Revisiting San Bin: My Childhood Home

In Beijing, we saw the Great Wall. In Hong Kong, it was the Giant Buddha. But the visit that has left the most profound effect on me during the past three weeks was revisiting my childhood home in Manila.

My family lived in a three-storey school - San Bin Private School - from 1983, when I was two, to 1989, when we immigrated to Canada. My mom was the principal and my family lived in a small unit on the second floor. The maintenance guy's family also lived on the second floor and my friend Kiking's family lived on the third floor.

I still have so many happy memories of San Bin. From my friends to teachers, to countless hours playing pretend teacher in the empty classrooms during weekends, to the terrifying flying cockroaches that chased me around our small home - all the way to riding the casela (horse carriage - which are still there) down the street with my dad. I even tutored classmates in kindergarten and grade 1. Apparently, one parent was so appreciative that she gave me a whole cooked chicken for Christmas!

Looking back, it was quite fun being able to wake up 15 minutes before class and just walking down the hallway to class - or coming out of the shower and seeing classmates hanging out in the hallway right outside our front door.

Last Friday morning, my aunt took me to visit my old home and neighbourhood. Driving down the street in the Binondo neighbourhood - where we lived - everything seemed so familiar yet so different. For one, the streets were so much smaller.

When we drove over a bridge, I remembered it as the same bridge that I crossed the time I ran off from my mom's work at the local Chinese newspaper (where she worked as a reporter/editor - yes, she was a workaholic), because she wouldn't let me watch my Bioman tv show using the work TV. So I decided to walk home and watch it there. As our area was not the safest place for a 6-year-old boy to wander by himself, did I ever get in a lot of shit when my mom eventually located me on the street, shortly after I had crossed that bridge.

When we finally reached Camba Street - where San Bin was - I had to take a deep breath. This was the moment I had been waiting for the entire trip. Then I was devastated when I discovered that the school was no longer there. It had closed down nearly two years ago. In its place, a condominium had already started construction.





I was looking so forward to potentially going in and seeing:

Our old home: the kitchen - which you saw first thing when you walked in - where my dad quizzed me on multiplication table while I ate my lunch; the small space where Sa and I shared a green metal bunk bed; my parent's bedroom where I watched TV on the weekends and repeatedly watched Sleeping Beauty, because it was the only Betamax movie I had (talk about conditioning a future homo, eh?).

Our old decrepit bathroom, where we had no functional shower or toilet - so I had to shower using a pail and bucket and take a dump into an old cooking pot, which our maid Emma would then clean. Someone please explain to me how we could afford to have a maid but not a proper toilet?

The small basketball court, where students lined up once a week - by their grade level - and all did physical exercises together (jumping jacks, squats, etc.); where the school put up a stage as part of the annual student talent show or during the year-end ceremony to award top students with medals and certificates.

The old classrooms, where had long school days - from 7:15 a.m. to 4:10 p.m. everyday; where students had to get up and greet the teacher everytime she walked in or out of the room (this got really annoying when a teacher would not make up her mind whether or not she was coming or going).



The disappointment over not seeing San Bin wore off very quickly, because just being in that space made me feel like I had revisited a really special time. It is a hard feeling to explain. It's not like driving back to my old apartment in North York, Toronto. This was different.

San Bin was not just an old home - but today, even though it's no longer there, it represents a lot of "what ifs." Like, where would I be now and what would I be like - if my parents had not made the decision to immigrate to Canada. For one thing, seeing my old home definitely drove the point home that my parents made big personal sacrifices when they made the decision to immigrate to Canada - so that my sister and I were able to have more opportunities here.

When my uncle asked me during dinner the other day if I have any regrets about coming to Canada, I could only reply with a smile, "I don't know. You'd have to ask my parents."