Chinese fare and hope from bamboo

The names of good restaurants serving “authentic” Chinese and Taiwanese cuisine was on the menu during a lunch with representatives of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (Teco), including resident representative Raymond L.S. Wang. I suppose the names of restaurants in the country that serve good Chinese fare, considering how many there are and how fond Filipinos are of Chinese food in general, are bound to come up in any encounter with Teco staff. Although I’m sure that’s not the only item in the conversation menu. But for now, I’ll keep the restaurants’ identities a secret—at least until I try out their fare for myself.

What’s not secret is the desire of the Taiwanese government to encourage the exchange of visitors between our country and Taiwan, which might explain their push for the granting of “visa-free” entry to Taiwanese. This is a privilege already granted to Filipinos—on condition that they hold valid visas to such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and the Schengen-member nations; and are not or have been immigrant workers in Taiwan.

For the moment, the privilege is still not being granted to Taiwanese, even if almost 200,000 of them visited the country last year, composing the Philippines’ fifth largest tourist market. But, points out Representative Wang, the numbers could still improve markedly considering that 9.5 million Taiwanese tourists traveled abroad last year. In fact, the Teco officials point out, in addition to the 94 regular flights per week between our countries, “major Taiwanese airlines are currently studying the feasibility of new charter routes from Taipei to popular tourist spots in the Philippines.”

Not so fast, argue those against the granting of “visa-free entry” to the country by Taiwanese, as well as Mainland Chinese. Weighing the considerations of reciprocity and possible tourism revenues against the entry of undesirables, who have already been able to penetrate our porous borders with fake passports and visas, is necessary before any changes in our foreign policy are made, they say.

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Meanwhile, assures Wang, he is working doubly hard to bring in more investors from Taiwan to the Philippines, including a group of businessmen who are looking into establishing a factory of “Coach,” a well-known luxury brand of handbags, in the Philippines. This, confides Wang, even as his counterparts in Vietnam and Indonesia are likewise wooing these executives.

The Philippines is Wang’s first posting in Asia, he admits, since he spent much of his diplomatic career in the United States. What keeps him busy in his Manila posting, aside from shepherding various trade delegations around possible investment sites, is visiting Taipei’s “sister cities” in the country and looking into strengthening ties with them.

Another involvement is charity work, with Teco recently donating an ambulance to the Manila City government, and another ambulance and wheelchairs to the UST charity hospital. The donation to UST is rooted in a quite interesting story. One day, when his driver suddenly felt dizzy while on duty, Wang had the car stop at the nearest hospital—which happened to be UST—and there had to physically support the driver while looking for the emergency room. “I had to call the Rector, whom I had met previously, to help me get treatment for my driver,” he recalls. Even as he was finally able to get help for the driver, Wang says he resolved to raise the funds to get help for the hospital to secure more wheelchairs and an ambulance. Perhaps out of such experiences are diplomatic relations cemented and strengthened.

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“Grass of Hope” is how the folks behind the country’s first “Bamboo Carving Competition” call the lowly bamboo, which is a grass, despite the fact that some species can grow as tall as several meters.

But the “hope” of bamboo is for now, at least in the Philippines, merely theoretical. But former MIA administrator and LLDA general manager Edgardo “Ed” Manda, who now heads the Philippine Bamboo Foundation Inc., says we need only to look to Mainland China to see how the “hope” of bamboo could easily turn into a prosperous reality.

Manda says his devotion to bamboo was cemented during a visit to China, particularly to the province of Zhejiang, where he and his group were oriented on the propagation of bamboo and on the many uses of this versatile and fast-growing plant. In his presentation before the “Bulong Pulungan at Sofitel” yesterday, Manda showed how in China they have been able to develop bamboo for uses such as construction (including floor tiles), beauty and health products, animal feed, charcoal, anti-cancer medication, juice and shampoo. Aside, of course, from the more traditional uses like bamboo shoots for cooking.

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Last year, says Manda, upon learning of the “trash slide” in the Irisan dumpsite in Benguet, they decided to visit the site to assess if bamboo could be used to arrest future landslides. At the same time, their attention was called to the plight of the community of carvers in nearby Asin, who were losing their livelihood due to the lack of hard wood trees in the denuded mountainsides.

This led to a brainstorm: Why not convince the nearly jobless carvers to try bamboo as a medium? With support from the local governments of Baguio and Benguet, they oriented the carvers on the planting and utilization of bamboo and held a competition among 42 carvers, with National Artist BenCab, noted furniture designer Benji Reyes, documentarist Kidlat Tahimik, among others judging the carvings.

The winning carvings, chosen last February, were on display at the Bulong venue, and indeed, there is no gainsaying the creativity of the carvers as well as the versatility of bamboo.