MEDIUM RARE

Cook is about to cultivate a phobia for going to market. Her latest report: Cherries from Hong Kong cost ₱50 a piece, per cherry, or ₱1,250 per kilo.

That’s all right, I told her, I don’t need cherries (like I need cilantro to perfume my salads and steamed fish, for what is life without cilantro?). Within minutes there came a knocking on our door. A messenger with a gift of cherries for me — what, a heavensent? — from a dear one who has just arrived from Hong Kong. The HK price, I was told, is HK$9 (about ₱63) for half a kilo, so it’s probably okay for me to eat the fruit without feeling like I’m biting into a gold nugget. At that price, cherries from China should cost ₱126/kg or a tenth of the prevailing price at our palengke.

But then China is China. For, on the eighth day God created China. After that everything was made, is being made, in China.

As Rep. Joey Salceda puts it, we must learn to live with China. Cuisine-wise, civilization-wise, economically and diplomatically speaking.

The chief finance officer of Jollibee, a long, strong chain of fastfood restaurants — special offer: Chinese fried chicken — has this to say: “China is too big to ignore.”

Big but not so big as to need to invade another country. With 1.2 billion mouths to feed and just a few years after the government declared the end of extreme poverty in their once poorest-of-the-poor provinces, China wants the world to know that “hegemonism is not in China’s DNA,” as stated by President Xi Jinping at a recent gathering of world leaders. 

Historians on the Chinese side have been reminding us that China is not in the habit of taking over territories and nations. The greatest maritime fleet in the world once upon a time under Admiral Chung-o was in the habit of sailing the oceans, but only to promote trade and nothing more sinister.

As the world’s second largest economy, China has been playing host to high-level American officials in recent weeks, including the secretary of commerce. President Biden was reported to have said that he expects to sit down with President Xi “this year.” A plan not made in China.