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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., June
14, at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center on Anda and Cabildo
streets, Intramuros, Manila.
The lack of data is one major difficulty
encountered when researching on the Chinese in the Philippines,
especially on contemporary economic and social status.
As far as we know, the latest available
comprehensive census on the economic situation of the Chinese in the
Philippines was the 1948 national census. That’s why we were so
excited to discover a Philippine Constabulary survey of the Chinese
in the Philippines in The Robot Statistics done in 1957. Thankfully,
Dr. Edgar Wickberg of British Columbia University in Canada donated
his whole collection, which included The Robot Statistics.
In the survey, a table refers to “persons 10
years old and over, classified by occupations and sex.” In all,
there were 91,788 Chinese, many of them in jobs that seem to shatter
stereotypes.
The table lists 85 kinds of occupations.
“Student” is a separate classification, of which there were
20,322. Among the workers were 166 agricultural workers (including
one female); 559 bakers (including one female); 136 barbers; 23
blacksmiths; 10 bus conductors and dispatchers; 24 butchers; 913
carpenters (including five females); 531 clerks (including 82
females); 33 construction foreman (including one female); 1,778
cooks (including 14 females); 15 craftsmen; 156 drivers; four
fishermen; three food servers; 89 foremen (including one female);
135 gardeners; 1,238 helpers (including 150 females); 11,040
housekeepers or housewives; 20 house helpers or maids; 13 janitors
(including three females); 515 laborers (including five females);
181 laundry workers (including six females); eight masons; 144
mechanics; 55 messengers; 14 painters; 556 peddlers; 9,279 salesmen
(including 223 salesladies); 111 secretaries or stenographers
(including 23 females); 17 security guards; 352 tailors (including
10 females); 981 teachers (including 604 females); 19 tinsmiths; 10
typists (including two females); 271 waiters; 13 watchmen; 39 watch
repairmen; and 190 warehousemen.
A total of 8,100, including 172 females, were
listed as employees without specific positions.
By and large, the data give us a vivid and more
realistic picture, not only about the occupations, but also the
social status of the Chinese in the Philippines in the 1950s.
Blue-collar workers far outnumber the few who
held white-collar jobs: 321 businessmen; 826 financial officers;
4,459 managers; 4,936 merchants; 89 sales managers; and 699
storekeepers (who at that time would also be the store owners).
The data disprove the common impression that the
Chinese were born businessmen and were all engaged in business. The
Chinese were as “common” as common goes. They held different
occupations, manual labor included.
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