Christina Miu Bing Cheng-Macau - A Cultural Janus-Hong Kong University Press (1999)

Christina Miu B in g Cheng
•*>
an i i.q
MACAU
A Cultural Janus
tfiilW'I
Father Manuel Teixeira (1912-) in front of the Amaral Equestrian Monument

August 1992
MACAU
A Cultural Janus
Christina Miu Bing Cheng
*t
# * * * a Ha *t
HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS
Hong Kong University Press
14/F Hing Wai Centre
7 Tin Wan Praya Road
Aberdeen
Hong Kong
© Hong Kong University Press 1999
First Published 1999

Reprinted 2009
ISBN-13 978-962-209-486-4
ISBN-10 962-209-486-4
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Secure On-line Ordering

http://www.hkupress.org
Cover designed by Lea 5c Ink Design

Printed and bound by The Green Pagoda Press Ltd., Hong Kong, China.
Contents
Frontispiece ii
Plates vii
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
2 An Anomaly in Colonization and Decolonization 9

The Age of Discovery 9
The Encounter of Two Civilizations 17
Problematic Sovereignty and Colonial Ideology 22
The Assertion of 'Perpetual Occupation' 26
Opium-Trafficking and Slave Trade 30
A Poetic Desire for Decolonization 33
Anachronistic Decolonization and a 'Pre-Postcolonial' Era 35
A Resurgent Symbol: The Bank of China Building 38
An Unprecedented Nostalgia 39
A Punctum in History 41
3 'City of the Name of God of Macau in China, There is

None More Loyal' 47
The Toponymy of Macau 47
The Propagation of Christianity 50
The Partition of the World 53
Rites Controversy 54
Ancestor Worship and Chinese Reactions to Christianity 62
Christianity, Gunboats and Cannons 66
vi CONTENTS
Autonomization of the Chinese Church 73

An Oasis of Catholicism 74
4 The Rendezvous of a Virgin Trio 81

Religious Culture in Macau 81
The Facade of the Church of the Mother of God 83
Ma Zu Ge or the Temple of the Goddess of the Sea 100
Guan Yin Tang or the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy 116
Two 'Civilizing' Forces 121
5 Colonial Stereotypes, Transgressive Punishment and Cultural

Anthropophagy 127
The T w a i n ' Meet 127
Western Literary Stereotypes of Macau 129
The Evocation of the Child/Mistress Imagery 142
The Punishment of the Western Intruder 144
Cannibalism, Carnivalism and the Mastication of the
Barbarian Other 146
The Intrigue of Miscegenation and the Manipulation of
Chinese Myths 149
The Monkey King's Ordeal 152
The Ultimate Victor 155
Satiric Elements and a Return to the Centre 156
A Field of 'Wheat' and 'Weeds' 157
6 Midway Sojourners, Macanese Moments and Stoical Settlers 161

The River and the Sea 161
City of Threshold and Exile 163
Peninsular Affectivity 169
A Flaneur's Amor 173
A Macanese Dilemma 177
A Bohemian's Adventure 180
City of Anchorage and Endurance 182
A Return from Exile 190
Rootlessness and Rootedness 192
7 Conclusion 197
Bibliography 219
Index 233
Plates
Plate 1 The Monument of Discoveries at Belem, Lisbon 11

Plate 2 The Tower of Belem 12
Plate 3 The Jeronimos Monastery 13
Plate 4 The Statue of Camoes, Lisbon 14
Plate 5 The Camoes Grotto, Macau 15
Plate 6 The Bust of Vasco da Gama, Macau 16
Plate 7 The Jorge Alvares Monument with the Padrao behind 19
Plate 8 The Lusitano Club, Hong Kong 20
Plate 9 The Amaral Monument 2%
Plate 10 The Bank of China Building and the Empty Pedestal
of the Amaral Statue 37
Plate 11 The Coat-of-Arms of Macau 48
Plate 12 The Leal Senado 49
Plate 13 Symbol of the Partition of the World 54
Plate 14 The Ruins of St Paul's 84
Plate 15 The Pediment (First Tier) 86
Plate 16 The Second Tier (the Fourth Storey) 88
Plate 17 The Third Tier (the Third Storey) — Left 90
Plate 18 The Third Tier (the Third Storey) — Right 91
Plate 19 The Fourth Tier (the Second Storey) 97
viii PLATES
Plate 20 The Foundation Stone 99

