Bottle Caps and The Basilica

Tantsing - a game of tatsing (touching) but instead of it being people involved, they use tansans (aluminium bottle caps). This is like the game skully, but with much simpler mechanics. The children would use the bottle caps throwing it against their contender's caps, trying to drive them away from the box drawn on the street with a piece of chalk. These are streetchildren, simple minds with simple games..

The church in the background is the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene, also known as Saint John the Baptist Parish and informally known as Quiapo Church, a prominent Roman Catholic church Latin-rite Basilica located in the District of Quiapo, Manila, Philippines.

The Franciscan Missionaries built the first church of Quiapo with Bamboo and Nipa materials. San Pedro Bautista, a Franciscan missionary at that time was one of the founders of the Quiapo church and several other churches in Metro Manila and Laguna city. The original church was burned in 1639 and was replaced by a stronger edifice. It was again partially destroyed by an earthquake of 1863. Under the supervision of Fathers Eusebio de Leon and Manuel Roxas, the third church was completed in 1899. Fr. Roxas raised an unprecedented amount of PHP 40,000.00 pesos from donations and lay contributions. On October 30, 1928, the church was caught in a fire which almost destroyed it. Dona Encarnacion Nakpil de Orense, head of the Parish Committee, raised funds for the reconstruction of the church. Filipino Artist and architect, Juan Nakpil also rebuilt the church.

The church is reputedly famous for enshrining the Black Nazarene, a dark statue of Jesus Christ which many faithful claim to have miraculous powers. The Quiapo Church holds a weekly novena every Friday and is attended by thousands of devotees every day. A January 9 event is participated by millions of devotees who celebrate the translacion or transfer of the Black Nazarene statue at the church. Daily hourly masses are celebrated and devotees come from all walks of life.

We stopped by the church to hear mass while we were at Quiapo. Under the bridge are lots of stalls selling Philippine souvenirs, from keychains with small crablets and shells inside, to curtains made of seashells and lamp shades and dividers made of transluscent capiz shells. Mr M bought some to take back to UK as his giveaways for coworkers.