History of Cebu Interesting Story

[THE KID]

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very good stuff............

[Engineering]

Going Places in Prewar Cebu

Then as now, traveling was quite a lively affair in Cebu around the 1930s. All the not-so-gentle persuasive techniques that dispatchers do today to entice the public to ride their buses began to evolve during the period. While, the central bus station was located in Plaza Washington (now Freedom Park), passengers of calesas were forced to alight some distance as dispatchers pulled and shoved against each other to get to their would-be passengers. The competition came because, aside from cheap rates, one could pick numerous modes of transport to use when traveling beyond the city limits.

By this time, Cebu boasted the highest number of first-class roads in the country. And the Philippine Railway Co. had long linked the city to Argao in the South and Danao in the North. While fare was pegged officially at 1 centavo per kilometer regardless of type of transport, the three major bus companies that competed with the trains resorted to illegal discounts, collecting ½ centavo in lieu of the mandated rate. Of the almost 200 buses plying the north/south roads, the Cebu Autobus owned 80 while the Filipino Bus as well as the Cebu Transit had 45 buses each. With 50 centavos, one could reach Santander or Bogo by bus or train.

Inter-island travel was just as lively with 30 vessels tied at the Cebu Wharf. At P5.40 one could travel from Surigao or Misamis in the evening and reach by noon the following day.

[Engineering]

@The Kid: Thanks Sir.. at least naa pd bag.o sa General Discussion w/ lessons

[Engineering]

The Cebuano Pasalubong

The Filipinos Pasalubong means something which a traveler brings from a place on the way home as a gift to the welcomers. It could either be a long-standing memento, a consumable gustatory delight, or a keepsake for eternity. Pasalubong comes from the word salubong, which means to meet. While the practice toes beyond cultural boundaries, the Filipino has found the word for it, which transcends arrival, gift, and affection — pasalubong.

If you happen to drop by Cebu, there are a hundred and one ideas for a pasalubong, things you could partake from this place, proofs that at least for one happy chance, you’ve been to the queen island of the sought, Cebu.

Every place has something it is famous for. Cebu, for instance has been known for its guitar products, mango preserves, and baked products.



TOSTADOS, AS the name implies, are toasted strips of bread. However, prior to toasting, each slice is coated with a mixture of sugar and margarine. It is perfect with coffee, or as siding for spaghetti, or ice cream.



SALVARO is a wafer-thin, crisp-brown biscuit, shaped into an elongated oval, and approximately ten cms in length and four cms wide. It uses entirely indigenous ingredients such as coconut, shortening, sugar and flour.



OTAP is an oval-shaped, crispy treat, which has become a trademark of Cebu. It is approximately 9 ms in length, 4.5 cm wide and about half a cm thick. It is made of eggs, flour, shortening, sugar and margarine. Otap has a unique flaky texture, a distinctive sweetness, and an accent of burnt flavor to it, that places this product as among the very best provincial specialties in the country’s baking industry.



SUNFLOWER is a biscuit shaped after the flower with a diameter of 7.5 cm. It has a subtly distinct flavor and aroma evoked by the liquorice-flavored anise seeds that are strewn all over the biscuit’s surface.



HOJALDRES. One of the newest in the delicious product lines of Pinky’s Galletas, Hojaldres embodies the best characteristics of both a biscuit and cookie. Somewhat similar to”otap” in texture, but it is slightly more substantial. The hojaldres is approximately6 cms in diameter and about one cm thick. Its rich flavor and aroma and its crispiness and texture make hojaldres a much sought after treat from Pinky’s Galletas.



GALLETAS is the Spanish term for biscuit. This thin crispy treat comes in neatly wrapped packets of threes. Each biscuit is approximately 5.5 cms in diameter. Made of basic local ingredients in just the right quantities, galletas are subtle and simple, reserve in evoking a strong flavor, yet a delicious snack item that Filipinos love so much.

