“What makes Tony remarkable is that he never forgets his friends, no matter how big he has gotten.”
by Ducky Paredes
The first known structure in the lot was built in the mid-1800s. It was a circular wooden structure with a nipa roof and was called the H.T. Hashim’s National Cycle Track. In 1890, the name was changed to the Teatro Nacional (National Theater) when it was used for performances of the Russian Circus and visiting American theater companies.
In 1902, the name became the Manila Grand Opera House after an extensive expansion of the original theater and its conversion to an opera house in time for the visit of an Italian opera company in 1902.
On October 16,1907, the First Philippine Assembly was inaugurated at the Manila Grand Opera House in Sta. Cruz, Manila, by United States Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, in the presence of thousands of people.
The theater then served as the home for theater productions, operas and zarzuelas. Toribio Teodoro, who the “shoe king of the Philippines”, acquired the property in 1942 and used it as his residence and his shoe factory during the Japanese occupation and the Second Philippine Republic,until his house and shoe factory were seized by the Japanese forces.
By the 1950s, the theater, equipped with state-of-the-art equipment for both theatrical and cinematic productions, was called “The Theater with a History”. It provided daily entertainment for Manila residents, charging 85 centavos for admission to one theatrical production and one movie. In addition to plays and movie showings, operas, concerts and vaudeville performances were occasionally staged in the complex.
(My own experience with the MGOH was when Dramatic Philippines presented its Holy Week drama “Martir sa Golgota” over several years. Since my father was the Apostle Peter, I and several of my siblings were always part of the cast, taking bit roles – an apostle, the thief on the cross, a priest, the risen dead boy and so on – for money for the summer vacation. It was then an awesome theatre.)
Ownership of the complex shifted from the heirs of Teodoro to former Philippine Ambassador to Laos Antonio Cabangon Chua in the 1960s, by which time the MGOH had become a cinema. Part of Cabangon Chua’s plan for the complex even then included the construction of a hotel at the complex.
The Manila Grand Opera Hotel is an eight-storey hotel that will be inaugurated on Saturday, August 30, 2008, starting with a Thanksgiving Mass at the Ambassador’s Hall on the 8th Floor.
It will be the only hotel with a direct connection to the Manila Light Rail Transit System, connecting to Doroteo Jose LRT Station, the land for which was sold by Capangon-Chua to the Light Rail Transit on condition that he would have access through the station, if he ever built anything on the rest of his property.
The celebration on Saturday is for three things: the inauguration, the formal launch of the Second Book called “The Continuing Saga of Success” by Jose F. Lacaba and Eric S. Caruncho, the sequel to the book written by National Artist Nick Joaquin on the life of Antonio Cabangon-Chua “A Saga of Success.”
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His father was a Chinese businessman who was killed by the Japanese during the war, leaving him and his mother with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Rather than live with relatives as servants, they choose to strike out on their own. Tony does everything – shine shoes, sell fish in the market. Eventually, the mother borrows, scrimps and saves enough to start a sari-sari store. Tony finishes high school and goes on to college, working all the time and finishing an accounting course. He drives a jeepney. With some friends, he starts a pawnshop. He starts other businesses: logging, casinos (pre-Pagcor), night clubs, motels, wet markets. Then, he grows bigger: insurance, publishing, real estate, hotels.
Tony Cabangon Chua has a knack for business. Everything he does, succeeds. Sitting with him one day in a condo, he looks at one of his buildings in the far distance and says, with child-like awe to his listener: “You know, I look at that and I realize mayaman na pala ako.”
No wonder that writers choose to write about Antonio L. Cabangon Chua. How does an orphan manage to rise from a poverty-stricken background to carve out his own business empire, an empire that today encompasses insurance, health care, banking, property management, newspapers and magazines, a memorial park, a hotel chain, a car dealership, and countless other enterprises.
Says Tony: “You should ask what businesses I am not in. Modesty aside, I am in a little of everything.”
At least 5,000 families depend upon his enterprises for their living, and Cabangon Chua, who will be 74 on Saturday, continues to embark upon new business ventures. But, he says, he is no Taipan. Compared to the famous ones, according to Tony, “I am a nobody. I know my limitations,
Nick Joaquin wrote about Tony: “Antonio L. Cabangon Chua had a couple of strikes against him from the start. One is growing up poor. The other is (literally) more sinister. He was born, as he puts it, ‘outside the kulambo,’ meaning his parents were not married…. That and poverty should have killed any chance of him making his way up in the world. Not to mention the bitterness that should have soured his entire outlook on life. But that was not the effect of misery on Tony.”
Cabangon Chua himself admits: “I have a burning desire to succeed in life because of the way my mother was treated by our rich relatives when I was very young. It pushed me. It motivated me. They were the catalyzer who pushed me to succeed.”
And as Joaquin himself put it: “Success is the best payback!”
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Tony says: “Whether you’re rich or poor, everyone has 24 hours in a day, It’s what you do with your 24 hours that counts.”
In the end, he says, it all boils down to this: “There is no secret of success. You just have to work hard and focus on whatever it is that you need to succeed. A talented man who takes it easy doesn’t stand a chance against a mediocre man who focuses all his energy on a project. But of course, you have to dream to succeed.”
What makes Tony remarkable is that he never forgets his friends, no matter how big he has gotten.
Someone who knows him well cites as Tony’ secret of success: “He is the compleat politician.”
That could well be true. He was truly good friends with the late Jaime Cardinal Sin, who to my mind, was just about the best politician that this country has ever produced.
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hvp 08.26.08)
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