Echoes and
footprints of history

BEIJING, China - Landing here in an early afternoon and feeling the fresh but nippy Chinese air of the late spring and early summer, I can hear the inaudible echoes and see the changing footprints of history, where more than 4,000 years ago, while monkeys were climbing the trees in Europe and America was an uninhabited land mass, what were known to the Europeans as the Empire of the Silk People of the East to be reached only by a months-long caravan across mountains and deserts were already highly civilized and an empire much larger than theirs.

This is too long for a first sentence introduction but it only reveals our being a historical buff who loves the beautiful history of China. For the history of these Silk People antedates the history of peoples everywhere.

While the empire of the Silk People fell apart from the attacks of different barbarians from the north, they regrouped and became stronger. Their instinct for survival is much better.

On the other hand, Rome declined and fell, never to recover from the destructive hordes of Atilla the Hun.

China, for three centuries A.D. 618 to A.D. 907, was the greatest, richest and the most civilized power in the whole world. This was also the time when it extended its hegemony to all countries all over Asia.

Some years ago while touring Kuala Lumpur, we saw a big mound, called "Bukit China" which was the burial ground of a Chinese princess who was gifted by the Chinese emperor to the Sultan of Malacca.

Malacca was a trading hub of Asia. Even in other places, the Chinese emperors, to exert his influence, gifted rulers with their young daughters, having so many of them.

***

The Silk People underwent millennia of growth, from the Shang Dynasty (1,500 to 1,000 B.C.) to Emperor Ch'in Shih Huang Ti in whose reign the Great Wall of China was built (246 to 210 B.C.) and from whose name the word China was adopted.

This until the death of Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi in 1908 and the accession to the throne, of the infant Hsuan T'ung (Pu Yi) was followed by a rebellion led by Sun Yat Sen that established the Chinese Republic in 1911.

Remember that movie "The Last Emperor" starring Peter O'Toole I think, portraying the accession and later imprisonment of Pu Yi?

The Silk People became the Han People under Emperor Han who established the Han Dynasty and many more Dynasties. But they later were called the Hua People and that was the time when they gained their identity as Chinese or Hua People. Until today.

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Back in Bacolod, we have these landmarks. Hua Ming is the "Ming" or school of the Hua. And Hua Kong is the "Kong" or drug store of the Hua. How I hope the founders of Hua Ming, led by Msgr. John Liu bring back the old name, Hua Ming. It will be historical, proper and more meaningful, without relaxing its Christian mission.

Hua Ming is synonymous with Msgr. John Liu who has played a very big role in assimilating the Hua people into the Filipino mainstream.

For Msgr. Liu can be proud to be a descendant of many great men, his ancestors among the Hua people. Msgr. Liu is very religious. His great, great, great grandfather Emperor Liu Ch'e built a jeweled palace, full of paintings, representing Heaven, Earth and the gods. There was his other great grandfather who came later, Liu Pang, a military official who seized power in 206 B.C.

If Msgr. Liu has outstanding statesmen ancestors, he also has among China's great writers of old. Liu Tsung-yuan, a protégé of Han Yu, must be a rebellious writer who was exiled in the mountainous area of the south.

Don't forget K'ung Ch'iu, Confucius, to us, is one of the wisest, outstanding philosophers of all time whose teaching rivals those of Jesus Christ.

One of his sayings I like, so simple yet so down to is "Have no friends not equal to yourself." This comes from his Anaclets. Msgr. Liu many years ago gifted me the Anaclets of Confucius but when my house burned, it went up also in smoke.

That Anaclet established my kinship with China.

***

The latest of Msgr. Liu's uncle was Liu Shao-chi, Mao Zedong's heir apparent, his right hand man and successor but Mao had him placed inside an unused bank vault where he died of suffocation during the Cultural Revolution. At the time Mao was already dying and the rivalry was intense among his would-be successors.

Ten years later, he was rehabilitated posthumously and his role in the Revolution was recognized.

Chinese history is one thing all Asians must know and put to heart, adapting to the strong points in the Chinese character and trait.

My mind still goes back to Bacolod remembering the many People of Hua I have made as friends.*

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