Chekwa, Are You?

Ms. Shelly

Chekwa. Like the word Intsik, Chekwa is considered a pejorative term to connote a weird, provincial and scary Chinese of old. So imagine how flabbergasted I was when in a middle of a conversation with friends one day, a guy I considered as nice and sensitive suddenly blurted out the word “Chekwa!” It hit me like a ton of bricks.



The last time I heard the term was when my younger brother berated me like somebody fresh off the boat (referring to the spate of new Chinese immigrants to the Philippines). What can I do, I said, when the clothes I found to be nice and affordable at the Tutuban Center all happened to be made in China?



But the Chinese in the olden days had to endure more than being checkwa. Filipino children chanting "Intsik! Intsik Beho!" or "Kain Lugaw!" (congee eaters and, therefore, weak in the knees) used to throw firecrackers in their path. A number of our hardworking forebears, who eked out a living by pushing wooden pushcarts to collect recyclable materials or deliver plywood and lumber within short distances (in the absence of pedicabs then), had to suffer the policemen’s batons banging against their pushcarts with accompanying threats of bodily harm when they stopped the rest in no-parking zones.



These had left scars on their psyche. A number of Chinese refused to assert their rights despite the abuses heaped on them for fear of creating a scene and becoming the subject of racial castigation. One of them was my grandmother.



My grandmother, who was then still residing in a town up north, was at her favorite dressmaker’s place when the latter’s arrogant and racist son uttered something objectionable. He and my grandmother were soon locked in a verbal tussle that unfortunately ended with him bashing her on the head with a drinking glass. With the help of the horrified dressmaker and her daughter, my grandmother, all bloodied, managed to call for a kalesa (horse-drawn carriage). Enroute to the hospital, she had the presence of mind to stop by my grandfather’s place of work to inform him of her whereabouts. The police jailed the culprit, but my grandmother did not press charges on account of her dressmaker’s pleas.



It wasn’t until the mid 1970s when Marcos opened up foreign relations with China that people began to see the Chinese in a different light.



We like to think that we have come a long way from the Chinese immigrants of old, who probably annoyed the locals then by their strange language, manner of extracting their nasal blockages and habit of raising one leg while eating in roadside cafes. Yet have we really? I cringe every time I chance upon the column of Erwin Tulfo in a tabloid, and I’m reminded of the precarious state I am in in Philippine society every time I hear Noli de Castro spit out the word Intsik on TV. But I console myself that these two men don’t represent the entire Filipino population? Or do they?



At a personal level, the worst discrimination I have ever experienced were being refused a bus ride in 1994 and hearing “Ching-a, chong-a!” years ago from teenagers when they heard me speak Hokkien while walking in the streets. Should I have turned and hit them inn the face like a younger brother and his friend did to two guys when the escalator reached the top floor inside a mall? Is that the right solution?



But haven’t many of us also been guilty of mimicking the way others speak? In high school, I found classmates who speak rapid-fire Cantonese loud and irritating, as opposed to our slower and milder Hokkien.



And if it turns out that those who don’t speak Chinese were the righteous ones, shall we all just stop using the easier (yup, easier, because the easiest I think would still be Tagalog) language that rolls off our tongue just to keep the peace?



Since it is known that Filipinos, even during the 19th century, have as much as 10 percent Chinese blood, is it “Hurray!” or “Yahoo!” then for those who have forgotten their Chinese roots because they’re now more Filipino than ever?



On confronted with the fact that we can speak a different language on top of the English and Tagalog of every Filipino, are we not different, i.e. not Filipinos, after all? Would we look at a new Chinese immigrant approaching and think, “Ah, here comes a Filipino” simply because he has a passport that says so?



And since we’re in the thick of this Tsinoy being a Tsinong Pinoy thing, just how Filipino are we anyway? With what kind of delusionary light should we view ourselves? I mean, isn’t it natural to think, “Ay, Bumbay” whenever we see an Indian doing his or her rounds of collection on 5-6 loans? In the same light, shouldn’t we be resigned to our fate upon hearing “Ah, Intsik” or in some instances, “Chekwa!” thrown our way?



As for that guy friend, after I fell silent and wrote messages to somebody else beside me to show my displeasure, he was immediately contrite and apologetic (genuinely or not I wouldn’t know), saying he himself looked a lot like a true blue Chinese, what with his sunken eyes and fair complexion, and thus had borne the brunt of hearing “Ching, chang, chong.” But that’s just my point, I said. Knowing yourself to be non-Chinese, you won’t feel the sting of discrimination attached to the word “Chekwa” or “Intsik”. It was sad, I realized only a friend with Chinese upbringing will never ever say that to me and mean it.



But then, is it possible that my friend is right; that I’ve made a mountain out of a molehill on a word that has long ago lost its derogatory meaning and is now used to simply mean “Chinese”?