A food odyssey in world’s oldest Chinatown: siopao, empanadas, hopia and tikoy in Binondo, Manila
- From a breakfast of satay guisado – stir-fried noodles in peanut sauce with beef – to siopao, or steamed pork buns, for lunch, Binondo is food heaven
- Visit neighbourhood’s temples, Arch of Goodwill, and Minor Basilica of St Lorenzo Ruiz, then it’s time for bean-filled pastries and sticky rice cake
Binondo, the oldest Chinatown in the world, has grown from a place for trading into one of the biggest cultural heritage attractions in the Philippines. It attracts dense crowds, especially during Chinese New Year.
You can never truly say that you’ve been to Manila until you have explored Binondo and its Chinese-Filipino subculture.
Binondo dates back to the 16th century. No other Chinatown has a history going back that far. During the Spanish colonial period, non-Catholic Chinese immigrants were confined to a place called Parian, a trading ghetto.
Those who ventured outside the enclave without permission were persecuted. To avoid this fate, many of them married Filipino natives and embraced Catholicism.
In 1594, Governor General of the Philippines Dasmariñas paved the way for a permanent settlement for Catholic Chinese by buying a parcel of land on the hilly northern bank of the Pasig river across from the walled city of Intramuros, where the first Spaniards in Manila lived. The place was called Binondok (meaning hilly in Tagalog, the local language), which later became Binondo.
