"Ben and I had been planning to go to Macau for months. Both the first colony established in China as well as the last one to be returned, Macau was the longest running colony in China and is the area in which the vestiges of foreign influence are still prominent in everyday life. Last Saturday morning, after an hour on a bus and another on a ferry -- neither of which covered a particularly long distance, mind you -- we were in Macau. The town is a study in contrasts and confusion, which beings at customs where, as the man stamps my passport above the one id received upon "leaving" China not one hour before, its even unclear what country I'm in. Macau, I'm told, is part of China both nominally and, increasingly, culturally. And yet, according to the customs man and my passport, China is no longer where I am. "China" on the top of the page, "Macau" on the bottom. That's about as much sense as it's going to make.
Macau used to be Portuguese and as a result most of the signs read in both Portuguese and traditional (as in, even more complicated) Chinese characters. No one but tourists and expats can be heard speaking Portuguese and most people speak, although really what it sounds like is scream, Cantonese. This is likely the most random and disparate language pairing one can ever hope to find, although both Portuguese and Cantonese share a few utterly mystifying nasal sounds that seem, at least for me (and also me! -Ed.), beyond replication.
The city is laid out much like residential portions of Hong Kong: narrow, winding streets piled with four and five story apartment buildings and clothing, wires, and signs hanging out into the middle of the streets. These streets open up into wide, tiled European-style plazas, many of which are bordered by one if not two churches. Churches, like all organized religion, are exceedingly rare and actively suppressed. Macau, being Portuguese and thus as Catholic as possible, apparently has an excuse, and continues to display its piety (or at least symbols of it) proudly. Aside from being ornate, vibrantly colored, and overall pleasing to the eye, churches like these also make it easier for people like me, who exist in a permanent state of wishing they were in Europe, to pretend that they are just that. While Macau has many, the most iconic church in the region is in fact not a church at all but rather one's facade. The back three walls, presumably built of much less grit than the first, went down in a fire along with the ceiling above them and the contents between. Now this ornate front wall stands starkly at one edge of Macau's old town, wide stone stairs winding down the grassy hill at its feet.
While I was interested in Macau for its European heritage, western food, and the promise of a decent fucking cup of coffee, Ben had another motivation for the trip -- the casinos (Note: This is not entirely true. I was equally, if not more, interested in the culinary traditions of the colony which include, but are not limited to, meat-sheets. -Ed.). If anyone has heard of Macau, they have likely heard of its casinos and booming economy. I say this trying to remember if I had heard of Macau prior to moving within 50 miles of it. More and more I have come to realize that my grasp of what is "common knowledge" leaves a little to be desired. Talking to Ari, I was shocked to learn that it was abnormal to know the average height differences between North and South Koreans. I was similarly stunned to see Ben's quizzical look upon telling him "platypus surprise" in American Sign Language. These seemed like common enough things to me, but in both instances garnered the same "what the fuck?" response (Danielle writing style is a bit..."grittier"? than mine. -Ed.). Maybe its just the boys I've been hanging with.
In any event, as per Ben's request we visited two of Macau's many houses of cards. It takes only about ten minute to walk from the churches, through the streets of crumbling apartments, to come upon a seemingly endless string of multimillion dollar casinos stretching out along the coast. First we visited the Casino Lisboa, a Macau establishment which, although still the most visited in the city, compared to the new casinos, looks at this point like the drunk, loser casino that had to move back in with its parents after it got fired from its gig as a part-time floor sander. The ceilings were relatively low, but the lights were bright and the two floors were filled with loud, smoking Chinese men and women winning and (mostly) losing money. While save the asianness of it all this could have been a scene from Circus Circus, there were two key elements missing: booze and sex. Every female employee was dressed in a sort of manish tuxedo-like uniform that buttoned up to their neck. Wearing a tank top at the time, I definitely had the most boobies in the place, which is really, really not saying much. The women that were not dealing cards or monitoring security were circling with a cart of coffee and milk tea (which, i presumed, was not spiked) and distributing it to anyone seated at a table.
Ben and I stuck out in the casinos. I would say that our whiteness was the first sign that we were different than the rest of the clientele, but I don't think that Ben's backpack or Tufts hat helped us blend in much either. Not much of a gambler myself, I spent most of the time there people watching and trying to understand the Portuguese and Chinese postings above each table, the Portuguese, sadly, being still much easier to decipher than the Chinese written above it. I did, however, have a brief encounter with a HK $5 (US $0.75) slot machine named Geisha. Our affair lasted about six minutes, which for me these days is a decently long time, but in the end she stole both my money and my heart. Ben gambled like a grown up, placing and promptly losing about $30 on blackjack. I could see him developing a gambling problem in the future."
What Danielle fails to mention about my little gambling stint was that I in fact won a couple times while gambling. The end result, however, is accurate: fail. Thanks for your great summary, Danielle.
1 comment:
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