The shop below was run by a Chinese man who went out each day to sell tahô, a syrupy yogurt, from two tin buckets dangling from either side of a wooden yoke on his shoulders. Mom loved hanging around the shop and the Chinese man became her friend. He allowed her to play at measuring out goods. He pretended to buy food from her. And later, he built Mom her own little yoke and she marched up and down the street pretending that she too was selling tahô.Mom has idyllic memories of those years in the Chinese quarter, it was a feral time, running and playing on the streets with other small children. If the war had never happened, it was an experience she would never have had, growing up amongst the buttoned up, conservative middle classes in Manila.

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