Plate 21 The Back of the Facade of St Paul's 100
Plate 22 The Replica of the Facade in the 'Expo 98', Lisbon 101
Plate 23 M a Z u Ge 101
Plate 24 The Fujianese Junk in Bas-Relief 105
Plate 25 The Shrine of Tu Di 108
Plate 26 Tian H o u at the Main Temple Chamber 109
Plate 27 The Laughing Maitreya 110
Plate 28 Guan Yin at M a Ge Miao 111
Plate 29 Guan Gong at the Garret of Guan Yin 112
Plate 30 The Aniconic Representation of Shi Gan Dang and She
JiZhiShen 114
Plate 31 Guan Yin Tang 117
Plate 32 The Gate of Understanding 208
Plate 33 The Inauguration of the Macau International Airport 211
Plate 34 The Co-Presence of Catholic and Buddhist Dignitaries 212
at the Opening of the Cultural Centre
Preface and
Acknowledgements
The Ruins of St Paul's, Monte Fortress, Guan Yin Tang, Ma Ge Miao, the
Amaral Equestrian Monument, Leal Senado Square, Camoes Garden: these
were the places that I came to know when my mother took me around,
and where I played with my cousins. I was baffled to see these fascinating
landmarks as a child and even more puzzled when I came across some
foreigners speaking impeccable Cantonese. Of course I did not understand
that they were the specific cultural legacies of an East-West hybridity in
a colonial context.
Macau has a 442-year history which was influenced by both the
Portuguese and Chinese authorities. It has a rich repertoire of cross-
cultural traits that can hardly be found in other former Asian colonies.
Macau leaves me with sweet memories and my childhood experiences
inspired me to conduct research on its unique role that straddles t w o
cultures. The more I have discovered the more I love this 'holy' but
somewhat eccentric city.
The research in this book traces Macau's syncretic cultural matrices,
its crucial position in Sino-Luso history, its religious mission, its toleration
of heterogeneous beliefs, its architectural artifacts, its literary depictions
by Westerners, the seascape's influence in textual productions, its hybrid
progeny, and above all, its ambiguity and liminality. During its colonial
vicissitudes, Macau has staged itself as a Cultural Janus. It embraces
conflictual structures generated by its imbalances of power relations which
are consistently articulated through degrees of tension and forms of
difference between the Chinese and Portuguese. But amid this cultural
asymmetry the two peoples have coexisted with each other w i t h o u t
destructive ethnic confrontations.
This book is a revised doctoral thesis. I have made certain excisions
and consolidations, as well as additions of updated sources, so as to
present a more coherent and condensed version than the original work.
x PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It will be informative and useful to those who would like to know Macau
in greater depth, in particular at a historic moment in 1999 when Macau
catches the world's spotlight.
In this study, there is a mixture of the romanization of the Cantonese
pronunciation and the pinyin romanization of Chinese names. It is difficult
to entirely standardize the systems of romanization, since Macau is virtually
part of Guangdong Province and the Chinese there largely speak Cantonese.
Consequently, in works cited and consulted, the proper names are often
referred to in English texts by means of the romanization of the Cantonese
pronunciation. In order to make things easier for those who wish to work
out the names, I have inserted the Chinese characters when necessary.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations of passages from the Chinese and
Portuguese originals are my own. Also, the photographic illustrations are
mine. T h e d r a w i n g s of each tier of the Facade in C h a p t e r 4 are
reproductions from Michael Hugo-Brunt's article on St Paul's. 1
I would like to thank my former supervisors Professor Gregory B Lee
and Dr Peter J Hutchings for their professional guidance, unusual patience,
constructive criticisms and stimulating comments throughout my research
project. I have enjoyed invaluable assistance and encouragement from
many people. My heartfelt thanks are due to Comendador Joaquim Morais
Alves, Father M a n u e l Teixeira, Father Segundo Vicente, Professor
Christopher L Connery, Senhora Julie de Senna Fernandes, Dr Grant
Evans, M r Ackbar Abbas, Mr Peter W M Cheng, Mr John C H Lam and
Mr Camoes C K Tarn. My special thanks and gratitude go out to Professor
Eugene Chen Eoyang for reviewing and commenting on the final version
of the manuscript.
Lastly, some material in Chapter 2 of this book has appeared under
the title 'Macau: A Pre-postcolonial Era', in Review of Culture, No. 19,
April/June 1994. This article was translated into Chinese and Portuguese
in (^CfbHlfii} and Revista de Cultura respectively. A small section in
Chapter 2 also appeared in 'Resurgent Chinese Power in Postmodern
Disguise: The New Bank of China Buildings in Hong Kong and Macau',
in Grant Evans & Maria Tarn (ed.), Hong Kong: The Anthropology of a
Chinese Metropolis (London: Curzon, 1997).
Christina Miu Bing Cheng

April 1999
1 See M . Hugo-Brunt, 'An Architectural Survey of the Jesuit Seminary Church of St

Paul's, M a c a o ' , Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. 1, N o . 2, July 1954.
Introduction
i
M a c a u (IflP1!)1 — the 'gate' of South China — stands on the Western

shore of the Pearl River in Guangdong Province, the southernmost coastal
area of China. The total area is 23.5 square kilometres including the
Macau peninsula and two small islands — Taipa (SJSff) and Coloane (5&~
M).2 Current reclamation projects are to enlarge its size to about 28
square kilometres shortly after 2000. Peninsular Macau is linked to the
Chinese mainland by a narrow isthmus at a point called as Portas do
Cerco, or the Barrier Gate (first built in 1573), which serves as the
'borderline' between Macau and China. The official population of Macau
is about 450 000. 3 The territory therefore has a population density of
about 20 000 persons per square kilometre, one of the highest population
densities in the world.
Macau was barely inhabited during the Ming dynasty and has been-
an overseas settlement of the Portuguese Empire since 1557. 4 It is a unique
terrain subsuming the cultures of Cathay 5 and Lusitania, 6 and a meeting
point of different civilizations. In its growth from a barren-fishing village
to a modern city, Macau has undergone a series of political changes.
From 1582 the Portuguese had to pay an annual ground rent of 500 taels
of silver to Ming China in exchange for the leasehold and, in 1887, the
sovereignty of Macau changed hands: it was agreed that 'Portugal will
forever administer Macau'. In 1979, however, China and Portugal jointly
accepted 'Macau as a Chinese territory under Portuguese administration'.
When Macau returns to Chinese rule on 20 December 1999, the People's
Republic of China resumes sovereignty after a lapse of 442 years. At the
d a w n of 2 0 0 0 , M a c a u is e n d o w e d with a new role as a Special
Administrative Region under the novel formula of 'One Country, Two
Systems'.
Macau's dramatic metamorphoses have had a certain impact on its
cultural process, which oscillates between two political entities. Given the
2 MACAU: A CULTURAL JANUS
confluence of two great cultural currents — the Sino-Luso cultural flow,

