This is, perhaps, not due to their unwillingness to do so, but because they dare not; the natives are too jealous of them, and their lives would not be safe away from the towns.
Their genius is commercial, and they are at home in shop, bazaar, or office. I think that the Chinese agriculturist does not leave his home for the Philippines. Most of those in the islands come from Amoy, and the district round that port. Some few are from Macao; they seem to be all townsmen, not countrymen. Each shopkeeper has several assistants, ranging in age from boys of ten or twelve upwards. On arrival, they are placed in a sort of school—a very practical one—to learn Spanish; for instance, numbers and coins, with such terms as Muy barato—very cheap. As a Chinaman cannot pronounce the letter R, but substitutes L, this becomes Muy balato. Thus, also, the Roo-Kiu Islands become the Loo-Chew Islands, in Chinese.
The Chinaman is an excellent shop-keeper or pedlar, and some years ago, the British importers of Manchester goods made it a practice to give credit for goods supplied to the Chinese; the banks also extended some facilities to them. In consequence, however, of heavy losses to several British firms, this custom has been abandoned, or considerably restricted.
The Chinese are good barbers, cooks and gardeners. As breeders of fish they are unrivalled. Besides this they compete successfully with the Tagal in the following trades: blacksmiths, boiler-makers, stokers, engine-drivers, ship and house carpenters, boat-builders, cabinet-makers and varnishers, iron and brass-founders, shoe-makers, tin-smiths. These artisans are very industrious, and labour constantly at their trades. Their great feast is at the Chinese New Year, which occurs in February, when they take about a week’s holiday, and regale themselves on roast pig, and other delicacies, making also presents of sweets, fruits, and Jocchiu hams, to their patrons and customers.
There are Chinese apothecaries in Manila, but they are mostly resorted to by their own countrymen, and their awful concoctions are nasty beyond belief. They deal largely in aphrodisiacs.
Some Chinese doctors practise in Manila, and are said to make wonderful cures, even on patients given up by the orthodox medicos. They feel the pulse at the temporal artery, or else above the bridge of the nose.
They used to suffer a good deal from the jealousy of the Spanish practitioners, and were persecuted for practising without a qualification.
Large numbers of Chinese coolies are employed in Manila handling coal, loading and unloading ships and lighters, pressing hemp, drying sugar, and in other work too hard and too constant for the natives.
The number of Chinese in Luzon has been variously estimated at from 30,000 to 60,000 men, and two or three hundred women. The anonymous author of ‘Filipinas—Problema Fundamental’ (Madrid, 1891), gives the number of Chinese in the whole Archipelago as 125,000, and he evidently had access to good information. The fact is nobody knows, and in all probability the Spanish authorities had an interest in understating the number.
The Chinese were organised quite separately from the natives. Wherever their numbers were considerable, they had their own tribunal, with a Gobernadorcillo and Principales, the former called the Capitan-China.