July 1 marked the 20th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China, marking the end of British rule.
Back then, in 1997, people in and outside of Hong Kong fretted about what would happen to this tiny but wealthy city-state. China had assured the world it would implement a “one country, two systems” arrangement, keeping capitalist Hong Kong intact but within a socialist China.
For Filipinos, the fears were more focused: What would happen to the more than 100,000 Filipinos there, most of whom were domestic helpers, mainly nannies? The fears were shared by the people of Hong Kong, given their dependence on Filipino domestic labor.
There was talk about foreign domestic helpers—Filipinos, Indonesians and Nepalis—being forced out to give way to mainland Chinese, but it proved to be unfounded. Filipino domestic helpers not only continued to hang on to their niche in Hong Kong but also slowly entered mainland China to work, sometimes illegally.
For today’s Filipinos, Hong Kong is about our domestic helpers (and Disneyland), but actually our ties go way back almost two centuries. Some of the historical encounters are
intriguing—the cloak-and-dagger types that could make good adventure novels and movies.
Let me tell you about two of these encounters: first, Jose Rizal’s dreams, developed in Hong Kong, for a “Nueva Calamba” in Sabah, and second, the Hong Kong junta of Emilio Aguinaldo and other revolutionaries.
Nueva Calamba
Hong Kong was annexed by the British in the 19th century. The historian Jan Morris writes in “Hong Kong” about how Filipinos were among the first to enter Britain’s newest colony. In the 1840s, Morris writes, the trading company Jardin Matheson had Filipino guards.
Filipinos, including Jose Rizal, continued to stream into Hong Kong during the Spanish colonial period. Rizal first visited Hong Kong in 1888 in a stopover on his way back to the Philippines from Europe, shortly after publishing “Noli Me Tangere.” He stayed only a few days but wrote about meeting a Spaniard when crossing in a boat from Hong Kong to Macau, and his suspicion that this man was assigned to spy on him.
Rizal returned to the Philippines, and then left again for Europe. In 1891, after publishing his second novel “El Filibusterismo,” he returned to Asia; this time he stayed a few months in Hong Kong, where there was a thriving Filipino community. His parents, brother and three sisters were able to join him. He settled in and was a practicing eye doctor and surgeon, operating on his own mother as well.
On the ship bringing Rizal to Hong Kong from Europe, he had met William Burgess Pryer, the manager of the British North Borneo Company which had a long-term lease from the Sultan of Jolo to manage the entire North Borneo, which we know today as Sabah.
Rizal was then grappling with the problems of some 300 families in Calamba, Laguna, including his own, who had been ejected from their lands by the Dominican friars. He had filed a case against the friars for their abusive practices, and the farmers had dared to testify when an official investigation was initiated.
North Borneo seemed to provide new possibilities, with Pryer agreeing to explore the possibilities of Filipinos from Calamba resettling there and developing the area. Rizal traveled from Hong Kong to Sandakan and envisioned a “Nueva Calamba” to be developed by Filipinos, including himself. He even seemed ready to change his nationality to be able to establish this Filipino settlement.
But the plan never prospered because the Spanish governor-general, Eulogio Despujol, suspected that a settlement in North Borneo would allow Filipino revolutionaries to establish a base. Rizal had gone from Hong Kong to Manila to talk with Despujol, and was instead arrested and exiled to Dapitan.
Many years later, Sabah continues to be part of Philippine history. President Diosdado Macapagal laid claim to Sabah as part of the Philippines, and today Sabah is home to many Filipino Muslims who sought refuge there during the 1970s because of armed conflict in Mindanao. Sadly, their children and grandchildren are stateless.
Hong Kong junta
Now to the other thriller, a longer playing one.
Aguinaldo, who had been leading the revolt against Spain, signed the Pact of Biak-na-Bato in 1897, agreeing to be exiled to Hong Kong in exchange for an initial P400,000 from the Spanish government. He and his companions arrived in Hong Kong on Nov. 1, 1897. They established a Hong Kong junta that continued to wage war on Spain, raising money to purchase medicines, food and weapons to send back to the revolutionaries.
The junta also began to negotiate with foreign powers, including the United States, to try to gain support for an independent Philippines. The American consul in Hong Kong, Edwin Wildman, accepted P50,000 from the junta to purchase and send 2,000 Mauser rifles and 200,000 cartridges back to Filipino rebels. A second payment of P67,000 seems to have been pocketed, with no arms delivered.
Aguinaldo secretly returned to the Philippines in May 1899, leaving other members of the junta in Hong Kong to continue their diplomatic negotiations. On Aug. 13, 1898, the Spanish government in the Philippines surrendered to the United States after being defeated in the Battle of Manila Bay.
The Hong Kong junta went full force, trying to gain recognition for an independent Philippines. Junta member Felipe
Agoncillo even met personally with US President William McKinley to seek Filipino representation in the peace talks between Spain and America, which were about to be held in Paris. Gregg Jones, in his “Honor in the Dust,” writes that McKinley listened politely then rejected Agoncillo’s request on grounds that Spain would not accept it, and that Agoncillo’s English was too poor for him to be able to plead his case with US negotiators.
Agoncillo still went on to Paris but could not get into the talks. On Dec. 10, 1898, the Paris Treaty was signed, and America took over the Philippines for $20 million. Two months later, the Philippine-American War broke out.
The Hong Kong junta continued its attempts at diplomacy, challenging the Paris Treaty while raising money to get arms into the Philippines. On March 23, 1901, Aguinaldo was captured; a week later, he took the oath of allegiance to the United States.
The junta continued in Hong Kong and was dissolved only in 1903. But one of the members, Artemio Ricarte, continued to fight, establishing a Katipunan Abuluyan and a Universal Republic of Philippine Democracy. He returned to the Philippines to fight the Americans, was captured in 1904, and was again banished to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, which is closer to Manila than Davao City, continues to be part of our nation’s history and the personal histories of many Filipino families, with strange detours. Who knows what other twists and turns and thrillers we will have in those intertwined histories?
mtan@inquirer.com.ph