NARRATIVES AND RENAMED STREETS
The Old Pueblos of the City of Manila (28)
From 13 to 16 Districts. In 1908, Act No. 1869 organized Manila into two districts. Including in its jurisdiction the Walled City or Intramuros, the first district covered the pueblos of Tondo, Binondo, and San Nicolas. The second included areas south of the Pasig River — namely Ermita, Malate, Paco, Pandacan, and Santa Ana. It also covered areas north of the river, like Sampaloc, San Miguel, Santa Cruz, and Quiapo. Eighty years later, the City of Manila (28) is officially divided into 16, to include the Port Area, San Andres, and Santa Mesa districts to the original 13.
Start of my narratives
Although having lived for the most part a resident of Quezon City (213), I grew up familiar with six of the 16 districts that make up the neighboring City of Manila: Sampaloc, Quiapo, Santa Cruz, Ermita, Malate, and Tondo. Until we moved to our own home in the late 1970s, my family rented an apartment in Santa Mesa Heights, a barangay located less than a kilometer away from the City of Manila (28). Beyond Quezon City’s La Loma District and its famous lechon or roast pig restaurants is the Sampaloc, my Kilometer Zero, the start of my narratives.
Named after the tamarind tree that probably used to proliferate in the area, Sampaloc is the place where I was born, at a hospital established in the late 1950s by its owners in gratitude to the Our Lady of Perpetual Succor after the birth of their only child. Just a couple of weeks ago, I stood in front of the Perpetual Succor Hospital located at at Brgy. 457. I looked up to the tile-covered partitions between the balconies and jalousie windows. The post war architecture looked rather tired, in comparison to the skyscrapers and shiny buildings being constructed along Sampaloc’s main thoroughfare España Boulevard. The logo of the hospital too has changed with the times. The street where the hospital stands used to be called Calle Isabel, until it was renamed years ago in honor of the founder of the Arellano University, Florentino Cayco, who died in 1976.
I remember having my regular check-ups nearby at the pediatric clinic of Dr. Gicaro on the second floor of an old wooden Spanish house at the corner of España Boulevard and Governor Forbes Street. The dark wooden waiting area and hallway led to his clinic, which was cheerful and brightly lit. Always with steady hands and with a smile, he gave us something nice, a tiny piece of chocolate or so after each shot, which he said was like an ant’s bite. Dr. Gicaro’s clinic always smelled so clean and I could not take my eyes off the little refrigerator that contained vials. The amiable pediatrician had long since died and the old house torn down years ago with its materials probably sold to old wood vultures. The street that bore the name of former Governor-General William Cameron Forbes was renamed in 1971 after Arsenio Lacson, a journalist, World War II guerilla and the mayor of Manila from 1952 to 1962. People still refer to the place as Forbes though, pronouncing it in two syllables: For-bes.
A narrative behind each street sign
My mother always brought us to see not-so-distant relatives in Sampaloc, particularly a dentist cousin of hers and his siblings. I also visited friends and schoolmates who used to reside there. I became fascinated with the names of the streets in the district, many of which are referring to the life and works of Dr. Jose Rizal and people connected to him, each with a narrative that should never be forgotten.
Two streets are named after places that figured in Rizal’s life: the hero’s birthplace, now the City of Calamba (41) in Laguna, and his place in exile in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte. Blumentritt Road, named after Rizal’s Austro-Hungarian confidant Ferdinand, explodes daily in a colorfully chaotic market that also bears the same name. Before being renamed after a European intellectual who had written about the PH where he never set foot, the road used to be known as Calle Sangleyes, after the old term for people of pure Chinese ancestry or sangley. Another Sampaloc street is named after US historian Austin Craig, who came to teach under the Bureau of Education in 1904 and later become one of the first biographers of Rizal.
Two streets bear Rizal’s pen names, Dimasalang and Laon Laan, which he both used as a contributor and correspondent to the La Solidaridad, an organization of liberal Filipinos living in Madrid. Other street names pertain to characters in his novels. These include the star-crossed lovers Crisostomo Ibarra, the main protagonist, and Maria Clara delos Santos, his fiancée. In the Noli Me Tangere, they never got to meet again after Chapter 60, but in Sampaloc, their names are linked by the street sign complete with a lamp at the corner in Brgy. 496.