Every place has something it is famous for Cebu, for instance, has been known for its guitar products, mango preserves, and baked products.



LINUNGAHAN. This miniature pie-shaped biscuit, approximately 5.5 cms in diameter, is basic enough in taste and texture to be a main snack item or dessert siding. The crunchy exterior “crust” surrounds a delightfully sweet brown filling with the added surprise of tiny sesame seeds. Its ingredients include flour, shortening, margarine, sugar, and salt.



ROSQUILLOS, on the other hand, has been a household name for many generations in Cebu for its denizens and visitors. Rosquillos is a circular cookie about half an inch with a hole at the center. It is a sweet delight made up of eggs, flour, shortening, sugar and margarine.



CHICHARON. Chicharon is a crispy deep-fried pork skin, flavored salty and hot. One may choose from two classifications: in the “special” pack, the chicharon has a little strip of pork fat that comes with the skin; the regular pack is purely skin. The chicharon has undergone a highly tedious process of cooking. It is deep fried, sometimes sun-dried or oil-drained, cooled, and reheated. The process is repeated from three to four times.



MANGO PRODUCTS. The mango produce of Guadalupe has been famous to many denizens and guests of Cebu. Dried mangoes are packed mango strips, which makes a good snack item or a dessert siding. Mango Puree is a mango extract, which makes a good thirst quencher.



GUITAR. Perhaps, there’s no other more successful pioneering guitar-manufacturer in the country than Lilang’s guitar. Its name has been synonymous to the acoustic instrument. Its outlet is located in Lapulapu city where the Mactan-Cebu International Airport is situated, Precision, style, and creativity constitutes the high-end musical quality of Lilang’s guitars.

Most of the local delicacies are available in supermarkets in Cebu and in some in-house stalls in many hotels and resorts. Souvenir goods, on the other hand, occupy a special nook in every department store in the city. too many to mention.

[Engineering]

Advertisements in 1930's

Advertisements in the newspapers in 1930s have served as an indicator of the dynamic trade industry in Cebu then.

There were notices of professional services, as well as movie and shipping schedules in local papers, such as in the Cebu's Bag-ong Kusog. In most issues, there were advertisements of goods and services being offered by export-import houses, bazaars, hardware and machine shops. Drugstores, shoe stores, beauty parlors, tailoring shops, and various other establishments had placed advertisements of their products as well.

For one, there was an ad of Macondray & Co.'s reconditioned automobiles, like the Chevrolet Dodge and Studebaker, which were sold from between P500 to P1,900. During this time, the latest models of Ford were pegged at P1,580 for a "roadster" and P2,140 for a four-door sedan.

Another ad was published by the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Company. It high-lighted a communication gadget called the telephone. The ad goes: "What is a Telephone - Can you afford to be without one?" It even included a local PLDT office's telephone number where readers could call on for additional information. Then, there was a Kanaga Mineral Water ad. Sold in dama, Kanaga Mineral Water were sourced from a spring in a place called Kan-aga, Sta. Filomena. Distributed by Oquiñena & Co., the water was recommended for both healthy people and individuals suffering from kidney ailments, hyperacidity, diabetes, and anemia. The ad even carried a facsimile of a certificate from the Bureau of Science attesting to the water's excellent properties.

wow!

[Engineering]

Cebu's First Airmail



It was in November 1919 when Cebu received its very first airmail. It is said to have also been the first plane to have landed in Cebu, at three-seater civilian variant of the Curtiss flying boat called the Sea Gull.

Renowned American aviators Maj. Joseph E.H. Stevenot and Alfred J. croft had set out to fly another first in Philippine aviation history and proven the feasibility of mail throughout the archipelago by airplane.

After a 24-hour delay, they took off from Manila on November 25, 1919 and headed south with a bag of mail destined for Cebu and Iloilo. They stopped for refuelling first in Mindoro and then in Capiz. They had to hail fishermen to row them ashore and haul their fuel to the plane in bancas.

