An aged photograph hanging on the wall of the Chinese Embassy library has often interested visitors, which has captured the historic scene of Premier Zhou Enlai and the then Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos signing the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of the Philippines, when our two countries formally started diplomatic ties 46 years ago.
Even long before that, the friendship between China and Philippines have already started. Back to hundreds of years ago in the Ming Dynasty, numbers of cargo ships sailed from Fujian to the Southeast Asia and their first stop on the sea was the Philippines. The Maritime Silk Road has promoted unimpeded trade and cultural exchanges, and closely linked up the the two countries and peoples. Ever since the ancient times, many Chinese have come to the Philippines, where they settled down, raised families and made friends, and even fought shoulder to shoulder with local Filipinos against foreign aggression to protect the common homeland. As of today, millions of Filipino-Chinese are living in the country, while the bustling Binondo streets and popular Chinese dishes such as tikoy and siopao are all vivid manifestations of the time-honored bonds of kinship and friendship between the two countries.
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