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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 7 p.m., on
June 14, 2008, at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center on Anda and
Cabildo streets, Intramuros, Manila.
The Chinese ancestry of our national hero, Dr.
Jose Rizal, and his family is well known.
Some people may also know that Rizal’s father
had a house on Estraude Street near Juan Luna Street, and his mother
lived in a house on San Fernando Street. Both locations are in
Binondo, Manila.
But did you know that Rizal’s brother and
sister once operated a restaurant on Ongpin, which is Chinatown’s
main street? A footnote on page 389 in John Foreman’s The
Philippines (1906) reads, “Paciano rose to the rank of general
before the rebellion ended.”
“. . . Rizal’s brother and sister were
keeping [in 1904] the Dimas Alang restaurant, at 62 Calle Sacristia,
Binondo [Manila]. It is so named after the pseudonym under which
their distinguished brother often wrote patriotic articles.”
Calle Sacristia is the old name of Ongpin
Street. It was renamed in 1915 to honor Roman Ongpin.
According to Witton’s Manila and Philippine
Directory 1902, a certain Coien Co. owned and operated a “small
shop” at 62 Calle Sacristia in 1902. How and why Paciano Rizal and
his sister turned the shop into the Dimas Alang restaurant two years
after is not known. There is also no information on how long
Rizal’s brother and sister operated Dimas Alang and what happened
to it.
We hope to someday locate the site of Dimas
Alang restaurant along Ongpin and ask the National Historical
Institute to install a marker there.
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