An Englishwoman in the Philippines

by Mrs. Campbell Dauncey

To-day is the Chinese New Year, and all last night the Chinamen were letting off crackers down in the town. All to-day they have been going on with them, too, and as the chief rejoicing seems to be to explode the fireworks under a horse, you may imagine—no you can’t—what the streets are like. On an ordinary day there is a good deal of pretty wild driving and no small peril in getting about in a vehicle or on foot, but the frightful risks one runs on every other day of the year are mild adventures compared to this Chinese New Year.

There are a great many Chinamen, you see, for they continue to come into the Philippines in spite of the heavy tax against them; and besides that, so many are left over from the Spanish days that Celestials are still the principal shopkeepers of the Islands. They make large fortunes here, I believe—the fortunes that are ready waiting for anyone who is as clever and industrious as a Chinaman—and so good a speculation do they think this country that they are constantly arriving, whenever they can get permission, paying the heavy tax, and then beginning by working for a year or two with some friend or relation for no pay!

Of course, the Filipinos hate the idea of being cut out by strong, hard-working, clever rivals, who make fortunes under conditions in which they themselves starve, so they have forced the hand of the American Government in abolishing foreign labour, which measure, so the business men say, has been the ruin of the Philippines. They say that such a law is wise enough in a country like America, perhaps, which is teeming with a busy population of its own, but here it is quite different, and “Philippines for the Filipinos” would be all very well if these people wanted their country, which does not seem to be the case. Moreover, if they did want it, it is too large for them, for there are 75,000,000 acres of cultivable soil in the Philippines, and the population all told is barely 7,000,000. Suppose one calculated one in ten of the natives of all ages as a capable tiller of the earth—a most unlikely average—and if three Filipinos could do the work of one Chinaman or white man (which they can’t), even then one would think there would be room for competition and other labour.

The magnificent forests of priceless woods simply fall into decay; the gold and all the metals with which the country is filled, lie untouched; the marbles are unquarried; the rich soil is uncultivated; and so these riches must remain as long as it pays no one to work them. Men often come to the Philippines to “prospect,” but when they find out the conditions of labour and the rate of Export and other Duties, they go away and are no more heard of; for, though you may run a sort of Government with philanthropical ideas, you won’t get business to flow in on the same system; and business men don’t care two straws if a labourer can read Latin or understand mathematics, so long as he will work well for low wages; but this latter ideal is the very last one the American Government appear to encourage or aim at.

Well, we went last night to a cinématograph show, which has established itself in a big empty basement in the Calle Real, with a large sign outside, made of glass letters lighted behind with electricity, all in the most approved European style. The “show” lasts for half an hour, going on from six in the evening to about ten o’clock at night, and the proprietor makes about 300 pesos a week out of it, for he has very few expenses, and it is the sort of thing these people love. They come out when the show is over, stand about and expectorate for a few minutes, and then pay their cents and go in again and enjoy the same thing about five times running, probably without the faintest idea what it is all about from start to finish. You remember the dreadful extent of the habit of expectoration in Spain? You have heard about this failing in America? The Filipino is the epitome and concentration of the two.

Everything in the hall was boarded up to prevent any stray, non-paying enthusiast from getting a free peep; but all the same I saw several little brown forms in fluttering muslin shirts, outside, where the wall formed a side street, with eyes glued to the chinks of a door in rapt attention; though I don’t suppose the little chaps could really see anything but the extreme edge of the back row of benches.

In the hall we were saved from suffocation by two electric fans, and kept awake by a Filipino playing a cracked old piano with astonishing dexterity, rattling out the sort of tunes you hear in a circus and nowhere else on earth. I could not help wondering where he had picked them up, till it suddenly dawned on me that one, at least, gave me a faint hint that perhaps the performer might once have heard “Hiawatha” on a penny flute; so I concluded that he was playing “variations.” Pianos never sound very well out here, and I am told it is difficult to keep them bearable at all, for the chords have an unmusical way of going rusty in the damp season, or else snapping with a loud ping.

The moving pictures were not at all bad, rather jumpy at times, but the subjects really quite entertaining, and all the slides, from the appearance of the figures on them, made in Germany, I imagine. The series wound up with an interminable fairy tale in coloured pictures, really a sort of short play, and in this one could see the German element still more apparent, in the castles, the ancient costumes, and the whole composition of the thing. I don’t suppose the natives in the audience had the wildest idea what it was all about, or what the king and queen, the good fairy, and the wicked godmother, were meant to be, probably taking the whole story for some episode in the life of a Saint.

The audience were really more amusing to me than the pictures, and I was quite pleased each time the light went up so that I could have a good look at them. In the front rows, which were cheap, as they were so close to the screen, sat the poorer people in little family groups, with clean camisas and large cigars, the women’s hair looking like black spun glass. Our places were raised a little above them, and were patronised by the swells who had paid 40 cents—a shilling. Amongst the elect were one or two English and other foreigners; some fat Chinamen, with their pigtails done up in chignons, and wearing open-work German straw hats, accompanied by their native wives and little slant-eyed children; a few missionaries and schoolma’ams in coloured blouses and untidy coiffures à la Gibson Girl; and one or two U.S.A. soldiers, with thick hair parted in the middle, standing treat to their Filipina girls—these last in pretty camisas, and very shy and happy. A funny little Filipino boy near us, rigged up in a knickerbocker suit and an immense yellow oil-skin motor-cap, was rather frightened at old Tuyay, who had insisted on coming to the show and sitting at our feet. When she sniffed the bare legs of this very small brown brother, he lost all his dignity and importance, and clung blubbing to his little flat-faced mother. Poor old Tuyay was dreadfully offended; she came and crawled right under C——’s chair, where she lay immovable till the performance was over.

To watch the people here is an endless source of amusement to me, and I only wish my words could be more photographic, or our photographs more pictorial, so that I could convey to you a real impression of this queer end of the world. That is what it is—I feel as if I had arrived at the end of the world, where nobody cares or knows or hears or thinks of anything, and where the inertia that is in the very air of things will at last wear down even the vitality, pluck, and good intentions of the Americans themselves.