Chinese and Filipinos are blood brothers

Could you tell who are Pinoys and who are Chinese here?

It’s just so unfortunate that Chip Tsao forgot to read his history. He would have read that his forebears once fought side by side with Filipino revolutionaries during our struggle against Spanish colonialism in the late 19th century. He would have seen how both Chinese migrants and Filipinos shared the same battlefield, ate the same food and used the same bolo in chopping off the heads of Western powers.

Chip Tsao must have forgotten that Hongkong once hosted Filipino revolutionaries during the war against Spain. Hongkong was considered an enclave of the Filipino revolutionaries during our Katipunan revolution.

Previous to that, the numerous wars of independence we Filipinos waged against our conquerors all show us in tandem with Chinese migrants. Even up to the Japanese occupation, our Chinese brothers fought side by side, sacrificing their lives for the sake of nation-building.

Up to this day, thousands of Filipino professionals are in constant fellowship with their fellow Chinese brothers, both here and abroad. The Chinese race and the Filipino race are inseparable.  I myself, am very fortunate to have many Chinese as my brothers. I am proud of being Filipino; yet I am equally recognizant of other people’s rights.

Chip Tsao must have been ignorant of even the struggles of Northern and Southern Chinese migrants out ekking a living here in the Philippines. They are here not as investors, mind you, but normal and ordinary Chinese who view the Philippines as a land of milk and honey. They are flocking here in our shores not as tourists, but as entrepreneurs, trying to build their futures here, not there in Hongkong.

So you see, Chip Tsao, we Filipinos are not really angry against you. We pity you for doing that cheap shot. You’re a war-monger. You’re even lower than that dog that I saw just now, roaming the streets of Manila.

You failed to grasp the fact that we Filipinos, are your blood brothers. Without our investments there in Hongkong, without our professionals working in your HK-listed companies and without our unskilled labor force, Hongkong would be nothing!

Don’t be proud of yourself. Your feet must always be firmly planted on the ground.

Davila erred when she ate Cheap Chow

That Hongkong magazine where Cheap Chow writes regularly, has issued a formal apology. They taken out the despicable article from their website and even issued that apology in their printed magazine. The question is—will we move forward after this apology?

No.

The core issue is Cheap Chow’s racist remarks. Apart from referring to our country as a country of slaves, he likewise tried to bully us by writing those condescending remarks. We, Filipinos, will not allow a shock jock like Cheap Chow to do that.

We hate being bullied. When the Spaniards bullied us with their forced labor laws, we militated and kicked their butts out of our beloved land.

When the Japanese did that to our forebears, the collective consciousness of the people was roused and we struggled to oust them from our land.

When our fellow Filipino, the late Ferdinand Marcos bullied us for twenty years, we finally found the courage to oust him through that glorious revolt.

Now, this chap.

Karen Davila, the broadcaster of DZMM, failed to grasp that. She was sympathetic with Chip Tsao, without even understanding every word that that chap wrote online. She even concluded that we should respect his right as a journalist, since everybody, as she mistakenly believes, has a right to exercise self-expression. It took a cause oriented person to remind her that every right has an attendant responsibility. That right ends when racist remarks begin.

Let me remind Ms. Karen Davila that:

1. Chip Tsao was never accurate when he described us as a country of slaves. I looked at the Labour migration stats of the ILO and at no instance in our history where the Philippines became a slave/domestic servant market. Domestic servants account for a measly 17% of the entire OFW population. Even in the world, the Philippines is NOT a prime exporter of domestic servants. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka ranked first and second, respectively. Philippines is not even close.

So, Ms. Davila, Chip Tsao is not, I say again, writing accurately.

2. Chip Tsao wrote beyond the borders of decency when he wrote something about his domestic assistant. That is not fact-based writing nor a painful satire, as Ms. Davila described. It was pure and simple racism.

Lastly (3) Chip Tsao was writing from the vantage point of a person who perceives himself as above the rest. Chip Tsao, if you checked, came from an impoverished family. There is a possibility though that one of his forebears even worked as a domestic in the Philippines. He just did’nt know it. (in the 1920s and 1930′s, majority of maids employed in the Philippines came from Hongkong. They are poor Chinese. They were fired for cooking cheap chow.

Chip Tsao and Chinese Food

Mr. Cheap Chow

I love Chinese food. Ask me about it and I’ll tell you where to eat the best Chinese food and what to eat. And I know what’s a cheap chow or a good chow.

And it’s not just Chinese food that I love. I also respect and love their literature. Ever heard of the Tale of the Three Kingdoms? Or I Ching? Or Tao Te Ching? Or how about the entire biography of Chairman Mao? Read his poems, read how Chairman Mao and his Chinese Liberation Army swept the whole of China and made monumental history. That’s good chow. And I did’nt imagine myself reading such rubbish coming from a cheap journalist based in Hongkong. It’s just unthinkable reading such cheap chow coming from the eminent People’s Republic of China.

Poor Chip Tsao (pronounced “cheaap chowww”). He’s a Chinese journalist over at some indescript magazine in Hongkong and he, obviously, does not like Chinese food. What he loves are all things Japanese. When the Japanese planted their flag over at Diaoyu island, a known island of China, he was one of those who shouted “bansai”! He usually watches Japanese anime and thinks of himself as a Japanese superman.

He eats purely Japanese food, especially sashimi. And he loves being with Japanese women, the anime kind.

That’s probably the reason why BBC kicked him out. When the Japanese occupied that Chinese island, he was one of those went over the fence and declared Japanese rule over Hongkong and the mainland. Good that some magazines still want him to write for them, with some exceptions though—he cannot and is barred to write about Chinese food. He can’t write about good chow, only cheap chow.

And you know what? Chip Tsao can’t understand why Filipinos acted differently when Filipinos claimed those scattered rocks in the Spratlys island as their own. No. Chip Tsao simply can’t accept the reality that most Filipinos are still proud of their being Filipinos. Not his maid, says Chip Tsao. She’s with me for all these time, cleaning my toilets and is at my beck and call, all the time. The government of my Filipina just made an unthinkable thing—claiming some scattered rocks as their own off the South China sea.

It can’t be. Chip Tsao is not familiar with the term “national sovereignty” nor does he know about “national pride” and “nationalist spirit”. Chip Tsao does not know what’s “national territory” is all about. He just have a map in his house, with a big region which he calls “MAPHILINDO” or “ Hongkong, Republic of Japan”.

And I really can’t understand why his publishers still allow him to dish out such embarrassing articles. Maybe they don’t know what good writing or cheap writing is all about? Maybe they’re used to eating cheap chow over some hawker store in Hongkong that they consider Chip Tsao’s articles and columns “world-class”? As they say, when you eat cheap chow everyday, you’ll get to be Chip Tsao.