The afternoon was hot in Binondo, Manila’s Chinatown, and the sun beat down on pedestrians’ backs. It was the kind of heat that experienced walkers know will bring rain in a few hours, or maybe even minutes.
In the hodgepodge of stone and wooden houses and contemporary concrete buildings are the kalesas, horse-drawn carriages dating back to the time when the Philippines was still under Spain, either roaming the streets or parked by the shade of the historic Binondo Church on Ongpin along with the 21st century cars and tricycles that already outnumber them.
Mang Benjie and his kalesa were parked past Carvajal alley, where a left turn from the narrow street market would lead straight to the Church. He was one of three kutseros waiting for passengers to board amidst the calls from competing tricycle and pedicab drivers offering faster transportation. Business was slow that day—it has been for years with all the quick, new and motorized competition—so Mang Benjie and his horse had time to lounge by the shade.
Kutseros like Mang Benjie offer trips around Chinatown, and for the traveler on a tight schedule, this could be the best way to see this historic place in an hour…or to experience the kalesa before it’s gone.
Pulled by an unnamed chocolate brown horse with white ankles and dirt brown hooves rhythmically clicking on the concrete, the kalesa was faded purple with an equally faded silver roof and floor. Its seat, sprinkled with little holes and dirty yellow foam, had seen many passengers come and go, rubbing off the seat’s once bright red color and gradually making it a dull pinkish red as they leave.
This isn’t Mang Benjie’s first kalesa; he has driven many more since he started as a teenager during Martial Law; back, he said, when kalesas filled the cobblestone streets of Manila.
Frequent flooding has since led to a change from cobblestone to modern day concrete, said Mang Benjie; but before the change, Binondo exuded the “Spanish style”—hinting back to the days of its founding.
According to E. Wickerberg’s “The Chinese Mestizo in Philippine History,” Chinese merchants in Manila had an important role in the economy by providing food, trade, and artisans for the Spanish colony. However, he, said, there were “feelings of distrust” between the two groups because of their difference in culture and because the Chinese had outnumbered the Spanish, a disadvantage for Spain should the Chinese choose to revolt. The distrust went so far as a “royal order to expel the Chinese from the Philippines.”
However, seeing how important these traders were to Manila, “the largest Spanish settlement,” Governor-General Don Luis Perez Dasmarinas in 1594 purchased land across Intramuros and awarded it in perpetuity sans tax with limited power to self-govern to the Chinese merchants. This became Binondo, and here the Chinese settled, leaving behind their first home in Parian, Intramuros.
Binondo became a Dominican parish and a means of assimilation for Chinese merchants moving to Manila. Here they converted to Catholicism and married indios (natives), bringing more and more Chinese mestizos into the community and creating a subculture within Manila society.
Mang Benjie said there were still some houses left from back then, part wood and part stone with large breezy capiz-shell windows—but most have succumbed to the weather, to fire, and time.
We turned toward the Plaza Sta. Cruz and were greeted by a gray fountain, with water sprouting from its very tip pointed toward the heavens. At the middle, robed stone women sat with their scepters in tow; below them carved children tipped vases of water to an unseen pool at the bottom. Behind the fountain was the white Sta. Cruz Church, set up by the Jesuits in the 1600s. With only a few seconds to see the plaza from inside the kalesa, the fountain and the church are the first things one will notice despite the cars, the electric wires, and the prism buildings in the area.
The tick-tocking of the horse’s hooves signaled the passage of time as we rode past the front of the old Post Office Building and its rose-colored Ionic pillars and solitary postman statue dressed in blue. Mang Benjie waxed nostalgic of the way things were before the pedicabs and tricycles and the tight roads filled with cars.
“Mas masarap noon (Life was good before),” he said, slightly turning his head to his passengers so his voice could carry over his horse’s hooves. For P2, he said, he could buy a bowl of rice with soup. A ride on his kalesa would only cost 40 centavos, and passengers were so many he couldn’t count them. By the end of the day, he’d earn enough to make a young man in the ‘70s quit school and pursue the kutsero life full time.
He recalled how he had seen many a movie star in Escolta’s heyday, when it was the hub for imported goods, and anyone able to shop there was considered made. But as we turned to Escolta proper from the Pasig River Station, only pictures of Filipinos in their Sunday’s best with their shiny ‘60s cars put over windows of old water-streaked department store buildings reminded passersby of Escolta’s glory days.
“Naiwanan na ng panahon (Left behind by time)” is what Mang Benjie thinks of Escolta. Around us buildings stood closed and unused or under renovation with large signs announcing commercial spaces for rent; and as the kutsero spoke of how glamorous the street was before, one could tell he thought his passengers were missing out on something.
But Chinatown still thrives. As we click-clacked our way past Dasmarinas and Urbiztondo, we saw how people have found ways to make use of the old buildings scattered along the two streets: sidewalk eateries, handyman shops, motor shops, storehouses, and more—framed in the buildings’ antiquated wood. In a place as enterprising as Chinatown, no building is ever empty and no opportunity unnoticed for long.
The ride winded down to San Fernando St., where Mang Benjie stopped by what was once the house of Teodora Alonzo, mother of Philippine national hero Jose Rizal. The house is gone now, and only a makeshift roof from tarpaulin and metal frames stands; a gate keeps the lot closed off to the public. Left of the gate is a marker on the wall certifying the lot’s authenticity.
Despite his nostalgia, Mang Benjie said he still thinks Chinatown has not changed. Perhaps the feel of the place is still the same: the same spirit of business, the same historical landmarks, and the same twists, turns, and imburnals (sewage) on his regular route.
But Chinatown is always on the go, always moving as fast as the speedy pedestrians that course through its veins. With how quickly everything is going, it is inevitable that some old sights will be left behind—maybe even disappear—with only its remains to remind people it had once existed. Maybe the kalesa is next; maybe it isn’t.
Some kutseros like Mang Benjie think it’s time to move on. Life is harder now, he said, especially with the motorized transport eating up his clientele.
But what mark will he leave behind? The sound of his horse’s hooves perhaps? His stories? Or maybe pictures from tourists of vacations past.
“Just one photo for my class project?” I asked him before his reins could prod his horse to plod on.
And the horseman smiled the mirthless grin only a long hot day without profit can muster.
Mang Benjie merged with the ongoing traffic—P200 richer—to find his fourth customer of the day. At first his silver-topped kalesastood out from the hunched roofs of the cars driving alongside him. Then, he gradually disappeared, fading into the hubbub of Chinatown, merging into the sighs, sights, smells, and sounds that make Binondo what it is.
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