The Philippine Online Chronicles

Share this Twitter Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Yahoo Googlize this Facebook Export PDF Print E-mail

In Gagalangin Tondo, Manila, at the time I was growing up,  there was a "tindahan ng Intsik" on every street corner, which co-existed with smaller Pinoy-owned shops we called "sari-sari" stores.

Right opposite our house, on the corner of Pampanga and Angat Streets, was one such store owned by a man we fondly called Sin Teng. He was a smiling ebullient Chinese with gold on his tooth and premature silver in his hair, who didn’t stop smiling and glowing even when young boys made fun of his accent and called him "Intsik beho, tulo laway." He made friends with his suki-housewives who would linger to small-talk him and steal glances at yet another new fair lady beside him – usually from the Chinese mainland who would be sure to speak no Tagalog -- and wait for Sin Teng to introduce her as his wife number two or three or so on.

It was from Sin Teng that we purchased our daily bread and the isa-singko Spam and Kraft (cheese) slices to eat with it. Same with the coffee and milk and Toddy (a popular chocolate drink) and Coke and Pepsi to chase the bread down with. Mongol pencils, intermediate pad paper, crayola, Manila paper, everything we needed for school – he had stocks of these which never seemed to run out. If someone was sick, we didn’t have to go to the drug store a ten-minute sprint away: we could get the most common medicines from Sin Teng -- Capi-aspirina, Mentholatum, Phillips Milk of Magnesia. Sin Teng ran his shop quite unlike the way Mang Iking and Aling Tonya ran theirs, which was right next door and thus should have been the more logical convenience store, but was almost always inconveniently out of every other thing we needed.

On hind sight, I know I should have recognized the implications of their work ethic. They bought their stocks in volume so they seldom ran short of stuff and were able to sell cheaper. They mostly didn’t allow credit (or allowed it discriminately and sparingly). Sin Teng didn’t, which was one of few reasons we would sometimes run to Mang Iking and Aling Tonya, on whose wall was clipped several small sheets of paper each of which was labeled with a customer’s name, all caps, underlined. These were in essence yesterday’s credit cards – but for poor people only – for the rich dealt in cash.

Mang Iking would huff and bristle when he spotted one of us headed to his store rather than Sin Teng's but would still take down the piece of paper with "Aling Celing" written on it – that’s my mom’s name. He would hand us the toyo or suka we needed grudgingly, but not before adding yet another P.50 to Aling Celing’s already number-laden card and not before reminding us sternly to tell our mom that "mahaba na ang listahan ninyo (your list is already long)."

But Sin Teng's was the store of choice even if it allowed no credit and even if we had to cross a mean street to reach it. His store was big and wide (easily five times that of Mang Iking) and open and well-lighted and welcoming and you didn’t have to knock and shout "pabili po" to be attended to. He sold cheaper than did the Filipino stores like Mang Iking’s. And he would sometimes give us small gifts – I remember ponkan in December and tikoy in February. I guess Mom was special among his customers because she was half Chinese and could strike up a conversation with his wives with a smattering of Mandarin.

Sin Teng was not the only Chinese man of my childhood but he was the most vivid and most stable memory because the others just seemed to pass through.

The other Chinese vendors were itinerants. The magtataho. The magpuputo. The magbobote / magdia-diario. The mag-tutuba. The cochero. Mostly elderly men, dark, and bent. And I don’t remember them to be particularly friendly or chatty or remotely as charming as Sin Teng.

When I left Gagalangin in the early '70s to settle down in Pasig with my growing family, Sin Teng's store had just closed. He had left without fanfare to venture into a hardware business and relocate more strategically in some commercial area in the city. I knew when I heard this that Sin Teng was going up in the world. Just like most of the other Chinese in the country.

In less than half a decade, the Chinese is no longer just the storekeeper, much less the magtataho or the magbobote of the Philippines. These are jobs taken over, alas, by the less advantaged but still the more hardworking among PInoys.

The Chinese are now the commercial, industrial and agricultural titans. And nobody ever calls them "Beho" anymore. Call some of them Taipan, if you please. You may have memorized just like I have the names of the biggest of them – Henry Sy, Lucio Tan, John Gokongwei.

