‘Pancit’ history

Felice Sta. Maria, doyenne of Philippine culinary history, referenced the Panciteria Antigua, established in 1866, on Plaza Santa Cruz, with Manuel “Po Kong” Bautista as the owner in her book “The Governor-general’s Kitchen” (2006). “Antigua” was so famous that 1940s print ads did not even carry an address. Sometimes, all it had was the phone number 2-40-42 for take-out and table reservations. As a “panciteria,” the staple was “pancit” and specialties advertised were non-noodle dishes like lumpia, bola-bola, and even zarzaparilla. We do not know when Antigua closed shop, or if it folded up because of the Panciteria Moderna across the street. We can’t be sure if the present Toho, that claims the title as the oldest existing panciteria in the Philippines established in 1888 is related to, forgive the pun, the old Antigua established in 1866.

Panciterias have been in the Philippines for a long time. Panciteria Macanista de Buen Gusto that had cooks or cooking from Macao, located at the foot of Binondo bridge by the Plaza Calderon (now Plaza Lorenzo Ruiz), is immortalized in Rizal’s “El Filibusterismo.” Did the phrase “lutong macao” (rigged) originate from plotters in this panciteria? Our national hero was no stranger to pancit because he cooked this abroad. One of the regular staples sent to Rizal from Calamba was miki noodles. Ma Mon Luk, on Quezon boulevard since the 1950s, literally had its humble beginnings to the 1900s when its founder was an ambulant vendor in the streets of Manila, serving noodles from containers balanced on a shoulder pole.

Half a century before Ma Mon Luk, Chinese noodle vendors with the shoulder pole were captured in charming 19th century watercolors by Jose Honorato Lozano. A Lozano album of watercolors, preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid, dates from 1847 and is cataloged under the title “Vistas de las yslas Filipinas y trages de sus abitantes” (“Views of the Philippine Islands and the costumes of its inhabitants”), has two plates depicting Chinese noodle vendors accompanied by explanatory text in fine cursive. One watercolor depicts customers sitting on their heels enjoying a street-side hot meal served by a Chinese vendor. An extended caption roughly translated from the original Spanish reads:

“Among the many stews that the natives eat, and that the Chinese generally sell, is what they call pansit made with rice and wheat paste in the form of thick noodles, and stewed with minced pork, and various ‘gulay,’ a species of beans from the country, and sold to customers at three-quarters of a coin. It can be said that this is the only food that the Indians do not eat with their fingers because they use, as seen in the picture, a type of stick called ‘sipit’ with which they carry the food to their mouths. The Chinese always eat with these sticks that they handle with great skill, but the Indians almost always do it with their fingers, forming a ball with the rice, and dipping it in a cup where they have sauce or vinegar that they like very much. You cannot give them a way of eating that is less roasted, and they will not have a very fine palate, since they indiscriminately mix all kinds of foods regardless of their flavor and eat with extraordinary appetite.”

The Lozano album depicts two kinds of Chinese food vendors in 1847: “pansiteros” that had a fixed spot on a busy street, and itinerant “chanchauleros” much like the taho and dirty ice cream vendors of today:

“There are many Chinese who are dedicated to the sale of this type of food, what they call Chinese ‘chanchauleros’, they are ambulant and they set up store where they find consumption; But the pansiteros settle in a certain place and especially in the vicinity of the cigar factories, where they have a large office, since many cigarreras [cigar factory workers] prefer to eat there at mealtime rather than eat back home, that is sometimes a league away and having to return to work in the afternoon.”

Text from the Lozano album compares Chinese and Filipinos this way: “The greatest contrast observed in Manila is between the activity and character of the Chinese population with the carelessness and laziness of the indigenous population; the desire to make money of the former and the indifference of the latter.”

Almost all the shops and trades in Manila are run by the Chinese who were described as, “the industrious people of the population” compared to Filipinos. What set them apart was “commercial genius and their inexhaustible patience to sell; always smiling, and not inconvenienced by [customers who] don’t buy anything, [or] strain their patience by taking hour to decide on or find what they need … ”

Reading these 19th century descriptions of small business transactions built on haggling (tawad) and a merry mix of products like today’s ukay-ukay underscores the fact that Filipinos have not changed much in a hundred, perhaps 300 years. One way to understand the way we are is to look back on the past.

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