From Capiz, the plane then left for Cebu and reportedly touched water a little more than two hours later. It took Stevenot and Croft six hours and 23 minutes of flying time to get to Cebu.

They were met at the dock by a large crowd among whom were high-ranking officials of the Cebu Chamber of Commerc. After changing from rain-soaked flying attires to dry ones, Stevenot and Croft then ceremonially delivered the mail to the local postmaster, some which were addressed to Osmeña and American colonial Governor-General Francis Harrison. The letter envelopes bore the cachet: Inter-island Aerial Mail-First Trip.

The aviators later attended a reception hosted by the Chamber. The following day, they took the Chamber's three top officials for test rides over the city.

social! we have airmail sauna

[Engineering]

How To Drink In Cebuano

Drinking is an important part of Cebuano culture. It is both occassion and symbol of sociality - it lubricates social relations, encourages the prized values of talk and verbal wit, and forms a part of traditional feasts and ceremonies.



Mining seventeenth-century dictionaries, the historians William henry Scott guides us to the old Visayan culture of drink. The early Visayans knew five basic kinds of alcoholic drinks. The most popular was tuba, the fermented sap of palms, usually strenghtened and colored red by adding crushed tungog (tanbark) or the bark of the lawaan tree. Tuba is commonly extracted from the coconut but may also be made from nipa, buri, and other kinds of palm. Lina is the sweetish sap, with no tungog added, a kind of "ladies drink". Bahal is day-old, bitter-sour tuba. Lambanog is a stronger brew, also called anisado when anise seeds are added.

lol hmmm i wanna but 1 gallon

[Engineering]

Cebu’s Early Magazines

Newsmagazines

These are the earliest forms of Cebuano magazines, consisting of weekly combination of news and articles, in magazine form. These magazines came about as a response to the slower pace of communications at that time. Aimed at an adult membership, these were general magazines that carried “a bit of everything” - current events (local, national, or world), literary and cultural pieces, gossip and humor, personality sketches, items of practical knowledge (such as homemaker’s tips) and advertisements by local establishments. Language used in the magazines during that time was either bilingual or trilingual, using Cebuano, Spanish, and English.

Examples:
Vicente Rama’s Bag-ong Kusog (1915-1941)
Paulino Gullas’ The Freeman (1919-1941)

General Magazines

Pedro Lopez’ Nasud (1930-1941) and Ramon Roces’ Bisaya (1930+) were among the examples of general magazines during the 1930s, which continued to be popular and profitable in the years that followed. Bisaya was phenomenal. Published out of Manila by the Roces-owned Liwayway chain of publications, it rose from an initial circulation of 5,000 to 50,000 copies by 1955, widely distributed in Visayas and Mindanao. Its content is mainly on fiction, poetry, comics, entertainment features (particularly movies) and general-interest articles. Bisaya (more than any other Cebuano magazine) shaped the cultural literacy of generations of Visayan readers.

“Niche” Magazines

With the expansion of daily newspapers, magazines had to define its special niche in the publishing scene. For one, there was the attempt to focus on a more literate, upscale market.

Examples :
La Epoca (1922) and Star (1929-1930)

Both magazines were published by Cebu’s leading printing establishment, Falek’s Printing House, owned by a Jewish entrepreneur Leopold Falek. La Epoca was trilingual (English, Spanish, Cebuano) with more than 50 pages per issue and had a circulation of 1,000 copies. Its staff and contributors were prominent Cebuano writers of the day, led by Antonio Abad, Vicente Padriga, and Piux Kabahar. The magazine lasted only for a year, and was succeeded by Star, a weekly English-Cebuano magazine, which only lasted for two years.

Other magazines focused on a particular set of readers were:

Progress (1928-34) - catered to English readers

Babaye (1930-40) - a “family magazine” designed to appeal to women. This magazine was a joint venture of Sotero Cabahug, Ciprianio Barba, and Eliseo Dejoras.

