Macau (1), The Macau Peninsula: Hong Kong and Macau Part 3

Cantonese with the Slightest Portuguese Accent

This is the first of two Macau posts describing a longer visit than our 2010 daytrip (click here for that post). This post and its companion Macau (2) Taipa and Coloane cover new ground.

Kowloon to Macau

Macau

In 2010 we used the Kowloon Ferry Terminal, this time we left our Kowloon hotel at 8.15 for the Sheung Wan jetfoil terminal on Hong Kong island. We had not previously travelled to Central on the MTR at rush hour – an interesting experience which brings you into crushingly close contact with your fellow travellers.

Arriving early, we drank coffee and waited for Brian and Hilary, friends for the last twenty-five years, and Hong Kong residents for two decades before that, to arrive from Ap Lei Chau. They were early too, so we caught an earlier ferry than we had booked and left Hong Kong at 9.45.

Jetfoil boats are undoubtedly fast, but on a bumpy sea they feel as if they are bounding from one wave crest to the next and just missing, but despite the continuous lurch and crash we completed the 65km journey in the scheduled 55mins. Construction of a Hong Kong-Macau bridge-tunnel-bridge started in 2009 and should have been completed last month (October 2016). It will cut the journey time to 30mins but although we saw pylons aplenty, there is much work yet to do. [update: it was completed Nov 2017 and opened in October 2018].

The journey across the Pearl River Delta to Macau, which consists of a small peninsula and two joined islands, Taipa and Coloane.
This is an old map, Macau is no longer Portuguese and Hong Kong airport is now on Chek Lap Kok Island

The Gran Lisboa and Stanley Ho

Macau’s raison d’être is gambling and shuttle buses wait to whisk punters from the ferry port to the casinos. We are not gamblers – I fail to understand the attraction – but we hopped aboard the Grand Lisboa bus anyway. Deposited in the hotel basement, we made our way through the casino, wallets unopened, to the waiting world above.

The Grand Lisboa is one of 19 hotels/casinos owned by the Stanley Ho organisation. Well into his 90s Ho probably has little control over the businesses he founded while his three surviving ‘wives’ (polygamy is technically illegal) and many children, own or squabble over his billions. [Update: He died May 2020.] Ho related businesses, including the jetfoils that brought us here, reputedly employ 25% of Macau’s workforce. Businessman, philanthropist, politician and (allegedly) gangster, Ho is also an art collector and the hotel lobby displays some remarkable pieces, including several large, intricately carved ivories - it is antique ivory… but even so…

Grand Lisboa, Macau (photo comes from our sunnier 2010 visit)

Central Macau: A Little Bit Portuguese, but Rather More Chinese

A short walk took us to the Largo de Senado, the heart of Portuguese Macau. Little remains of Macau’s Portuguese heritage - for colonial history see the 2010 post - but the Largo looks the part (like the Grand Lisboa doesn’t).

Largo de Senado, Macau

In 2010 we visited on the 15th of November, a warm sunny day, unlike the cool 25th of November 2016, but being that little bit later meant we could enjoy the Christmas decorations.

Christmas decorations, Largo de Senado, Macau

Opening a New Shop

Nearby a new shop was opening. A couple of dragons had been invited to dance…

Dancing Dragons, Macau

…to the rhythms of their youthful percussionists…

Youthful percussionists

…until all were satisfied that good luck had been guaranteed.

Good luck is ensured, the shop is opened and the dragons rest

São Paulo and Sweet Salami

Continuing north, past a small fish market…

Fish market, Macau

…and the façade of São Paulo Church (see 2010)…

Sao Paulo, Macau

… we encountered shops dispensing samples of the salami-like meat, which we tried in 2010 and again this year. I still wonder why anyone why anyone would think sweet salami is a good idea.

Sheets of sweet salami. A good idea?

The Old Protestant Cemetery

After a snack lunch we continued to the Old Protestant Cemetery. The Portuguese did not permit Protestant burials in their Catholic Cemeteries and the Chinese wanted no foreigners in theirs, but prods – British, American, Dutch and Scandinavian – insisted on dying. Clandestine burials along the boundary wall separating the Macau peninsula from China were the only solution until 1821 when the East India Company bought a plot of land to create a Protestant Cemetery. It is no longer in use, but remains well maintained and is a very pretty place.