this book offers a 'reading' of Macau and addresses the role of culture in
the construction of a collective life. It attempts to understand Macau's
cultural matrices and its specific role in colonial vicissitudes, which have
been shaped and inflected by major shifts in the enclave's political
administrations and socio-economic changes.
Mapping onto the main contours of Macau's history, this study intends
to break with conventional chronological narratives. Instead, a topical
and thematic approach is employed in order to examine its culture from
interdisciplinary perspectives. In addition to the 'official' histories written
by the Chinese and Portuguese authorities, I focus on a variety of textual
materials and visual arts. As a work of cross-cultural study, the method
is clearly different from the approaches of historical sociology and cultural
history. Although this study does not follow a linear narrative path, it is
self-contained and coherent in its analysis.
The methodology of Cultural Studies is applied here, which cuts across
diverse social and political interests in various academic disciplines. Cultural
Studies is often regarded as a bricolage, embracing both a b r o a d ,
anthropological and a more narrowly humanistic conception of culture.
In the field of Cultural Studies, 7 'culture is understood both as a way of
life — encompassing ideas, attitudes, languages, practices, institutions,
and structures of power — and a whole range of cultural practices: artistic
forms, texts, canons, architecture, mass-produced commodities, and so
forth' (Grossberg et al., 1992: 5). This broad rubric is also 'about' popular
culture, and concerned with the everyday terrain of people.
Culture is not a unified corpus of symbols and meanings; it is an
emergent, temporal and historical entity. In exploring cultural evolution
and social transformation, it is useful to look at 'context' and 'text'. One
may recall Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1895-1975) who says, 'Where there is no
text, there is no object of study, and no object of thought either.' (Bakhtin,
1986: 103) He neatly defines the term 'text' as 'any coherent complex of
signs' (Bakhtin, 1986: 103), a definition which broadly encompasses
everything from literature to visual (fine arts, films) and aural (music)
works of art, as well as everyday action and communication. For Bahktin,
text is the unmediated reality (reality of thought and experience) on which
the study of the human sciences and philosophy in general depend. H e
considers all cultural utterances as text, because text is the aggregate of
various kinds of knowledge and a subjective reflection of the objective
world. To study text is, in effect, to look at a reflection of a reflection in
the realm of culture.
Bakhtin also uses the term 'discourse' in its broadest sense as language
in its concrete, living totality. Both text and discourse refer to cultural
INTRODUCTION 3
production rooted in language. Language in turn breaks d o w n the

demarcation between text and context. For him, the barrier between text
and context, that is, between 'inside' and 'outside', is an artificial one,
simply because there is an easy permeability between the two. Just as the
text is 'redolent with contexts', that is, it reveals historical process and
social events, the context is always already narrated in different textual
forms.
On the relationship between literary text and culture, Bakhtin writes:
Literature is an inseparable part of culture and it cannot be

understood outside the total context of the entire culture of a
given epoch. It must not be severed from the rest of culture, nor,
as is frequently done, can it be correlated with socioeconomic
factors, as it were, behind culture's back. These factors affect
culture as a whole, and only through it and in conjunction with
it do they affect literature. (Bakhtin, 1986: 2)
Bakhtin points out that there is a close link between literature a n d

culture, and literature is imbricated with culture. Similarly, a 'cultural'
text, says James Clifford, is basically a dialogical and textual production
which 'obliges writers to find diverse ways of rendering negotiated realities
as multisubjective, power-laden, and incongruent' (Clifford, 1986: 1 4 -
15). Culture is not merely relational, entailing intertextual dialogism, it is
also ideological and is closely involved with power relations. One could:
argue, therefore, that culture is a constellation of discursive practices. It:
is the entire matrix of communicative utterances among which are variousi
kinds of textual examples. In essence, cultural formation and cultural
production simultaneously embrace the phenomenology of the textual,
the intertexual and the contextual.
When Walter Benjamin argues that history is 'a tool of the ruling
classes' (Benjamin, 1968: 257), he is of the opinion that history may not
reflect the past objectively as it is only concerned with the triumph of
progress and is the unconscious ideology of the ruling party. Instead,
literary texts are themselves history because they may in some way reflect
a particular place and era from different angles. History is often considered
metaphysical and the h u m a n past is only accessible t h r o u g h the
texualization of documents. Texts hence constitute ways to explore and
understand socio-cultural contexts, the historical past and discourse of
ideology. Quite in the same vein, Hayden White contends that there is no
such thing as a specifically 'historical' approach to the study of 'the past'.
Literature, however, can help us understand 'history' and the particular
ideological spectrum (White, 1987: 302). The approach to literature, history
and culture can be interdisciplinary. Literary texts do not passively reveal

