I HAVE never been to any country in the world where there were no Filipinos. The Filipino diaspora has kept us moving and insinuating ourselves in all corners of the globe.
There is no job too menial or too professional for us; we work abroad to feed our growing families back home.
In China, I’m told that there are many English teachers who are Filipinos. (As a nation, China just keeps galloping at a fast clip; where there were once just empty tracts of land, and people leading a hand-to-mouth existence, there are now highways connecting provinces to provinces, stylish modern commercial buildings and condominiums, and young people learning English and working as professionals, while shopping in spanking-new malls filled with luxury goods.)
On my first visit to China in 2011, the only Filipinos I met were those from the Philippine Embassy in Beijing, and Eric Baculinao, Beijing bureau chief of NBC News. (Baculinao was one of 14 Filipino student activists on a friendship and cultural tour of China in 1971, and decided to stay when Marcos declared martial law.)
Later, in Manila, I also managed to interview Apples Chen, a Filipino woman who is a veteran hotelier now working in Shanghai. Before this, she lived in various parts of China training local hotel employees and upgrading their skills in the service industry.
On a recent 10-day media familiarization trip to southwest China, I was fortunate to meet Gabriel Castro while standing in the aisle of our China Southern Airlines plane, which had just landed in Guangzhou. He chatted us up, probably only too glad to see familiar fellow Pinoy faces on his flight.
In the time we deplaned, gotten our luggage, and made our way through immigration to transfer to Chengdu for the second leg of our journey, Gabriel happily answered my nosey questions about his life, punctuating his sentences with the respectful “ate.”
Apparently Gabriel works as an interior designer at some hotshot design firm in Beijing. He said their clients are high-end, with a lot of government projects and some private properties as well. He, in fact, had just designed the home of a famous Chinese actress. (For Gabriel’s protection, I’d rather not publish her name, but, yes, she’s appeared in international films.)
He was in Guangzhou because he said he missed his flight to Beijing. Probably in his late 30s or early 40s, Gabriel graduated from the Manuel L. Quezon University (MLQU) and had been working in China for the last 18 years—18 years! (Thought balloon: Who knew that MLQU, a well-known law school, actually has an interior design course?)
Of course, like most overseas Filipino workers, Gabriel has been staying in Beijing pretty much for the high salary. “E pag umuwi ako sa atin, walang mangyayari [If I go home to our country, nothing will become of me],” intimating that the salary grade for a similar job in Manila won’t be enough to support his family. So he must sacrifice by being away from his loved ones, but says he goes home to Manila fairly regularly, anyway—Beijing being only four hours by air.
He confirmed that the air in Beijing is pretty much polluted with the haze and all, and as I acknowledged how fortunate he was for remaining healthy despite this, he said: “Patibayan na lang, ate. ‘Di pwedeng magkasakit e. May tatlo ako sa Ateneo. [It’s survival of the fittest, sister. I can’t afford to get sick. I have three kids studying in Ateneo.]”
He said that he is the only Filipino in the firm where he works, and thus far hasn’t met any other Filipino interior designer anywhere in China. It was his second firm, which he pretty much had helped set up, as his boss was a client of his former company. (“My boss asked me if it was profitable to set up such a firm, and I said yes. Then he asked me to go work for him,” Gabriel narrated in Filipino.)
Gabriel said he had just come from Manila, just staying for a day, because he had to check on a house that he had been designing. He added that he has a few clients back home, and when I joked that I’d call him to have my house designed as well, he said firmly, “Oo ba! Kahit libre basta kababayan.”
He said that he still draws his plans by hand—a skill sorely lacking among the Chinese. His staff, all locals, then renders his drawings into computerized versions. Gabriel sagely advised young students who are going into interior design or architecture, to learn how to draw by hand. He said that this skill is still highly valued in his profession—anyone, after all, can learn drawing by computer.
As he bid us good-bye to catch his flight to Beijing, I asked Gabriel if I could take his photo. He was understandably self-conscious and asked if he didn’t look disheveled. I assured him that he did not. After exchanging calling cards and shaking each other’s hand, I congratulated him on his work and wished him well.
A very impressive young man, making a good name for himself, his family, and his home country. What an accomplishment!
Image credits: Stella Arnaldo