The transfer of colonial mantle from Spain to the United States foreshadowed changes to the names of Manila’s streets. For example, Legarda Street is named after Benito Legarda y Tuason, Filipino legislator who served as a Resident Commissioners to the US Congress from 1907 to 1913 alongside Pablo Ocampo and Manuel Quezon. The memory of Legarda almost buries that of Spaniard Jose Maria Alix y Bonache after whom the street was originally named: Calle Alix. An Alcalde-Gobernador of Batangas, he was a member of the Audencia Filipinas in the 1860s, during which Legarda was only around 10 years old.
The former names of streets in Sampaloc still survive in the signboards and names of routes painted on the side of jeepneys and in usage when giving directions or stating destinations. One particular jeepney route travels within Sampaloc’s heavily populated and narrow streets from Bustillos to Balic-Balic. The jeep I took is among those that might become junk once the government pushes through with its plans to phase out vehicles older than 15 years. With its paint peeling from all over, this same jeep had passed ownership thrice. It already has eight under the watch of its latest driver-owner, who proudly told me that he sent three children through college from earnings on the Bustillos to Balic-Balic route.
Google maps now show Bustillos as J. Figueras and Balic-Balic as G. Tuazon. Jose Figueras served for three years in the 1950s as labor secretary to PH President Quirino. His name replaces that of Spanish Governor-General Fernando Manuel de Bustillo Bustamante y Rueda, who was assassinated in 1719. The origin of the name for Calle Balic-Balic is explained by three different but plausible accounts. One referred to the peculiar way the funeral processions moved forward and backward at particular intervals. Another explained that with the old Calle Balic-Balic being a dead-end, people simply had to retrace the same way out. Both these accounts have to do with the word balik, which means “to go back.” The third account referred to the balik-balik tree, the Indian beech tree or Pongamia pinnata, which the parish attempted to reintroduce in the area.
As for G. Tuazon? A book by the NHI refers to the “G” as Gregorio, as I have also seen written on the streets signs along the Balic-Balic to Bustillos route. Gregorio is the younger brother of the Don Antonio Tuason, or Son Tua, a Chinese trader who built a fortune from the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade. After proving his fierce loyalty to the Spanish authorities during the British Invasion, Antonio the patriarch was conferred the rank of nobility by Charles III and awarded large tracts of land that stretched to as far as what would become the cities of Marikina (36) and Quezon City (213). Historical records and most ethnographic studies I read, meanwhile, never spelled the only non-Spanish noble clan’s name with a “Z” — and oh, Commissioner Benito Legarda descended from Antonio.
University Belt narratives
As the location of several higher educational institutions, Sampaloc forms part of the University Belt, which is commonly understood to include other districts like Quiapo, Santa Cruz and San Miguel but it stretches to Intramuros and Ermita. I studied for two years at the University of Sto. Tomas (UST), built by the Dominicans on a plot of land called Hacienda de Sulucan in 1927 as the original campus in Intramuros could no longer accommodate the number of students. The name Sulucan lives on as the name of street a block away from the district’s main thoroughfare, España Boulevard.
After having been granted by King Philip III two years earlier, the Dominican founded the institution in Intramuros as a seminary-college in 1611, opening a year later as the Colegio de Nuestro Señora del Rosario. Renamed as the Colegio de Santo Tomas in 1617, it became a university in 1645, with more titles added to its name in the succeeding centuries. National heroes like Marcelo H. del Pilar, Emilio Jacinto, Apolinario Mabini, and Dr. Jose Rizal are among its distinguished list of alumni, which also includes four PH presidents. The Japanese used the Sampaloc campus during World War II as an interment camp for different foreign nationals and their Filipino spouses and families. A marker by the NHI at the main gate honors the memory of Captain Manuel Colayco of the USAFEE who was killed in February 3, 1945 during the liberation of the 4,000 internees at the camp.
By the time I was studying there, its official name in Spanish read: La Real y Pontificia Universidad de Santo Tomás de Aquino, La Universidad Católica de Filipinas or The Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines. During the late afternoons, I felt uneasy taking the flight of stairs on the back of the Main Building or stay in some of the classrooms alone, especially the ones that had a thick column at one side. It felt like that there were eyes watching from the shadows. I realized by my pre-med sophomore year that I was not cut to be a doctor and shifted courses and school. So did my chance to be a co-alumnus with Rizal or President Quezon.
