Macau 澳門

(What once was...)

It's hard to believe how fast time goes sometimes! I feel like I just got back from my trip to Kinmen, and already three months has gone by- so it became time for me to venture out from Taiwan once again.

For this Spotlight on a Strange Place, I chose to go to Macau. Macau is quite a bit more well-known than Kinmen, but it's still a very small place quite far away from most of my readers, so if you don't know where it is, let me help you:

See the little green peninsula on the left?

As you can see, Macau is very close to Hong Kong- just across the Pearl River Delta, which means that from Taipei it takes just about two hours to fly there. As you can also see, Macau is much smaller than Hong Kong, which is itself very small; and, Macau along with Hong Kong are both a different color than China. That's because Macau and Hong Kong have very similar backgrounds; where Hong Kong belonged to the British Empire, Macau was claimed by Portugal. Macau is about two hundred years older than Hong Kong, and it was sold to China at a later time; but right now they have very similar situations, with their own laws and passports but no freedom to make decisions separate from China.

When I arrived in Macau, I immediately noticed the many ways in which it is different than Hong Kong. Take this picture for example:

Just looking down a street

I took this picture between the airport and a bus stop. See the buildings, how they're short enough you can see the sky? And the flowers on the road? And the nice (I later learned, hand-cobbled) sidewalks? And the absence of millions of people? Immediately, Macau was a more comfortable place to visit than Hong Kong.

Many of those things are caused by the heavy Portuguese influence still felt in the city. Macau was established by the Portuguese in 1557. You might ask yourself, as I did when I first heard of Macau, "What were the Portuguese of all people doing in Asia in 1557?"

Back when the British were still stuck on their home island, the Portuguese were already excellent sailors and traders, having sailed around the tip of Africa, past India, and on to Ming China. For a while, they were content to use their bases in India to trade with China- in the process, discovering and naming Formosa- but after a few years, they realized the benefit a local settlement to repair and refit their ships could bring. They asked the Chinese if they could buy some land, and got a flat "No" in response. It didn't matter what they offered, the Chinese still said No.

Old main square of Macau- as you see, the Portuguese eventually won

According to a museum I went to while in Macau, one day a Portuguese ship heading into Canton was damaged badly by a storm and sunk near modern Macau. The Portuguese authorities arrived and found that although they had lost the ship, much of their cargo could be saved- if they could get it quickly and let it dry out.

They approached the Mandarin of Guangdong Province, and in return for a cut of the trade goods he agreed to not notice while the Portuguese landed on current-day Macau Peninsula and salvaged their goods. While he was still busy not noticing them, the Portuguese quickly build a fortress and stationed enough cannon there that the Mandarin of Guangdong could not move them!

The Mandarin requested Imperial troops to help him, but the Emperor informed him that the Portuguese were his problem- the Emperor had enough problems of his own. So, his solution was simple: Build a large wall across the peninsula and pretend the Portuguese weren't there.

An old Catholic church (and an apple)

Amazingly, this worked out pretty well for everyone. The local Chinese couldn't mingle with the Westerners, the Portuguese had a trading base and couldn't expand further into China, and after a few decades of pretending they didn't exist, the Chinese finally signed a treaty leasing Macau Peninsula to the Portuguese for 40 pounds of silver per year- which they continued to pay right up until they ended the lease in 1999.

Shops in the Senado

The official languages in Macau are Portuguese and Cantonese- not Mandarin, and not English. Since Mandarin and English are the two languages I know, communicating with the locals was a bit difficult! Still, they use the same written Chinese characters, and enough storekeepers knew enough Mandarin (still no English) that I could get by alright.

For the first three hundred years, Macau's main economy was trade with China. Traders from all over Europe would put into port at Macau while doing business with China, and many rich companies competed with each other for land to build warehouses and offices on. In the 1800s, though, Britain gained possession of Hong Kong, and afterwards Macau was never able to recapture the same prominence. Hong Kong was bigger, its harbor was better, it had more water, and to top it all off it already had Chinese people living on it, so it was easier to find workers. Macau still struggled along, but it was never the same.

Of course, now its main economy is gambling.

The casinos loom over the old streets...

Oddly for a culture that loves a good wager, gambling of any sort is illegal throughout all China. That doesn't stop small games of course, but for anything bigger than a game of poker or 麻將 the Chinese are out of luck...

Unless they go to Macau, where gambling is totally legal! 

Because China is so big, and because most Chinese people really do like gambling, Macau has become much like Las Vegas- except Chinese, and much bigger. In fact, last year Macau made seven times as much money as Las Vegas. Many of the local Macanese people aren't too happy about the changes the casinos have brought, but everyone has to admit that at least the extra money has reached all the residents of Macau- it's not just a few rich guys laughing to the bank.

