TO MY MEMORY, ONE OF DAD'S FINEST HOURS

It would be a difficult endeavor indeed, for Dad has over half a century's worth of global accomplishment, but if I were to try and narrow it down to a single event that best exemplifies to me his strength of character, it would have to be an event that began in the wee hours of the morning one day in July, 1976.

Dad was less than a year into his assignment as Minister-Counselor and Chargé d’Affaires at the newly opened Philippine Embassy in Beijing, China. At that time, China was still very much in the throes of the Cultural Revolution. There was a deep-seeded institutionalized suspicion of the outside world, particularly of Western countries and those governments allied with them. There were very very few foreigners living in Beijing at the time, the overwhelming majority of them diplomats and their families. We lived in residential enclaves exclusively reserved for diplomats, apartment buildings, luxurious by Chinese standards back then, in compounds separated from the local population by high cement walls and big iron fences. At the gates of these exclusive residential complexes stood guardposts, manned 24 hours a day by People’s Liberation Army soldiers, many armed with AK-47s. The running joke was that we weren’t quite sure if these guards were there to keep out the locals or to keep an eye on us foreigners. The consensus was a little of both, such was the nature of the Chinese government’s relationship with the outside world at the time.

The year 1976 was particularly tumultuous in modern Chinese history. My brother Howie, sister Gina and I joined Dad in Beijing in early April, after the Ateneo school year had ended. In January of that year, just several months before we arrived, Zhou En Lai had passed away. The capital was still in a state of mourning, with Red Guard parades winding solemnly up the empty Chang An Boulevard to Tien An Men Square. There was much speculation of a power struggle taking place in the upper echelons of the Communist Party, not only as a result of Zhou’s death, but also in anticipation of Mao Ze Dong’s impending demise, as his health was also reportedly failing. Key figures in the Party were jockeying for position and consolidating their power. China was entering a period of grave and precarious uncertainty, the future unknown and unpredictable, requiring cautious vigilance from Beijing's few foreign residents.

1975, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos (foreground left) toasts with China's Premier Zhou En Lai to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Less than a year after this moment, Zhou would pass away leaving a vacuum in the Communist Party leadership and a power struggle to fill it. (Photographer unknown, print from the Severino family archives.)

Chinese society was deep into the frugal communist lifestyle, which dictated no nightlife for the common people. There were no bars, no Starbucks open until midnight, no 24-hour McDonald’s drive-throughs, no discotheques with Filipino cover bands, and no traffic. It was de facto a curfew for the locals, who had better have a good reason to be out after dark. Aside from security personnel, the streets of Beijing were typically dead by 9 or 10 in the evening. The city was silent at night, not the kind of silence like the tranquility depicted in classical Chinese landscapes; it was the silence of repression, palpable as we foreign teenagers biked home from lavish parties thrown by various embassies, the only nightlife available to diplomatic personnel on weekends. In the wee hours of the morning one day in July of 1976, as Beijing lay in silence, asleep in the midst of this political upheaval, the capital of the most populous country on the planet would be violently awakened by an earthquake of unprecedented magnitude.

Dad and I were the only ones in the apartment, as Howie was already living in Cervini Hall dormitory on the Ateneo de Manila campus, and Mom and Gina were also back in Manila for some reason I can’t recall - I think they were packing and preparing our things to be shipped to Beijing. Dad and I escaped with our lives (obviously), along with the rest of the diplomatic community, a testimony to the strength of the residential buildings built by the communist government for the foreigners. The rest of the city, however, remained a mystery. Trying to project China as a global superpower, any information released by the authorities was always carefully censored to meticulously articulate the Communist Party line, and the last thing they wanted to do was reveal any vulnerabilities in government, including the way natural disasters were managed. Thus, with transparency in the state-controlled media non-existent, little to no information was forthcoming about conditions in the rest of the city. I vaguely remember Dad discussing with his officers and his counterparts from other embassies the question of who might now be in charge in the Chinese government and which agencies were still functioning. 

