Historical Roots of Chinese Devotion to the Our Lady of Caysasay

In 1603, when Taal was still located in what is now San Nicolas, a fisherman named Juan Maningcad caught an image of the Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in his cast net while fishing the channel that separated western from eastern Batangas¹. After the cataclysmic eruption of Taal Volcano in 1754, this channel would be reduced to that we know now as the Pansipit River².

The image of the Immaculate Conception that Maningcad found was brought to the church in Taal and placed inside the tabernacle, but it repeatedly disappeared and was later found near the Sta. Lucia springs in Caysasay³. These unexplained movements — rather than the discovery itself — sparked the early devotion, as the community came to believe that the Virgin chose to remain in Caysasay⁴.

The Augustinians eventually built a chapel at the site, establishing one of the earliest Marian shrines in the Philippines⁵.

AI-imagined image of Juan Maningcad with the image of the Immaculate Conception.

Alongside this documented miracle cycle, Taal preserved a folk narrative about a Chinese figure named Haybing, who was known to locals as Juan Imbing⁶. According to oral tradition and the 1929 revival of the Haybing religious drama, he was remembered as a Chinese mason who worked on the construction of the Caysasay church and was known as a devotee of the Virgin⁷.

Folk accounts describe him as someone who gradually neglected his religious obligations and stopped attending Mass⁸. During one of the Chinese uprisings — episodes of violent conflict and colonial crackdowns involving Chinese communities in the Spanish Philippines — Haybing was caught in the sweep of arrests⁹.

These uprisings were periods when Spanish authorities, fearing rebellion or economic dominance, imposed harsh measures on Chinese residents, including mass executions and expulsions¹⁰. In the Taal legend, Haybing was executed, often described as decapitation, and his body thrown into Taal Lake¹¹.

The following day, to everyone’s chagrin, he was said to have been seen alive again, an event attributed to the intercession of the Our Lady of Caysasay¹². Although this narrative does not appear in early written sources, its survival in oral tradition and performance culture shows that Taal maintained a legendary Chinese figure within its devotional imagination¹³.

When examining the historical roots of Chinese devotion to the Our Lady of Caysasay, the documentary record is silent for the Spanish period¹⁴. No seventeenth- to nineteenth-century source mentions Chinese pilgrims visiting the shrine¹⁵.

The early miracle cycle contains no Chinese characters, although some say that Maningcad was a Sangley or Chinese-Filipino mestizo. This piece of information, however, is uncorroborated¹⁶.

The Haybing story, while culturally meaningful, belongs to folk tradition rather than archival history¹⁷. Thus, the earliest documented Chinese devotional connection to Caysasay appears only in the modern era¹⁸.

Modern scholarship and contemporary practice reveal a different kind of Chinese presence: the syncretic relationship between the Chinese sea goddess Ma-Cho (Mazu) and the Virgin of Caysasay¹⁹. Scholars such as Christina Lee have described how Chinese-Filipino communities interpret the two figures as spiritually linked, both associated with water, protection, and miraculous intervention²⁰.

This understanding led to the establishment of an annual pilgrimage from the Ma-Cho Temple in La Union to the Caysasay Shrine in Taal, where special Masses are celebrated before the image of Ma-Cho is returned north²¹. Reference works such as the CCP Encyclopedia also note that the feast of the Our Lady of Caysasay is “popular among Chinese-Filipinos,” confirming the visibility of Chinese devotion in the present day²². These practices form the documented basis of Chinese devotion to Caysasay²³.

Because no colonial-era evidence exists, the most defensible conclusion is that Chinese devotion to the Our Lady of Caysasay is a modern phenomenon, shaped by contemporary Filipino-Chinese religious identity and the Ma-Cho–Caysasay devotional link²⁴.

The presence of the Haybing legend shows that Taal’s folk imagination once included a Chinese figure, but this does not constitute historical evidence of early Chinese pilgrimage²⁵.

This creates a striking historical irony. During the Spanish period, Taal — like many colonial towns — enforced restrictions on Chinese residence, movement, and economic activity²⁶. Chinese migrants were often viewed with suspicion, required to obtain special permits, or subjected to periodic expulsions²⁷.

Yet today, Chinese-Filipino pilgrims are among the most visible devotees of the Caysasay shrine²⁸. A community once regulated and marginalized in Taal’s early history has become one of the most active participants in one of its most cherished religious traditions²⁹.