Vigan: A touch of romance, dose of nostalgia

Tag : Interwoven Fabrics

Vigan: A touch of romance, dose of nostalgia
By Camille Pilar
One will never know what it is like to be a Filipino until one hasvisited Vigan.
Vigan, a name once or twice encountered on the Philippine map,somewhere up in Ilocos Sur, a place made familiar by the tinge ofhistory lessons, of identity gained and lost. Yet it is a placeburied in books, a fairy tale place scratched out of this countrysconsciousness more attuned to economic instability and personalgain. Through periods named after invader after invader, and withinthe time frame of buildings built and battles won and lost, we havearrived here, the 21st century where no one bothers to bendbackwards and glimpse at what we were like once upon a time.
It is almost impossible to imagine that Vigan used to be an island.Centuries ago, it was surrounded by interconnected rivers streakedwith water plants, one of which is the origin of the places name.Vigan, in all its antiquity and surprising yet gentle touches ofmodernity, is a place with personality. Vigan is the old, wisecharacter in this countrys story.
Once upon a time is all the time in Vigan and such is thewondrous air about the place. It is the third oldest city in thecountry, but far more preserved than Cebu and congested Manila.While Intramuros and Magellans Cross have given way to a newcolonizerprogressVigan basks in untouched historical glory. Afterall, at the heart of Vigan is a love story. It was the love of aJapanese officer for a Filipina that spared the place fromAmericas bombing spree. Today, the same vein of love and salvationthrobs in every street and corner of Vigan.
A page out of tine
I first stepped on Vigan Streetcobbled, not cementedafter a10-hour bus ride from Manila. The moment my shoe kissed the ground,I knew there was something special there, and all dizziness fromthe bus ride disappeared like magic.
Yet magic is mere understatement. What Vigan cleaves to is time,culture, history, our story. Things better than magic because theyhold no trick, they are real. I was once a student of Philippinehistory but in Vigan, I was its comrade, its longtime friend.
I found myself at the entrance of Plaza Salcedo: to my right wasthe municipio, exuding the air of centuries-old State affairsamidst the fresh coat of paint, and to my left was the grand ViganCathedral, whose tiles are as old as our countrys name, with itsbelfry towering over every head and every roof in sight. There Iwas, a witness to the once marriage of Church and State. The cityhall and the church were built side by side at the town center bySpaniards bewildered by the number of tiny, separate (thusunconquerable) barangays in the islands, as an effort to integratethe communities in an urban planning project we have come to learnas the reduccion. This plaza complex still stands in Vigan today,and for long minutes, I could not shake off the chill ofexperiencing firsthand what it was like to be bajo la campana orunder the bell.
All roads across all barrios in Vigan lead to the town center. Fromthe center, I, along with another writer and our tour guide,meandered into lanes which boasted stone houses with sliding capizwindows and narrow balconies. They were uniform in size, big andboxy, though each house had a slight peculiaritydaintier brasslamplights, intricate woodcarving by Chinese artisans on the doors,roofs, pipes and gatesto set it apart from the houses beside it.These houses were actually mansions, the closer you lived to theplaza, the richer you were.
We found a cozy place called Grandpas Inn at Calle Bonifacio andthere we found elegant rooms, an exquisite restaurant and a lovelylittle coffee shop inside an authentic Spanish house converted toaccommodate the said amenities. The stone walls bore the cracks andcorners of age yet they stood formidable as if they were built onlyyesterday. An antique piano was on display and around it weredifferent wind instruments, and the setup was reminiscent of bandsthat entertained the elite at parties in the bulwagan (ballroom).Huge paintings and dioramas covered the walls and antique tables,benches, typewriters, telephones and vintage sewing machines turnedtabletops filled the place with a touch of romance and a heavy doseof nostalgia. These were feelings conjured in almost all the housesin Vigan.
