The Hokkien community of Manila was a prototype and forerunner of many more Hokkien “Chinatowns” in Southeast Asia, when the Dutch and the British in their respective empires in Asia also came to depend on their services, skills, ethnic and social networks, and their deep and vast trade and commercial experiences. In considering the mighty seaborne empires of the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and British, the Chinese were never behind. Furthermore, the Parián in Spanish Manila, America’s first Chinatown, exhibited many of the characteristics—some accurate, others stereotypical—that would be associated with all barrios chinos throughout the Americas, including modern Spanish America.  Among these were their willingness to do any kind of job, provide any kind of service, produce any kind of gift (luxury) and consumer goods, and in other ways fill occupational niches that no one wanted, as well as meet market demands that others shunned, excelling in retail trade.  They went places at the margins of society that experienced sudden development, such as the long borderlands with the United States in northern Mexico, the mining towns of Peru and the Amazon, the sugar plantations of nineteenth century Cuba, as well as established towns and cities.  They readily extended credit to regular clients of their bodegas in their role as the ubiquitous shopkeeper, the “chino de la esquina.”  And they were resilient, tolerating abuses and violence to a great degree, as long as they could make a living, with prospects of doing better.   And always, in a recurrent observation that borders on stereotype, their goods and services were praised and appreciated for their good quality and low cost: “muy bueno y muy barato.”  

Finally, language sometimes preserves memory in unexpected ways.  The Chinese, in Mexico and in China, often refer to Mexico in the vernacular as “Big Luzon” (Da Lusong 大 旅 宋) as if in tribute to the original Luzon of the Spanish Philippines where the Chinese had played such a significant role, and where Chinese had the first sustained contact with Spanish-speaking peoples. In linking these two places through language, the Chinese have preserved the historical continuity of Mexico and Mexicans in their lives.