Switching identities, believing in different religions, dispersing family members – these were but some of the flexible strategies that prominent Chinese merchants in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Manila employed to take advantage of or evade policies created by colonial authorities. In reconstituting individual biographies and family histories, Chu demonstrates not only how people in their everyday lives negotiate and utilize power but also how a micro-historical approach to the study of Philippine history can enrich knowledge of the country’s society and culture.