Just off the main highway leading north from Manila is a town of about 80,000 people called Bamban. Until recently most Filipinos hadn’t heard of it. At first glance Bamban looks like any other provincial town in the Philippines. Low-rise buildings and corrugated-iron shacks selling vapes crowd the edges of the road; occasionally a cart trundles by selling susong pilipit—freshwater snails cooked in coconut milk.

In the centre are some gleaming, brightly lit shops—not a common sight in such towns. There’s Jollibee (a local fried-chicken chain), 7-Eleven, KFC and McDonald’s. These all arrived in the past few years, after a dynamic millennial named Alice Guo (pronounced “Gwor”) became the town’s first female mayor.

Guo was a local girl who’d done well. As she told it, her parents were both Filipinos who owned a piggery near Bamban. Guo worked for them and helped the business grow, diversifying into fisheries and chicken farms.

Fortunato Meija, now 70, a former town councillor in Bamban, had become friends with Guo years earlier when they were both volunteering on a local official’s re-election campaign. He admired her grit and enterprise. Guo was young and pretty, with a smooth, round face, long, shiny hair and glasses. She seemed to prefer discussing business with town elders—whom she addressed as lolo (grandfather) or tito (uncle)—to hanging out with people her own age.

In 2021 Guo suddenly seemed to have a lot more money. She had taken on more responsibility in the family business, but that didn’t seem to account for her flashy new car, or the fact that she had started travelling around the region by helicopter. “I remember asking her, how are you getting so rich?” said Fortunato. Guo just said that she had a new business partner. She told her friends the car was borrowed.

The same year, Guo announced she was going to run for mayor.