| Introduction 簡介 | Pan Chai means a ‘Filipino Boy’ in Chinese Cantonese. Pan Chai is any Filipino male in Macau, and its counterpart is Pan Mui, which means Filipino female, or simply ‘maid; house servant’. Pan Chai is a name one sensitive Filipino like me would not like be addressed with, much in the same manner a sensitive African-American would not be pleased to be called ‘negro’ or ‘nigger’. The book Pan Chai: A Filipino Boy in Macau is an experience, mine per se as a bard and as an observer of the world around me, surreal and real. When I say experience, I mean I put my very own self in the shoes of every Filipino I see in the streets of Macau and in the shoes of every god that any religion can possibly invent. That is what a poet or a writer should do—put themselves in the shoes of others. When I was writing the book Pan Chai: A Filipino Boy in Macau I did just that, and doing so was painful and poignant. I felt the sadness of my people— a sadness whose shape, depth, and color cannot be defined even by the most powerful gods in whatever brightest corner of ethereal light they may be reigning; their struggle that seems to be endless and fathomless; their dreams that can never be real, because a dream to be real should be born out of reality and be tangible, but people’s dream is born out of blind and unreachable hope— it is nothing that the very muscles of man can do; it is nothing that the very hands of man can grasp. I am not saying our attempts at solving our problems are in vain. I just want to say that our ways are ineffective, because dots just don’t connect. Pan Chai is, honestly and admittedly, a very pessimist book, because its observation of the Filipino is an attempt at telling the whole true the way I see it. — Papa Osmubal |
Association of Stories in Macao 澳門故事協會 