What's Kaing?

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1. Literally:

 

A Basket Made of Bamboo Strips? Kaing is basket or container made from bamboo strips handcrafted in Leon town to contain its farm harvest of fruits and vegetables. Because of its pervasive use it can be designed with different sizes in order to transport products from the plantation site to the farm storage, from fresh harvest farmlands to the market, from wholesale centers to retail distribution outlets. A piece of Kaing becomes a finished product after a weaving process using the strips of a newly-felled bamboo. This local craft has been a mainstay in the life of the people in the locality going back to the past centuries. When the Poblacion site was transferred from Sitio Camando (1865) to Sitio Capan (the present-day town of Leon), it can be easily supposed that people carried their belongings inside the kaing during the short exodus. But it still remains uncontested that the old folks of Brgy. Isian Norte were the original makers mostly of the kaings where it used to be that the villagers from the young to the old expertly indulge themselves in this kind of basket weaving industry.

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2. Symbolically:

 

A Collective Representation The Kaing is our basket of prosperity and symbol of quest for progress and unity as a people. It express a harvest of abundance being endowed with rich natural resources. But alongside with these' naturally endowed gifts are the efforts of trying to sustain the already known identity of Leon as the fruit and vegetable basket of the Province of Iloilo. A Kaing Festival would showcase our talents and unique culture, our achievements and progress. The symbolism in utter simplicity is a discourse of abundance in analogy because we can't go too far to be reminded that our ancestors enabled us to go attain education and better lives because of their toils with the lowly kaing accompanying their noble endeavors of planting and harvesting, sowing and reaping, weaving and filling up the basket with their honest labours. The local economy has been silently accompanied by what the kaing constantly delivered. We realized that we are now proud of the beauty of kaing as an image of our people. Beauty is innovative. It's also high-time to innovate the kaing with its sizes, beauty and artistry as glimpse of who we are. The kaing does not discriminate what it can contain. It stands as an instrument of peace. In a way, what we have, all the accomplishment we have attained so far, the aspirations and dreams can be harnessed in the life of a united, loving deeply grateful and spirited people for what the Almighty had granted so far. For what is there around us, that the kaing cannot to be useful and functional. Indeed, the KAING FESTIVAL, is a name given as collective representation to that simple but potent image, tangible and relevant of unique celebration in a community that seeks to inform its people of its tradition, share knowledge of struggles, stories of progress, identity of its own people amidst the vast humanity to the next generation. Beside you, anywhere, one or many pieces, in big or small sizes... it seeks to inform you... if you can think deeper and listen to its discourse... the KAING speaks as an embodiment of Leon, it's People and Culture!

 

Prepared by: Rev. Fr. Emman G. Tuberrada

SCPS/06 November 2012