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By Go Bon Juan
Editor’s note: The Sixth Dr.
Jose P. Rizal Awards for Excellence awarding ceremony will be held
at 2 p.m., June 14, at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center on Anda
and Cabildo streets, Intramuros, Manila.
Written Chinese records said
Filipinos visited China in the 10th century.
At the same time, written Chinese
chronicles also made notes of Chinese visitations to the Philippines
that happened much later, although archeological findings in this
country indicate that they were here as early as the 7th century.
“According to Chinese records,
Filipinos went to China before the Chinese came to the
Philippines,” wrote the late William Henry Scott, a renowned
authority on Philippine prehistory in his Filipinos in China before
1500.
What Scott emphasized here is
that “according to Chinese records,” which means written
records, Filipinos went to China as early as 982 A.D. as recorded in
Song Shi (or Sung history). Although most of us are aware that the
Chinese came to the Philippines much earlier, even as early as Tang
Dynasty (618 to 906 A.D.) as Tang wares excavated in the Philippines
showed. However, according to written Chinese records, the earliest
records of Chinese coming to the Philippines appeared much later.
Interestingly enough, the same is
true for recorded names. Names of Filipinos who went to China,
settled and died there, appeared much earlier than the names of the
Chinese who came to the Philippines.
According to Song Shi, the King
Qiling of Butuan sent his minister Li Yihan and assistant minister
Jiaminan to China in 1003 in a tribute mission. And the first envoy
sent by China to the Philippines (Kumalarang, now Basilan), Zhang
Qian was only in 1417, more then 300 years after the envoys of the
Butuan king.
The famous Sulu king, Paduka
Batara, who died in Dezhou, Shandong, after paying tribute to
Emperor Yong Lo in Beijing in 1417 was the first Filipino recorded
to have died in China.
His two sons, Andulu and Wenhala,
who were left in Dezhou in the same year to look after their
father’s tomb, are the first recorded Filipinos who settled in
China.
On the other hand, the earliest
ever known Chinese who was recorded to have come to the Philippines
was the pirate Limahong in 1574 and Pan He Wu, the leader of the
Chinese rowers who mutinied and killed the Spanish Governor-General
Luis Perez de Dasmariñas in 1593.
So when all is said and done, who
visited whose country first? Based on written records, Filipinos
journeyed, lived and died in China first. Written records made no
mention of the Chinese who went to the Philippines before that. But
based on historical relics found in this country, we know that
visits of Chinese to the Philippines happened much earlier.
Which boils down to what matters
most. The relationships between the two countries, unnoted
officially, started much sooner than the records show.
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