My People

The earliest settlers in the archipelago that would become the Philippines were the Austronesians. They migrated from the Yunnan Plateau in southern China and are related to the Guangdong/Fujian Chinese. They reached our archipelago via Taiwan. You may ask me why they are darker than their relatives in China. That change in their physical feature can be explained by the process of navigation and adaptation to their new environment. While they were sailing through the open waters, they were sunburned. They also adapted well to the islands near the Equator where there is much more sunlight than where they came from. Those are the reasons why our Austronesian ancestors have brown skin. In spite of the change in their physical appearance, it is still a fact that they came from southern China and therefore they are Chinese.

In 1279, the Mongols invaded the Song Empire. After the fall of the Song Empire, the last Song emperor and his fleet escaped to our archipelago and established the Lu-Song or ‘Lesser Song’ Empire. Tondo or 'Eastern Capital' (in present-day Manila) was the capital of the Lu-Song Empire. The Lu-Song merchants were considered Chinese by the people they encountered across Asia. Lu-Song became Luzon in Spanish historical records and it was the name given to the whole island.

Chinese immigrants not only settled in Tondo but also in many parts of our archipelago where they intermarried with the local Austronesian population. Their mixed descendants were called Mestizos de Sangley. One place where there was a high concentration of Chinese mestizos is Ilocos where we can still see the remnants of the Chinese quarters called Kasanglayan in Vigan. Like Tondo, Vigan was also an important coastal trading post for merchants from many regions in Asia. Tondo and Vigan were two of the only five communities with more than two thousand people when the Spaniards and Mexicans arrived in our archipelago.

In 1574, Limahong attempted to overthrow the Spanish colonial government twice. A year before that, he gathered an army of around 3,000 Chinese. Limahong and his army first arrived in Ilocos Sur but the Spanish army drove them away. They then tried to capture Intramuros, the seat of the Spanish colonial government, but they failed so they fled and settled in Pangasinan.

The Galleon Trade from 1565 to 1815 between Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico attracted many Chinese males from Fujian to work in the Philippines. The Spanish colonial government allowed only the males to enter the Philippines and restricted the activities of these Chinese immigrants. They engaged in retail trades and they could not own land. Because of the abuses done by the Spaniards, the Chinese revolted 14 times. The Chinese revolt in 1603 led to the massacre of around 24,000 Chinese as ordered by Governor Luis Perez Dasmarinas. Another revolt in 1639-40 led to the massacre of around 22,000 Chinese. In 1662, around 30,000 Chinese were expelled from the Philippines and those who were caught were immediately beheaded. Most of the massacred or expelled Chinese were unconverted Chinese. To avoid this fate, many Chinese male immigrants embraced Catholicism, intermarried with local women, adopted Hispanized names, and practiced Hispanic customs and traditions. Some of their descendants, like Jose Rizal and Emilio Aguinaldo, would someday lead the Filipinos in their fight for freedom against the Spanish colonial government.

The American colonial government put into effect the Chinese Exclusion Act in the Philippines but many Chinese were still able to settle in the Philippines. During World War II, the Japanese killed many Chinese-Filipinos. Some years after the Chinese Revolution of 1949, many Chinese migrated to the Philippines. During the Martial Law Regime, Chinese schools were ordered to study Filipino culture. This policy led to the formal assimilation of the post-1949 Chinese-Filipinos into mainstream Filipino society. The most recent Chinese immigrants started to arrive in the 1980s and these Chinese lived in a society in China where the traditional Chinese culture is suppressed.

There are five waves of migration from mainland China. The first ones to arrive were the Austronesians from Yunnan. The second wave brought the survivors of the Song Empire. The third group composed of mostly Fujianese males who intermarried with local women during the Spanish colonial period. The fourth set of migrants left the mainland after 1949. The fifth wave is still bringing some Chinese to the Philippines. The Chinese-Filipinos comprise about 20% of the people in the Philippines.