Old Protestant Cemetery, Macau

George Chinnery, Robert Morrison, Capt Spencer-Churchill, Lt Adams and Others

Pride of place goes to George Chinnery…

The grave of George Chinnery, Old Protestant Cemetery, Macau

…a London born artist who left for Chennai in 1802 aged 28 and spent the remaining 50 years of his life in Asia, the last 27 in Macau. He painted portraits of the rich and powerful, both Asians and Europeans and as the only European painter resident in Southern China in the mid-early 19th century, his depictions of the life of ordinary people and the landscape of the Pearl River Delta are especially important.

Macau Street Scene with Pigs by George Chinnery (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum)

Also buried here is the missionary Robert Morrison who compiled a Chinese dictionary for foreigners and translated the bible into Chinese….

Grave of Robert Morrison, Old Protestant Cemetery, Macau

…Captain Henry John Spencer-Churchill, RN, Winston Churchill’s great-great-grand-uncle, and American Naval Lieutenant Joseph Adams, grandson of John Adams and nephew of John Quincy Adams.

Grave of John Henry Spencer-Churchill, Old Protestant Cemetery, Macau

Most poignant are the simple, laconic gravestone of young men, often sailors, who died, far from home, from accidents and disease. Dates of death before 1821 indicate their remains were moved here from earlier unofficial interments.

Older gravestones, Old Protestant Cemetery, Macau

Hilary had been keen to show us this cemetery and, as Lynne says ‘you can’t have a proper holiday without a good cemetery’.

Macau's Buses

We moved on to the A-Ma Temple, in the south western corner of the peninsula, a bus ride away.

As regular visitors Brian and Hilary were able to introduce us to Macau’s efficient bus system. Routes are well mapped and each stop has a schematic for its particular route with the stops named and fares clearly shown. The stops are displayed and announced on the bus in Chinese and Portuguese. Drivers do not give change, but Hong Kong dollars, notes and coins, are accepted at parity with the local pataca so we managed to scrape together the exact money for our fare.

The A-Ma Temple

The bus dropped us outside the temple, a series of shrines straggling up a rocky promontory. Built in 1488, A-Ma predates the city which may have been named after it, Ma-ge (The Pavilion of Ma) the first Portuguese arrivals were told when they asked where there were.

A-Ma Temple, Macau

A-Ma (The Mother) known on the mainland as Mazu (Maternal Ancestor) or more formally as Tianhou - Tin Hau in Hong Kong - (Empress of Heaven) is the Goddess of the Sea, a deification of the allegedly historical 10th century Fujian shaman Lin Mo.

A-Ma protects sailors, and several rocks have been decorated with fishing boats.

Painted Boulder, A-Ma Temple, Macau

Some sources describe the temple as ‘Buddhist’ though ‘Mazuism’ occupies the grey area where Taoism blends into Chinese folk religion. The temple has Buddhist and Confucian elements, but such distinctions are of little importance in southern China - any gods will do, as long as they bring good luck.

Shrine, A-Ma Temple, Macau

In this spirit of ecumenism Lynne bought some incense sticks…

Lighting Incense sticks, A-Ma Temple, Macau

…and offered them with due reverence.

Placing incense sticks, A-Ma Temple, Macau

We climbed to the highest point of the temple, lit some more incense sticks and descended.

Shrine at the top of the A-Ma Temple, Macau

The Moorish Barracks and the Largo de Lilau

Walking back towards the Mandarin’s House we passed the ‘Moorish Barracks’ a strange hybrid of a building erected in 1874 to house an Indian regiment the Portuguese brought from Goa to aid the Macau police….

Moorish Barracks, Macau

…and the little Portuguese style Largo do Lilau, in one of the first Portuguese residential areas. Its spring was once Macau’s main source of drinking water – 'one who drinks from Lilau never forgets Macau', as the saying goes.

