It is Chinese New Year in the Philippines on January 30. The Philippine-Chinese connection has been pervasive, at least as far as I can personally remember. In my generation, I don’t think there is any Filipino who can honestly claim he or she absolutely does not have a Chinese ancestor.

I claim to be Western in my thinking, but the English language I use daily is replete with Chinese. A quick trip to a dictionary showed an array from A to W. Chinese amah to Chinese white. I suppose had I gone to a bigger dictionary i would have found Chinese words for X, Y and Z as well.

In his graduate school classes, my husband would have fun with an aphorism: “God made Adam and Eve but the rest of the world is made in China.” In Wimbledon in 2011, a sales clerk saucily answered me when I asked where a piece of luggage was made: “Tell me, what product can you buy nowadays that was not made in China.” Of course he was Asian but not Chinese.

How China has evolved while I wasn’t looking! Amazing! I grew up the nuns in school and the priests in Church exhorting me to pray for “poor” China. But in 2002 hen my family and I joined a group tour to some selected cities in China I had a culture shock. How in heaven’s name  did”poor” China build a Zhenzhen (my encyclopedias could not help me with the spelling neither me spelling check, neither Google. After all it’s garbage in, garbage out!) highway with twelve lanes on either side?!

In Beijing, the traffic was awful. I even saw some impatient pedestrians jumping over the iron bars of the islands separating the lanes To my disappointment we went through several restaurants but could not find pancit canton nor lumpia Shanghai, staple entrees in Chinese restaurants in the Philippines. In 2002, China already had Christmas trees in the shopping centers. In our hotel on Christmas eve we were bold enough to borrow a Christmas tree from the lobby.Emboldened we attempted to have a Catholic liturgical session at the lounge of our floor. Of course we were not allowed. Public assemblies were no permitted. We quicly greeted each other a merry Christmas then retired to our separate rooms

I have a 101 stories about my Chinese experiences but certainly not for now.