The older Intramuros campus meanwhile did not survive the war and its original entrance has since been relocated to the Sampaloc campus. Known as the Arch of Centuries, the portion facing the España Boulevard is the replica of the original, while the one facing the Main Building is the very archway salvaged from Intramuros. It perhaps captures the essence of Manila’s efforts to save its many heritage sites — one side left unchanged and another reconstructed, at times, fused together and coming from different times and places.
Deeper into the University Belt are other higher learning institutions such as the Far Eastern University (FEU) and the University of the East (UE). The former started from a merger of the Far Eastern College and the Institute of Accounts, Business and Finance, becoming a university in 1934. The latter began shortly after the end of World War II as the Philippine College of Commerce and Business Administration, renamed as the University of the East in 1951. I grew up hearing traditional rivalries between UST, FEU, and UE from my mother who studied in FEU and her sisters who studied in UST. This rivalry gets even hotter when these three join five other universities during the annual varsity competitions under the University Athletic Association of the Philippines or UAAP.
I remember passing through the University Belt area with my uncle to watch Kung Fu Bruce Lee and Godzilla tokusatsu movies at Avenida Rizal. I was always amazed with the tons of old and new books for sale in the many established bookstore and book traders along Claro M. Recto Avenue, once known as Calle Azcarraga. During my college years, I scoured these bookstores for hard-to-find second-hand titles required for particular subjects. Named after one of the most brilliant Filipino statesmen, C. M. Recto is also the epicenter of the counterfeit documents trade — the place to obtain fake identification cards, certificates, diplomas, and licenses. It is also a place to walk fast, focused, and with wallets and bags well secured.
Narrative of faith and coexistence
A place I have always associated with the word crowded, Quiapo got its name from the kiyapo or the pantropical water cabbage, Pistia stratiotes that used to be abundant in its waterways. Part of the city state under Rajah Soliman, it became an encomienda or a dependency during Spanish rule. Just fifteen years after the 1571 destruction of the rajah’s palisade across the river, it became a separate district, seceding from Santa Ana de Sapa. As one of the main PH religious centers of Roman Catholicism, it pulsates with a vibe that mixes in with the smoke and heat from red and brown candles lit by the devotees of the Black Nazarene. Fernando Nakpil Zialcita even wrote a 400-page book on the district entitled “Quiapo: Heart of Manila”.
With the noise and color of the tightly packed streets of this district, cautionary tales of swindlers, pickpockets and muggers and predictions of fortune tellers becoming true have become part of the centuries-old Quiapo narrative. This becomes especially busy on a Friday or Quiapo Day when a novena is held. Early in February, I accompanied my mom who was briefly home from the US, to visit Quiapo Church. I asked her about why she remains a devotee of the Black Nazarene. She has been one as long as I can since remember. “He has always answered my prayers,” she replied as we stepped out of the church which was not particularly crowded that day.
Raised as a Roman Catholic, I grew up with the impression that the heart of the Quiapo narrative is the Senyor Nazareno, the black image of Jesus Christ shipped from Mexico in the 17th century. Housed at the Basílica Menor del Nazareno Negro or the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene. Held miraculous by many Catholics, the Senyor Nazareno is the focus of the annual fiesta on January 9 when Quiapo is flooded with devotees. A 1937 painting at the National Museum captures a scene of the Nazarene carried by devotees and women still wearing veils to church.
The district boasts of a stunning wealth of architectural styles and heritage sites. Foremost perhaps is the Quiapo Church dating from 1933 which followed the design of one of district’s sons, National Artist Juan Nakpil. He is the son of Katipunero revolutionist and musician Julio and Gregoria de Jesus, widow of Andres Bonifacio. But Quiapo Church no longer has the columned and tiled interior I remember. Before the remodeling of the interior and expansion of the lateral walls to accommodate more people, the church had saints on its square columns and colorful tiles. The floors of the Baroque-style church have been replaced with marble. With its coffered ceiling, the interior was designed by Filipino architect José Ma. Zaragoza.
Along the very perimeter of the church, I saw indigenous herbs, strange potions and Catholic religious items sold alongside lenticular posters of two young Muslim girls looking at some Arabic inscriptions with the Great Mosque of Mecca in the background. This arrangement reminded me of posters that I saw on the wall in 2003 in a coffee shop at the market in Pikit (1179) in Cotabato: posters of a smiling Santa Claus next to Arabic calligraphy. Thoughts on the mix of Christian-Muslim-indigenous merchandise and the posters in Pikit led my path on my way to see another Quiapo narrative: coexistence.
