Ten years ago, Charlson Ong's 'Embarrassment of Riches' won him hossanahs and a bucketful of pesos from the Philippine Centennial literary contest. Three collections of short fiction and this landmark novel--all are preludes to his latest munificent oeuvre, 'Banyaga: A Song of War,' a clearly polished window to the lives on contemporary Chinese Filipinos--their plight from the distressed homeland as they cope with the conflict of tradition to modernity, the anxieties of urban living. The story goes back to the 1896 Revolution, to the Japanese Occupation, the New Society;s Byzantine maze, onto the kidnapping and other forms of mayhem which Manilans are familiar with. Charlson--the superb wordsmith, is also a throat-grabbing storyteller.