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| The streets of Manila Chinatown are rarely this empty - unless it's Holy Week or during a Manny Pacquiao fight, of course. |
Getting ogled and asked by random passersby if they may kidnap you is one of the risks of going to Manila Chinatown. Carrying around and displaying a giant digital camera in an open marketplace tends to attract all sorts of vagrants, from beggars and snatchers to would-be kidnappers. But, most of the people on the streets of Binondo are harmless, and any kidnapping requests are probably just jokes. Probably. In any case, showing off gadgets and money in this area isn’t the brightest thing to do.
The risk of losing wallets, patience, and excessive amounts of sweat apparently isn’t enough to keep either the tourists or the locals away from Chinatown. Everyday, a tide of people crashes into Binondo and the surrounding areas for its shopping and unique cultural atmosphere – but still, mostly for the shopping.
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| The freshest fruit in Manila can be bought in Chinatown, especially Carvajal Street. |
It’s not just the dirt cheap prices that bring the masses to Chinatown. Anything that is needed to be bought, can be bought there – be it Styrofoam food containers, drain cleaners, wedding tokens, tarpaulins, flowers (both fake and fresh), personalized stamps, handheld sewing machines, cedulas and university diplomas, pots and pans of every size and shape, Luis Buiton and Gooci bags, pet chickens, medicine (whether as exotic as seahorses for kidney problems, or as typical as cough drops) – name it, they’ve got it. It is the real mall of Asia.
Every area, from Binondo to Sta.Cruz and Quiapo (which are now starting to be considered as super extensions of Chinatown) is a mecca for a particular product. Carvajal Street is known for its fresh and often unusual food offerings. Pirated DVDs and CDs are available almost everywhere in Chinatown, but Carriedo, Quiapo is always the first to have the latest flicks.
One of the lesser known and little publicized areas in the new Chinatown area is Gonzalo-Puyat Street, popularly known as Raon. Located in Sta.Cruz, it is the place to go for sporting, musical or electronic goods.
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| Raon - where custom-made trophies sit side-by-side with custom-made speakers. |
There are volleyballs next to miniature drum sets, and the air reverberates with the sound of dozens of speakers all trying to outdo each other in hopes of attracting customers. Shining sports trophies stand next to videoke machines as if awarding those testing the sing-along machines “Worst Vocals of the Year,” or “1 Billionth Rendition of Frank Sinatra’s My Way.”
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| Every single jukebox-type karaoke machine comes from Raon, Sta. Cruz. |
Dinggoy, a lifelong denizen of Chinatown, whose family used to own a sporting goods store in Raon, said that every single karaoke machine in the Philippines came from Raon. The retailers along the street could fashion the machines in any shape and color – “kahit korteng Hello Kitty pa nga, kung gusto mo (Even Hello Kitty-shaped, if you want)”, he said.
Raon has been a haven for music lovers for a long time, even before karaoke became popular. Aside from being a major store for musical instruments and parts, Raon is also one of the birthplaces of music piracy.
According to Dinggoy, long before the Pirates of Carriedo were hawking their debede movies and fake CDs, the enterprising businessmen of Raon were already copying vinyl records into cassette tapes and selling them.
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| The Pirates of Carriedo aren't shy about flaunting their wares. This stall is right on the sidewalk of a major road. |
Raon, like the rest of Manila Chinatown, overflows with both the real and original, and the good-enough-to-be-real pirated goods. The whole area is a study in contrasts, a constant balancing act between extremes in culture and society.
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| A roadside altar, where Catholic prayers are offered with incense, is one of the places of worship in Chinatown. |
Chinatown has one foot in the past and the other in the future. It is the site of two of the most historic churches in the Philippines. Hidden within its dark alleyways are Buddhist temples that look like sets straight out of the latest Chinese telenovela being sold by the DVD vendor next door. At the same time, the clothes and gadgets on sale in the market stalls of Divisoria and the 168 Shopping Mall (Divisoria for those who must shop in air-conditioned buildings) try to keep up or are even ahead of the current fashion.
Even the barrage of smells strikes a balance between the heavenly scents of piping hot mami and fresh fruit, and the slightly fishy odor common to marketplaces (which shop owners try to mask with incense).
The whole area may look like one giant, dirty market, but Chinatown can boast of some of the most expensive real estate in the country because it is an important center of business. There are plenty of rich folks proud to call Binondo their home. However, it is still a market, which means that there are also plenty of predators just waiting for an unwary tourist or distracted shopper to harass. Nevertheless, they’re predators of breeding who are polite enough to request permission before kidnapping their victims.
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| With wares piled high, and stalls extending in every direction, anything and everything can be found at Manila Chinatown. |
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