The 15th century tells us that Islam always had its roots in Quiapo — which like parts of San Nicolas and Ermita four hundred years later — became the home of many Muslims who fled Mindanao due to the brutal war that erupted between the Marcos government and the Moro National Liberation Front or MNLF. At the heart of the Muslim quarter is the Golden Mosque or Masjid-al-Dahab, the spiritual core of the Muslim community of Globo de Oro, which takes its name from a hotel that is long gone. On its site in 1976, Imelda Marcos built the Golden Mosque for Libyan President and Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, who never went through his visit. Manila anticipated the visit of the Libyan leader who had brokered the negotiations between Manila and Misuari. Around three decades later, Mayor Lito Atienza had the minaret torn down due to structural problems. In 2010, the large dome has been repainted totally in gold, forever erasing the colorful geometric design that once captivated me from afar. The sides of the mosque still have the multi-colored mosaics versions of traditional Moro patterns and designs.
I always spied Quiapo’s minaret and gleaming golden dome every time I headed down Quezon Bridge coming from across the Pasig River. I was always discouraged from going to the Muslim area for safety reasons. A couple of weeks ago, however, with a new friend, I finally saw the Golden Mosque and afterwards reacquainted my gut with spicy turmeric-seasoned Maranao food. A young Sama Banguingi who is moonlighting as a kitchen help while waiting for his visa to work in Kuwait served our food.
The narrative of commerce
Any visitor would see, hear, feel, taste, and smell commerce in the streets of Quiapo, Santa Cruz, Binondo, and San Nicolas, the four districts lining the northern banks of the Pasig River. From the Muslim and Christian residents of Quiapo to the heavily guarded Chinese empires of Binondo and Santa Cruz and the ambulant vendors in the cracks, all share one particular narrative: commerce. Starting from dawn, the streets of these districts come alive with restaurants, shops, vendors, peddlers, cargadores or porters of all ages, and customers. Quiapo and the Divisoria Market in San Nicolas are crowded labyrinths that continue to enjoy the reputation as places to buy things cheaply. It is said that almost anything can be found in these two districts. Quiapo’s stores offer items ranging from the most expensive camera brands to mass produced toys; from fake trendy Fendi eyewear to military uniforms. Divisoria meanwhile reigns supreme as the place to buy textiles, school and office supplies, and Christmas gifts.
Along the streets with the names of 19th century Filipino painter Félix Resurrección Hidalgo and the 15th century Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos in Quiapo are itinerant vendors of fresh vegetables and fruits, assorted meats and seafood. One item from Quiapo that I always looked forward to is the pineapple ham from Excelente located along Carlos Palanca, a street named after an American period Filipino-Chinese businessman and philantrophist. However, after my mother had learned to cure her own, we stopped buying any from the store. She insisted that her homemade hams, though tediously made, are cleaner than the commercial ones made in Quiapo.
During my visit in February, the decades-old Quinta Market had already been demolished by the city government to give way to a modern three-story structure under a private-public partnership. In 2014, the Manila City government, in cooperation with a company that has built a chain of malls in Antipolo City (598)and Caloocan City (25), reopened the Lacson Underpass, the first one to be built in the country. Whenever I used the underpass, I always had to hurry to get out because it was dark and unsafe. The signs of neglect were everywhere: the walls looked grimy, the stores uninviting, and the threat of being mugged hung in the air.
Now brightly lit, with glass doors, guards posted in each entrance, Victory Lacson beckons people to stop and look at its stalls of food and merchandise. I stopped to have a cool drink of coconut water — and stopping for anything is something I never did in using the underpass, which has been refurbished with air-conditioning like when it first opened in the 1960s. The project recognizes one obvious fact: life has never really left Quiapo, which still has living images from the past. Producing school and sports team uniforms for decades, the tailoring stores at the Claro M. Recto Underpass remain busy with the sound of sewing machines, appearing almost unchanged like how I remember them in the late 1970s.
Narratives of the obscure, irrelevant, and nearly forgotten
Throughout the districts of Ermita, Malate, Quiapo, Binondo, San Miguel, San Nicolas, Santa Cruz, and Tondo, there are narratives that have almost been nearly forgotten by time. They are remembered by way of street names, memorials, cast-iron plaques put up by the National Historical Institute (NHI), and grave markers that remain along the walls of its churches. The old structures that still remain standing throughout Manila and its districts also breathe with narratives that have become irrelevant in time.
