We should all be grateful to the people who came before us and who contributed to make our towns and villages better than how they found it. In Victorias, each generation since the days of the earliest settlements by the mouth of the Malihaw River has contributed to the growth and expansion of our hometown.
Unfortunately, in my research about its history, I discovered that there were people in position who twisted and exploited our history to serve their own political agenda, even immorally wasting taxpayers' money for it. A perfect example of this historical negationism is discussed in Chapter 8 and the October 22, 2022 article. (Please see links below)
But let us pay tribute to those who helped but never asked for any recognition. Let's remember those generous individuals whose descendants never asked a statue for, and whose descendants never wasted taxpayers' money for a political propaganda disguised as an annual wreath-laying at the Victorias public plaza.
On the wall inside the Our Lady of Victory Parish church in Victorias City, there is a marker that reminds the parishioners of the names of the generous individuals who donated the land for the church, who built the church, and who donated the land for the Victorias public cemetery.
These generous individuals were Don Manuel Lopez and his wife, DoƱa Paz Tongoy; they donated the land where the church stands today. Don Miguel and Don Jesus Ossorio "helped build" the church with building materials like the concrete, steel, trusses, as well as the manpower to do the work. Don Gonzalo Ditching and his wife, DoƱa Simeona Jingco, donated the land of the current public cemetery, the one located at the northern end of Victorias City along the national highway. I said 'current' because the previous cemetery in Victorias was at the present-day 'Malinong' in Barangay 7 of the City. The Hiligaynon word 'malinong' meaning quiet or serene, was probably first used by the people in 1934 when the old cemetery was created in that area as it was probably the most peaceful part of a growing town then, and that description stuck and became one of its names until now.
In this Chapter, we pay tribute to the names and to the generosity of Don Gonzalo Ditching and DoƱa Simeona Jingco-Ditching, who gave us the Catholic cemetery by tracing the journey of the family of Don Gonzalo from China up to Binondo in Manila, while the succeeding chapter will try to continue their journey after they left Binondo.
In my conversation with certain individuals for this Chapter, I always emphasized that we, as Victoriahanon, should be grateful to their kindness because all our departed have been given a final resting place.
And from the words of his descendant, Mr. Cielo Ditching as told to him by his father, Mr. Vicente Ditching, Sr., plus my research on the circumstances faced by their ancestors during their time and with the help from notable historians, this is the story of Don Gonzalo Yusay Ditching as I trace his journey through parts of Chinese and Philippine histories.
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FROM CHINA TO LAS FILIPINAS
The original family name of the Ditching clan was the Chinese surname Ching, having their roots in China. In 1868, when Don Gonzalo was just seven years old, his grandparents made a difficult decision to uproot the whole family and leave their friends and livelihood behind in China in order to start a new life in Las Filipinas. This Ching clan had a mixed Chinese and Dutch ancestry.
The main reason for this decision was to escape the Taiping Rebellion in China.
According to Dr. Jely A. Galang, the Associate Professor of History at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, the Taiping Rebellion, that took place from 1850 to 1868, was the reason why there was an influx of Chinese immigrants from the Fujian Province to Las Filipinas during that time. This rebellion, along with the discontent of the Chinese people that time during the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912), was the cause of Chinese emigration to other colonies and countries in Southeast Asia. The Taiping Rebellion that happened in the central and southern parts of China was said to have been bloody with written accounts of massacres and brutality. Millions of innocent Chinese died. It is then understandable that Don Gonzalo's grandparents put their family's survival and safety above everything else, and they had to find a safe place for the Ching clan, even if they had to cross the seas to find it.
Like most of the Chinese families in Binondo, the Ching clan spoke Hokkien as they were from Fujian Province, a southeastern province in mainland China that is only 200 kilometers from Taiwan. And this must be the reason for their Dutch ancestry.
The Dutch colonizers had presence in China since 1603 when they ventured into putting up colonies in Asia after having seen what Spain and Portugal had done with their maritime superiority. But after they were driven out of Formosa, present-day Taiwan, in 1662 by the legendary Chinese sealord, Koxinga, after a bloody battle, most of the Dutch officers and soldiers were executed, while the Dutch women and children were spared and taken back to the mainland by the Chinese commanders and soldiers as wives or concubines. The Dutch ancestry of Don Gonzalo's grandparents could probably be traced to a wife of one of Koxinga's soldiers, or a concubine of one of his commanders.
The decision of Don Gonzalo's grandparents to choose Las Filipinas over the Southeast Asian countries or colonies must have been influenced by the stories brought home by the Chinese merchants who traded with Spaniards and native Filipinos in Binondo.
