The Legacy of Macau
At midnight on 19 December 1999, the old Portuguese-Chinese city of Macau has reverted to Chinese sovereignty, 442 years after its founding. Except for some of its inhabitants (notably the five percent Portuguese, other Europeans and non-Chinese), no one seemed to be overly concerned with this change of status. There was no public debate either in the local press or in the international media about the implications of this change-over. This was in marked contrast to the clamour and anxiety in Hong Kong in the last few years preceding its hand-over a few years ago. Macau, one of the oldest and most intriguing 'colonial territories' of the West therefore raises several questions. Why is it different? How has it prepared for the return to China, and what will be its legacy and future as a specific urban culture?
By J. ABBINK
As an industrial and trading centre, Macau (at present a city of some 460,000 people) has, at least in the past century, always stood in the shadow of Hong Kong, located opposite Macau on the other side of the Pearl River Delta. Macau's history, however, is more ancient and diverse. The fact that its status as a Portuguese territory was not forced upon China after a military defeat (as was Hong Kong in the treaty after the Opium Wars), may have contributed to a pattern of mutual tolerance and of gradual rapprochement with China.Macau (in Chinese: Aomen) was founded in 1557 by Portuguese seafarers, traders, and soldiers, with the permission of the local Chinese governor in Xiangshan. The rocky peninsula was virtually uninhabited, but there was a Chinese temple dedicated to the goddess Mazu, or Amá, at the southern end, and there were fishermen active in the bay area. Since that date, Macau saw a remarkable development into a fast-growing entrepôt city, with great ups and downs in its fortunes. There is also a unique urban quality that has enveloped it in the course of centuries, confirmed by its proud residents and experienced by many visitors as an elusive combination of faded colonialism, isolation or independence, (past) grandeur and economic wealth, and a specific identity constructed from the mixture of Portuguese-European, Asian, and Chinese elements. (The best evocation of this is given in Porter 1996, who writes a sensitive, historically grounded portrait of Macau's uniqueness). Indeed, while geographically and culturally a meeting place of 'two different worlds', symbolized by the 'Barrier Gate' with which the Chinese had sealed off the city from the mainland, Macau has been just as much characterized by a mingling of those worlds, and by a resultant social fluidity and cultural hybridity. The Chinese immigration into the city was always strong (formally allowed since 1793), and frequent social and marriage relations between the various population groups were notable. There has emerged a specific group of 'Macanese people', with a unique style, identity and a local Creole language (Batalha 1974), and they have been the mainstay of Macau society.
This situation of contact and mingling, brought about by economic interests, did not mean that Macau was always a peaceful place, or was without a strong social hierarchy of classes and ethnic groups and great differences in power, wealth, and privilege. The contrary was true. There was no question about the Portuguese and later Macanese elite being the masters. But comparatively speaking, Macanese history has been marked neither by great rebellions and violent struggles among its inhabitants, nor by acrimonious, implacable conflict with the Chinese on the mainland. The sovereignty question was not pushed to a confrontation either the Chinese never ceded to the Portuguese in this matter, and the Portuguese did not insist on a full and unambiguous legal status in terms of a treaty. The history of Macau has also been characterized by a strong sense of independence towards both China and Portugal.
Intermediary
Historically, Macau can be considered one of those urban precursors of the 'global economy' as we now know it. Alongside Goa and Malacca, it was a pioneer mercantile settlement of the Portuguese on the trade route from Europe to the East and Far East (some of the main items were silk, silver, cloth, brocades, pearls, amber, porcelain, spices, and agricultural products) and became a very important entrepôt in the period from the 1560s to the 1640s, after which a decline set in (Boxer 1974). The wealth it acquired then has been the basis for its expansion and its attraction ever since. The city experienced periods of boom and severe decline, accompanied by a certain sense of social and cultural isolation, but it never went out of business. It retained a vital function in the emerging global economy, opening up new vistas for personal advancement, and stimulating production and industry in China and Japan. In an economic sense, Macau always kept a role as an intermediary between East and West, and between the mainland and the coast.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Macau revived its role and capitalized on the emerging trade with the Chinese hinterland, which induced many regional Southern Chinese traders to choose Macau as their headquarters. Throughout its history, the city created new opportunities for the mainland Chinese, as witnessed by the steady immigration to the town. (In the late 19th century this was driven largely by rural poverty and destitution in China.) The city also expanded its role in the trade of new products like tea, (illegal) opium, and contract labourers or 'coolies' (see below). In the late 19th century, nevertheless, Hong Kong grew in importance at the expense of Macau.
