Macau 澳门

To be honest, I wasn’t very eager to go to the city of Macau at first. I heard Macau being the home of gambling and other dark organisations which I won’t mention here. The experience of going to Macau was quite different than I expected it to be.

As you probably know Macau’s architecture has Portuguese characteristics (at least the old part of town). It was given to the Portuguese as a sign of gratitude by the Chinese Emperor for fighting the British in the 16th century. Thus, Macau was reigned over 300 years by the Portuguese who utilised this place to spread their own power and diplomatic connections in Asia.

The great Sun Yat-Sen used Macau as well to plan and operate the Xinhai Revolution, which obviously wasn’t possible from Mainland China. The Xinhai Revolution in the year 1911 marked the end of an over 300-year-old Manchu reign.

Macau was given back to China 20 years ago. Due to the loosening of restrictions concerning the gambling industry, Macau, previously under Portuguese control already famous for its gambling, got even more freedom. Now it’s one of the most famous gambling capitals in the world.

Macau today is full of skyscrapers and people. Macau’s roads are tidy, but its streets are narrow. Too many people for such little space. People are waiting in 100m long queues to get on the bus. We had luck not to be one of them. By the way, Chinese love to wait in queues. If there are a lot of people in one place, for example in a restaurant, then it definetely has to be good.

Then, there are very beautiful parts of town where you are all alone by yourself away from the big tourist attractions. I must admit that it’s only worth visiting Macau if you are located in Hongkong, Zhuhai, Zhongshan or Guangzhou. From Hongkong you can do a quite nice day trip to Macao. Why am I telling you this? Because there are indeed places more beautiful in China. By saying this I don’t want to discourage you to visit Macau! Macau is full of history. The first missionaries from Europe first came to Macao. This was the starting point of their travels through China. Jesuit missionaries like Matteo Ricci were the first to explore China (after Marco Polo and merchants from Russia and parts of the ancient silk road) and to introduce the Christian believe to the Chinese people.

Apart from all the casinos, skyscrapers, churches, old Portuguese buildings and ruins, there are the residential parts of town, which I really like to take pictures of. They have a certain style which I like very much. Some of them are more beautiful than others. If you don’t like these kinds of buildings, you can take the bus to the tourist attractions. Sometimes it’s smells very suspicious in there, reminds me of wet socks. Sadly, there are very awful looking building right at the border.

As you could see at the first picture, Macau seems to be a very modern place, but this is the part of town where all the skyscrapers are. The rest of it looks quite different. Even Zhuhai at the other side of the river looks more promising. Nevertheless I liked it.

On the very right side you can see one of the oldest buildings in Macau – a church – or what it still left of it. It’s been destroyed by a fire many years ago.