Strong tremors and aftershocks continued for days after the initial quake, so Dad had to manage the safety and security of the Embassy’s entire staff and their families, a community of Filipinos living in China during the most precarious period in the country’s history since the communists took over. Some of the families had very small  children. I myself was only 13 years old, and the closest thing to a natural calamity I had experienced until then was a blizzard in Maryland during Dad’s assignment in Washington DC from 1967 to 1974. Snowfalls back then meant it was playtime for Howie and I. Snow was about building snowmen, snowball fights in the back yard with our neighborhood friends, and Dad taking us out sledding in the nearby hills of Silver Spring. It was nothing remotely close to what Tita Menchu and Tito Jimi have been experiencing there in recent winters. In 1976 China though, it wasn’t just the continuing aftershocks we had to worry about. Given the political circumstances under  which the government leadership was currently engulfed, there was a real possibility that the city could descend into chaos.

Until 1976, the closest thing I had ever experienced to a natural disaster was a blizzard in Maryland, which was no disaster at all. Snow meant it was playtime for Howie and I. (Photos by Dad.)

Dad converted the undamaged Philippine Embassy into a makeshift shelter for the staff. I remember sleeping on a folding military cot in the chancery hallway, waking up repeatedly to tremors causing the capiz chandelier to sway. Dad’s leadership in this time was critical. The entire community of diplomatic officers, staff and families serving under him looked to Dad during these frightful days, when little information was forthcoming. Dad’s leadership was steadfast, resolute, calm, and most importantly, reassuring in his decisiveness.
 

Dad (in white) surveys the Embassy grounds, converted into a makeshift earthquake shelter for the staff and their families. (Photographer unknown.)

When the Chinese authorities finally ordered the evacuation of all foreigners out of the city, Dad stayed behind  to keep the Embassy open with a skeleton crew of a few staff members, but not before he arranged our transport to Guangzhou in the south of China. My memory now is hazy about how long we were holed up in the Guangzhou Hotel, which served as a high-end evacuation shelter for diplomats from Beijing and their families. I do remember countless afternoon hours spent playing football in the courtyard with kids from all over the world, one of my first experiences with the transcending and therapeutic quality of the beautiful game; many of us couldn’t speak the same language, but we could all play the same game. Our stay at the Guangzhou Hotel ended when a Philippine Airlines jet came to pick us up and take us home to Manila, along with a Bayanihan dance troupe whose China tour had been cut short.

The scale of the earthquake’s destruction was made clear to me after I returned to Beijing in late August. Life seemed to be back to normal and Dad took me on a weekend trip to Bei Dai He, a beach resort on the coast about five hours’ train ride from the capital, famously reserved for diplomats and Communist Party bigwigs. The train route passed through the industrial city of Tangshan, the location of the earthquake’s epicenter, at which point it measured 8.2 on the Richter scale. Dad guessed that railway officials would not want us foreign passengers to get a good view of what had become of Tangshan after the earthquake, and anticipated that the train would not stop. So he made sure we sat and watched out the window of our cabin to catch at least a glimpse as we entered the city. Indeed, the train seemed to speed up as it rolled through Tangshan’s heart. 

Northeastern Chinese cities are built on the Manchurian plateau, and thus like Beijing, Tangshan was topographically very flat. From the vantage point of raised train tracks, one could see all the way to the horizon. For as far as my eye could see, this city of a million people had been completely flattened to the ground, block after block after block of nothing but rubble, heaps of concrete that were once inhabited buildings. It was complete comprehensive devastation of Biblical proportions. To a 13-year-old boy, such an image would be both unforgettable and unfathomable.
 

On the balcony of the Bei Dai He guest house. Our train from Beijing to the coast rolled through the heart of Tangshan where the earthquake's epicenter was. (Photo by Dad.)

It would take me a few years until I got a little older and wiser to fully understand the implications of what I saw in Tangshan, where over 600,000 people had perished in 16 seconds in the wee hours of the morning one day in July of 1976, in what would go down as the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century. That image of devastation underscores for me how meaningful Dad’s leadership was during those critical days, as he navigated through that period of uncertainty with little information to go by, overseeing the safety of an entire community of families in the midst of a natural calamity - with a steadfast, resolute, calm, and reassuring decisiveness. To my memory, this was one of Dad’s finest hours.

In years to come, as I navigate the positions of leadership with which I have been blessed in my own career, I thank God that I can look back upon instances like this for inspiration. Thank you Dad for being the great role model you are for so many people, especially me…