an external reality; they are agents themselves in constructing and
commenting on a culture's sense of reality. What we consider in this book
is Macau's sense of reality.
Macau is 'read' as a Cultural Janus. Janus is a Roman god or numen,
guardian of the doorways of dwelling houses and city gateways. He is
usually portrayed with two faces looking in opposite directions and is
denoted to have two contrasting characteristics. Hence, I would call Macau
a Cultural Janus on both near literal and metaphorical planes. It is because
Macau is China's 'gate' to the outside world and has two faces: the face
of Chinese civilization and the face of Portuguese legacies. Since Macau
has been nurtured by two dominant yet contrasting cultures, it is a Janus-
like ecumene 8 having two culturally different aspects. Moreover, just as
Janus (for whom January is named) looks back to December (the past)
and forward to February (the future), Macau looks back to Portugal and
forward to China at this historical moment.
Macau's physical marginality from Mainland China and peripheral
relations with Chinese and Western cultures constitute its identity as a
cultural 'threshold' and a crossroads of the East and the West. It once
enjoyed admirable prosperity, but its harbour was easily silted up by the
outflow of the Pearl and West Rivers. Macau was subsequently eclipsed
when Britain acquired H o n g Kong in 1841 and turned it into an
international trading centre partly because of its deep-water harbour. In
light of the reunification, Macau is expected to regain some of its aura as
the gateway to China.
The colonial relationship between Portugal and China came into
existence long before the so-called classic period of imperialism and
colonialism during the middle of the nineteenth century. Among other ex-
colonizing European powers, such as Britain, France, Holland, Spain,
which once occupied Asian countries, Portugal was the first to come to
Asia (occupying Goa in 1510) but is the last to leave on 20 December
1999. This date marks the real and symbolic decolonization of Macau,
but it also closes a chapter of the receding tide of Western colonialism.
F r o m elusive s e t t l e m e n t a n d c o l o n i a l m a s t e r y to m u t u a l
accommodation, the Portuguese have expanded the activity of empire-
building and hegemonic penetration. Under the ideology of ecumenicalism,
the Portuguese carried out a kind of imperial process of colonization by
superimposing their religious beliefs and value systems upon Chinese
political and social s t r u c t u r e s . While these structures u n d e r w e n t
transformation, the cultural milieu also changed either through processes
of internal evolution or political revolution, resulting in a hybrid or Creole
form of culture. Macau is never just a sum of Lusitanian influences;
INTRODUCTION 5
rather, it articulates its uniqueness and engenders specific cultural forms.

In the interstices of two political systems and dominant cultures, it is a
hybridized site showing multifarious cultural manifestations.
At the outset (Chapter 2), I begin with the Age of Discovery and the
first encounter of the two empires — China and Portugal — which was
marked by the arrival of Jorge Alvares on Tamang Island in 1513. Alvares'
arrival also marks the dawn of Portuguese dominance in Macau in 1557.
This chapter discusses the dramatically controversial historia of the
problematic sovereignty of Macau written by Anders Ljungstedt (1835)
and C.A. Montalo de Jesus (1902). These two historians inadvertently
fell into the bind of a hero/traitor paradigm in the Portuguese colonial
ideology. Even in advance of the reversion of sovereignty, China has
already assumed its resurgent p o w e r and influence, n o t a b l y and
symbolically through the architectural gesture of the new monumental
Bank of China Building (1991), and Macau is permeated with a kind of
'pre-postcolonial' ambience before decolonization. The removal of the
Portuguese colonial icon, the Amaral Equestrian Monument (1992), may-
perhaps testify to the 'pre-postcolonial'. The questions at issue are: how*
can this oxymoronic rubric 'pre-postcoloniality' explain the somewhat-
peculiar situation in Macau prior to 20 December 1999? Also, can Western
cultural debates on colonial discourse be neatly mapped onto the specific
historical moment in Macau?
Chapter 3 examines the toponymy of Macau, or Ou Mun in Cantonese,
and its various religious appellations. The naming and renaming suggested -
that the Portuguese regarded Macau as their 'city' or 'overseas province'.
Macau came to embody the meaning of Portugal and Rome. It valorized-
'the imperial centre'. This chapter investigates Lusitanian and Iberian
religious zeal, which led to the 'partition of the world' in 1494 and the
subsequent Rites Controversy. Out of four distinct occasions for the
introduction of Christianity in China, Macau twice played an indispensable
role as a bridgehead for Catholicism and Protestantism in the sixteenth
and nineteenth centuries respectively. Both the Portuguese and the British
ardently advocated missionary activism as a mission civilisatrice alongside
their colonizing programmes, but were they really concerned with saving
heathen souls for Christ? Was the proselytizing of Christianity merely an
ideological inducement for colonial domination and subjugation?
Chapter 4 compares the three goddesses in Macau: the Virgin Mary,
Tian Hou and Guan Yin, and explores the architectural expression of the
Fagade of the Church of the Mother of God, Ma Zu Ge, and Guan Yin
Tang. These three sites are the 'sacred spaces' of the 'virgin trio'. In view
of Portuguese colonial rule and prevailing Catholicism, how can the Taoist
Goddess of the Sea and the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy coexist with the
Christian Mother of God and form a balance of power? How are the
cults of Tian Hou and Guan Yin standardized and reinforced by Chinese
