Intoxicating blend
Beyond Macao’s glitzy casino strip, east and west collide beautifully on every other corner, says Lorna Thornber.
Feeling Wong may speak limited English but he finds the words for the important stuff. ‘‘Whisky?’’ he asked each of our party of six in turn, nodding rapidly, making it clear that as far as he’s concerned there is only one right answer.
Bellies bulging with the likes of drunken sauna shrimp – which are marinated in rice wine and then steamed – sweet-and-sour fish, barbecued duck, Macanese egg tarts and more beer and rice wine that is good for us, all but two of us declined. But Mr Wong, the 70-something founder of Nga Tim Cafe on Macao’s Coloane island, isn’t one to let others dampen his high spirits.
Clearly the life and soul of the lowkey party that takes place in the openair Chinese and Portuguese restaurant in the evenings, he produced three glasses of golden liquor with a flourish. And after a quick ‘‘gom bui’’ (Cantonese for cheers), downed his in a gulp. ‘‘When I drink, I sing,’’ he exclaimed and launched into an emotive rendition of what sounded like Chinese opera, waving his drink in one hand and gesticulating wildly with the other before clutching both to his chest as he delivered the final, clearly heart-rending lyrics.
Sitting at our plastic round table as children played before the custardyellow facade of the Chapel of Francis Xavier in the adjacent plaza and a guitar player at a neighbouring restaurant turned heads with a fadoesque melody, I felt as if I’d landed at some clandestine crossroad between Asia and Europe. A place where two cultures collide in, as far as I’m aware, unparalleled ways. It was a fitting end to what had been a day of surprises, primarily that the former Portuguese colony on the south coast of China is much more than its moniker ‘‘The Las Vegas of the East’’ suggests.
We’d taken the ferry to Macao, a special administrative region of China since 1999, from Hong Kong International Airport that morning and began as we meant to go on – by discovering, plateful by giant plateful, just what makes Macao a Unesco Creative City of Gastronomy.
This was accompanied by generous helpings of sightseeing and high- and low-brow entertainment because you can’t visit and avoid the casinos in all their skyline-dominating, neon lightflashing glory entirely. Especially if you’re an optimist with a hefty student loan.
Originally settled by Chinese fishermen, Macao was discovered by the Portuguese in the 1550s and became an important trading post. Roman Catholic missionaries built the baroque churches, grand buildings and villas that are interspersed in the old town with Chinese-style buildings and temples but, our guide Joao tells us, they didn’t try to force the locals to forgo their beliefs as long as they accepted Jesus. The result: a land where East and West appear to meet amicably on every other street corner.
Checking into the Sofitel on the edge of the Unesco-listed historical centre, I used my 40 free minutes to dive into narrow streets lined with stores selling local fast food ... in search of the socalled Macanese acropolis. Designed by an Italian Jesuit and built by Japanese Christian exiles and Chinese craftsmen in the early 17th century, the Church of St Paul was ravaged by fire in 1835. While only the facade and grand staircase remain, the ruins are spectacular enough to rank as Macao’s most famous historical icon.
The statues and engravings were designed to illustrate the Passion of the Christ to the illiterate and help tell the story of Christianity in China. Trying and failing to get a shot that is not obscured by posing tourists, I climbed the steep steps to Monte Fort, from which the facade, surrounded by the tourist throngs and dingy high-rise apartment blocks, looks like a broken but still beloved martyr; a relic from a bygone era which, while increasingly incongruous in its surroundings, serves as a tangible reminder of the Macao that existed before the religion of gambling took hold.
Waking to another blue-sky spring day, we walked past apartment blocks with illegal caged balconies (desperate attempts to carve out more space in one of the most densely populated place on the planet) to Camoes Garden, named after legendary Portuguese poet Luis de Camoes, who is said to have begun his epic Os Lusiadas – often compared to Virgil’s The Aeneid – in Macao. As most Macanese apartments are tiny, public parks serve as al-fresco settings for many a social gathering.
As we followed pathways – and one painful but strangely pleasurable reflexology walkway – past boulders, banyans and other centuries-old trees, we spotted chess and card players, men who’ve hung their birdcages in the trees so their feathered friends can socialise while they do, and people doing tai chi exercises.
We were invited to join a group of elderly but enviably energetic women who gather each morning to perform a few of the 100-plus tai chi dances in their repertoire. Their flowing movements made it look effortless but our distinctly unco ones revealed the truth. From there, we made our way to Senado Square, where scrubbed-up pink and yellow colonial facades ride the waves of hand-placed black and white paving stones.
I admired the artworks in beautifully restored St Dominic’s Church and climbed the front steps of the neoclassical Leal Senado to what feels like a secret courtyard garden with intricately painted Portuguese tiles and ivy-covered walls.
The next morning, I took a walk to the Mandarin’s House, the former home of influential reformist and author Zheng Guanying, whose fans included Chinese emperors and Chairman Mao, just off quaint Lilau Square. Entering via a ‘‘moon gate’’ through a stained stone wall, I made my way through a maze of open-air corridors, courtyards and high-stud rooms with a mix of Chinese and European features that somehow look as if they were made to be together.
Hand-carved Chinese screens complement Tuscan-style columns; shuttered French windows in a room decorated with Chinese paintings and inscriptions look out onto a courtyard which, with its orange fruit trees, would look just as at home in Seville, Spain. The compound was badly damaged after it was rented out in the 1950s and although it has been restored its air of faded glam and mystery lingers, only adding to its allure. If only these 19th-century walls could talk. I encountered a similar