That title is the most appropriate to describe a significant number of Filipinos. Perhaps, it would have been better, if it was the other way around that we had an American look and a Chinese paradigm. But the truth is: most Filipinos have Chinese blood but they have a US-oriented education. Even our system of government had been patterned on the Americans. Our Constitution, the 1935, the 1973, and the 1987 charters have all been based on the basic principles, forms, structures, and processes of the US Constitution. Our presidential system is based on the American model, and even our Bill of Rights is almost verbatim clones of Thomas Jefferson's version.
Aside from our face, there are many things that are very Chinese in us. For instance, we are very family-oriented, and we are largely matriarchal. Also, we have certain distinct cultural values, such as the one where we honor our dead and even venerate our ancestors. We are very clannish, and we are very loyal to our relatives and neighbors. We always love to go home to the land of our parents and renew ties with our kin. Another Chinese trait in us is our love for good food. We like bonding moments where we break bread and engage in boodle fight with our bare hands, eating native delicacies, and ethnic concoctions.
But on matters of law and education, in our government, and legal systems, it is always the American way that we follow. For instance, our court procedures and our mechanisms for resolution and settlement of legal, especially labor disputes, we adopt the adversarial, confrontational, and antagonistic legal procedures. We adopt mediations, arbitrations, litigations and appeals based on American models. In education, we follow the public and private school systems in the US. Even the quality of our higher institution of learnings and academic institutions are benchmarked against the American standards.
We can rightly see that the Filipinos have Chinese roots but with American wings, American dreams, that is. Our soul, psyche, and innate character are Chinese. But our ambitions, our value systems, and our standards of success are all Americans. That is why President Duterte could not have been serious when he mentioned something about separation or divorce from the US. The large majority of the Filipinos would never allow that to happen. Nine out of ten families have close relatives in the US. The ties could not just be broken in the wink of an eye or abandoned out of the blue.
The Filipino character is a complexed one. It is the product of 377 years of oppression by Spain, 45 years of occupation by the Americans, four years of invasion by the Japanese, and many centuries of interactions with other Asian countries Indonesia, Malaysia, China, India, and the Middle east which brought Islam into our islands long before Christianity was introduced in 1521. In formulating our independent foreign policies, the president should consider both our roots (where we came from) and our wings where we want to be. That, to me, is what matters most.