist while saying:

“I am a Filipino - inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future… I am sprung from a hardy race of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the mighty swell of hope in the free abundance of new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever… This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green and purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promise a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of commerce, is a hollowed spot to me…”

After almost three decades since my juvenile chords proclaimed that piece I still tremble at the message of hope. I can understand Romulo’s optimism when he first wrote those words. The Philippines in the 60’s had a booming economy and was ranked among the most progressive nations in Southeast Asia. The country was obviously cashing in on the enormous “goodwill” of the Americans who took it upon themselves to help rebuild the shattered economies of their closest allies during the Second World War. We knew it was all part of a grand plan to re-consolidate America’s position in the Asia-Pacific region. We were also aware that foreign fiscal aid always came with a price tag. But good old Juan de la Cruz was willing to trade his aces for a shot at economic glory.

So Romulo could not be faulted if he sounded optimistic. The nation’s coffers were full, agro-industrial production and building construction were at a peak, the arts were flourishing, and the citizens were happy and prosperous. It was the golden age of our newly-independent nation and the future looked very bright indeed.

But looking at our country now, I don’t see the same brilliant future once held by the great statesman. I can’t even understand how we’ve managed in the last three decades to drive our country to the brink of socio-economic collapse. Was it our lack of national unity or our ineptitude in self-governance? Was it because of the bad habits we conveniently claim to have inherited from the Spanish? Did our naïveté and deeply-rooted provincial nature keep us from coming out of our shells and be more open to progressive thought? Were we too hung up on foreign help, relying too much on foreigners to think and initiate for us, and failing to learn to do things by ourselves? Did our “hacienda” lifestyle get the better of us and romance us all into corruption? Did we always like to be second best in everything, bystanders who never took the initiative to lead, to speak out and be heard? Was it all or a combination of these little catastrophes that completed our destruction?

Sooner or later my inquisitive 9-year-old son will start asking these same questions “in the present tense” and I’m worried I won’t be able to offer him concrete answers. I can already see him sense my eventual lack of optimism at such a subject. I can only assure him that there is always hope, hope that now rests in him, that someday our nation will rise on its feet and catch up with the rest of the world. Otherwise Papa, who has been working abroad for 5 years now, can never come back home, work in his own country and provide sufficiently for the family.

There is no telling when our impotent system will recover and take off. No hope can be derived from the actions of our current politicians who’ve officially become a media circus and the butt of endless jokes. Rizal and our national heroes must be stirring in their graves at the appalling lack of honest statesmanship in our leaders today. Their heroic sacrifices have amounted to almost nothing after more than a century. Our police and military have well turned themselves into criminals, hooligans and private armies of the rich protecting their own self-interests instead of the people’s welfare. What’s left of our taxes is misappropriated by the taxman in broad daylight, while hungry contractors and local officials fight over the spoils, effectively stifling down the flow of project money into a pathetic trickle. Our economic infrastructures – roads, water, power and transport facilities and government centers are so dilapidated, unreliable and corrupt that no investor would ever risk investing his money in our country. Our cities are so dirty, congested, slum-infested, devoid of trees and parks it makes Gotham City look like a gag. The list goes on and on and I take no pride in saying all these, but that’s that. We have to face the fact that our country is going downhill and unless there is overriding change in the system we’re all going down with it.

I doubt that in my lifetime I would be able to see the country recover from its social malaise. This is particularly heartbreaking for us architects, who design and build big time for foreigners overseas, but only get the chance to build a few houses at home. It’s a pity our country can’t make full use of our talent, but what is there to build? Same thing goes with the rest of our best minds, our millions of skilled professionals who have to forage elsewhere to realize their dreams. It is understandable. If the EDSA revolution of the 80’s, a supposedly system-changing event for our country, has failed to effect change on our disintegrating political conscience and whip up our green-eyed monster of a government into real positive action, what else is there to look forward to?

