At the end of his splendid evocation of the city of Macao, Philippe Pons quotes a paragraph by journalist and novelist Italo Calvino about cities that "sometimes succeed each other on the same site," but that "die without ever knowing each other."
Macao is such a place, a vanished city, existing -- writes Pons -- only in the archipelago between memory and imagination. It remains a fascinating place, but one "so oppressed by the weight of time it forces one's mind to flit continually between present and past." Though small in area (the former Portuguese enclave covers only some 15 sq. km), Macao has an enormously rich history.
It was the West's first anchorage in China; it was also its last in Asia. Two years after the British handed over Hong Kong, the Portuguese lowered their flag on Macao. After this the city became something else. Now, "heritage has been reduced to a back-drop, to a staging of the past, and Macao has become the Mediterranean Disneyland on Chinese soil." No longer itself, Macao is now a theme park.
Is Macao now a Chinese city? Was it ever? Like Shanghai, it is in China but is somehow different. And yet, as one early French diplomat said: "The air is in some way saturated with China, and this physically continues to invade us, even in our most intimate thoughts and activities."
If it is still there, however, it is a China one would have difficulty finding in China itself. In fact, "Macao has remained an extraordinary living museum of ancient Chinese traditions and beliefs."
Pons speaks of stacks of cities. Certainly in a geological sense one Macao exists on top of another. And there are also stacks of populations. There is the Chinese one (Taoist, nominally atheist), and then the Christian one (the place was long home to the Jesuits and one of the bones of the locally most famous, Francisco Xavier, was once on display there). There is also what Pons calls "the Creole one" -- the mixtures of Chinese and Portuguese creating that mixed race, the Macanese.
With its strata of historical guises, its mixed casts of those passing through, Macao offers a wonderfully evocative past. It was a bustling market. More merchandise is said to have passed through Macao than crossed the Rialto Bridge in Venice. At the same time, "it was a city of illusions, more bewitching than seductive."
"You discovered it step by step; it told its stories through leisurely strolls, encounters and whispered anecdotes. You'd be allowed to catch a brief, nonchalant glimpse, as of skin unexpectedly revealed when a piece of fabric slips."
It was a city, like Naples or Palermo, so "lazily indifferent to its faded glory [that] it exuded a calm lasciviousness in decline." And the gentry's center, the hotel Bela Vista, exuded "the serene charm of old ladies of experience who have learned not to lie about their age."
Out of this stew swims many a character. Vaz de Camo~es, Portugal's national poet, is said to have written a section of his epic "The Lusiads" here. There is no proof of this, but the story legitimizes a Portuguese presence "rather as if Shakespeare, in another life, had spent time in Hong Kong." Then there is William Jardine, unmistakably a resident, a navy doctor who "sniffed out opium and quickly transformed himself into a smuggler."
Opium was for a time the major industry (along with slave-traffic in "coolies"). When these more or less disappeared, gambling took over. Indeed, since the early days of the past century Macao's income has derived mainly from gaming of various sorts.
Hence the city's reputation as "the most depraved city in the world." This reputation was general -- there was the 1939 film, "Macao, L'enfer du jeu," and no less than Ian Fleming, father of James Bond, 007, once called it "the least recommendable place on earth."
Originally published as "Macao, un eclat d'eternite" in 1999 by Gallimard's Le Cabinet des Lettres, this splendid account of a city and its metamorphoses is both moving and captivating, qualities captured admirably by Sarah Adams in her translation. Reaktion's Topographics series, devoted to cities, is an important and beautifully produced venture, and this evocative display of the many Macaos that have existed throughout history attests to its high literary standards.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.