After going to the old main square, I walked up a very steep hill to the Fortaleza del Monte, the Fortress on the Mountain, which protected Macau for nearly five hundred years.

And those old stones look every bit of five hundred years old...

According to the museum (which was actually built inside the fortress, as it was decommissioned in the 1980s), this was the very fortress the Portuguese built to initially seize control of Macau! It was expanded since they first built it, of course, finally attaining its current appearance in the late 1700s, but some of the original structure is still visible.

Guard tower overlooking the entrance...

...which is here, complete with the Portuguese coat of arms above the gate

Inside the gate

The Fortaleza is a nice place to spend some time. On a mountain, the breeze is very refreshing, and the views of the city are very impressive.

Aimed perfectly

On the current Fortaleza, there are no guns pointing towards Mainland China, as a gesture of peace and goodwill- but even the original structure has a smaller battlement and less defenses in that direction. Perhaps the Portuguese realized, if China ever really got angry there wasn't much they could do to defend themselves? If so, it makes sense that they would focus their attention against pirates- who did come a few times- and maybe use the lack of defenses against China as proof of good intentions.

A nice Chinese man helped me prove I was there

The museum inside the Fortaleza was small, without too much to write home about other than the storiy of Macau's origin I already shared with you. They did have a nice street built with facades of various Macanese houses, from a poor fisherman's house all the way up to the Governor General's mansion, which was pretty cool.

No pictures allowed... so be discreet

After I came down from the mountain, I came across this grand old ruin, the Cathedral of St. Paul, which was gutted by fire in the 1800s. The entire structure was so badly hurt by the fire it collapsed- except its front, amazingly, which still stood and continues to stand down to our day!

Iconic! (Get it? Because of the icons?)

Actually it is a pretty iconic building, I saw the Ruins of St. Paul's on souvenirs of all kinds- although most people now living in Macau aren't very Portuguese, they're still proud of their city's heritage!

From farther away

Looking out on the Cathedral's street- "Resurrection Rd."

During my trip, I had the good fortune to be on the same bus as an agent of Macau's Ministry of Tourism, who not only suggested several of the sites I went to but also enlightened me on Macau's current situation. The woman (whose name was Cinderella- really) explained that she herself was native-born Macanese, and since she was alive during the hand-off she's actually now a Portuguese citizen. (On a side note, that was really nice of Portugal to do. Many people in Macau didn't like the idea of becoming Chinese citizens, so Portugal gave them a way to emigrate if they wanted. Britain, on the other hand, completely ignored the people of Hong Kong's protests, didn't let any of them leave to the UK, and actually restricted travel before the hand-off to prevent people fleeing.)

Cinderella told me that before the hand-off, when Macau was still Portuguese, Macau had only 650,000 citizens; now, sixteen years later, it has close to five million. Offsetting this somewhat, the Chinese government has given Macau huge amounts of money to artificially enlarge their islands and even create new ones, so the people aren't as packed together as they might have been; but the effect on Macau's culture has nonetheless been immense. 

Obviously, these 4.35 million extra people weren't born in Macau; they came from China, and they brought their own Chinese culture with them. As such, most people who live in Macau cannot speak Portuguese, even though it's an official language; most cannot make or even don't like Macanese food; they listen to different music, think about different things and were educated differently. In fact, because Portugal gave all Macanese citizens Portuguese citizenship, the effect is even more pronounced than it might seem, as many of the remaining 650,000 people left Macau.

All that Chinese money, though...

I really, really like Macanese culture. It's a really interesting mix of Portuguese and Chinese, and although this might seem odd, it feels very... like home. Hospitable, maybe, is the word, very open and generous. But today's Macau doesn't really have that culture anymore; what's left of it is just on life support, propped up by the government to attract tourists and to keep the few remaining native Macanese happy.

Macau Tower; if you're crazy, you can bungee jump from it!

I only visited for a day. There's probably much that I missed, and surely many people are quite happy with the new way of life. Certainly, the extra money from the casinos has opened a lot of doors for many people who had very little options before- new schools, hospitals, roads, and houses are appearing very quickly, and even islands are emerging from the sea to provide comfortable living space for everyone. But I can't help feeling just a little bit sad for Macau- it seems it sold its heart for a nice job.

I killed time in this nice auditorium while waiting for my plane to leave

At least one thing is for sure, though- 蛋塔 danta are amazing.

Within two hours of taking this picture of delicious egg tart pastry, I was back home in Taipei waiting for a bus.

It's hard to say when my next post will go up, unfortunately- I have been very busy with a variety of projects lately, and I'm afraid I will have even less time in the coming weeks. I may have news for you soon...