supplied, some of the mausoleums being plumbed.
‘Which would you rather be, a dead Chinese or a living Filipino?’ ran the joke question that was neither question nor joke and expected no answer, lnsofar as there was an answer it lay on the other side of the cemetery wall in the shape of a parody suburb in miniature. Here were well-swept, empty roads with proper pavements and neat plots with patches of lawn, each with its little building. Or house. Or palace, even, for some were cased in polished marble. Behind their padlocked wrought iron gates a sarcophagus rested in what could only be a living room, given the mats and vases of flowers, the brooms tucked neatly behind the staircase in one corner. Stairs because there was often another room above which no doubt (according to those from over thewall) contained a fax machine, a Betamax, a telephone and all the other things essential to dead Chinese businessmen. Votive lights burned in the tombs of the Catholics, otherwise in shrines containing curling photographs, old joss sticks and scraps of red tissue paper. Solidly built and mostly well maintained, these vacant houses with their water and electricity were visited on anniversary and feast days by families who parked their cars in the empty street and bore supplies of food and metal polish through the iron gates.
Not all these tombs were well looked after, just as many were not palaces. Some – especially those of such flamboyantly weird design as could only have belonged to the sort of lone eccentrics who leave no family – were in sad disrepair. They were cracked, tumbledown, overgrown. One or two were broken into and inhabited briefly by squatters until noticed and ejected by the cemetery’s police detachment. Generally, the grander and newer tombs were those offering services and it was behind one of these that an illegal standpipe had been plumbed into a water main and supplied the people living on that side of San Clemente. The ordinary muser, the stroller in the cemetery (it being one of Manila’s few oases of comparative calm) might wander for hours in this Lilliputian townlet without knowing of San Clemente’s existence, or of its barely distinguishable neighbouring slums separated each from each by a stretch of wall, a muddy lane or a rivulet of effluent. Only, from one or other vantage point grey waves and crests and hollows could be glimpsed as the shanty roofs spread out below in a frozen sea of tin. True, children came up from these barrios to play, but they stayed close to the gaps in the wall, ready to scuttle back at the sign of a patrol by the cemetery police. This detachment was billeted in an infrequently used chapel somewhere in the middle. Their presence was assured by the city’s predominantly Chinese administration, as well as by the privately donated funds of the Chinese community. They were there partly to prevent the ever-rising tide of squatters from lapping over the walls and flooding in (swirling around the classical columns, eroding the very marble!). But they were there also to stop the stealthy bands of grave robbers who might otherwise come by night and dig to their hearts’ content. Never mind gold teeth: there was a brisk market in any old teeth to supply the nation’s thousands of dental students, each of whom had to acquire some for practical exam projects. Many a body lay in a provincialcemetery minus lower jaw or entire skull. Much, too, might be mentioned of more occult purposes.
San Clemente, then, rose to the flanks of this cemetery from a miasmic dell of sewage to a lesser eminence, sandwiched between the living and the dead (if the mainstream of city life was represented by howling boulevards like José Abad Santos and Aurora Avenue). Upwards of two hundred families were crammed in. Inside this walled village were no streets, only trails scarcely four feet wide which twisted and dipped according to the haphazard siting of the shanties. Here, some casually abandoned
‘Which would you rather be, a dead Chinese or a living Filipino?’ ran the joke question that was neither question nor joke and expected no answer, lnsofar as there was an answer it lay on the other side of the cemetery wall in the shape of a parody suburb in miniature. Here were well-swept, empty roads with proper pavements and neat plots with patches of lawn, each with its little building. Or house. Or palace, even, for some were cased in polished marble. Behind their padlocked wrought iron gates a sarcophagus rested in what could only be a living room, given the mats and vases of flowers, the brooms tucked neatly behind the staircase in one corner. Stairs because there was often another room above which no doubt (according to those from over thewall) contained a fax machine, a Betamax, a telephone and all the other things essential to dead Chinese businessmen. Votive lights burned in the tombs of the Catholics, otherwise in shrines containing curling photographs, old joss sticks and scraps of red tissue paper. Solidly built and mostly well maintained, these vacant houses with their water and electricity were visited on anniversary and feast days by families who parked their cars in the empty street and bore supplies of food and metal polish through the iron gates.
Not all these tombs were well looked after, just as many were not palaces. Some – especially those of such flamboyantly weird design as could only have belonged to the sort of lone eccentrics who leave no family – were in sad disrepair. They were cracked, tumbledown, overgrown. One or two were broken into and inhabited briefly by squatters until noticed and ejected by the cemetery’s police detachment. Generally, the grander and newer tombs were those offering services and it was behind one of these that an illegal standpipe had been plumbed into a water main and supplied the people living on that side of San Clemente. The ordinary muser, the stroller in the cemetery (it being one of Manila’s few oases of comparative calm) might wander for hours in this Lilliputian townlet without knowing of San Clemente’s existence, or of its barely distinguishable neighbouring slums separated each from each by a stretch of wall, a muddy lane or a rivulet of effluent. Only, from one or other vantage point grey waves and crests and hollows could be glimpsed as the shanty roofs spread out below in a frozen sea of tin. True, children came up from these barrios to play, but they stayed close to the gaps in the wall, ready to scuttle back at the sign of a patrol by the cemetery police. This detachment was billeted in an infrequently used chapel somewhere in the middle. Their presence was assured by the city’s predominantly Chinese administration, as well as by the privately donated funds of the Chinese community. They were there partly to prevent the ever-rising tide of squatters from lapping over the walls and flooding in (swirling around the classical columns, eroding the very marble!). But they were there also to stop the stealthy bands of grave robbers who might otherwise come by night and dig to their hearts’ content. Never mind gold teeth: there was a brisk market in any old teeth to supply the nation’s thousands of dental students, each of whom had to acquire some for practical exam projects. Many a body lay in a provincialcemetery minus lower jaw or entire skull. Much, too, might be mentioned of more occult purposes.
San Clemente, then, rose to the flanks of this cemetery from a miasmic dell of sewage to a lesser eminence, sandwiched between the living and the dead (if the mainstream of city life was represented by howling boulevards like José Abad Santos and Aurora Avenue). Upwards of two hundred families were crammed in. Inside this walled village were no streets, only trails scarcely four feet wide which twisted and dipped according to the haphazard siting of the shanties. Here, some casually abandoned
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