Our Desk: Can you “falar”?

João Pedro Lau

In her blog, former Legislative Assembly (AL) president Susana Chou has spoken about her experience of being, somehow, discriminated against by others because she can speak Portuguese.
Ms Chou said that due to her unwillingness to blindly follow some leaders of the “Love China, love Macau” camp before the 1999 sovereignty handover, she was suffering from long-term suppression and boycotting.
The former AL president said that, in a semi-public event, a former once-powerful leader in Macau told people: “Susana Chou can really “falar” (the word “speak” in Portuguese). She also has many good friends in Portugal and some western countries. Therefore, she is politically unreliable.”
Of course, the distrust of people who can “falar” and have foreign friends is no longer the case, given that bilingual speakers of Chinese and Portuguese are highly valued nowadays in Macau. Nevertheless, it is evident that residents here are still separated according to the cultural and linguistic group they belong to.
For me, I never made friends with anybody who could not speak Cantonese before I went overseas. Even though I had Macanese friends in my early childhood, we were able to befriend each other only because they could speak Cantonese.
It seems to me that people speaking different languages are living in different worlds in Macau, although they may only be living two blocks or two houses apart from each other.
I think that this is an upsetting situation. Given that Macau has always prided itself as the place where the East meets the West, locals (both Chinese and Portuguese) should strive to make connections with each other in order to honor the history of their city. Nevertheless, in most cases, people simply take the easy way out and choose to hang out with those who share the same culture or language as them.
Some may point out that the Macau government has already allocated a huge amount of resources into promoting the Portuguese language. However, learning the language is not enough. It is the cultural exchange that is going to break the barrier between groups.
Through learning each other’s culture, people can then understand what, and how, each other think. It is from this understanding that true communication will emerge.
I think the government has already done its part through organizing different events to promote Portuguese culture to local Chinese. It is now the turn of the residents to rise to the challenge and start reaching out.
Allow me to share my experience here. There’s a Portuguese couple with a little daughter living in my building. Around a year ago, I came up to them, out of nowhere, and asked if they were interested in doing a language exchange so that we could teach each other our mother tongues.
The teaching, as far as I can remember, lasted for only half a year. Since then, all we did during our gatherings was only to chat and eat (mostly me eating their food). Neither of us can claim that we learnt a lot from each other in terms of language skills. However, we have fostered a friendship and I can truly say that I have learnt a lot about Portugal and Portuguese culture from them.
This is more important to me than being able to “falar”.