The boy from Macau | Journalist, author Luís Andrade de Sá dies at 58

Luís Andrade de Sá in Macau (May 2015) – Photo by Paulo Taipa

Journalist and researcher, Luís Andrade de Sá, died early yesterday (Macau time) in his birthplace, Setúbal, from prolonged cancer illness. He was 58.

Born on the banks of the Sado River on December 31, 1958, Andrade de Sá studied journalism at a Lisbon university before starting his career in 1984. He worked in Macau from then until 2000, and was part of the initial teams at TDM-TV, where he participated in several innovative shows at the newly-created TV station, ultimately reaching an editor position. Sá left the local broadcaster in 1993 to join the now-extinct daily newspaper, Futuro de Macau.

Luís Andrade de Sá was one of the most prolific Macau correspondents, working for O Público – one of the top newspapers in Portugal, penning hundreds of features during the critical years of the late Transition Period until the handover on December 20, 1999.

Sá eventually moved to Lisbon in the early 2000s to become a staff journalist at the Lusa news agency where he held several positions over 17 years. He was the managing editor (chefe de redacção) of the Portuguese news agency between 2007 and 2011, after returning from his first 2-year stint as Lusa chief correspondent in Maputo, Mozambique. He would then return in 2011 to the former Portuguese colony in Africa for another three years at this job.

In 2014, Luís Sá decided to come back to “his” Macau – “the place I was once happy,” he told me – to join a new media project, the Plataforma bilingual newspaper.

An avid reader, researcher, and writer, Luís Andrade de Sá penned several books on Macau’s contemporary history, most notably, “The Boys From Macau,” a pioneering insight into the Portuguese/Macanese community of Hong Kong and the Far East.

A traveler at heart, Sá’s first title to be published was “A História na Bagagem” (History in the Luggage), a prelude to his seminal works on Hotel Bela Vista and the history of aviation in Macau.

The journalist was hospitalized at a clinic in Setúbal in February after being diagnosed with cancer around two years ago in Macau. Luís Andrade de Sá is survived by his children Daniel and Luísa, and his wife Isadora Ataíde, who is also a journalist, and a scholar. PC