officials to counter the invasion of Christian ideology? The tete-a-tete of
these three goddesses nevertheless constitutes a Janus complex of having
Sino-Luso political forces in religious disguise.
Chapter 5 investigates missionary journals, travel memoirs, traveller's
tales, poems and novels in an attempt to exemplify how Macau is 'written'
in contested codes and fed into the stereotypes of colonialist representations
and imaginations. Reinforced with Orientalist essentialism and exoticism,
some colonialist texts tend to posit an obvious binarism. Macau is often
constructed either as a tropical Arcadia or a den of iniquity. Are there,
however, any 'unofficial' or unconscious voices, which implicitly subvert
the colonial ideology of Manichean opposition and shatter familiar
stereotypes? This chapter also illustrates how the notion of cultural
anthropophagy produces an ambivalent resolution within a situation of
cultural asymmetry in line with Bakhtin's carnival aesthetic. Bakhtinian
carnivalism militates against the domination/subjugation of Western over
Eastern paradigms in colonial discourse.
Chapter 6 discusses contemporary English, Chinese and Portuguese
textual materials in relation to the dialectic opposites of 'rootlessness' and
'rootedness'. Macau is dubbed the 'Drifting Island' where people roam
around like duckweed, but it is also a haven where people settle with stoicism.
H o w then is Macau portrayed as a stepping-stone for midway sojourners,
bohemians, flaneurs, and criminals; and as a final stop for refugees and
'returnees'? This chapter also examines the Western metaphysics of the
pharmakon in connection with the river and the sea in texts, which comes to
be the salient constituent in forming story lines. It illustrates how the imagery
of the sea embraces a paradoxical effect of nurturing and threatening, how
people reveal their different attitudes towards Macau where they confront,
adjust and situate themselves under Portuguese administration.
The conclusion addresses the particulars of Portuguese imperialism
and colonialism, and the distinctive characteristics of Portuguese colonial
practice and ideology, that of panracialism and ecumenicalism. The
Portuguese departure from Macau not only marks the end of European
global imperialist expansion geopolitically, it also points to the demise of
European colonial domination. But does decolonization signal the undoing
of Portuguese cultural hegemony and ideological dominance? It is worth
examining Macau's cultural situation and its colonial legacy by testing the
applicability of such topics (much debated in Western academies) of
colonial-discourse analysis: postcolonial theory and its concomitant
neocolonial critique. Towards a consensual decolonization, the Macau
government has put forward an array of cultural and construction projects.
INTRODUCTION 7
Such projects provide some insights into the relationship between culture
and politics in the crucial years that have led up to the return of Macau
to the People's Republic of China.
Notes
1 There are two spellings of 'Macao' and 'Macau' for the Cantonese transliteration 'Ou
Mun', or in Putonghua 'Aomen'. While the former is the English spelling, the latter the
Portuguese spelling. In this book, I use the Portuguese spelling, except that in quotations
I follow whichever is in the texts.
2 According to the Land Registry and Map Department, the peninsula is 9.1 square
kilometres including the Nam Van Lakes project, Taipa is 6.33 square kilometres
including airport reclamation areas, and Coloane is 8.07 square kilometres including
an industrial park. The Portuguese seized Taipa in 1851 and Coloane in 1864.
Sovereignty over Macau (including these two islands) was confirmed in 1887 and was
ratified as the Luso-Chinese Treatise of Friendship and Trade in 1888.
3 It is estimated that the total population is close to 600 000 taking into account the -
illegal immigrants as well. The majority is Chinese comprising 96%, Portuguese around--
3% and other nationalities 1%. On Macau's population, see Zheng Tianxiang et al.
(ed.), Populacao de Macau (Macau: Macau Foundation, 1994), and J.K.T. Chao,
'Contemporary Population Statistics of Macau', in Rufino Ramos et al. (ed.), Population
and Development in Macau (Macau: University of Macau and Macau Foundation,
1994).
4 Although the Portuguese landed on Macau in 1553 under the pretext of drying out
soaked cargo, they only succeeded in settling there in 1557 by paying tribute. So the
year 1557 is generally considered to be the foundation year of Macau as a Portuguese-
settlement. See Elfed Vaughan Roberts et al., Historical Dictionary of Hong Kong and^
Macau (Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1992), pp. 277-282.
5 China is often referred to as Cathay in Western texts. The term 'Cathay' can be traced *'
back in Marco Polo's travel journal in which it was regarded as the richest geographical
signifier.
6 Lusitania, which was given by the Romans, was the old name for Portugal. Legend has
it that Lusus, the bosom-companion of Bacchus, was the mythical founder of Lusitania.
The present name, Portugal, is derived and phonetically evolved from the twin cities
of Porto and Cale (Portucale) at the mouth of the Douro River in Northern Portugal.
The Portuguese are referred to as the 'sons of Lusus' in Camoes' Os Lusiadas.
7 It is the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham that adopted,
constructed and formalized 'Cultural Studies' as a discipline in 1964. See Lawrence
Grossberg et al. (ed.), Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1992).
8 The term 'ecumene', as defined by Igor Kopytoff, is a 'region of persistent cultural
interaction and exchange' in relation to cultural interconnection across the world. See
Igor Kopytoff (ed.), The African Frontier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987),
p. 10.
An Anomaly in
£ Colonization and
Decolonization
The Age of Discovery
T seek Christians and spices.'

