Street View in Macao

 Street View in Macao

Street View in Macao

To me, Macao is quite familiar yet somewhat strange. In the late autumn of 1966, I moved from Guangzhou to Macao. After living more than one year, I moved to Hong Kong in 1968. At that time, Macao was an interesting compound of western European villa and mainland town. Along the coastline of South Bay or West Bay, two–or-three-storey European apartments and garden villas were lined by rows and stretched westward up Wangyang Hill. The avenue along the seashore made a big turn at Majiao Cape and displayed a totally different scene. 

The then Macao was quite like an isolated island. Without airport or deepwater harbor, only one or two East-Timor steamships from Portugal would occasionally put in the external port. Those people who planned to travel abroad from Macao were obliged to make a transfer by air or by sea at Hong Kong, not excepting all the Governors of Macao before returning to China. It was quite serene, and there were scarece pedestrians along the street. Therefore, it was a joyful experience to have a relaxing and cool walk in the seashore of South Bay or West Bay. In 1926, Yu Dafu had a short stay in Macao and he described this city as follows. “With a taste of ancient tradition, the bay is surrounded by green. A hill stands in the harbor. With three sides by the sea, a thoroughfare is lined apartments of deep colors…Courtyards and villas are everywhere. Two rows of banyan trees stood along the street, and whoever rest in the bench, Chinese or foreigners, are feeling so comfortable.” To my surprise, 40 years later, when I arrived in Macao, both the landscape in South Bay and the Jingfeng Hotel remained the same as Yu Dafu had described. With nothing ever changed, forty years’ time seemed to be only one day to me. Similar to Yu Dafu, what I favor in Macao is its simplicity, serenity and low price as an ancient Chinese town. In the 1970s, I would come to Macao for couple of days. I would enjoy breeze under the banyan in South Bay or savor a cup of coffee in a Portuguese restaurant in the middle way of the hill, or have some new Cantonese dishes of Macao flavor in Fulong Street, or observe the remote mainland and fishermen’s boat from top of the hill. 

Street View in Macao

Nevertheless, in the past ten years, I have hardly been to Macao. Two years ago, on the eve of the official opening of Seasons Hotel and The Venetian, plenty of advertisements were on Hong Kong’s TV. As one of my wife’s friend visited Hong Kong, they decided to have a look and I had to keep them company. We respectively reserved a room in both hotels since my wife intended to know about the setting and amenity of those luxury hotels. However, as there were connected passages between the two hotels, we even need not walk out, which they call convenience. Since I never gambled or had hardly any interest in anything luxurious, what I can recall now is dazzling dumps of gold or jade treasure, or lamps of silver or crystal. My two days’ stay in Macao brought me to realize that Macao had changed so much that it seemed strange to me. It was no longer a European villa or a Chinese town, but an indeed American type, or to be exact, another Las Vegas. Except for the old town, all the buildings in Macao were skyscrapers with gorgeous decoration, and without exaggeration, Macao had gone far more than Las Vegas. To be frank, I still prefer the Macao in the past, as simple and pure as a little girl.