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(Editor’s note: The Sixth Dr. Jose P. Rizal
Awards for Excellence awarding ceremony will be held on June 14,
2008, 7 p.m. at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center on Anda and
Cabildo streets, Intramuros, Manila.)
BY GO BON JUAN
Right after writing about
Sterling Seagrave’s Lords of the Rim version of the 1603 Chinese
massacre in the Philippines in the March 2007 issue of Tulay (the
weekly newspaper of Kaisa), I came across materials that corroborate
the information Seagrave gives about the main character Li Tan.
Li Tan, according to Seagrave,
had possessed “immense property holdings, including more than
40,000 gold bars rumored to be only a small part of a huge mountain
of gold and silver ingots he had hidden.” It was due to “a group
of imperial household eunuchs” from China who came to Manila in
1603’s search for Li Tan’s “gold mountain” that triggered
the massacre that killed 24,000 of the 26,000 Chinese then in
Manila, the author writes.
Interestingly, the materials I
read are not about Chinese in the Philippines, but the Chinese in
Japan and the history of Chinese pirates. I got these leads from
Seagrave’s book, which says Li Tan moved his headquarters to
Hirado and Nagasaki in Japan in 1607. Seagrave also writes about Li
Tan’s relation with Cheng Chilong, the father of Koxinga, the
general who expelled the Dutch from Taiwan.
Zheng Guang Nan’s History of
Chinese Pirates (1999, Shanghai) refers to a Li Tan from Chuan Zhou
(Quanzhou) of Fujian who became rich through marine trading, and was
one of the most important Chinese in Japan.
Li Tan had lived and engaged in
business in Manila before the Spanish colonizers forced him to move
to Japan. History of Chinese Pirates mentions that the Dutch and
British addressed Li Tan by the name “Andrea Dittis,” the same
information found in Seagrave’s Lords of the Rim.
Quoting from Diary of Batavia of
the East Indies Company of the Dutch, Zheng states that Li Tan was
called “Captain China,” as Seagrave had also written. Among the
sources cited by History of Chinese Pirates is an article about
Captain Li Tan written by a Japanese scholar, Yan Sheng Cheng, that
appeared in East Ocean Journal (No. 3, Vol. 23) of Japan. Li Tan
passed away in Hirado on July 14, 1625.
Then there is Luo Huang Chao’s
History of Chinese in Japan (1994, Guangzhou), which says Li Tan was
an active Chinese merchant engaged in the marine trade between
Japan, China and Southeast Asia. The book says Cheng Chilong joined
Li Tan in Japan, and gained Li Tan’s trust to the point where he
would become Li Tan’s “adopted son?” and inherit most of Li
Tan’s fortune.
These two books indeed confirm
the existence of such an influential person as Li Tan at the time of
the Chinese massacre in 1603. And to think, he has never been
mentioned in the history of Chinese in the Philippines and the
history of the Philippines.
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