Straight from the Horse's Mouth

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” — Benjamin Franklin

WILSON LEE FLORES is a one-of-a-kind wunderkind. He is a book author, a real-estate entrepreneur, an economic and geopolitical analyst, and owns the oldest artisanal bakery in the country. A multi-awarded writer, he is a recipient of 15 Catholic Mass Media Awards for his Philippine Star newspaper columns and three Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. He has also been honored with three CMMA Hall of Fame Awards, including “Best Opinion Column” and “Best Business Column.” He also writes a Tagalog column “Kuwentong Panadero” for Philippine star Group’s mass-market, Pilipino Star Ngayon tabloid. On top of all these, he is an advocate for education who is well-versed in Asian history and culture.

What makes all his accomplishments all the more impressive is the fact that he was literally, a self-made success story. As a kid in Ilocos, Wilson lived with his mother and younger sister. Orphaned by his father when he was only seven years old, Wilson was raised by a loving mother, the late Ms. Mary Young Siu Tin, a Chinese teacher, who taught him the value of perseverance and hard work. Unlike traditional Chinese parents who wanted their children to be successful businessmen someday, Wilson’s mother wanted her son to become a writer. While many Chinoy kids were made to pursue business, she encouraged him towards the arts.

“I think my mother was the only Chinese parent in the Philippines who wanted her only son to be a writer,” he recalled. “At that time, my mom wanted me to be a novelist.” The reason for his surprise was because he did not know anyone in the country who was a full-time novelist. “The reason why my mother was like that was because she grew up in a Chinese tradition that loves writing… that loves art and culture more than business.” For his mother, being a writer was better than being a tycoon or a politician. To make her happy, Wilson kept writing throughout the years. It helped him because he enjoys writing as a hobby. Little did she know that he would eventually become a very successful businessman and a prolific writer.

Wilson traces his roots from his ancestors since the 1750s, being the seventh generation of Lee progeny in the Philippines. An avid advocate for education, he stresses the importance of passing on values to the next generation. “Some parents bequeath companies. But the most important thing parents could give to their children are values and culture. Those are priceless and those cannot be stolen. Those cannot be gambled overnight or lost in a pandemic.” He shares his admiration for the older generation of entrepreneurs who came before him. In his words, they “not only work very hard, but they study non-stop.”

As a seventh generation Chinoy, Wilson confesses that he was among the first to experience a very low standard of Chinese education. “When I was a kid in the 1970s, there was a move to limit the Chinese language courses in the schools,” he said. “The government also opened up citizenship to the Philippines. For the first time in centuries, the ethnic Chinese minorities were allowed to become Filipino citizens.”

An alumnus of Grace Christian College and a business management graduate of the Ateneo de Manila University, Wilson was a popular writer even during his university days. He was managing editor and columnist of the Ateneo’s Guidon (university paper), wrote Filipino poems in every issue of the Ateneo’s Matanglawin and was founding president of the Ateneo’s multi-awarded Celadon (Chinese students’ organization). He has since authored five books on Philippine business leaders commissioned by the De La Salle University Press and once edited a German doctorate scholar’s book on the EDSA 1986 Revolution in his Ateneo philosophy class.

Unknown to most people, Wilson’s parents died when he was young and he has since been very independent. Although he considers writing his hobby, and devotes more time to what he describes as “mundane money-earning chores,” this multi-millionaire has learned to enjoy writing the most.

He believes that writers in the Philippines have three main interrelated roles: first, in a Third-World country like the Philippines, a writer should not only entertain and educate but should also be agents of social change and reform. Second, a writer should be a conscience of society, reminding people about truth and goodness despite the absurd environment we live in. And finally, in a corrupt and unjust society like ours, writing for the sake of self-expression or for art’s sake is not enough; writers should be brave and revolutionary in subverting the prevailing corrupt and inefficient order that we have in the country, or else, the country will forever continue its nonstop economic, social, political, moral and cultural decline. Writers should not accept things as they are but should be more critical of things around them.