July 2018 - Scoot In-flight Magazine

ABOVE:
The master’s
bedroom is a
popular spot
among the
visitors of the
1730 Jesuit
House.
SPANISH
AND CHINESE
INFLUENCES
1730 Jesuit House features coral
stone walls and hardwood
floors made of tugas or molave
trees. The two-storey house was
completed in 1730 to
accommodate the Jesuit
missionaries who were assigned
in Parian, an area where Chinese
merchants conducted trade
with the locals. Astonishingly,
these commercial transactions
were already ongoing even
before the team of navigator
Ferdinand Magellan came to
conquer the island and claimed
to discover the archipelago.
In 1768, the Jesuits were
expelled from all of the
territories where Spanish King
Carlos III reigned, which included
the Philippines. No reliable
evidence proves what
happened to the house after
the religious order’s exile until
the Alvarez family—originally
from Spain—resided in the
property. The Sy family then
purchased it and transformed it
into a warehouse in the 1960s.
“My father originally bought
this place to be used as a
warehouse. He didn’t buy this
house because of the house
itself. He was interested in the
compound because it was
fenced,” recalls 68-year-old
Jaime Sy, owner and founder of
Museo Parian.
His father, Nicanor, converted
the open space into an area
where he could store
construction materials for his
business, Ho Tong Hardware,
and intentionally kept the house
untouched. Jaime even
remembered his dad telling him
to preserve it because “this is
memorabilia of the Chinese
craftsmen who built it.”
Even though it is believed that
the Chinese were responsible
for building the house—as
observed through the wood
construction, dragon tail details
inside the rooms, and the clouds
painted on the ceilings—it is still
mainly influenced by the
50 SCOOT