Lungsoranon (1934+) - a weekly publication founded by Archbishop Gabriel Reyes which is a general-circulation magazine focused on religion and church matters.

[Engineering]

Teatro Junquera

Cebu’s politico-military governor, Gen. Inocencio Junquera was responsible for putting up Cebu’s first theater. After watching a Spanish play staged in a small Parian convent, he decided to put up the structure on the site of the destroyed Parian church.

However, because of Junquera’s liberal and anti-friar background, the friars, with Fray Martin Garcia Algocer, made it difficult for him to push the project. They spread rumors of more taxes on the project and even built a monument on the theater’s planned site.

Junguera, however, pursued the project in another location and constructed the theater’s first post on a land owned by Rafael Veloso in Barrio Kanipaan (now in downtown Cebu). Opening a street that ledg to the theater and with the help of the district’s residents, the theater was finished in 1895 and was named Teatro Junquera.

Junquera later left the Philippines in December of that year, leaving the theater to his nephew, Joaquin Hernandez Junquera, and Florentino Rallos. The ownership of Teatro Junquera was later passed on to several owners, like Pedro Royo, Leopold Falek, Pedro Rivera Mir and Jose Avila

The theater later became a cinematograph called “Cine Oriente” in 1913 but was eventually destroyed during the Second World War II.

very interesting... now I know.

[Engineering]

Cebu's Larsian

When talking about barbecues, Larsian immediately comes to mind. For decades, many have used this name to refer to that smoky stretch of barbecue stands along the nameless road adjacent to Don Gil Garcia street near the Fuente Osmeña Oval with fondness. The place has been the "hideout" for many barbecue lovers over the years.

Although most people do not know how the name originated (even many of the vendors do not), they remain attracted to the rustic stretch of barbecue stands, where the smoke of burning charcoal screens the vision and the low-watted incandescent lights set the mood as they send one teary-eyed onto a humble abode.

The name Larsian actually belonged to one of the first eateries that opened in the area during that opened in the area during the early Seventies. It occupied the largest space and had the most prominent billboard among the rest of the stalls, so that the whole block was named after it, probably for easy reference.

The original Larsian was owned by Ret. Col. Alvino Mondarez. During early Eighties, when he felt that he had enough of the barbecue business, he decided to give it up and pass it on to his family's long-time helper, Irene Payaw. Today Nang Irene owns a stand of her own. Her stall was given another name at the request of her former employers.

Larsian is a blend of two names, Pilar and Siana. Pilar was the mother of Col. Mondarez and Siana was Pilar's twin sister, thus Larsian was born.

The stalls encroach into the unknown street. The structures, poorly built, become shelters where nails protrude and become the gaunt fingers of prodding children. A Santo Niño icon, adorned with now wilting flowers, peers over. Here you simply choose among the piles of meat on skewers: chicken thighs, wings, breast, skin, gizzard, intestines (liston), pork barbecue, pork liver, tocino, chorizo, sausage, dried squid (pusit) and a lot more.

You have them cooked over blazing embers, and then, you devour them with the puso (portable rice), which are conveniently hung on one post. Most customers drown their barbecued meat into a mix of vinegar and soy sauce with, of course, some pinched chilly peppers. It does not take a chef to prepare this, and it takes no more than a hungry person to enjoy it. The place stays awake until the morning sun drives away the darkness.

Eating in Larsian is like being your primal self because things don't have to be complicated. Barbecue and puso have almost become an inseparable duo in Cebuano cuisine. They have gained popularity for faddish reasons - fast food for a fast lifestyle.

Most of the people who frequent the place are people who work during night shifts. They choose to eat there because the prices are affordable. The place has already somehow turned into a tourist attraction. Foreign guests enjoy the variety of barbecued meat. The place was once featured in Philippine Airlines' in-flight magazine Mabuhay in the late 1980s.

In Larsian, when you eat there, it does not matter if you are rich or poor.

wohoo!! Mabuhay Cebu!! Mabuhi Ka!!!