Whenever I say “I am a Filipino” Romulo’s strong message of hope always comes to mind, reminding me of the past. It keeps me focused on the future whatever the present. But still, in my moments of weakness, when my resolve to make sense of my heritage begins to crumble, I look at a picture of my smiling son, my daughter and my expecting wife, and wish against hope I never stop hoping…

Here’s one of my more pensive earlier poems. As floods and quakes are both natural disasters, this could also be an apt tribute to the recent earthquake disaster in Sichuan. The feeling of devastation at the loss of lives and the ugly side of nature is the same in both. I’ve had ample past experience with both calamities, you may even call me a veteran, so in 1994 as flood waters submerged my hometown at record levels, I steeled my pen. With a cup of hot coffee in my hand and the lilting drone of the rain on my galvanized roof… while the cisterns choked from the city’s dregs and mountain water knocked at my bedroom door… I wrote:

NEVER CRY RAIN

the day monsoon clouds
emptied a river into our street

windows wore
the eyes of dead boats
marooned in brown and gray waters.

i saw no grass, no potholes
only neighbors half-deaf

to the screams of drowning tables.
no wild song chanced the roofs

as gutters choked on rust
and last summer’s prayers.

bedroom walls swayed at every slap
of the waves of clashing tides

and the sun and young leaves
hugged only in daydreams caught

in the spirals of an eddy.

- JCT 1994

Much has been said about our chinky-eyed brothers, the Chinese, especially outside of China. We look upon them as uncouth, selfish heathens who think only of money and money alone. Visiting Westerners who encounter the locals in their rawest behavior are often shocked at the way they carry themselves in public; yes they spit anywhere, slurp when they eat and can’t be bothered by the way they look. In a way they denigrate themselves in outsiders’ eyes.

To them however propriety is nothing, deception is everything. After generations of growing hand in hand with the Chinese in all parts of the world, we still refuse to believe that this is all part of an age-old stance. Haven’t we noticed that our Chinese neighbors (in the Philippines for instance) in their worn shirts driving their rustic vehicles actually keep 2 SUV’s and a sports car in their garage? Or that they own that humongous piece of vacant land across the road? They are really rich mc coys in plain clothes, the gatekeepers of our local economy, controllers of the prices on our most basic commodities, owners of the largest most progressive corporations. And we still cling to the idea that they are crude and ignorant. Or are they really? Someday when the curtains are drawn and the trick is revealed we might find ourselves with nothing.

The world is becoming more dependent on China on almost anything that can be produced by Chinese hands. And why not? They can fabricate any item cheaper than anywhere else at the same quality. In fact, over four hundred of the Fortune 500 companies now have operations in China. As an example, 80% of Wal-Mart’s grocery items now come from China. Everything we eat, drink or wear has something to do with the Chinese. China is one crazy continent (in itself) full of all sorts of factories that produce everything one can think of, from the minutest to the colossal. Fortunes are now measured in days instead of years and all that money is slowly shifting the weight over this side of the world.

Regardless of how they look, the Chinese psyche is unique – one of perseverance, dedication to family, ancestors and prosperity, and community spirit. In their own way, they are exceptionally studious - devouring every Chinese and English reading material they can get hold of. During weekends the gigantic libraries here are so full of people reading books (to the last square meter) they are literally “standing room only”. They are remarkably flexible in both body and mind – for them adversity is a path to prosperity, an acceptable fact of life. For them, poverty at the onset of a small starting business is a small price to pay. They will keep on pushing, run themselves to the ground if they have to, but never quitting until they master the trade, break the surface and expand in every direction. They are obsessed with role models – almost unashamed to say they just copied something from somebody else’s work. But that’s where they hope they can proceed from. Japan used to be a pirate nation too after WWII before they ever learned to create on their own. Reverse technology is very common among a population who had just come out of its shell, hungry for everything they haven’t tried before.

China also had its own dark age. There was a time in their “collective era” when everyone had to wear the same drab clothes and line up for basic commodities on family coupons in state-owned shops. All these are just whiffs remembered as a necessary past, a means to a goal which is the present. It is a past memorialized with great pride by living descendants of that age and worshipped by the young. Heroes are after all role models in their own right.

Although it may seem otherwise to the West, the China of today is a forward-looking, positive force based on the true element of its population: its entrepreneurial spirit. Its people revel at the thought of creating prosperity for themselves and their families. No amount of difficulty or inequity can ever stop them from being their true business-minded selves in or out of China. And nothing can be wiser for a country than to tap into this common strength that simply struggles to be unleashed. As the world converges into a global society without race, color and boundary, where vast distances are covered within minutes by transport and within seconds by phone or email, where only collective economies survive, where the individual ceases to be an island, this continent-country with almost 2 billion people united in singing the same communal song in the name of capitalism will hold undeniable power indeed.