My Life in China

I was born on January 25, 1922 in our ancestral home in Chio Ku Kho Village, Jin Jiang, Fujian Province. It was the year of the dog in the Chinese calendar.

I was the firstborn of my parents and was named Co Su Giap. I don't know if my mother and grandmother held any notion that mine was an auspicious birth, but I can surmise that they greeted my arrival with great warmth and joy because of the way they raised me.

My father, Co Ay Tian, was not there when I was born. He had moved to the Philippines when he was 14 years old after his father's death. In those days, a lot of Chinese were migrating to the Philippines for greener pastures and he traveled with a group of them. In those days, a lot of Chinese were migrating to the Philippines for greener pastures and he traveled with a group of them. When he arrived in the Philippines, his uncle, Vicente Gotamco, gave him a job with his lumberyard company.

After 10 years, my grandmother asked him to return to China and get married to continue the lineage. The marriage was arranged and she had picked a wife for him. Dutifully, he returned to the village of his birth to marry my mother, Lok Siok Kee. He was 24 and she was 17.

My mother left the comfort of her parents' home in Sua Be Tau Village to live in my father's ancestral home. She was from a well-off family and had bound feet. In those days, Fujian women of aristocratic lineage had bound feet. From childhood, they submitted to this painful regimen because small feet were considered beautiful in China.

After my mother got pregnant, my family returned to the Philippines where his livelihood was, and I was born in his absence. For the first 11 years of my life, I did not get to meet my father. I knew him only as a distant figure who sent money to support us, and, because I did not know him, I did not miss him. My world was complete in the presence of my mother and my paternal grandmother, Go O-Tim. They both loved me and took care of me. I lacked for nothing as a child, and I grew up secure in their love and confident about the future.

Idyllic Childhood

My childhood was idyllic and not marred by any extreme hardship. My father, the second child of Go O-Tim, was her only son, and he supported her after his father died. My father had an older sister and a younger sister who had both gotten married and had gone to live with the families of their husbands. They lived a distance from our village but came to visit us often.

I also had a maternal grandmother, Ang Wu, whom we saw frequently. She lived in Sua Be Tau Village, some distance away, but my mother and I went to visit her several times. Today, the journey by car would take a mere 30 minutes. In the 1920s, on foot or by sedan chair, the trip took a couple of hours.

My mom had an elder brother and a younger sister. Her elder brother (my uncle) had gotten married and had several children. Both of her siblings came to the Philippines eventually. My uncle worked in Ilocos and sent money to his family in China. My auntie married and lived in Manila.

In those days, the custom was for grandchildren to live with their grandparents and take care of them until their grandparents died. So it was with our family.

Ancestral Home

My mother and I lived with my paternal grandmother in the ancestral home of the Co family. Ten rooms were built in a square around an inner courtyard where activities like raising chickens, ducks and pigs took place. From the outside, the enclave looked like a small fort with strong walls and small windows. The walls were made of bricks the color of ochre, which is yellowish brown. The enclave was designed for protection against marauding bandits. I recall one incident with robbers but nothing untoward occurred.

We occupied three of the 10 rooms. My grandmother, Ama, had her own room, while my mother, Abu, and I slept in the room where I was born. About three by four meters in size, our room had ample space for a wooden bed with a mosquito net (the mosquitoes were very big) and a cabinet for our belongings. We also had an orinola (potty) that was emptied in the morning.

The third room was where we cooked and ate. It was where my grandmother and my mother did their chores and where I studied by the light of a kerosene lamp. The rooms were cold in the winter and hot in the summer. They were also poorly ventilated with small windows high up in the walls. The other rooms in the enclave were occupied by distant relatives. All the rooms had tiled floors, while the rest of the house had stone floors.

Staple Food

Outside our enclave was our vegetable patch. We had people to till the land for us, so my mother and I were spared the rigors of toiling in the field for the vegetables we ate. Our staple was camote (a root crop known in the West as sweet potato). My mother made a soup with the camote, which we ate with viands, mostly vegetables. Maybe once a week we had a bit of chicken or pork or fish. For breakfast, we had plain lugaw (rice congee). During birthdays, we had misua (noodles) and boiled eggs in the morning. It was always in the morning at the start of a new day. Misua for long life and eggs for new beginnings. Sometimes, we had shredded chicken with the misua. Then lunchtime and dinnertime, we were back to camote soup. There was not a lot of noodles for food then, but there was never a time when we went hungry, which was a blessing because the land was parched and water was scarce.

