Insight: A place all can call home

Paulo Barbosa

“A weed from catholic Europe, it took root
Between some yellow mountains and a sea,
Its gay stone houses an exotic fruit,
A Portugal-cum-China oddity.

Rococo images of Saint and Saviour
Promise its gamblers fortunes when they die,
Churches alongside brothels testify
That faith can pardon natural behavior.”

W.H. Auden

Sometimes, after leaving the newsroom late at night, I like to have a stroll in the old Macau. I pass the house where someone once told me the poet Camilo Pessanha lived, and then I head to Senado Square, enjoying the fact that the beautiful Mediterranean square is so quiet and almost empty at that hour. I then walk through the arched sidewalks of the avenue known as “San Ma Lou” (which could be translated as new horse street) and gaze upon the decrepit commercial mansions that stand there. The imposing Hotel Central, once described as Asia’s biggest and most luxurious casino (or, as 007 creator Ian Fleming wrote, “the largest house of gambling and self indulgence in the world”), is still operating. Hookers whistle at me as I pass on the opposite sidewalk, evidence that the place “long ago started its descent into shabbiness and eventual demolition,” like Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel.
Some of the mansions here are of Portuguese style, while others – like the Tak Seng Pawnshop – are clearly of Chinese origin, reminiscent of Macau’s mixed soul.
Turning left, I enter the famous Rua da Felicidade (Happiness Street), which is deserted at night. The words about the street’s heyday uttered by the late Macanese writer Henrique de Senna Fernandes come to mind:
“By day, the Rua da Felicidade was like any other street in the Bazaar. The windows of the ‘flower houses’ remained shut, because their residents were fast asleep after the previous night’s harvest. In the early afternoon, one could hear the clacking of mah-jong tablets and the plucking of string instruments as pupils set out on their apprenticeship to become sing-song girls. As evening fell, the lanterns were lit, and one by one, the houses were illuminated. That was when the sing-song girls, or pei-pa-chais, began to get dressed, to put on their carmine make-up, and perfume themselves. The fussiest among them spent hours in this ritual, surrounded by mui-tchais and the apprentices, who later on would become sing-song girls themselves.” [translated by David Brookshaw from the book Nam Van] I walk down the street and head to the Inner Harbor. Once a hub for fishermen and “tancareiras” (tanka women), the place has lost the close relationship with the waterfront it once had. A lot has been destroyed in the district. Centenary houses were replaced by uncharacteristic buildings. But some of the ancient residences are still there, magnificently beautiful at night, transporting us to former times. My stroll ends close to the churches of St Joseph and St Lawrence, at the heart of what was once called the “Christian City.”
Macau strikes me as a vintage place where these old remnants and stories mix with the effervescence of the casinos and the neon exuberance. Religious and debauched at the same time. Decadently old but still full of novelties and surprises. It is sometimes incomprehensible for those who try to decipher its multiple layers, yet a place all can call home.