Page 27 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_2nd_Edition

Passenger on a Ship

Albino Z. SyCip was born in the Philippines in 1887; like many other Chinese
th
immigrants, his own father had come over from Fujian province in the late 19
century. Wash never met this grandfather; he believes that one time the family might
have been in Cagayan Valley before it moved to Manila, because of the presence of
relatives there.

Albino SyCip had thought about studying medicine, but when he saw his first cadaver,
he quickly changed his mind, and decided to take up law instead. He clearly had the
brains for it, becoming the first Chinese-Filipino to top the bar examination in 1913.

A Dr. Lyons of the Methodist Church had arranged for Albino to go to the US
to finish his high school and study law at the University of Michigan. He excelled
further in Ann Arbor, joining the staff of the prestigious Michigan Law Review and
becoming fast friends with a classmate named George Humphrey, who would later
become President Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Treasury. In 1955, Michigan would
accord Albino an honorary doctorate in law. Albino returned to the Philippines to
practice, joining the law firm of Feria and LaO.

On yet another voyage to Manila, Albino had met a young woman named Helen Bau,
whose family had roots in Shanghai, and who had also gone to the US to study music
at Oberlin College in Ohio. She was Presbyterian and he was a Methodist, and both
came from Chinese families, but unions between Fujianese and Shanghainese in those
days were quite rare; even their dialects were different, and the two communicated in
the common language they knew, English. Nevertheless, a romance blossomed—in
English—and the couple married in Shanghai. Helen would later learn to speak some
Fujianese, and their children would be exposed to both dialects as well as English.

Soon Albino was asked to become one of the incorporators of what would become
China Bank—the first commercial bank in the Philippines owned by Chinese-Filipino.
On August 16, 1920, China Bank opened for business in Binondo, capitalized at P10
million, with Dee C. Chuan and Albino SyCip as two of the leading incorporators.
With his full attention now demanded by banking, Albino dropped his law practice—
at least until he was asked by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to take up a case
involving the controversial Bookkeeping Act, which required Filipino businessmen

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