Teasure Find 8: Experiencing Chinese New Year in Binondo (for the 1st time!)

TREASURE FIND 8:

Some say that my small eyes make me look Chinese.  In fact, when I was sent to China for work, some of the locals have always mistaken me to be just like them.  They kept on talking to me in Mandarin :).  However, although my mom's ancestors have a little Spanish lineage as well, I still consider myself  more than100% Filipino.  That doesn't mean though that I don't value the Chinese influence in the Filipino culture.  Of course I do, especially when I took Mandarin classes (although Fookien is the one most spoken in the Philippines) a few years back when I finally appreciated the value of their traditions, which I never paid attention before.

And with my interest and curiosity for the Chinese custom, I actually have planned at the start of the year (during my personal goal setting session) that I'll celebrate Chinese New Year this time around!

Stored Treasure: Learning Culture through a Cool Tour... our Manila Chinatown (Binondo) Trip

BAYANIHAN REPUBLIC

Stored Treasure / 27 March 2010

http://digitista.blogspot.com/2010/03/learning-culture-through-cool-tour-our.html

Manila Chinatown is really not a new place to me. In my college days, we always passed that route going to some of our classmates’ houses. When I worked in First Metro, where its Binondo branch is just beside the San Lorenzo Ruiz basilica, I also managed to frequent the place when I need to fix our company’s web content or attend meetings. And ironically, though I had many opportunities in the past, I never took the chance of knowing the famous place by heart. And I even got to explore offshore Chinese spots first (HK, Shenzhen, Sanya City and Shanghai) before knowing our very own Chinese heritage right at the heart of Manila.  Well, nothing’s too late in exploring. Thanks to the Manila Chinatown trip organized by our Confucius class, I had the chance to know the place, and the Chinese characters, better. =)

 Our first stop is lunch at Golden Fortune Seafood Restaurant.  We felt so bloated after eating steamed lapu-lapu, shrimp, Mandarin chicken, spinach, dimsum, hot and sour soup and yang chow fried rice!

Omar Laoshi was our official tour guide and Lin Na, being the class valedictorian, was able to read Chinese characters easily.  Right photo shows Lin Na reading the name of a Kung Fu school.

Then, we found out Mang Inasal has Chinese version! =)

A newspaper stand which we normally see in HK / China.  Meron din pala nito sa Binondo!  =)

After the long walk, we stopped at DVD and book shops.

 We just can't stop Romel Yisheng from buying Mandarin books at the Xinhua Bookstore! Go go Yisheng!

Yisheng and Ni Ca enjoying a Mandarin book for first graders. =)