I’m out in the Philippines for a month and it seemed more appropriate to write about that than, say, the American election, on which enough has been written to fill a horse.
The Philippines is a developing country and where I am – a nowheresville in the centre of Mindanao – it’s properly, properly poor. The electricity goes off and sometimes also the water; there’s no Grab, just ancient rila taxis made from converted Kawasaki bikes; most of the economy, counting by people, is made of tiny stores in roadside shacks. But the Philippines is also growing like topsy, with Chinese-style growth rates for most of this century. Much of this must be concentrated in Manila, a crazy metropolis, but it’s happening here too. So, there are juxtapositions. Modern SUVs drive beside the rilas and multicabs (a kind of bus made from elongated jeep). A person living under a tin roof has this year’s phone. (It’s not iPhone: almost everyone here has Asian Android. Oppo seems to be a popular brand. In terms of tech Facebook rules everything here: it has replaced the Internet as the platform for business, messaging and social media.)
The starkest difference is the quality of building. Good building work is hard to find. Steps are uneven, concrete blocks are slapped together with crumbling cement, doors don’t always fit. The more general rule, I guess, is that traded goods are more advanced because they come from Asia. The Philippines isn’t just poor, it’s an island economy and not – until recently – a big enough market to support much innovation or learning-by-doing.
I mentioned the shacks. The two other parts of the economy are the malls and online shopping. Malls, here, are civilisation, and if you think progress is a myth, or are snobbish about commerce, come here and experience the heat. You will run to the mall, my friend, because malls are gleaming, modern and air-conditioned. Air conditioning here is simply civilisation. You step in and are transformed from a sweating primate into a modern person. The new cheap kind of aircon, which is quiet and doesn’t need to be stuck into a window, will likely be equally transformative and within reach of many ordinary families. Malls run the gamut. At the low end they are just covered markets filled with people rummaging through clothesbins. At the high end, like the Mall of Asia in Manila or the huge white building looking down into Baguio’s valley, they are something out of Neuromancer. The history of Asian development will probably have an Age of the Mall.
The sun is a tyrant alright. House windows are tinted; life inside goes on under artificial light. Roadbuilders swaddle themselves in clothing, looking like Salvadorean gangsters or Muslim women, because it’s better to boil than get skin cancer. Heat dictates the day’s rhythm: school kids get up at 5 to be in school at 7 because the early hours, when it’s light but not hot, are too precious to waste. You’d expect the Spanish pattern of a siesta followed by late evenings, but I haven’t seen evidence of that: maybe it gets dark too early, even in summer, being close to the equator. Right now it’s rainy season, and mornings until eight are pleasantly cool with the sun behind low banks of cloud. There’s no winter; leaves never fall from the trees and pink and purple flowers are always in bloom. Only high in the mountains, you might need to wear a long-sleeved shirt and enterprising farmers cultivate strawberries, a shalla delicacy because they’re Western.
The malls will probably go the way of the cinema, because of online shopping. Amazon doesn’t reach here and its high-modern routing algorithms might struggle in a place where roads may be dirt tracks, addresses rely on asking a neighbour, delivery men run scams and a town may be several days and multiple ferry journeys from the capital. The players are Shopee, Lazada and TikTok. Shopee is winning: it offers generous promos and has figured out how to get the goods to the customer. The slogan of its parent company SEA is “connect the dots“, which makes sense when you look at a map of the region.
Shopee delivers the Chinese price/quality curve to the archipelago. Local manufacturers must struggle to compete. In this developing country you can buy a cute, elegantly functional travel cot for maybe 20 bucks. And Chinese nappies beat the Western brands on price, style and quality. I don’t say politics can’t drive China apart from “alternative Asia“ – politicians rarely side with consumers against producers – but if it happens, the cost to the average family will be big.
So there’s evidence here for every theory of economic development. I already mentioned climate. As for culture… well, lavatories in public buildings are almost always dirty, surprising given the abundance of cheap labour. But actually, capitalism seems to be generating its own cultural types. Everywhere there’s a leavening of hard-working, competent people who, given the chance, are gonna make bank: like my father-in-law, a builder, who minutely criticises every house he steps into, and is always in demand. And they generate little spreading islands of comfort and modernity among the dust, sweat and heat: the new motel by CDO airport, with clean, comfortable rooms for $20 a night. Connect the dots! I’d bet on the Philippines.
Unlike much of SEA the Philippines’ population pyramid still looks like a pyramid. Fertility has dropped sharply but inertia will keep generations growing for a while. Schools are everywhere, painted in bright primary colours with big concrete “I ❤️” signs in the gardens and hopeful declarations of educational principle on the walls. They seem to be the focus of considerable community pride. Pinoy culture is family- and child-oriented, and given the age structure of the population it also has a childlike, Kawaii vibe.
