Bonifacio Limtuaco’s case makes clearer how an upper-class Chinese mestizo could be reclaimed by the Chinese community. Bonifacio was born in Xiamen, which meant that his father likely brought his Chinese mestizo mother to China. Although we do not know anything about Bonifacio’s parents, it was not an unusual practice for Chinese men to bring back their Chinese mestizo or indio wives or concubines to live in China.[19] When Bonifacio left for the Philippines in 1850 at the age of 36, he was classified as Chinese mestizo.[20] He then requested the Ministro de Ultramar in 1880 to officially change his classification from “Chinese mestizo” to “sangley,” and to pay the tribute as “his ancestors (had) and to dress as Chinese.”[21]
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[19] Richard T. Chu, Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture 1860s-1930s;(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 361.
[20] Because of the more common occurrence of travel back and forth between China and the Philippines, there is reason to believe, even in the absence of documentary evidence, that Bonifacio must have visited the Philippines a few times before 1850.
[21] Rafael Comenge y Dalmau, Cuestiones Filipinas (studio social y politico). Ia. parte. Lost Chinos (Manila: Tipolitografia de Chofré y compa, 1894), 229.; Wickberg, “The Chinese Mestizo in Philippine History,” 66 n.11.