In a cultural sense also, Macau was also a precursor of a global society, a microcosm of globalized culture before its time. For instance, it was a focal point of early religious, techno-scientific, and cultural contact and exchange between the West and China (and Japan). The Jesuits settled in and around Macau (from 1561) to prepare for the Christianization of China (largely unsuccessful), and in the early nineteenth-century Protestants did the same.
When we as late 20th-century social researchers and historians are more than ever interested in the interface of the local and the global, Macau is an intriguing early example to explore this juxtaposition: a place of an admixture of peoples, languages, and ethno-cultural styles. This mix is also evident in the fascinating design and architecture of the city, with is plethora of churches, monasteries, forts, Chinese temples, and gardens. It is in the interstices between the different styles which, however, do not exactly resemble any of those found in the Portuguese or Chinese 'motherland' that the space for imagination and romantic imagery of Macau, as urban experience and lifestyle, could emerge.
'Coolies'
But an inextricable aspect of 'globalization', especially in its early expansionist forms, is force, violence, contestation: the seamy side of history. Here, Macau was no exception: the Portuguese were not particularly benevolent masters to their Chinese and other subjects; most of the city was built on African slave labour, and after the decline of the commodities trade and the rise of Hong Kong in the second half of the 19th century, it became a centre for the trade in human labour, in 'coolies', virtual slaves, who were recruited by, or offered themselves unknowingly to, Macau traders for indenture. They came mostly from the mainland. Many girls were also sent to Macau and other places by Chinese families and became domestic workers and prostitutes. In the early decades of the 20th century, Macau was one of the 'cities of sin' (De Leeuw 1934), a seamy place rife with gambling, drugs, crime, prostitution, contraband, and racketeering. Macau gambling syndicates enjoyed the proverbial bad reputation. Many literary evocations of this dark side of Macau exist (Kessel 1957). Gambling still exists as one of the central pillars of the Macanese economy the city does not and cannot deny its past. There are eight big casinos, frequented by hundreds of thousands of mostly Asian visitors, but they are now 'orderly businesses'.
In the 1990s Macau entered another new phase in its history. While still a mercantile and industrial city, more strongly than ever connected to the modernizing Chinese hinterland, it is now concentrating on entertainment and tourism, which at present generates about 45% of its GDP. In 1996, a new international airport was opened on the nearby island of Taipa, connected to Macau by a large new bridge.
As a result of the successful reorientation of its economy, the social life and character of the city is changing significantly. The old, elusive urban atmosphere including the architecture of the past is greatly threatened. Indeed, the image of Macau's past as a unique city not Chinese, not Portuguese, not classically 'colonial', but all these together is cultivated in the new tourist discourse; but paradoxically, in this period of social change and of frantic construction of a new, hard urban landscape (high-rise hotels, gambling palaces, and office blocks), its material signs are being endangered by demolition and decay. This is one of the challenges that the new Macau has to deal with under Chinese sovereignty. In his book Jonathan Porter cites a Macanese antique dealer, who, shortly after the 1985 announcement that China would regain sovereignty over Macau, started packing his things to go to Portugal, saying that Macau would hardly survive two years.
This may be too pessimistic; but question marks do indeed remain. Will Macau recede into its Chinese background? Is a Macanese identity culture, social structure, language viable in the long run? Will the Euro-Portuguese heritage vanish or be absorbed into a broader Chinese urban culture? Research into many aspects of this fascinating and dangerous place remains to be done. In light of the above questions, it would be highly satisfying to see inquiries into: the social structure and identity of the Macanese elite; possible conflicts between the different groups that form Macau society; the changing Chinese views of Macau throughout history; Macanese folk religion and the changing role of the many public festivals of the city as markers of identity and community. Whatever changes will occur now that the Barrier Gate has been demolished on 20 December 1999, Macau's mysteries will not disappear from one day to the next. *
References
Batalha, G.N.
Lingua de Macau
Macau: Imprensa Nacional, 1974
Boxer, C.R.
Macao as a Religious and Commercial Entrepôt in the 16th and 17th Centuries
In Acta Asiatica 26: 64-90, 1974
Kessel, J.
Hong Kong et Macao
Paris: Gallimard, 1957
Leeuw, H. de
Cities of Sin
London: Douglas, 1934
Porter, J.
Macau: The imaginary city
Boulder: Westview Press, 1996
Dr J. Abbink is an anthropologist and a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre, at Leiden University.
E-mail: abbink@fsw.leidenuniv.nl