The maritime trade between China and the neighboring colonies in Southeast Asia had been flourishing for centuries even before the arrival of the Spaniards in our archipelago, with recorded mentions in history books as early as the Song Dynasty (960 CE - 1279 CE), and the Chinese families in Fujian that eventually moved to Las Filipinas, including Don Gonzalo's, must have heard about the interesting stories and the profits from the trade, but also about the Chinese communities that existed in other countries at that time, including Binondo in Las Filipinas.
The Ching family must have crossed the South China Sea from Xiamen (known in Old China as Tong'an County and as Amoy, its old English name), one of the major seaports in the Fujian Province, on a Chinese junk that traveled as part of a fleet.
Depending on the weather and sea currents, the trip took ten to 15 days for these Chinese junks that were loaded by Chinese products and animals intended to be traded, Chinese families seeking new life and fortune in Las Filipinas, and on some occasions, Chinese fugitives trying to escape punishment for their crimes in China. These Chinese junks were operated and manned by able boatmen and purposely traveled with other junks as a fleet for protection against sea pirates. The people who joined the trip just had to pay.
The sea voyage from Fujian Province in China to Binondo in Las Filipinas simply followed a short route, which, by that time, was already used by merchants for a thousand years as the route was a part of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, a network of maritime routes that took merchants to China, Persia, India, Europe, and Southeast Asian kingdoms and settlements, including those in the Pre-Hispanic Philippines. It was simply a straight path from the southeastern part of China down to Luzon. Had the fleet left China during the winter monsoon, the currents would have helped them sail faster as compared to crossing the South China Sea during the summer monsoon when the currents moved against them.
When the fleet of Chinese junks that carried the young Don Gonzalo and his family finally arrived in Las Filipinas and was tracing the western coastline of Luzon that was dotted with coconut trees, forests and occasional seaside communities, they must have been relieved that they were now safe from notorious sea pirates, and most important, that the Ching family was safe from the dangers of the Taiping Rebellion and was now ready to begin a new life in Las Filipinas. What could have been the conversations on the junk among the Ching family members? Was the young Gonzalo excited for the new life ahead?
And as their fleet turned left to enter Manila Bay, their arrival was already signaled to the Spanish authorities in Manila by a fire signal of the watchmen posted in Mariveles in Bataan. Upon docking at the banks of the Pasig River, the Chinese junks were boarded by Spanish officers who inspected and collected tax for the goods they brought in and also listed the passengers that rode along with it.
NEW LIFE IN BINONDO
When the family reached Las Filipinas in 1868, Binondo was already the backbone of the Philippine economy for centuries. Its old name was 'binundok', meaning, hilly, and was officially named by the Spaniards 'Isla de Binondo'. Binondo's status as the center of trade and economic activities in Las Filipinas was fueled by Chinese merchants, artisans, laborers, and the trading of popular Chinese goods like porcelain, precious stones, ivory, silk, kitchen utensils, and food products from China, as well as animals like horses and exotic birds, especially the ones that could talk.
These popular Chinese commodities were also shipped to Mexico via the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade from 1565 to 1815 with a good portion of these goods eventually reaching Europe. The galleon trade stopped because Mexico waged war for its independence. But even without the galleon trade, Binondo remained to be one of the centers of trade in Asia. This was why the British and Dutch attempted to invade Las Filipinas. They were interested in taking over the islands from the Spanish due to its strategic location.
On their arrival in 1868, Don Gonzalo's family must have had a ready arrangement on where to stay in Binondo. His grandparents probably had friends or even relatives who arranged for their temporary lodging before the family arrived. And having planned on what business to open in Binondo, the family could have even brought with them cooking ware and baking utensils, perhaps even goods that they would trade or sell for their start-up capital. Since they left China for good, they brought along personal belongings and family heirlooms. The young Don Gonzalo must have brought his toys, too.
Don Gonzalo's grandparents' cooking and baking business was able to feed the family. While life was difficult for the family at first, their hard work enabled the family to prosper through the years. As Binondo was the main food source for the Spanish families living inside Intramuros and the communities surrounding Old Manila, the Ching family's food business was part of the food supply chain that fed the Spanish populace in Intramuros, the Chinese community in Binondo, and Filipinos living in the surrounding villages in the Spanish-era Manila. Since the family were bakers and cooks, they, too, contributed to the evolution of what we call today as the Filipino cuisine. According to Filipino food historian, Ms. Felice Prudente Sta. Maria, it was the Chinese cooks who introduced to the Philippines quick stir-frying over high heat, the slow cooking over low fire that is called 'tim', and, of course, the Chinese ham, which is a Christmas staple, not only on noche buena tables of Chinese families, but also of Filipino families, and as early as the 1700s, there were already Chinese noodle makers and pansiterios in Binondo.