Vasco da Gama (1469-1524)
One of the most celebrated Portuguese navigators, Vasco da Gama, left

Portugal in 1496. He successfully sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and
reached Calicut, India in 1498. The discovery of a new trade route by da
Gama marked the zenith of the most difficult and dangerous journey of
Portuguese maritime exploration. It also signified the dawn of European
imperialism and colonization in the world of the 'Orient'. 1 The pioneer in
opening up the sea route into Asian waters and the subsequent penetration
in Asia were fostered by a number of reasons. First, there was an ecclesiastic
ideology of propagating Christianity and of establishing a universal Christian
state. Secondly, there also existed a crusading zeal against Islam and the
Muslim monopoly in trade in the Indian Ocean; and thirdly, a secular and
practical demand for Asian products. The whole project of religious
colonization and trade expansion is perhaps condensed in this laconic
remark — T seek Christians and spices' 2 — which announces a symbiotic
relationship between ideological inducement and economic adventure.
Lying along the western seaboard on the Iberian Peninsula, Portugal
enjoyed a favourable position in European geopolitics. Due to its
geographical isolation, it freed itself from the European power-political
struggle, and concentrated on overseas expansions. 3 However, Portugal
never had a very large seafaring population and never had enough sailors
for its ocean-going ships. Even at the height of its maritime power in
1536, Portugal only possessed about 300 ocean-going ships (Boxer, 1969:
56), but their control of Asian waters was mainly due to their incomparable
guns and cannons. Their decisive superiority in Asia was, therefore, based
more on powerful artillery than on their supreme naval technology.
The Portuguese admiral, Afonso d'Albuquerque, successfully seized
Goa in 1510. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese
exercised control over the whole Indian Coast. 4 Goa was soon turned to
be the key Portuguese base in Asia, 5 and the centre of the Church after
the bishopric was established in 1534 having jurisdiction over the whole
of Far Eastern Asia. It was also the tropical headquarters of the Portuguese
mercantile empire to wrestle with Islamic States for monopoly control of
the spice trade, and 'the most representative centre of European culture
. . . in Asia' (Coates, 1987: 4). The Portuguese continued to move eastward
and settled in Macau in 1557. Due to Ming-dynasty China's prohibitions
on Chinese trading directly with J a p a n , the Portuguese secured the
commercial dominance. They became the principal intermediaries and
carriers of the trade between China and Japan 6 by means of the Macau-
Nagasaki trading voyages. They helped exchange Chinese silk, gold, musk
and porcelain for Japanese silver and copper. The official rupture of
relations between China and Japan in the aftermath of Japanese pirate
raids on Chinese coastal areas gave the Portuguese the opportunity to
build up the most profitable business. As a result, they developed the
richest European-sponsored trades in Asia during the Habsburg era between
1580-1640 (Chaudhuri, 1985: 76).
However, the Portuguese were not merely involved in trade. The
propagation of Christianity was also their prime concern in the wake of
the Counter-Reformation. Portugal was usually considered the most fervent
Catholic country in Europe at large and Catholicism played an absolutely
pivotal role in the ideological and political structure. The arduous
adventures into unknown seas were in fact partly animated by the spirit
of the medieval knight and the mystical fervour of proselytizing the heathen
souls. As Arnold Rowbotham observes, c [I]n these great voyages and
voyagers, the romanticism of high adventure was coupled with a medieval
love of the Church. It is not surprising, then, to find that in these
explorations the Cross accompanied the Swords.' (Rowbotham, 1966:
39) Their enthusiasm was often represented by the juxtaposition of the
cross and the sword. This emblem suggested mystic militarism and religious
chivalry. 7
We can see a huge cross in the shape of a sword at the entrance of
o Padrao dos Descobrimentos, or t h e M o n u m e n t of Discoveries
(inaugurated in 1960), facing o Rio Tejo, or the Tagus River, at Belem in
Lisbon today (Plate 1). It is a colossal monument commemorating the Age
of Discovery, which was synonymous with the Golden Age of Portuguese
maritime supremacy. When one looks at this monument, one may feel
AN ANOMALY IN COLONIZATION AND DECOLONIZATION 11
Plate 1 The Monument of

Discoveries at Belem, Lisbon
puzzled in distinguishing whether the eye-catching sign is a cross or a

sword. This monumental motif indeed blurs the identification. Perhaps
the inseparable and symbiotic relationship between the cross and the
sword inspired the designer to merge two incongruous elements into this
ambiguous representation. On the side of the m o n u m e n t , soldiers,
missionaries, adventurers, and Prince Henry the Navigator (the mastermind
of the great discoveries) were thrown together on a panel of sculpture.
Equipped with the sword, the cross, and the rosary, they are portrayed
in an elevated mood to conquer the world for Christ. N o t far from the
monument is a Torre de Belem, or the Tower of Belem (Plate 2). It was
built between 1515-1521 on the very spot where da Gama launched the
historic sail and reached India. This piece of architecture has ever since
become a symbol of national pride.
Plate 2 The Tower

of Belem
O p p o s i t e to the M o n u m e n t of Discoveries lies o Mosteiro dos

Jeronimos, or the Jeronimos Monastery (Plate 3). The great abbey church
(the foundation stone was laid in January 1501 to mark the 'new era')
was erected as a monument of thanksgiving to God and was intended to
celebrate the triumph of the Portuguese navigators over the most distant
seas. The Jeronimos Monastery not only contains several magnificent
examples of the flamboyant Gothic style (known in Portugal as Manueline
style), but also gains its fame by housing the sarcophagi of Vasco da
Gama and Luis Vaz de Camoes. The former was Portugal's most valiant
navigator while the latter was one of its most famous poets who composed
the epic Os Lusiadas8 (first published in Lisbon in 1572). The hero in the
epic is the historical Vasco da Gama.
Like da Gama, Camoes (1524P-1580) also ventured to the East, where
he was appalled by the corruption he witnessed among the Portuguese
during his seventeen-year sojourn. He was also disillusioned by the vanity
and greed he encountered back in Lisbon. He thus held up da Gama as
a model for a degenerate society. His aspiration in Os Lusiadas was to
do for Portugal what he believed Homer had done for the Greeks and
Virgil for the Romans: the epic was to chronicle heroic deeds in order to
reawaken his countrymen the values and pride that would renew the
Plate 3 The Jeronimos

Monastery
nation (Finlay, 1992: 233). The ten-canto Lusiadas interweaves with

historical reality and myth-making. It is a collection of lyrical hymns and
poems celebrating the epic grandeur and the Portuguese 'atrevimento*
(pride and presumption) in venturing into the seas during the Age of
Discovery. Camoes obviously modelled the literary tradition after the
inventions of Homer's and Virgil's classical epic fictions. Like the Odyssey
and the Aeneid, Os Lusiadas has given the poem its place in 'world
literature'. 9 However, similar to da Gama's presumptuous transgression
into uncharted seas, Camoes staked his own claim — another version of
overweening pride — in considering his poem superior to Homer and
Virgil because it celebrated a heroism that was not fictitious (I: 11 and II:
44). 1 0 Much in the same way as many other neglected men of genius,
Camoes was included in the pantheon of literary immortals only after
death. He was extolled as 'the Confucius of the West' (Teixeira, 1980: 6),
'the prince of heroic poets' (Bell, 1922: 180) and Voltaire even called him
'the Milton of the Portuguese' (Thomson, 1909: 92). The epitaph upon
his tomb (in the Franciscan church of Santa Anna in Lisbon) proudly
reads: 'He excelled all the poets of his time.'
The two neo-Manueline sarcophagi lie on each side of the nave at the
entrance of the abbey church. They are in essence the emblems of national
MACAU: A CULTURAL JANUS
pride — the adventurous spirit and the literary achievement. While da

