The Most Romantic City in the World

The oldest city in the Philippines is actually two cities, one an archipelago of affluence, the other a sea of poverty.

For the past three-and-a-half weeks I’ve stayed at a pension in Fuente Osmea, a neighbourhood of formerly trendy cafs and karaoke bars in Cebu City. Middle-aged Europeans breakfast with their Filipino girlfriends in the lobby. I hesitate to call them sex tourists though some are leering embodiments of the stereotype, down to the patronizing bluster and sunburned arm hooked proprietorially over a delicate neck. Others are more like deranged romantics in search of their Dulcinea. They flatter and woo, presuming nothing, oblivious to the fact that conquest is a foregone conclusion. Weirdly, their rituals of courtship jive with a certain Filipino idea of romance. Money talks, obviously, but the objects of their ponderous attention seem genuinely charmed. I hail a taxi at the Fuente Osmea roundabout. Five lanes of traffic circle a ratty patch of grass and a gigantic, half-dismantled Christmas tree. It’s thirty degrees outside; in the taxi I can almost see my breath. The radio plays Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” For a few years Fuente was the heart of Cebu City, pumping air-conditioned bubbles to and from every corner of the city. It’s possible, I think, to inhabit the city’s middle-class districts without ever breaking a sweat, serenaded by power balladeers and tween pop stars. In between “Eenie Meenie” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” the deejay invites all the lovers out there to call in their poems, songs, and marriage proposals. Her mid-Atlantic accent is nearly flawless. We glide past girlie bars and empty shops. The recent history of Cebu is encoded in the movement of its centre. The city grew quickly after the Second World War and continues to grow at twice the national rate. As the poor encroach upon the elites, the city centre shifts further and further inland. There are now two Cebus: one an archipelago of affluence, the other a sea of poverty. The Old Town rots beside the port, a dismal parade of subsistence commerce and historic churches; Sunday mass at the Basilica Minore del Santo Nio is the only reason a middle-class Cebuano would ever want to visit. Fuente, too, is slowly going to seed. A balloon vendor approaches the window, head bobbing among a passel of inflatable hearts. Today is St. Valentine’s Day, but it could be any day. Filipinos love Love. Enshrined somewhere in the constitution is the right to karaoke, fast food, and Romance. The first caller, Eulalio, stumbles over a poem to his neighbour, most glorious Bernice. The deejay coaxes the words out of him a second time, slowly: Roses are red Violets are fine I am top boy in my class Will you be mine? Inevitably, a traffic jam. It looks like a pride parade. Half a dozen jeepneys crowd an intersection, a hot mess of chrome and acid colours. Passengers hang off the rear bumpers; their feet dangle in traffic. There is a laying-on of horns. I’m surprised these iconic people-movers haven’t become rolling billboards for cell phones and beer. Happily, they remain the canvases of amateur muralists. I’ve seen jeepneys that quote scripture; I’ve seen dramatic seascapes and rococo thunderbolts and wistful portraits of villages abandoned for the city; even a memorial to the 2002 Sacramento Kings, with gruesome portraits of Vlade Divac and Chris Webber. Here the psyche of working-class Cebuanos finds potent — and trivial — expression. An interval of heat and Bieberlessness: I abandon the taxi and walk six or seven blocks into Lahug, the new commercial district. No obvious street plan has guided its development. Office towers and business parks predominate. Walking in the shade of an overpass, I end up at the Terraces, a trendy shopping mall and social hub. I pass through a metal detector, an alarm goes off, and the pantomime begins. Every shop, from bargain basement to boutique, employs security. The ritual varies only in its intensity: the lowlier the business, the greater the scrutiny. I step forward, empty my pockets. The guard, splendid in his uniform and peaked cap, smiles politely. Holstered at his waist is an enormous revolver. He stirs the contents of my backpack with a flashlight. Another smile. Sure enough, he doesn’t bother to pat me down. In a place like this the security check is for my benefit, anyway — an affirmation of belonging. The Terraces is a four-story ellipse of glass, wood, and tile that conjures an atmosphere of global luxury, half-successfully. The shopping oases of Singapore and Dubai are obvious inspirations. In the middle is a pleasant garden. I notice the shift in demographics right away. The obvious affluence, and the greater numbers of Chinese-Filipino families, tourists, and overweight kids. All citizens of a self-contained nowhere-world: here, the usual shopping-mall ritual of seeing and being seen plays out against a backdrop of elaborately staged placelessness. References to the world beyond these manicured gardens and airy shops are deliberately few. There’s a hotel, movie theatres, restaurants, a spa. You can buy an iPad, drink Mexican beer, enjoy an aromatherapy treatment, even move in — there’s a luxury condo tower on site. The siege mentality of Cebu’s elite finds its apotheosis in the Terraces complex. A group of tatty highschoolers loiters outside the karaoke caf. Girlish boys and boyish girls with comb-forwards tease their girlfriends. The girlfriends carry paper hearts and chocolates. A few still wear their school uniforms, awkward purple smocks. I’m not sure how they got in here. Who cares? Let them sing their hearts out.

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