My mother had to fill pails of water at the well that was a few meters away from our house. She put it in a big jar from which she drew what was needed for cooking, washing dishes and cleaning up. Bathing consisted mostly of sponge baths and we had a common toilet outside our quarters. My mother washed our clothes near the well because that was more convenient. Our clothes were mostly cotton outfits — light ones for the summer and heavier ones for the winter. For special occasions we had nicer garments made of silk. Our shoes were made of heavy cotton, like the kung fu shoes of today.

My Studies

I was not given any chores around the house or the farm as I was occupied with studying. I attended Chin Yaw Elementary School, which was a 10-minute walk from our home. I went with the neighbors who were my age, including my best friend, Kieng Tha, who lived nearby.

The lessons were traditional, consisting of writing Chinese characters and memorizing the Confucian classics. I enjoyed my schooling and many of my professors liked me. I had good relations with them, especially with Professor Sy Piak Chiam. On weekends, the other students and I would go to his farm, where there were many fruit- bearing trees. One of my classmates was Co Giok Tong, who is living in Manila today with her husband, Sy Ying Chiw, a famous Chinese poet and writer.

Now that I think of it, my mother must have had some difficulty doing the housework with her bound feet, but I do not recall her ever complaining. She accepted her destiny with cheerfulness, understanding and tolerance. She had a big heart, as did my grandmother. While we were not poor, we did not have much; but what food we had, Ama and Abu shared with the needy who came to our door. Both of them were Buddhists, devoted to Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, to whom they offered incense at the Shiong Te Kong Temple in our village. Like any young kid, I mimicked them, waving incense before the statues without much thought about religion or spirituality. It was just another custom in the life that I was born into.

Ancestral Hometown

Chio Ku Kho Village where we lived had a population of 2,500. Apart from the school and the temple, there was a small market but no restaurants. It was not the practice to eat out because the village was poor. For the most part, we had what we needed in the village. Occasionally, we went to Chio Say or Stone Lion Town, the biggest municipality near us, which had a bigger market and a commercial district with factories, including a brick-making factory. However, we did not go often because it was expensive. The conveyances then were human-powered. We hired either a sedan chair or a rickshaw.

The sedan chair or minjiao was basically a wooden box slung on two poles. The box had a seat and curtains to shield the occupant from the sun. My mother and I shared a sedan chair because we were light enough to be carried by two men.

Sometimes, we used rickshaws, which were carts on wheels pulled by men, many of whom were from Jekang Province. (The rickshaw originated in Japan in 1868. China used it to transport people from 1914 to 1949 when it was banned by the Communist government.)

Jekang was a poor province so the peasants went to Fujian to look for work. Pulling a rickshaw was usually the first job that these men could get and it suited them. They were big, muscled men who gripped the ends of the poles in their strong hands and hurried along the path with quick steps. The coolies, as they were later known, grew accustomed to the work and were adroit in their steps. In contrast, the hour-long trek to Chio Say would have been difficult on foot for my mother with her tiny feet.

Other than going to school, the activities I looked forward to were family occasions, which were usually celebrated with banquets. They always served very good food and my favorite was machang or glutinous rice. We attended wedding parties and funeral parties. Because the village was small, nearly everyone we knew would go to the wake if someone died.

On feast days, we had activities supervised by the temple. I remember these as very happy occasions. We paid a temple fee but the shows were free. If it was a small occasion, we had a puppet show or a small play with some actors. For these shows, they used hand puppets or puppets on a string handled by puppeteers or puppet masters. Sometimes, we had a kaw kah, a bigger play that lasted three to four hours. Usually, two of these dramas went on simultaneously. They had the same subject and the same scenes, and took place on stages next to each other. When the people watched, they would compare and say, “Ah, this one is much better.” That was the biggest entertainment then (there were no movie houses) and the themes were usually about the emperors and the history of China. It was a way to impart history and moral lessons.

Through actors on stage and by example at home, I was taught to respect my elders, love one another and help other people whenever I can. And I saw my grandmother and mother living out those values, which deeply influenced me.

When I was 10 years old, my grandmother died. Then my father asked us to come to the Philippines. It was a year before we were able to leave so I met my father for the first time when I was 11.