Kapok | The spire hiding the temple

Eric Sautedé

While presiding over a regular meeting of the Cultural Heritage Council last week, Alexis Tam, the secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, grabbed the opportunity of the genuine emotion he had felt at seeing part of the Notre-Dame Cathedral engulfed by flames to reflect on the measures needed to ensure that such a dramatic incident would be prevented in Macao. His emphasis, as reported by the press, was three-fold: strengthen communication with the people or organizations managing heritage buildings, continue to educate the public on the safeguarding of cultural heritage, and keep carrying out inspections under the supervision of the Cultural Affairs Bureau while enrolling the public at large on the matter by allowing citizens to easily notify the Bureau on the actual state of preservation of these buildings.

As a Parisian, I had always assumed that the Notre-Dame Cathedral was indestructible. After all, it had been erected in the mid-12th century and survived several invasions and civil wars. Beside the shocking images and the realization that what once was would be no more or at least will be different, it came as a relief that for the world over, Notre-Dame de Paris somehow represented part of this universal heritage going beyond the category of the most visited places in the French capital city.

A loss for the Parisians became a loss for humanity, far beyond France’s borders. The erection of such an edifice had a political dimension though: medieval historian Patrick Boucheron reminded us that the Cathedral was “a field of force, a metaphor for reason” which power was derived from its “proximity with the King of France”. Reconstruction was thus bound to be political as well: French President Emmanuel Macron immediately pledged to restore the Cathedral within five years and solemnly declared that it would be a collective effort. Without the scars? Or are scars and failures not part of history too? As Boucheron remarked, “if we were in medieval France, we would consider the latest techniques, the most modern ones so as to build the Cathedral again, only better”.

Although Mr Tam is thus to be praised for making the connection between what had just happened in France and what could occur in Macao — and try to put in place prevention measures rather than costly and traumatic cures — one can also suspect a pretty blunt political usage behind his take: if it can happen in a city like Paris and for a building like Notre-Dame, then everything is possible.

The irony is that it is under Mr Tam’s watch that the Buddhist pavilion of the A-Ma Temple caught fire in February 2016 — a previous fire had gutted the same pavilion back in 1988. At the time, a short circuit in the electrical installations was blamed, but the damage caused was considered not “irreversible” even though what was supposed to take just a few weeks to restore ultimately became more than a year. Also, it was revealed that a member of the association managing the temple had first tried to take care of the issue by himself instead of immediately calling the fire services, that eventually intervened promptly and successfully.

Moreover, it is in this very Cultural Heritage Council that the opacity of the measures designed by the government to protect historical buildings has been denounced time and time again. More recently regarding the Lai Chi Vun shipyards, and before that precisely regarding the overall policies supposed to be in place to protect Macao’s unique heritage. In 2017, a decision by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee read like this: “[the committee] regrets the lack of progress with the completion of the Management Plan [a plan to safeguard and manage the Historic Center of Macao], which was due for submission by 1 February 2015”. A new deadline was fixed for December 1, 2018 and thus in early 2018 a two-month public consultation was organized, results were compiled (but not disclosed), transmitted to the central authorities by September and supposedly sent to the UNESCO.

What has become of the Plan Mr Tam? Let’s not forget that the Ruins of Saint Paul’s became Macao’s main landmark precisely because of fire… and negligence! Eric Sautedé