CHAPTER II

Rizal's Chinese Ancestry

Clustered around the walls of Manila in the latter half of the
seventeenth century were little villages the names of which, in some
instances slightly changed, are the names of present districts. A
fashionable drive then was through the settlement of Filipinos in
Bagumbayan--the "new town" to which Lakandola's subjects had migrated
when Legaspi dispossessed them of their own "Maynila." With the
building of the moat this village disappeared, but the name remained,
and it is often used to denote the older Luneta, as well as the drive
leading to it.

Within the walls lived the Spanish rulers and the few other persons
that the fear and jealousy of the Spaniard allowed to come in. Some
were Filipinos who ministered to the needs of the Spaniards, but the
greater number were Sangleyes, or Chinese, "the mechanics in all trades
and excellent workmen," as an old Spanish chronicle says, continuing:
"It is true that the city could not be maintained or preserved without
the Sangleyes."

The Chinese conditions of these early days are worth recalling, for
influences strikingly similar to those which affected the life of José
Rizal in his native land were then at work. There were troubled times
in the ancient "Middle Kingdom," the earlier name of the corruption
of the Malay Tchina (China) by which we know it. The conquering
Manchus had placed their emperor on the throne so long occupied by
the native dynasty whose adherents had boastingly called themselves
"The Sons of Light." The former liberal and progressive government,