Before Binondo, the area of the old markers and settlements for the Chinese migrant was the Parian de Arroceroes, which, today, are the area of Liwasang Bonifacio and the Manila City Hall.
Arroceros means rice farmers, and the area was where rice farmers from surrounding areas and provinces sold rice. Parian came from the Tagalog word 'pariyan', meaning 'to go there'. In Hiligaynon, it means 'kaladtuan', a place where people frequent. Parian was a busy place where people bought their everyday necessities from rice, clothes, fabrics, utensils and things for the home, alcohol, tobaccos, and much more. It was like the Divisoria of the old days. It was full of shops that were built to have a store on the ground and the living quarters of the families and workers on the second floor. This must have been the type of shop and the living quarters of Don Gonzalo and his family. Even today, there are still shops in Binondo where the family lives upstairs, while the ground level is the family business.
In 1594, then Governor-General Luis Perez DasmariƱas ordered that Binondo be the permanent settlement for the converted Chinese and the Chinese who wanted to be converted to Catholicism. The Chinese who converted to Catholicism were called 'sangleys', which might have been borrowed from the Hokkien word 'sionglai' which meant 'frequently coming' or frequent travelers'. It was the indios, or the native Filipinos, who used the word after learning it from the Chinese, but ended up sounding as 'sangley' because the Spaniards could not pronounce the original 'sionglai'. The term 'sangley' was used by the Spaniards for Chinese immigrants who converted to Catholicism, and to convert more Chinese immigrants, the Dominicans were allowed to build the Binondo church in 1596. And having been allowed to live in Binondo, Don Gonzalo's grandparents must have decided that it was the best for the family to convert to Catholicism as well.
During the Spanish colonial period, the Chinese living in the Philippines were the lowest group and were burdened with the most taxes. The Spaniards and Spanish mestizos were on top of the hierarchy, then the indios, the Chinese mestizos, the lowest were the Chinese, who paid the most taxes.
According to the late historian Antonio S. Tan, it was in 1741 when the whole population in Las Filipinas was reclassified to assign a legal status to Chinese mestizos, the sons and daughters of Chinese immigrants who married indios. This created four classes for tax purposes. In the 1800s, the taxes imposed on the four classes were as follows: The Spaniards and Spanish mestizos were exempted; an Indio had to pay P1.50; a Chinese mestizo had to pay P3.00; and a Chinese had to pay P6.00. Through the centuries, the Chinese in Las Filipinas had resented the abuse and exploitation, and as early as 1603, they already had revolted against the Spaniards. Unfortunately for them, their revolt that time was suppressed with the help of the indios, native tribes of pintados, and some Japanese living in Las Filipinas. The Spaniards had always been wary of the Chinese populace in Las Filipinas over the centuries as the former had always been outnumbered by the latter. The census data from 1838 tallied the Spanish peninsulares (born in Spain) to about 1,500, while the Spanish insulares (born in Las Filipinas with both parents Spanish) were about 3,500. The Spanish mestizos (mixed Spanish and indio heritage) were about 20,000, while the Chinese mestizos were 240,000.
But in the 1890s, when Filipinos were organizing their own revolt, certain prominent and rich Chinese businessmen in Binondo secretly provided money and support for a successful revolution. Although the most prominent Chinese at that time was Roman Ongpin, there were unnamed Chinese businessmen who aided the Filipinos, and Don Gonzalo's family must have been one of them as this rebellion, this time in Las Filipinas, caused the family to worry again about their safety.
When news got around that the Spanish authorities were hunting down members of the Chinese community who supported the rebellion against Spain, the Ching family, once more, had to look for a safe place. By that time, the family must have heard about the other thriving Chinese communities in Cebu and Iloilo, and they chose to move to the latter.
(Next: FROM BINONDO TO MOLO, ILOILO on Part 2)
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Photo: Don Gonzalo Ditching (from the Ditching Clan)
Photo: The marker inside the Our Lady of Victory Parish Church in Victorias City, Philippines)
Photo: The Maritime Silk Road used by Chinese merchants since the 10th Century
Photo: Sangleys (converted Chinese) from the Boxer Codex
Photo: Binondo in 1899
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