Macau

This weekend I went to Macau, a Portuguese colony turned Chinese special administrative region (or “S.A.R.” for the aspiring cognoscenti), which lies one hour west of Hong Kong by ferry. Though it’s geographically nearby, a trip to Macau involves squeezing through crowded immigration checks upon entering and leaving. As a bona fide Hong Kong local, I used my Hong Kong ID card to avoid most of the lines where they check non-residents’ passports.

While it’s commonly referred to as the “Las Vegas of Asia,” I prefer to call Las Vegas the “Macau of America.” One would not be incorrect to deem Macau as dirtier and grungier, but placing it second behind Las Vegas in grandeur is injustice. The casinos here are just as artificially resplendent and are present in wider variety; Macau has two separate strips compared to Sin City’s one; Macau has beaches and waterfronts to mitigate the, at times, suffocating humidity, while Vegas is landlocked and dry.

There is a palpable and unparalleled flow of cash in Macau, as China provides millions of heavy-pocketed and gambling-addicted visitors resulting in bigger crowds and higher minimum-bets than Las Vegas — my ears were constantly harrowed by the gentle shuffling of paper money and the sharp click of poker chips being lost.

The two main strips—one in Cotai, on the island Taipa, which is connected to the other by bridge on the Macau peninsula—are lined with ostentatious, technicolor casinos, all of which are uniquely shaped and hued though when viewed together, constitute an ironically picturesque chaos.

The Studio City hotel has a figure-eight shaped Ferris wheel embedded into the skyscraper; there is a glittering Eiffel Tower outside the Parisian Hotel; there is a Venetian and Wynn and two MGM hotels and dozens others all with their own garish, meretricious tinsels and attractions.

The city breathes and bristles with a distinctly ambiguous cultural echo. Portuguese cathedrals, roads, and restaurants are all abundant and available in Macau, though they are primarily frequented by Chinese patrons. There are districts that feel entirely foreign from what I’ve come to know as Chinese streets; the very same cobblestone I’ve seen in Europe is present here either as a convincing facsimile or of original Portuguese construction. There are pastel Portuguese buildings with aesthetic carved balconies and unintentional speckled motifs on account of their senescence, and right next door may stand a Chinese-style building with equal deterioration though marked with Chinese letters and characteristic hints of spirituality — a Buddha statue here, a bundle of candles and offerings there.

The Ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral instilled the most nostalgia for my past European travels; it is as if it was dropped off in Asia from a traveling European architect, forgotten, and left to decompose as a spectacle for Chinese onlookers.

There is only one wall left standing, the front entrance of a once-grand 17th-century Portuguese church dedicated to the Apostle, Saint Paul. It overlooks the Macau historic district—or the more Portuguese part of Macau—and enjoys an interminable flow of tourists armed with selfie-sticks and Portuguese egg tart pastries. Standing right in front of the ruin, the view immediately below is Portuguese and antique, with a large public square common to European cities. In the backdrop to this, however, looms the casinos, the cityscape abruptly materializing in stark contrast against the bygone Portuguese vestiges below.

There are Chinese vendors handing out Portuguese street foods in Santo Antonio, and the Cantonese I heard sounded different — there were certain words that seemed slurred or twanged and it made me wonder if this was a unique Macau dialect or simply the same Cantonese though with a Portuguese accent. Seeing Portuguese this and that’s among the crowds of Chinese didn’t seem to make sense; the waves of black hair and short-statured groups seemed uncharacteristic atop the cobblestone walkways.

In Hong Kong, buses and taxis start and stop within the choked street traffic, indifferently voicing their shrill and abused car-honks. I had expected a similar sight in Macau, but I was pleasantly surprised at both the terrific amounts of European-style mopeds and motorbikes and the graciousness that vehicles granted pedestrians. Walking into a road with oncoming cars in Hong Kong is a venture reserved for the quick-footed brave or stupid. People drive slower in Macau and do not assume they have the right of way amid a crowd of wayfarers.

One of my favorite things I saw was how the menus and street signs of Macau listed their contents in three languages: English, Chinese, and Portuguese. I cannot read either Chinese or Portuguese, though for some reason it stands out as one of my favorite quirks of Macau. Though it is not like the melting pot of different cultures that is America, there remains a more specific recipe for residents of Macau. The culture blurs the demarcation between Portuguese and Chinese, and accommodates for foreigners and tourists (like me) and the result is fascinating.

Macau could be described as a rocky yet becoming marriage between China and Portugal that tiptoes on the brink of divorce. It is both held intact and infected by the sin and money-lust of Las Vegas, and the longevity of this marriage creates uniqueness and contention, with one party trying harder than the other to hold on to the past.

It was a fast and compressed few days, though the free shuttle system connecting the hotels and the smallness of Macau allowed it not to feel rushed. Next on my list is Taiwan, just 24 days away…