Along San Fernando Street in San Nicolas, two NHI markers are on the walls of a modern building of a trading company and built on the site of a house that used to belong to the Rizal family. Both markers, one dedicated in 1960 and another 54 years later, honor the memory of the mother of Rizal, Teodoro Alonso, who died at the age of 84 in August 1911 in the house that no longer exists. Looking at the markers, while I am happy to see how the nation honors the mother of Rizal, I am puzzled as to why the S-Z are often interchanged in Philippine surnames and place names. The older marker spells her surname with a “Z” and the newer one with an “S” — Alonso or Alonzo, Tuason or Tuazon.
Since 2010, I have been rediscovering and re-acquainting myself with Chinatown, formed by portions of Sta. Cruz and Binondo districts. Decorative arches welcome visitors and locals to Manila’s Chinatown, claimed to be the world’s oldest. Among these arches is the one located at the start of Ongpin Street directly facing the Santa Cruz Church. I always marveled at the four dragons on top of another arch, the Filipino-Chinese Friendship Arch built in the 1970s to commemorate the establishment of diplomatic ties between the PH and the People’s Republic of China. Meanwhile, two other gates also built in the 1970s, at the Ongpin North and South Bridges continue to press people to support Marcos’ vision for a New Society and to develop Metro Manila — in gold painted font with equivalents in Chinese characters. The social reforms that the New Society attempted to bring have long been replaced by narratives of corruption and plunder by Marcos government. Meanwhile, bilateral relations with China have in recent years become thorny due to maritime dispute over the Kalayaan Group of Islands in Palawan.
I pretended to be in Hong Kong every time I was in Chinatown, which my family did not often visit probably because of difficult parking. Nonetheless, my worst childhood memories of the place was when we were forced to stay in the car for what seemed like years while my father had his shave and haircut in a barbershop that admitted no children in its premises. My best childhood memories of Chinatown was when we bought tins of my favorite delicious mooncakes and variations of small sweet cakes called hopia.
In the shadows of the skyscrapers and larger buildings of Binondo and San Nicolas, the blur of streets that form the border of the highly populated district of Tondo and Santa Cruz, and in the busy narrow streets of Quiapo and San Miguel are old houses that date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. Wedged between the face of urban decay and relentless modernization, many of these heritage homes have been lost forever. Many of the these wood and stone-style ancestral homes have already been dismantled. Others have fallen into disrepair and are rented out to or overtaken by impoverished families. There are others which are being used as a bodega or warehouse.
The physical state and use of ancestral homes in Quiapo present the challenges and successes in the conservation of heritage sites in Manila. Along F. R. Hidalgo Street leading to San Sebastian Church are several ancestral homes. One of these is the Paterno Ancestral House which dates from the 1870s and boasts of two courtyards. From its current state, I imagined how the old structure might have looked like in its heyday. Spacious as its seemed, the Paterno Ancestral House is partitioned into smaller units that are leased to impoverished families in the district. On the other hand, the Nakpil-Bautista House, declared as a cultural property in 2011, now serves as a museum in honor of its famous residents, among them, the widow Gregoria de Jesus who married Julio Nakpil, and Dr. Ariston Bautista. Built in the Vienna Succession style in 1914, the Nakpil-Bautista House also serves as community center. During my visit to the museum in late February, volunteers were having a reading session with children from the community in one of the rooms. A Nakpil descendant handed me copy of Gregoria’s Sampung Tagubilin sa Mga Kabataan or the “Ten Advice to the Youth”. I am struck with No. 8: “Fear history, for it respects no secrets.”
Indeed, Manila fearlessly kept its secrets in plain sight. Ermita, just a short walk away from the Rizal Park and bound by Mabini and M. H. del Pilar Streets, used to be part of the red light district. The birthplace of nationalist and novelist León María Ignacio Agapito Guerrero y Francisco, it was an area that both scared and fascinated me as a young boy, with its dark corners and neon-lit establishments full of pimps, made-up ladies in revealing clothes, and male foreigners. After hearing mass at Sta. Cruz Church, we sometimes drove down M.H. del Pilar on the way to Roxas Boulevard’s restaurants. From the car windows, I would shyly look at the people walking on the narrow pavement eaten up by a trade that engulfs children as young as 16 from different parts of the country.