Gama is hailed as the model of maritime prowess and the embodiment of
fortitude and leadership, Camoes is idealized as a beacon of patriotism
and the personification of the Portuguese nation. The significant positions
of the tombs unequivocally speak for the importance of these two men for
their contributions to the triumph and glory of the powerful Lusitanian
Empire under the reigns of King Manuel I (1495-1521) and King Sebastian
(1557-1578).
Camoes can be taken as a metonym of Portugal because 10 June, the
date he died in 1580, is commemorated as o Dia de Portugal or Portugal's
National Day, which is also known as Camoes Day and Portuguese
Communities Day. The elevation of Camoes into a 'primeiro' national
personage perhaps constitutes an ideological function: an ocean-going
people beget a literary immortal, who even excels the Greco-Roman epic
laureates of antiquity. At a prominent spot in Bairro Alto, Lisbon, a
bronze statue (Plate 4) was erected as yet another recognition of his
national and international fame.
Camoes is said to have been sent into exile in 1556 to Macau where
he was appointed o Provedor Mor dos Defuntos e Ausentes, or Custodian
of the Property of the Dead and Absent Portuguese, between 1557-1559.
Given his sojourn during the inception of Macau as a Portuguese settlement,
he is regarded as one of its founders. Tradition maintains that he composed
part of Os Lusiadas in a grotto overlooking the inner harbour. A bronze
bust was re-inaugurated in January 1866 11 in the grotto at o Jardim
Camoes, or Camoes Garden (Plate 5), commemorating his poetic chronicle
of da Gama's heroic deeds. Part of the poems were inscribed on the slabs
in the grotto.
Plate 5 The Camoes Grotto, Macau
In addition to the sword and the cross as symbols for the Age of
Discovery, the motifs of Portuguese carrack 12 and rope are also used to
signify this great epoch of maritime power. On the side of da Gama's
sarcophagus there is a delicately craved carrack which is enveloped by
rope-like curvy lines. Visible on the sails are Greek crosses as symbols for
their crusading zeal. The fact that da Gama is perennially remembered
may speak for the last World Exposition of the twentieth century being
held in Lisbon in May 1998. The Exposition celebrated the fifth centennial
anniversary of his historic voyage. A new bridge, in the name of Vasco
da Gama, which spans 13 kilometres across the Tagus River joining
Alentejo, was also inaugurated coinciding with the 'Expo 98'. All in all,
Lisbon is a legacy of the age of exploration and discovery.
In Macau, the monument of da Gama was put up in 1911 at o Jar dim

Vasco da Gama, or Vasco da Gama Garden (Plate 6) commemorating his
maritime achievement. In order to highlight his role as the chief character
in a great Renaissance epic poem, there is a white marble bas-relief depicting
a notable episode in Camoes' Os Lusiadas on the base of his bronze bust.
The scene portrays the apparition of the cloud-born giant Adamastor,
who foretells at length (V: 43-48) the violent storms and mishaps that da
Gama has to undergo in opening up the new sea route to the Indian
Ocean. Half-naked Venus is depicted to have intervened and pacified the
subsequent waterspout. While da Gama is 'canonized' in Camoes' oeuvre,
Camoes is 'immortalized' by narrativizing da Gama. In this spirit, they
are imbricated as intrinsic signifiers for national greatness. In the garden,
the motifs of the helm, the carrack, and above all, the cannon, are jumbled
together. Well equipped with cannons in the carracks, da Gama's expedition
was considered not 'a voyage of discovery, but an armed commercial
embassy' (Parry, 1963: 155) that preceded the Portuguese enterprises of
ecumenicalism and imperialism of exchange. 13
i mm
Plate 6 The Bust of Vasco

da Gama, Macau
The Monument of Discoveries, the Tower of Belem and the Jeronimos

Monastery in Lisbon were built to glorify Portugal's prowess at sea at the
turn of the sixteenth century. As for the abbey church, George F.W.
Dykes emphasizes that the sacred concept is 'its location on the shores of
the estuary, at the gateway to the Atlantic, as it were pointing to the route
by which flowed in the Kingdom's wealth' (Dykes, 1991: 5). In fact, the
Age of Discovery not only heralded Portugal's success in sea expeditions,
but also crystallized an age of commercial opportunity for an abundant
flow of income to Portugal. In the first half of the sixteenth century,
'Lisbon became the most spectacularly opulent town in Europe' (Anderson,
1962: 91), and 'the most westerly point in Europe for a redistribution
network of commodities originating from eastern emporia such as the
Persian Gulf, India, Indonesia, China, and Japan' (Russell-Wood, 1992:
124). However, recent scholarship showed that such economic success
was short-lived. The merchants' new wealth and the growth of Portugal's
commercial expansion soon caused moral and economic decay in the
traditional agrarian society (Boyajian, 1993: Preface).
The Encounter of Two Civilizations
After occupying Goa, the Portuguese continued to explore along the China
coast. At that time Ming-dynasty China issued an Imperial rescript tellingly
imposing an austere isolationism, which throttled foreign adventures and
prevented emigration. As a result, China was practically sealed off from.
the rest of the world. The so-called 'closed-door' policy was mainly based'
on the Sinocentric world order; China was so proud of her own civilization
that China wanted to seclude her people from the influence of the outside
world. The politico-cultural anxiety of being c o n t a m i n a t e d by the
'barbarian Other' 14 plainly manifested China's self-regarding superiority.
The Chinese cast upon the barbarian Other a Sinocentric gaze from the
perspective of a central civility of the Middle Kingdom, 15 ruled by the Son
of Heaven. 16
During the isolationist era, it was believed that Jorge Alvares, o feitor,
or treasurer, of the Malacca Trading Post, was the first Portuguese to set
foot on Chinese shores in June 1513 by sea in the name of the King of
Portugal. It was not until 1517 that the first Portuguese envoy, Tome
Pires, arrived at Guangzhou in an attempt to establish an 'enduring'
official Sino-Portuguese trading relationship (Cortesao, 1990: 137-141).
When Alvares arrived at Tamang Island, he erected um padrao,11 or a
stone monument. It was surmounted by the Portuguese coat of arms, as
witness to his mission in the newly discovered land. Tamang Island, then
called T u n m u n Island (^F^JJ) by the Chinese and T a m a o by the