After settling in our rooms, we were welcomed by an Ilocano feastfor dinner at Kusina Felicitas. We were served various interestingdishes such as the bulbulong salad, a medley of kamote and ampalayaleaves, and the poqui poqui, an eggplant omelet. Our main mealconsisted of baby back ribs and the renowned bagnet, a pork dishsimilar to the lechon kawali, and the famous Vigan longganisa camein the morning. Only in Ilocos can you use the words sensual andcholesterol in the same sentence.
The next day, I woke up to the sound of calesas clip-cloppingoutside my window. It was a soothing sound unlike any sound in thecity, where we wake up to the rude grumbling of tricycles andvarious car engines. The vehicles of choice in Vigan today areeither motorcycles, compact enough to zip through the tiny streets,or the calesas, a not-so- quiet reminder of our colonial past.These horse-driven carriages are a living testament to ourcolonization, as horses did not exist in the islands before theSpaniards came.
Making poets weep
A first-time traveler to Vigan, I traversed the many in-roads onfoot, forefinger poised above the camera shutter. A few turns tookme to Calle Crisologo, the main heritage street lined with restoredhouses, souvenir shops, antique shops and other centuries-oldmemorabilia. If there was one place in the entire world melancholicenough to make the poets weep, it would be Crisologo Street.Crisologo is most memorable for its expanse of cobblestones,stretching over a kilometer, where local and tourist feet slow downon purpose to breathe in the sights of antiquity and linger a whilelonger to appreciate the majestic mix of Chinese, Castillian andMexican architecture.
One need only step into the Syquia mansion for time to standperfectly still. The mansion was a dowry from the parents of AliciaSyquia to Elpidio Quirino, president of the Philippines from 1948to 1953. The original residents of the mansion, the Syquias, werepart of the Chinese mestizo elite. Heavy wooden chests, intricatebeds and benches, fine-detailed figurines, Spanish mirrors andcollections of trinkets, unmoved from their original positions,bore traces of the old Galleon trade and Chinese mercantilism.Contrary to the myth, we could not find Quirinos golden toiletanywhere, but three original Amorsolo paintings added all theneeded prestige to the place. How the mansion thwarts theft is asecret known only to the current caretaker, who is afourth-generation Syquia himself.
History is alive in Vigan every day yet not too many people areaware of it. To reawaken the ardor for origins, Vice Mayor FranzRanches and lawyer Everin Molina spearheaded this years weeklongcelebration of all things Vigan. The festivities in Vigan startedon May 1 to celebrate Labor Day since Isabelo de los Reyes(considered the Father of Philippine Labor for establishing thefirst labor union in the country in 1902) is from Vigan. Isabelo isthe son of Leona Florentino, a poet during the Spanish era, and isknown to be the mother of Philippine womens literature.
The festival also highlighted the provinces premier products, fineabel iloco fabrics and the burnay jars, the production of which isa skill passed from mother to daughter, and from father to son. Astrand of modern culture is interwoven with the old in contestssuch as the Barangay Idol and the Vigan Amazing Race, where theclues and destinations revolve around Vigans colorful tale.
As the afternoon sun rose on, the cobbled streets burst with themusic and colors of street dancing with each dancers costumecarrying a different story.
Viva Vigan! the crowd exclaimed. I looked around a sea offaceslocals, foreigners, enthralled city-dwellersall oblivious tothe suns heat, smiling, laughing along with feet pounding thepavements in a rhythm in sync with our heartbeats. As the camerasclicked away, the bell tower looked on, surveying its nth fiesta ina span of four hundred years.
At the end of it all, one can retreat into one of the pews in theVigan Cathedral and silently thank the heavenly Father for placeslike Vigan, not choked but gently stroked by the hands of timeacross the turns of many centuries. There, a McDonalds with capizwindows, a marketplace of mixed dialects, a calesa awaitingpassengers, and there, a young couple sitting on an antique bench,a longganisa vendor, a painted carabao. Vigan restores thehistorian and awakens the poet, the Filipino, the dreaming child,in whoever visits, re-visits and finally, stays.