BIZCUITS: CanNOT

Leanda Lee

There’s no doubt about it, my behaviour feels more controlled in Macau than in most places I’ve been. Not that I’m much of a wild thing, but it would have been pleasant to have been able to kick a ball with the kids when Taipa Central Park was a mess of weed and rubble – cyclone fencing and roaming labourers’ dogs suggested it would not have been appreciated. And once the park was built, woe betide wanderers beyond the designated pathways; no child to experience the sensation of grass underfoot (I understand this – too many people and too little grass). I would have liked to have stepped off-track in our green areas to swing from the branch of a tree or two, perhaps even climb one in a mad moment. But one gets the sense after a time that if grass is off-limits, how illicit communing with trees might be. And then there was the quiet midday morning when I decided to soar high on a swing in that park. Weighing in less than a good proportion of Macau’s youth, the explanation from the tyrannical guard that I was too heavy for the equipment just didn’t ring true. The sad fact is that apparently I’m too old to soar.
Elsewhere, I’ve recently enjoyed a sampling of comedic opera along with jellies in the auditorium and champagne at intermission. In the Macau Cultural Centre I’ve tried savouring sweets and chocolates (granted, no Maltesers down the aisle) and been told off. Now, I just join the ranks of subterfuge candy-eaters, sneaking bonbons to the kids when officious eyes happen to be averted. It’s not the same joy of occasion, though. Special little treats are supposed come with the ballet, it’s part of the whole event, the stuff of childhood memories.
Then there was the time I went training in a sailing dinghy off Hac Sa just short of the shipping lanes where the wind was strong and stable, an area where the team could keep up pace and test distance endurance; we were summarily turned back by the coast guard into the gusty confines of shallow Hac Sac bay supposedly for our own safety – and that was the end of effective training for Macau’s competing sailing athletes.
Worse than the control over my behaviour to save me from myself or to safeguard scarce public property, is the control over my being. The first time I sensed this was in December of 2004. As tourists reconnoitring to determine the affability of Macau for a life well led, we went to visit the Macau Tower, as one does. Our entrance was blocked by banks of official cars and broad shouldered chaps. But this was a tourist destination, so I swaggered up to the front door as I supposed was my right, merely to be turned back with no explanation and no apology. That one stung, and still stings. Apparently, someone more important than me was in town and the comings and goings of lesser mortals was inconsequential.
“Cannot”, that one little word, with no explanation and no empathy, is the leitmotif of Macau’s system of command and control. We have wealth, money and pleasure in abundance in this town, but here and there are reminders of the little things. We still lack, and I fear we are losing more of, the simple freedoms and the simple pleasures.