A friend, Ana Maria Correia in Macau, has sent me a detailed - and nice - message about my last posting. As my experience of the Portuguese is related almost exclusively to my time in Macau, she has appropriately pointed out that there are all kinds of people in the city, and that I therefore need to scratch beyond the thick varnish of casino glitz that covers a good deal of it, in order to find them. Ana is in fact not the first person to tell me about another Macau that is historically only barely out of sight for those in the know. Macau was a small colonial provincial town of Chinese, mostly Cantonese (with some Hokkiens and a couple of Hainanese), various kinds of Portuguese (locally born as well as from Portugal, Africa, India, and Timor), and Filipinos. The current expats - read white-looking Anglophone expats - were not there, nor were many different kinds of immigrant workers and students. The Burmese, though a tiny group, were also already there, as well as a small Indian community (of Goan and other origins) besides the Timorese. There were also Africans back then, and even African clubs (until the 1960s in fact Macau had Moçambican solidiers). Besides, there were jazz clubs (Ana's former companion was part of one of the last clubs, and jazz bands before the casinos took over almost all night life in the city. A Brazilian musician was also part of it). In fact a claim has been made on behalf of Macau as the site of the first jazz club in China (competition says however that the first jazz club actually sprouted in Shanghai. Macau holds so many firsts, however, that it is hard to tell: the first photographs - daguerreotypes - taken in China were taken in Macau. The first oil paintings were also made there). Until not too long ago, I am told that you could also sit near where the New Lisboa is now, and enjoy great food in the open, as there was a kind of night market. The boat to Hong Kong took almost an entire night to sail across the delta, and people would accordingly entertain themselves on board (now the fast and very expensive hovercrafts take just an hour - however quite a few people in Macau are left stranded in their tiny peninsula and two islets because they cannot afford the fare. They can still walk their way into Mainland China, however, through the famous barrier gate - Portas do Cerco).

It may have been a boring city, besides being one that until 1968 lived in the impossible situation of being literally a stone throw's away from Mainland China, across both a couple of hundred meters of water and barrier gate, and yet not having formally any relations with it. Instead, it kept ties with Taiwan, now just under an hour away by plane. That is because Portugal was a fascist dictatorship until the Revolução dos Cravos in 1974. Macau therefore lived a strange existence, as a slightly isolated colonial outpost, in the middle of many historical crossroads, and right under the nose of China. It has moreover a long history as a maritime trading port, with particularly strong links to Southeast Asia, from hence came quite a few of its earlier inhabitants, Portuguese included (in fact as far as I know the Portuguese first reached Macau from their newly conquered base in Melaka). This situation of partial isolation of course was not to last. Now Macau is slowly but surely being absorbed into the Mainland, in fact at a faster pace than Hong Kong. Some in Macau - and not only Portuguese or foreigners - fear it will eventually become just another Cantonese provincial city. There is no danger of that happening, however: Macau has become first and foremost a casino city that has virtually no equal in the whole of China or the whole of Asia for that matter. It now turns over much more money than Las Vegas - in fact, a couple of casinos in Vegas are being bankrolled through the financial crisis with profits from Macau. To me however that is a fairly sad mark of distinction, and not only because I have no interest in gambling as such. Not only almost the whole cityscape but also a good deal of the social life now revolves around the casinos with all the attendant consequences. A good deal has therefore been destroyed and lost, and it is doubtful whether much has been gained in exchange, except for a tycoon-powered economy which generates astronomical amounts of cash on behalf of fabulously tiny groups of people. These last in turn either employ or bribe the rest into compliance (when they are lucky, that is - contrary to legend, the inhabitants of Macau are not necessarily a meek lot), especially as Macau is internally officially autonomous (as far as Beijing allows it, that is).

The other Macau however lingers on in the many nooks and corners that survive and, above all, it goes on beneath the sleaze, especially in the memories and daily lives of many of the city's inhabitants. There are also foci of rebellion and resistance, as when during May Day in 2010 the population suddenly decided to demonstrate on the streets against the government - and local business. It must be quite hard to feel poor and count your patacas, and not being able to afford even the boat ticket to Hong Kong for a day trip, while there are signs of untold wealth all around you (riqueza nababesca, literally, Nabob-like wealth). There are in reality over ten thousand people in Macau, out of over six hundred thousand inhabitants, who are permanently unemployed - and unemployable as the casino industry has no use for them, nor has the government (the two single largest employers in town). Meanwhile the casinos keep recruiting hundreds and even thousands of people from abroad. Differently to Bahrain - another small to tiny wealthy nation basking in social inequality - there is no serious religious or ethnic rift within Macau. However, the tensions simmering just beneath the surface are some times scary to look at.

There is a notorious place by the margin of one of the two lakes that lace the southern rim of the Macau Peninsula, where people supposedly jump to their deaths because of gambling debts - they are locals, by the way, not foreigners. Some times desperate relatives plaster a message in Chinese nearby, such as 'Papa please come home'. Differently to Monaco in southern France, and Singapore, who has recently slapped an entrance fee of one hundred Singaporean dollars on its citizens willing to go into one of the new local casinos, Macau allows its citizens free access to its many casinos. As quite a lot of people live right next door to at least one casino (and often to several!), if you like gambling it must be virtually impossible to resist the temptation. This last is in fact compounded by the fact that casinos also concentrate almost all of the night life in the city, not to mention most of its luxury shops and expensive restaurants and cafés. Prostitution is also rife in them. Incidentally, I have nothing against prostitutes: I grew up in the centre of São Paulo, barely a stone throw's away from the traditional old redlight district on rua Aurora, and besides lived for years in Copacabana Posto 5 in Rio, and therefore right next to one of the major prostitution areas for tourists in the city. Only I felt more than slightly weird when I went to a club in Macau, and had to live with the fact that some times a third or more of everybody standing around me was literally out hunting for business. Another choice was to go next door to the only other club, patronised by the children of the local elite - it was full of charming security personnel and the varied, incredibly interesting people who fawn on the wealthy.

Macau however, though tiny (you can easily walk right through it all the way to the Portas do Cerco - literally 'Siege Gates' - if you are on the Peninsula which concentrates about two thirds of the population), is a very complex society full of contradictions and unexpected blessings. You can meet people who lead an alternative lifestyle in the middle of the sameness; who are genuinely into art and culture; who are trying to revive the local Creole language, a dying relative of Melaka Portuguese, called Patuá; and who are artists and intellectuals with a cosmopolitan experience. All this is also Macau, though understandably enough it is not visible to the eye of the outsider. One shocking truth I learned about Macau is that friends in Hong Kong who had been to the city several times in fact had only jumped out of the ferry into one of the waiting buses headed for the casinos - which also invariably double as hotels - and then back into the bus and the ferry back home, without ever catching a glimpse of the historic city centre or other parts of town. It sounds funny, but Macau is in fact a world heritage casino city, Unesco's first - and almost certainly last.

Macau has however been ominously absent from this blog, even though I have so far spent more time there than in Kerala, let alone Jawa or Thailand. Besides, Macau is also about Hong Kong - at times a very unappealing, overcrowded and expensive city which I however miss a good deal, because of its cosmopolitanism and its amazing people, who are often a kind of Anglicized Cantonese with at times little or no English (besides, I'm told, somewhat bad Mandarin), but a good, wry sense of humour, and fairly hedonistic too.

Macau could certainly have been a major place for saudades. Perhaps it is. I had a life there and still have friends. I only need time and distance. And then I will scratch beneath the surface once more. [originally published on 02/03/2011]