Macau Travel Guide

Introduction of Macau          Macau People         Invironment of Macau

 Introduction of Macau

It looks like a tiny European city. Its solemn architecture of Catholic churches and Chinese temples, as well as tranquil and less crowded streets compared to Hong Kong and Shanghai make the town a little heaven on our planet. The majestic and beautiful Largo de Senado is located there, and the prettily stone-paved ground reflects the gorgeous decoration lights from the Leal Senado in a moonlit and romantic night. You may want to stay there all night long and will forget to return to your hotel room, even if you are alone.

But the town has another side, which is quite playful and sometimes erotic. The entertainment business has always been prosperous, casinos and nightclubs are all around. Gaming became legalized by the Portuguese in 1847, the business had been developed fast and later branded "The Oriental Monte Carlo". In 20th century, the casino industry has played an important role in the town's economy. The scale of it can be compared with that in Las Vegas in the United States. Nowadays there are five categories in the licensed gaming business : casino, horse betting, dog racing, lottery and soccer betting. The industry is still being legally allowed after its reunification in December 1999.

In addition to the irritating and money-burning recreational activities, a lot of fine art experiences are waiting for you to find in town. The International Music Festival is held every autumn that attracts many great musicians and world-renowned symphony orchestras to perform intoxicating works of classical composers and innovated sounds of the contemporaries. The annual Arts Festival delights local audience with great arts and emotional theater plays too. If you are a cuisine lover, lots of mouth-watering food can be found, especially traditional Chinese meals, authentic local style dishes and exotic Portuguese recipes. Nothing may disappoint you anyway. 

This is Macau Special Administrative Region (abbr. Macau SAR), and we can know a little bit about its history through the magnificent Ruin of Sao Paulo, which is an eye-catching façade of a Catholic church. Sao Paulo Cathedral had been built in 1637. By combining the styles of East and West in church architecture, the cathedral incarnated the mixture of fine art in both cultures. The carving works were very fine and delicate. The making of the façade had used about 30,000 taels of silver, it was a tremendous amount of cash at that time and thus it made a great fame in the Far East. Unfortunately in 1835 the church was destroyed by a big fire, but miraculously the façade and the 68-step stairs in front of it remained intact. The scene becomes the Ruin of Sao Paulo, which has been a symbol of Macau in modern times and a must go attraction here. 

 Macau People

Macao's population has experienced fast demographic growth in the last two decades, increasing at an annual rate of around 4 per cent. The population of the SAR is estimated to be 543,000, of which 45 per cent were born in Macao and another 45 per cent were born on the Mainland, while less than 10 per cent of residents are from other regions, and it is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Chinese nationality accounts about 95 percent while the rest 5 per cent takes up of Portuguese, Filipinos and people from other countries.

Macanese is a general term referred to the natives of Macau, specifically to local-born Portuguese people. Portuguese culture dominates these people, but Chinese cultural patterns are also significant. This community acted as the middleman between ruling colonial government and the Chinese who knew little about the Portuguese. Many Macanese migrated to Portuguese-speaking Brazil and Portuguese African provinces and those descendants who grew up in Africa returned to Macau. In the year 1847 many were sent to Peru as contract laborers. During the late-nineteenth century the upbringing of most Macanese fell along the lines of the continental Portuguese, they attended Portuguese schools, participated in mandatory military service (some fought in Africa) and practiced Catholicism. Only until the 1980s, most Macanese had not received formal Chinese education ; hence they only spoke but could not read or write Chinese.

The Portuguese settlement in Macau since 1557 with a strong Catholic presence, some Chinese converted to Catholicism, and many of these Chinese became assimilated into the Macanese community, dropped their Chinese surnames and adopted Portuguese ones.

The mid-twentieth century, with the outbreak of the World War II in the Pacific and the retreat of the China's Kuomintang to Taiwan, saw a surging of Macanese population by the reunion of two disparate Macanese communities, the Hong Kong Macanese and the Shanghai Macanese. When Hong Kong was under Japanese occupation (1941 - 1945), the Macanese population made its way to Macau as refugees. They were fluent in English and Portuguese and brought valuable commercial and technical skills to Macau. Shanghai Macanese were the descendants of Portuguese settlers from Shanghai that acted as middlemen between other foreigners and the Chinese in Paris of the Orient, they came to Macau in 1949. Many of them spoke little Portuguese and were several generations removed from Portugal, speaking primarily English and Shanghainese or Putonghua. The Shanghai Macanese carved out by teaching English in Macau. In the time of World War II and before and after its return to China's sovereignty in 1999, Macanese migrated again to African Portuguese colonies, Latin America, North America and Australia. Those who returned to Macau can speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Macanese, and/or African languages.

Historically many Macanese spoke Macanese language, a Portuguese-based Creole, now virtually extinct. Now many are fluent in both Portuguese and Cantonese. Chinese and Portuguese are the official languages in Macao and more than 97 per cent of the people speak Chinese (of which some people can speak Cantonese and Mainland's official Putonghua). Portuguese is spoken by about 0.7 per cent and the remainder speaks English, Filipino and other languages.

 Environment of Macau

 

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