Though that might be a Westerner’s optical illusion, because Filipinos are literally small. It’s a land of short kings and queens. I’m sure this is genetic – the country is too rich for malnutrition to be a serious problem, and it’s not just poor people. Actually, there might be an example here of culture substituting for genetics: a typical YouTube advert is for “growth-enhancing“ fortified milk. Height matters here, not least because basketball is a popular sport. I suspect that the worldwide export of Pinay girls as nurses, cleaners et cetera is at least partly driven by the desire to find a Big Lunk. (There’s a book to be written on how sex is woven into global macroeconomic trends.) If I were unscrupulous, I’d buy a load of the growth hormones that Texans feed their cattle, and market it as a baby food supplement.
In general, the Philippines feel like a hybrid of Latin America and Asia. Legacies of Catholicism: big families, no divorce, and, I surmise, a tendency for the elite to tell everyone else how to behave. If you’re in labour in the public hospital, the doctors might tell you “stop crying! You brought this on yourself!“ The state sometimes seems to have stepped into the friars’ shoes: before marrying you must attend a lecture either from the priest, presumably on family values, or from a state official on family planning. For many betrothed couples this is like a lecture on equestrian facility door security. Why do you think they’re getting married?
As a crossroads in the Pacific, Philippine culture is also syncretic. Bisaya, the local language in Mindanao, has its own numerals, but uses Spanish ones for dates and times, and English ones for prices. I guess the Spanish brought the bell and the clock and the Americans brought capitalism. English and Spanish words pepper the language: “official” Bisayan, taught in schools only recently, has many pure Bisayan expressions that people don’t actually use or know. There are hints of Chinese and Hindi too (men call each other bai). More recently, Asian media products have invaded: Japanese manga, K-pop and Korean dramas. Not much from the Chinese mainland yet – maybe good art really does need freedom. Weirdly, these media are a conduit for the spread of English, since that’s what they are subtitled in. All the same, Hollywood has been marginalised here, except maybe for the Marvel franchise. You’re more likely to see One Piece on the side of a truck than Spider-Man.
The size of the islands gives Philippine politics a personal, intimate feel. Ideological struggles are also struggles between families – everything comes back to family here. Even the local Al Qaeda offshoot, the gloriously-named Moro Islamic Liberation Front, supposedly grew among dissatisfied Malay clans, more than from pure Islamic ideology. MILF was finally smashed – I’m sorry – when special forces under Duterte kept killing its leaders within months of their election. The last one just said “guys, I’m not worthy of this honour”.
Duterte, by the way, is very widely loved. He was originally mayor of Davao and surprisingly ecological/progressive in that role. As president, as much as cutting crime (via quite ruthless methods) he terrorised the bureaucracy into actually doing its job. He cosied up to China, and again in this seems more realistic than the goody-two-shoes Marcos shrub who has followed him. I saw Marcos on TV recently discussing the four day week. Developing-country politics so often seems to exist in a fantasy world, following the latest Western trends. Nobody‘s gonna have a four-day week here until they’ve got a decent car and a solid roof over their heads.
Family is everything here. In my in-laws’ compound, seven or eight cousins are always available to play, and someone will always be watching them. The extended family is very real and its benefits must be worth a lot to young parents. It’s very much like that vision of the working class childhood in the book Unequal Childhoods: nobody is coddled, but there are also no children’s books or educational toys lying around. It would be nice to combine the best of both worlds. The compound can be rough: everyone gets a nickname and even quite small children who cry may be simultaneously comforted and laughed at. Childrearing methods in general are… robust 😳. Exchange with my wife: “but when they get older you beat them less, right?“ “No! When they are older and misbehave, it’s more disrespectful, so you beat them more.”
Family is everything. Even the mangy street bitch outside our Airbnb harbours sad fantasies of becoming a family dog, perhaps padding down a thick-carpeted hallway to retrieve Master’s slippers in exchange for a pat and a treat. Chasing this dream, on day three she snuck inside and fortified herself under the television set. She had to be chased out with threats and a broom handle, growling bitterly. Back to reality, Askal mutt! Back to your friends and their hideous, untreated tumours! Now she lies outside in the sun, teats akimbo, murmuring “tread softly, because you tread on my dreams”.
Oh, about the cot? Honestly, all this parenthood discourse is straining at a gnat. Raising the birth rate should be easy for anyone who wants to. Children are adorable and low-maintenance, if you don’t tie yourself in knots, and I personally find changing nappies enjoyable. *I have been a father for 10 days.
I have gone paid. Now is a great time to subscribe and support my writing. It costs just £3.50/month, and yearly subscribers get a great big 40% discount, plus a free copy of my book:
Congratulations!