Rizal’s Last Haven

Hong Kong conjures up images of shopping and dining. But Hong Kong also figures in so much of our history, particularly in the life of our national hero Jose Rizal. When I go there, as I did recently, I make it a point to take a break from the sightseeing and the shopping and revisit the places where Rizal lived and worked. In doing so, I ponder on a very crucial period of his life, his thoughts and his aspirations for our country.

It was November 20, 1891 when Rizal arrived in Hong Kong from Europe with 600 copies of El Filibusterismo, the sequel to his Noli Me Tangere. It was a hardship finding the money to print the books and his friend Jose Ma. Basa, a wealthy lawyer exiled in Hong Kong, lent him the money he needed. By the time he arrived in Hong Kong, he had received much praise for the Fili from compatriots in Europe that he must have felt a sense of satisfaction and pride to meet his patron friend.

Rizal left Europe with a lot of internal turmoil among his fellow reformists. He questioned the continued publication of the newspaper La Solidaridad and factions like Pilaristas (those favoring the editor Marcelo H. Del Pilar) and Rizalistas developed. He wanted to have nothing to do with the infighting and thought of establishing a school in Hong Kong, become its director, and teach Science, Languages and the Arts, like his old school Ateneo.

The Crown Colony would be tonic for Rizal. He was comforted being near to the Philippines. But just as he was looking for a house to live in, he would receive distressing news from home. The Dominican friars in collusion with the Spanish colonial government was forcibly ejecting tenants, including his family, from their lands in Rizal’s birthplace, Calamba, in the province of Laguna. By the end of December, Rizal’s parents, two sisters and a brother joined him in Hong Kong. Rizal’s 64-year-old mother was harassed, threatened and, despite being blind, was forced to walk for days in order to leave Calamba.

There is a long, probably the longest, escalator in the HongKong island side which starts from the old Central section and ascends up a mountainside alongside the old stairways, in between buildings and above the roadways that snake up the mountain. Halfway up this series of escalators are a number of modern condominium buildings now peopled mostly by expats, complete with boutiques and watering holes.

About three-fourths of the way up, you alight and walk up the stairs until you see a small street sign that says Rednaxela Terrace. It’s an unusual name but it is actually the name "Alexander" in reverse! Folklore has it that it was a Chinese sign maker who wrote the letters in reverse and, it seems, was never corrected.

Number 2 Rednaxela Terrace, 300 feet above sea level on the steepest slopes of Victoria Peak, was where Rizal lived with his reunited family for the next seven months. He wrote to his friends to say it was a house. I walked the length of the Terrace and unfortunately, aging apartment buildings interspersed with empty lots now inhabit the narrow street. An empty lot abutting a mountain-side rendered a magnificent view of Hong Kong below, the bay and Kowloon beyond. It must have been the same view from their house that Rizal noted his contented father "contemplates the sea and watches the boats."

Rizal wrote to his best friend Ferdinand Blumentritt that the house was small and the rent was $40 a month. "We have furnished and decorated it. The hall is also my library; we have few callers. Everywhere I have hung pictures, arms and photos; I see you and your children every day," referring to the Blumentritt family photos that he lovingly posted on their wall.

Hong Kong allowed Rizal to actually practice being an eye surgeon and he set up an office on No. 5 D’Aguilar St. right off the main Queen’s Road Central. If the escalator had been around in his time, he would have comfortably commuted from his house up on the Peak to his work in less than 15 minutes. He had business cards made and developed a large clientele and, for the first time in his life, became financially independent. It was in this colony that he would also successfully operate on his mother’s eyes, allowing her to see and read again.

D’Aguilar Street is very near the chic Landmark shopping center and if you make a pilgrimage to his address the original building is gone but there is a plaque, placed about seven years ago, that commemorates our hero’s work place. There was some initial opposition to the placing of the plaque but it was eventually installed with pressure from the local media and the Filipino community.

Dr. Lourenco Pereira Marques was a neighbor of Rizal’s in Rednaxela Terrace and the two became steadfast friends since they shared radical ideas. Dr. Marques was the medical officer of Victoria Prison and Rizal would write extensively about a visit to that prison, which today still stands several blocks up the hill from his workplace. It was also through Dr. Marques that Rizal would visit nearby Macao.

Dr. Marques was influential in Rizal’s plan to encourage the migration of his family and dispossessed Calamba citizens and establish a Filipino colony in North Borneo. This was not a lark of a plan since Rizal had written to many of his compatriots about it and they had all written back eager to know what to do next.

Rizal left Hong Kong in late March of 1892 to see North Borneo for himself and scout for a potential site. There were land ownership issues that came up and Rizal may have realized that the plan was a personal reaction to protect his loved ones from further Spanish cruelty. His father, having reached Hong Kong and having regained his strength and a renewed happiness, had vowed never to return to his homeland and would die there instead. His own mother had become very cynical with her Catholic faith and his relatives and friends were constantly telling him not to return.

But the country tugged at Rizal. He realized even more that his efforts to have the Philippines assimilated into the Spanish empire and the reformist work that he and his colleagues in Spain were involved in were useless, given the mistreatment of his countrymen.

In the relative freedom of Hong Kong, Rizal created the organization La Liga Filipina, a secret union of Filipinos that would come together to protect and defend each other from injustice and violence. It would also study and promote reform in education, agriculture and commerce. Its preamble seemed innocuous, primarily to assuage the Spanish authorities. But, with Rizal at the helm and with his significant following, the organization could only be seen as subversive.

For the organization to have life, Rizal had to return home. It would seem such an inopportune time. After so many years of being a student dependent on family allowances and the support of friends, he was now a successful eye surgeon. His family, for the first time, was basking in the freedom of Hong Kong and, through their letters, acknowledged that their sojourn in the Crown Colony would be the happiest moments of their lives.

Despite the reassurance of the local Spanish consul of his safe return to the country, Rizal was on a trajectory that only he could fathom. At 30 years old, he was an accomplished writer and essayist, considered a singular threat to the Spanish government in the Philippines. His latest book El Filibusterismo was another blistering salvo at the friars and was, through its principal characters, rationalizing the need for a revolution. Rizal knew that his works would have a price, including that of his own life.

Rizal wrote two letters, one for his family and the other for his countrymen, to be read only after his death. He entrusted these two letters to Dr. Marques. In the letter to his family, he asked for their forgiveness for all the grief set upon them for the work he did. He would add, "…if I had to start all over again, I would act as I did because it is my duty."

To his fellow Filipinos he wrote that, despite his death, "…the country has still many sons who can take my place." In closing, he simply stated that "I have always loved my poor country and I am sure I shall love her to the last moment…I shall die blessing her and wishing for her the dawn of her redemption."

The two letters were written on June 20, 1892, one day after his 31st birthday. The next day, Jose Rizal boarded a boat to return, finally, to the Philippines. On that same day, the Spanish consul in Hong Kong sent a telegram to the Governor General in Manila with a brief but ominous message : "The rat is in the trap."

After four years of exile in Dapitan, Rizal would be sentenced to death.

On your next trip to Hong Kong, get a free map at the airport arrival counter and find D’Aguilar in the Central section of Hong Kong. When you’re shopping or carousing in the area, walk up that street and you can’t miss the plaque. And later, at tea time, think about the bitter sweet sojourn of our hero and his family in this beautiful former Crown Colony.