Two Filipinos in China, 600 years apart

One of the Philippines’ most accomplished journalists, former Time magazine and CNN bureau chief in Beijing Jaime “Jimmy” FlorCruz has covered the stunning economic resurgence and socio-political changes of China over the past 40 years, up until his recent retirement. He was a student activist who visited the then socialist mecca of Beijing in the early 1970s with fellow student activist Chito Sta. Romana (now Philippine ambassador to China), but decided not to return when martial law was declared in the Philippines in September 1972.

Apart from interviewing celebrities like Asia’s NBA superstar Yao Ming, literally hobnobbing with the World Wildlife Fund’s symbol, the panda, to covering milestones of legendary leaders like the reformist Deng Xiaoping, one of his most unforgettable adventures as a journalist and lifelong student of history was his 1981 visit to Dezhou in Shandong province, Eastern China.

Due to the 1949 nationalist and communist revolution of Mao Zedong, followed by the ultra-leftist 1966 to 1976 Cultural Revolution which cleansed China of feudalism but also closed it off from most of the outside world, Jaime FlorCruz was perhaps one of the earliest Filipinos — let alone a journalist — to visit the mausoleum of the Sultan of Sulu Paduka Batara. This burial place and memorial honoring the Sulu Sultan was prepared for him by his friend, China Emperor Yong Le of the Ming Dynasty in 1417; they now stand as modern-day symbols of the ancient friendship between the peoples of the Philippines and China predating Westerners’ discovery of our isles.

This year is the 600th anniversary of that high-level state visit of the Sulu Sultan Paduka Batara to the Ming Dynasty Emperor of China in Beijing City, and Jaime FlorCruz got out is baul of old photos from his 1981 visit to Dezhou town (now a progressive city) when our ancient neighbor had just quietly come out of the Cultural Revolution and Shandong province was still a rather backwater rural region. Here are his recollections and some of his old photos:          

 “Six hundred years ago this year, the Sultan of Sulu, Paduka Batara, and his retinue of 340 people sailed to China for a historic journey to visit Ming Emperor Yong Le. That was 1417, before the beginning of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines.

“On his way back to Sulu, he died and was buried in Dezhou, a town in eastern Shandong province, where many of his retinues’ descendants still live. Decades ago, his Dezhou burial place was designated as a national-level protected shrine. However, it remained a little-known piece of historical ‘trivia,’ off the usual tourist path.

“In the 1970s through the early ‘80s, Dezhou remained off limits to foreigners, a paranoia inflicted by the Cultural Revolution. In 1981, as a keenly curious history student at Peking University, I found an unconventional way to stop over in the then sleepy town to specifically look for the Sultan of Sulu’s burial ground. Remarkably, I found the tumulus and the memorial markers and chatted with a few residents around. The place has since been upgraded and expanded, worthy of its significance, as noted by recent visitors. These snapshots show how it looked when I visited in 1981.”

It is sad that perhaps partly due to the unexpected terrorist attack on Marawi City in Mindanao region and the still ongoing conflict there causing a lot of suffering, the celebratory events of our two countries, the Philippines and China, to commemorate the 600th anniversary of that historic journey of the Sulu Sultan to Beijing have become low-key. Still, let us remember and honor him and all the leaders as well as diplomats of both nations.

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