What appeared to have been a mutually beneficial and interdependent relationship between Spaniards and Hokkien in Manila sowed the seeds of discord and distrust that led to incidences of extreme violence.  Even as some Spaniards praised the Chinese for their skilled labor, commercial spirit, and overall alacrity in meeting every Spanish need and demand, these same Spaniards also sought to control and discipline Chinese entrepreneurship with a series of improvised taxes, tariffs and licensing fees that the Chinese viewed as onerous, arbitrary and unfair.  For example, for those who wished to reside permanently in Manila, a residency permit of eight pesos per annum was assessed.  The missionaries also imposed a contribution of several pesos for a community fund.  (Salazar; p. 237 in Blair and Robertson translation)  Chinese junk merchants especially resented an indirect tax of ten percent of the total value of their goods, in addition to the six percent tariff imposed on merchandize from China, compared with only three percent for goods from all other sources.  (Guerrero, pp. 31-32; Morga, p. 317, notes that only 3 percent was assessed on the Chinese merchandize, which amounted to 40,000 pesos per year.)

Occupation Number Occupation Number
Blanket sellers          31                             Umbrella maker        3
Silk vendors             50                              Boxmaker                   7
Peddlers                   27                               Locksmith                  4
Ceramics dealers       7                             Western tailors         6
Weavers                   31                               Fishermen with nets        6
Sweetmakers             6                              Petate makers          6
Foundrymen              5                              Waterjar makers    3
Netmakers                 27                              Boatmen                  9
Sugar vendors            24                            Druggists                5
Hat/sword makers     13                           Barbers                   11
Vegetable sellers       26                             Chinese tailors       6
Shoemakers                8                               Brokers                  16
Fishermen                  8                                Braziermen           10
Fishermen with boats                 26           Dyers                     24
Silversmiths                                  21            Carpenters           17
Wax chandeliers w/o shops     14             Boatmen to Pampanga    23
Wax chandeliers w/shops        14             Boatmen to Cebu                 8
Booksellers                                  3               Boatmen to Iloilo                 6
Rattan dealers                           10              Guards                  9
Ironsmiths                                   8               Tea dealers           4
Winemakers                              10                Ropemakers         3
Noodlemakers                          18                Water dealers       3
Sellers of buyo                         33                 Rice cleaners       5
Rice dealers                               6                  Tahug sellers       7
Chicken dealers                       7                   Chinese cooks     12
Chicken dealers w/ boats     19                  Porters                33
Tobacco dealers                    28                   Oil dealers           11

In 1603, with their numbers in Manila as high as 30,000, the Chinese staged a protest against the heavy and arbitrary taxes and fees imposed on them.   Even more than the onerous multiple taxes and feels, they really resented the arbitrariness of being repeatedly assessed, even when the stated amount had already been paid.  In response, the Spaniards unleashed the full force of their military might on the Chinese.  The reported massacre of 25,000 Chinese (probably exaggerated) practically decimated the Parián.  Those who had escaped death were deported back to China.  Manila came to a standstill. (Díaz-Trechuelo, pp. 138-40)

Before long, Spaniards beckoned Chinese to return, which they did promptly and repopulated the Parián, resuming life and work as before, provisioning the galleons with luxury goods as well as food, supplying Spanish residents with food, clothing, shoes and all other necessities of everyday life.  Just as the Chinese re-entrenched themselves into the Spanish American colony, protests against heavy taxes and fees in 1639 and again in 1662 provided Spaniards with ready excuses to rain reprisals on the Chinese with a heavy, violent hand, each time followed by destruction and desertion of the Parián.  (Díaz-Trechuelo, pp. 149-53)  After a brief respite, traders, artisans and laborers from Minnan, (augmented by immigrants from Guangdong later in the century), would return to the site of their violent confrontation with Spaniards, enabling a revived and rebuilt Parián to rise from the ashes of violence to grow and thrive until the next state campaign to cut them down again. (Felix, p. 3)  Insatiable appetites on both sides of this transpacific transaction—Chinese for silver, Mexicans for silk—made this an enduring relationship, albeit often confrontational and violent, because of its very interdependence.  

Admiration tinged with fear of the Chinese could be discerned in all those Spaniards who lived, worked and observed the Sangley close at hand. While prompted to pronounce them “a great danger to the Spanish population in the city,” they also knew they could not conduct trade with China nor survive in Manila without the Chinese. There was simply no way out for Spaniards, who could not rid themselves permanently of the Chinese community when the Chinese constituted the backbone of the Spanish mercantile colonial enterprise in Manila.   Spanish fear and mistrust would always be trumped by their total dependence on the Chinese, hence their haste to recall the Chinese to Manila shortly after each periodic violent episode that culminated in expulsion, setting the stage for the interplay between integration and rejection that characterized relationships in the first American Chinatown. Putting it another way, it was precisely the close and intimate daily interaction between Chinese and Spaniards in every facet of local life, in addition to the global economic exchange, that provoked intense Spanish fear of this high degree of penetration into their lives and material interests.  Their response was to break the momentum of the Chinese by shutting them down periodically.  Further adding to the anxiety of Spaniards, while instilling fear and loathing in the Chinese as well, were formidable Chinese pirates off the south China coast, notably the Hokkien known as Limahong, who first attacked Manila in 1574 with three hundred junks.  (Schurz, p. 26; Díaz-Trechuelo; Tsinoy)  As with more well-known pirates of the Caribbean and Atlantic, they were all attracted primarily by the prodigious amounts of silver crossing these oceans.

On the other side of the Pacific, the sleepy port of Acapulco aroused itself from torpor at the approach of the não de china at least one a year and sometime more.  The renowned Acapulco fair attracted buyers and onlookers—as many as ten thousand--from throughout Mexico and the rest of Spanish America, especially Peru, whose Potosí mines (in present-day Bolivia) produced much of the silver for the trade with China.  (Porras, pp. 37)  From Acapulco, much of the merchandize would make their way through the “camino de China” to Mexico City, where they would be bargained over and sold at the big alcaiceria also commonly called the Parián in the middle of the plaza mayor of Mexico City.