In the mid-1990s, I frequented the former red light district since the German visitors I toured were often billeted in hotels there. I hung out at two antique shops selling ethnic craft that began to proliferate in the area, but these have long since stopped operations. One of them was the Atelier, along M.H. del Pilar. There I met Mr. Hiro Kobayashi, a former fashion and news photographer from Japan who later spent a couple of decades documenting the death rituals of the various indigenous communities of the Cordilleras. He collected antique Ifugao rice gods or bulul and shipped them to Japan, never to be seen again on PH soil.
Narrative of migrants
In the 1990s, Mayor Lim sought to change the City of Manila’s deteriorating image by getting rid of Ermita’s infamous bars. In time, homeless families have entrenched themselves in some of the derelict former bars, while others were converted into small inns, brightly-lit halal food restaurants, and cramped money changer establishments. These are owned either by members of the Tausug or Maranao community who sought better futures outside their homeland because of armed conflict and rido or family feuds.
The densely populated district of Tondo perhaps best describes the narrative of migrants that have come to seek better fortunes in Manila. Extending from the North Harbor area to another blur of streets and esteros along the border with Santa Cruz, Tondo, through through film, literature and word of mouth, became known as a world of criminality, violent gang wars, and abject poverty. Before the roads have been improved in the late 1970s, traveling to Tondo meant passing its maze of asphalt streets, even passing through one rickety wooden vehicular bridge in Herbosa that threatened to collapse anytime.
By the time I frequented Tondo in the 1970s and 1980s to visit my aunt and her family during the Holidays and other occasions, my family had already been part of Tondo’s narrative of migrants for ten to twenty years. During their college years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, my mother and all of her sisters lived for a time in the district with their paternal aunt. My grandmother, a parole officer, moved to Brgy. 110 years earlier after she had married a Tondo resident. The eldest of my aunts, a pharmacist, stayed on; she opened a small store at the ground floor of my grandmother’s former home, and married an employee of the nearby Procter and Gamble factory and moved into their own home at Velazquez. During the annual January fiesta dedicated to the Black Nazarene, homes on the street where my cousins lived warmly opened their doors to visitors with food and drink. I often bee-lined for the traditional ube halaya or purple yam pudding artfully shaped into fishes.
Tondo may have been the first place seen by visitors and migrants to Manila. After all, it traces its roots to an ancient kingdom that traded with other small states around the Laguna de Bay and even China. In Tondo’s crowded streets of post-war apartment units and homes built very close to one another are families that come from almost every PH island region. In 1892, a railway service opened between Manila and what is now the city of Dagupan (514) in Pangasinan. Standing before the Tutuban Center Mall, once the main station of the Manila Railroad Company, I imagined the facial expression of migrants and traders who came to Manila for the first time. Their lives and names mixed into the greater narrative of surviving in the capital. The City of Manila — and all of the Metro Manila for that matter — is a world that never would have prospered have it not been for migrants.
Lasting perspectives and surprises
Aside from the valuable lesson of learning to wade through knee-deep floodwaters and administering self-care afterwards, Manila provided me great lessons in appreciating different places. The best can come in finding out the interconnection of places, no matter how distant. I am amazed with how many of the name of the streets in Sampaloc — from Austro-Hungarian to American, whether fictional or factual — were connected through one powerful historical figure, Rizal. Certainly, while there can be different accounts on the origin of name of a given place, each has become part of its identity. The trees or plants from which it derived its name may no longer be there or the person after whom it was named or renamed may not be very well known; but what the place stands for may remain in collective memory.
My experience in Manila gave me the foundations to form my four basic rules on traveling across boundaries: Firstly, whether they were imposed, imagined, or the result of communities developing differently from one another, boundaries demand attention and respect; but they should not limit interactions or help perpetuate stereotypes, sweeping generalizations, and false notions. Secondly, simply experiencing what each area has to offer to the senses is part of relishing a place’s character. Thirdly, grass should never be thought as greener on either side of the fence. Finally, even the most familiar of places can still be surprising. I thought I had seen most of Manila and its districts, but I still had a great surprise in seeing for the first time the bizarrely Japanese-inspired tower of the Ocampo Pagoda in Quiapo and the eclectic combination of Lady Liberty and Katipunero leader Bonifacio in the art deco facade of a crumbling department store in Binondo.
Salamat muli! — Marco de PH
Previously: Beyond the Walls — More Ramblings in the City of Manila (28)
Writing from: Iloilo City (797).
