THIS is the Year of the Pig in the Lunar New Year which the world welcomed last Tuesday and celebrated with prayers in temples, family feasts, and public festivities featuring Dragon Dances and Lion Dances.
Most Filipinos are more familiar with holidays like Christmas and New Year, which we celebrated only a few short weeks ago and Valentine’s Day which will be here in a few days. This is because of the long colonial period – three and a half centuries under Spain and half a century under America – which erased memories of what we used to share with our neighbors in our part of the world.
But now we are beginning to discover those ancient links – our trading with the lands to the north, west, and south of us, Muslim missionaries from the far-off Middle East, and the Chinese merchants who regularly came to trade, some of them eventually settling down in these islands.
Many of our national leaders trace their ancestry to these early Chinese settlers. Our national hero Jose Rizal descended from a Chinese named Lam-co from Fokien province who settled down in Laguna in the 17th century. Most of our business magnates today have links to China.
And so we are celebrating the Lunar New Year, along with the people of Chinatowns around the world – in New York and Los Angeles, United States, in Sydney, Australia, in London, United Kingdom, in Vancouver, Canada. It is similarly celebrated in Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan.
In China itself, hundreds of millions of people have been travelling for days to go home to their hometowns and villages, the world’s single biggest annual migration. Going back to the old hometowns to be with families and old friends, incidentally, is also practiced by Filipinos especially on All Saints’ Day and during Holy Week.
This year is the Year of the Pig in the Lunar New Year, the last of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac and a symbol of good fortune and wealth. It is a theme we in the Philippines hope will mark the new year as we embark on a massive infrastructure building program that should provide millions of jobs while strengthening the economic foundations of our country.