Largo do Lilau, Macau

The Mandarin House

The so-called ‘Mandarin House’ was built in 1869 by Zheng Wenrui. His son, the far-sighted political reformer Zheng Guanyin (1842-1922) lived here while writing his masterpiece ‘Words of Warning in a Prosperous Age’, a book which influenced, among others, Lu Xun (we visited his house in Beijing in 2013) and Mao Zedong.

The Mandarin House, Macau - it doesn't look much from the outside

It was the largest family house in Macau, but in the mid-twentieth century the Zheng family moved out and the house was let – sometimes to as many as 300 tenants and living conditions deteriorated.

The Mandarin House, Macau

The Macau government acquired the house in 2001 and carefully restored it.

The Mandarin House, Macau

I have always admired the way the Chinese create oases of peace amid vast bustling cities and this house, with its spacious and beautiful rooms, exudes quietness and calm.

The Mandarin House, Macau

Part of me would like to live in a house so sparsely but elegantly furnished, but lacking the self-discipline I know I never could.

São Lourenço and The Theatre of Dom Pedro V

Macau is still divided into its original Portuguese parishes. We continued towards the centre through the streets of São Lourenço…

Sao Lourenco district, Macau

….and dropped into the mother church. One of Macau’s oldest churches, São Lourenço was built by the Jesuits in the mid-16th century. The exterior received a 19th century make-over, but the interior remains calm and unbothered by baroque.

Sao Lourenco, Macau

Nearby, the neo-Classical Theatre of Dom Pedro V, built in 1860, was one of the first Western style theatres in a East Asia.

Theatre of Dom Pedro V, Macau

The theatre has seen periods of neglect, but is currently open, in good repair and well-used.

Inside the Theatre of Dom Pedro V, Macau

Pousada Mong-Ha and Dinner at La Lorcha

It was now late afternoon, so we took another bus up to Macau’s northeast corner and checked into the Mong-Ha Pousada, a former army barracks, now a training hotel for the hospitality industry.

Our room was pleasant and we had a rest, a shower and shared a bottle of wine with Brian and Hilary before heading back towards the Temple of A-Ma for our evening meal at La Lorcha where they ‘endeavour to offer [their] customers the best dining experience they can have in Macau bringing a centuries-long cuisine resulted from the combination of Portuguese sailors with the local Chinese community.’ (from their website, grammar and spelling adjusted). This is, I presume, the definition of Macanese cuisine.

Lynne and I started with octopus salad, Brian with the caldo verde he enjoys so much in in Portugal (and Hilary’s starter is hidden behind a very familiar bottle of Dão). So far so Portuguese.

Dinner at La Lorcha, Macau

Like us, Brian and Hilary are no strangers to Portugal, but they knew Macau first and approached Portuguese food from that direction. For Lynne and I it is very much the other way round and we thought we had made very Portuguese choices for the main course too, pork and clams (eating clams for the third day running was an error that was nobody’s fault but mine) and ‘African chicken’, assuming it to be chicken piri-piri by another name.

We were wrong, ‘African chicken’, chicken covered in a peanut, tomato and chilli sauce, is a Macanese speciality. Whether it really has African origins or was invented in a Macau hotel in the 1940s is open to debate, but it is said (by The Guardian, among others) to be Macau’s favourite dish. Lynne’s verdict - ‘all right, I suppose.’

We were disappointed by the meal which seemed uncharacteristically heavy by Cantonese or Portuguese standards - and by the rather surely service. Tomorrow we eat at the legendary Fernando’s, so I will withhold my judgement of Macanese cuisine until then.

Hong Kong and Macau
Part 1: Delights Revisited: The Sheraton at Dusk and Woo Sung Street
Part 2: The Transit of Lamma
Part 3: Macau (1) The Macau Peninsula
Part 4: Macau (2) Mainly Taipa and Coloane
Part 5; Hong Kong History Museum, Dim Sum and Mongkok
Part 6: To Sai Kung and Deeper into the New Territories
Part 7 The Peak, Markets and a Trip to Ap Lei Chau

The End