 

Fortune in the new country

Henry Sy was 12 when he came to the Philippines and straightaway worked in his father’s sari-sari store on Echague Street in Quiapo before he went into partnership with a friend to put up the very first S & M shoe store. It was, as everybody knows, the forerunner of what was to become one of the world’s biggest shopping chains. Lucio Tan, an engineering dropout, ran a small scrap business before he was employed as buyer in a tobacco factory – from which came undoubtedly the experience and inspiration to put up giant Fortune Tobacco Industries. Kuwentong cochero or not, I remember having read a newspaper interview with him where he recounted having plied the streets as a kalesa driver. For his part, at 15, John Gokongwei, who has holdings in food manufacturing, petrochemicals, and financial services, had to help his mother support his family by buying and selling basic commodities on a bike before he engaged in small trading in a batel and then worked as bodegero in a merchandising business.

How did these Chinese migrants progress so phenomenally in the Philippines?

When one is a member of the minority race in a country, he has to be very resourceful. There are tough barriers he has to overcome to get into the more conventional occupations usually reserved for the locals. He has to explore other options and all too often he chooses entrepreneurship. Even then he has to work doubly hard.

The Chinese – or at least the first-generation migrants that came from China to the Philippines shortly before the war – were steeped in the Confucian values of industry, frugality, self-discipline, and respect for their elders.

They came here hardy and ready for hard work.  No work was too menial that they wouldn't take it. They did not mind long hours, measly wages, or inhospitable working conditions.

Most of all, perhaps, they came here needful. And Need is the Mother not just of Invention but also of the Enterprising Spirit.

When they left their jobs to start their businesses, they were content to begin modestly. Not for them were plush offices and air-conditioned lounges and other trappings of power. They were willing to sit down on apple boxes while conducting their business while a sensible electric fan rotated behind. They had no second thoughts about mopping floors, carrying and delivering heavy merchandise, selling house to house, and doing almost anything needed to keep their business going. They denied themselves, tightened their belts, and kept an eye on future and long-term benefits. Today, psychologists call that "delaying gratification."

It is said that the basic Chinese principles of doing business have been written down many years ago by the ancient taipan Tao Zhu Gong. Of these, the most well known and practiced is the strategy of seeking low-profit margins, while aiming for high sales volumes, as applied by retailing tycoon Henry Sy, Jollibee founder Tony Cak Tiong, and yes, even the genial shopkeeper of my childhood, Sin Teng.

Many business principles have been inspired by Tao Zhu Gong. Jacworld.vox.com ticks off some of these: (1) Do not be myopic and narrow-minded. Look at the bigger picture. (2) Do not worship grandeur. Be focused. (3) Do not be indecisive. Be alert and flexible in order to seize opportunity and counteract threats. (4) Do not be lazy nor complacent. Work hard and lead by example. ( 5) Do not be stubborn. Stubbornness can lead to missed-out opportunity. Stubborn men do not make good leaders. (6) Do not be insensitive. Learn when to score and when to retreat gracefully. (7) Do not be greedy for credit. ( 8) Do not engage in unnecessary competition. A very focused person does not seek the limelight nor rush into battle with a competitor. (9) Do not weaken savings and surplus. (10) Do not ignore changing business trends and conditions nor over-rely on current products or services.

The traditional Chinese way of raising children also resonates with Confucian values. Children raised in the old Chinese discipline had to learn a trade or a craft or an artisanship in their formative years. Rather than hang around and chill out during off-school days, they worked in the family business or in the business of a family friend as young trainees, beginning their apprenticeship doing the most menial of jobs. They obeyed and revered their elders. They knew the value of work and were told from the outset: Everything you want to have, you have to work for.

The second and third generation Tsinoys (or Chinoys) may no longer be as stoic or as driven as their patriarchs.  However, being scions of self-made taipans and even of lesser entrepreneurs, they were sent to the best schools and got premium education.  And if they were bright enough, they went abroad and matriculated in Ivy League schools.

It is this generation of highly-educated Chinese entrepreneurs that have improved and innovated mostly traditional businesses handed down to them by their patriarchs and parlayed them into the modern, highly-systematized and professionalized, global business empires that they are now.

I seldom visit the Gagalangin of my youth these days. But in the rare times I do, my eyes would sometimes seek out the street corners where the "tindahan ng Intsik" used to be. There are still stores there, to be sure -- but smaller now, darker now, grilled now for security for times are harder and more desperate, and tended by my own countrymen who will never be taunted as "tulo laway"--but then who knows that as a consequence they are not missing out on a push and a trigger to make something bigger of themselves.