Kumain ka na ba? Mag merienda ka muna. (Have you eaten? Have some snack first.) These are typical warm, gracious and hospitable words of welcome that Filipinos utter to their guests.
Thus it was shocking and condescending to a Filipino like me to be denied getting served and be disallowed from ordering “to go” food in a Chinese restaurant at the corner of Jacinto and Ocampo streets in the village of Pio Del Pilar in the city of Makati in my own country. The answer given to me by the Chinese sitting in one of the three rectangular tables was just no, no, no, no. When I pressed for an answer as to why, I was dismissed again with the words no, no, no!
Then the teenager and old Chinese guy in this place named Flys Kitchenette called the Filipino helpers manning the restaurant’s kitchen to explain things to me. The responding Filipino helper told me that they only serve Chinese customers because the owners of Flys Kitchenette speak Chinese only and their menu is in Chinese. I exclaimed what! Pancit is pancit and they can show pictures of the food they are serving! Whether others call it pho hoa, ramen, or mi goreng, any Juan, Inday or Neneng who sees the picture will know it’s pancit.
How many exclusively for mainland Chinese restaurants have mushroomed in Metro Manila? Are we going to take this situation sitting down? Is the economic invasion of China (not to mention its invasion of the West Philippines Sea), specifically the proliferation of Chinese POGOs (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators) with their ancillary only-for-Chinese kitchenettes, a phenomenon that we just read on the newspapers or a news video that we only see on TV or Facebook? What are we going to do about the Chinese invasion of our own neighborhood? Hey you, former flower children now retired folks who were rallying in the streets in the 1970s and who were in the EDSA revolution, are you saying you are too old for this?
After about three days of reflecting on this situation, I talked to several persons living near Flys Kitchenette. They all confirmed that only Chinese enter the Flys Kitchenette to eat. The Pinoy I saw squatting on the sidewalk a few meters from Flys said he does not interfere with other’s business. The old lady at the corner store response was “We do not eat there.” The two ladies at a restaurant down the corner said it’s true that only Chinese enter and eat at the Kitchenette. The lady owner of the restaurant right across Flys stated that mainland Chinese people usually flock to this restaurant during weekends.
My spiel to the Filipino folks that I talked with was this. The Chinese who are currently working and living in the Philippines will sooner or later leave our country and they will be the ones who will testify how the Filipinos are. Let us remain to be warm, gracious and hospitable people. These are the people who will expose the truth and facts that are being censored by the ruling authoritarian communist party of China.
The basis of my faith in the Chinese people is the story of the more than 100,000 Chinese who were forcibly shipped out of Bali, Indonesia 60 years ago by the former Indonesian President Sukarno. The firsthand bases of my optimism are my Chinese-Filipino friends, who I dearly love, and the Chinese-Indonesian persons I worked with for six years when I was in Jakarta. The newspaper, South China Morning Post, quotes one of the Chinese who was forced to flee Bali and who now lives in a village that he and his fellow deportees call Kampung Bali Nansan: “We’re a group of Chinese who love Indonesian food, love Indonesian cakes, love Indonesian songs. We’re not Indonesians, but we’re Chinese people with Indonesian flavours.”
As for me and my wife, we will probably go to Flys Kitchenette or any of the same kind where mainland Chinese flock, wearing T-shirts, mine with Manny Pacquiao smiling at the front-side and my wife’s tee embossed with the Filipina Miss Universe Catriona Gray’s charming face and both of our tee’s backside inscribed with words written in Chinese with the quote: “Is it right for a country to claim a whole ocean? … President Rodrigo Duterte”
Your t-shirt would be inscribed with what?