Portuguese, is actually Lantau Island (^c*Rli|), now part of the territory
of Hong Kong. 18 It is believed that he landed specifically on Tai O (^cM),
a fishing village (Tarn, 1994: 40), from where he entered into Mainland
China. Alvares' voyage, however, was long forgotten and his symbolic
role in bridging the two civilizations was ignored. Nobody ever referred
to his primeiro mission before the turn of the twentieth century. Not until
1956 did J. M . Braga emphasize the archival research conducted by Luis
Keil in relation to Alvares' achievement in his China Landfall 1513:
We are indebted to Luis Keil for an excellent little study in

Portuguese, published in 1933, clarifying the circumstances and
pointing the way to the existence of a great deal of source
material, which had to be suitably interpreted. (Braga, 1956: x)
Keil's exhaustive account simultaneously celebrates and consolidates

Alvares' historic role in the distant past. It also dispels some of the
misconceptions/controversies about who was the first Portuguese to arrive
in China. 19 Keil's study, Jorge Alvares — The First Portuguese to go to
China (1513), was given extraordinary attention in 1990 when it was
republished in a new trilingual edition: Portuguese, Chinese and English.
It is perhaps a historical irony to celebrate the Portuguese as the first
among other European colonizing powers to reach China but also as the
last to leave on 20 December 1999. When the date is known for a closure
of a historic moment, Alvares is remembered as a symbol of the first
arrival, and constitutes a bracketing effect for a period of Portuguese
presence in Macau.
As a belated celebration for the fourth centennial anniversary, a stone
monument of Alvares (Plate 7) was erected at a prominent spot (opposite
t h e H i g h C o u r t s of J u s t i c e ) in R u a da P r a i a G r a n d e in 1 9 5 3
commemorating him as the first Portuguese to arrive in China. Cloaked
with heavy drapery and with a sword tied on his waist, the statue stands
on 'weight-shift' 20 in a relaxed and heroic disposition against the padrao,
which has now become his attribute. His contrapposto pose is likened to
a Roman imperial soldier. His raised right hand gesture readily reminds
us of Western paintings depicting the 'Annunciation', in which the archangel
Gabriel raises his right hand in a gesture of delivering a divine message
to the Virgin Mary. Moreover, it is common nowadays for us to see this
gesture in papal blessing. The enterprising Portuguese sailor is thus idealized
with an angelical quality and 'apotheosized' as a religious personage. The
posture of Alvares is an ideological construct and the monument embraces
two significant motifs — the Greek cross and the sword. The former
topping the padrao is an icon of religious proselytizing, and the latter an

indispensable weapon in ostentatious subjugation and colonization. It
was not unreasonable for the Chinese to feel that the Portuguese came to
them offering Christianity with one hand and suppression on the other,
both backed up by swords, guns and powerful cannons.
Plate 7 The Jorge Alvares

Monument with the Padrao
behind
Alvares' arrival constituted one of the earliest rendezvous in which

the Middle Kingdom first met the modern European Other. It also led to
the subsequent 'occupation' of Macau as a religious centre and a trading
post. He was no doubt the harbinger for the grafting of the West to the
East. He paved the way for the later arrival of influential Jesuits, such as
M a t t e o Ricci, Francis Xavier, Ignatius Loyola, and consolidated the
'fabulous' stories about the riches of the Celestial Empire brought back
to Venice by Marco Polo in 1 2 9 1 . The monument could imbricate the
following connotations: it commemorates the grand mission in initially
knocking the door open during Ming-dynasty China's 'closed-door' policy,
and celebrates a kind of 'Pax Lusitania' 21 ideology of ecumenicalism and
commercial expansion. These were the two decisive forces that prompted
the Portuguese eastward sail.
Alvares' significant role is also honoured in the Lusitano Club (founded
in 1866) in Hong Kong (Plate 8) where a mosaic is put up at the entrance
of the Club in Ice House Street. The mosaic, designed by F. Borboa in
1967, depicts a big Portuguese carrack with all its sails spread. The
spreading mainsail and the smaller sail are inscribed with big Greek crosses,
like engaging in a Crusade. The carrack in full sail may signify the
Portuguese naval supremacy. The crosses may be seen as the ideological
symbols for the propagation of Christianity. King Manuel I and Jorge
Alvares are placed at the lower part. Near Alvares are the year 1513 and
the Facade of St Paul's. The former is the historic date of his landing on
Chinese territory while the latter apparently becomes an important
landmark of Macau. The carrack is certainly a crucial element in bringing
Alvares on the China coast, but the pivotal sign — artillery — is
ideologically eliminated. Without the incomparably powerful guns and
cannons, the Portuguese might have been unable to operate an imperial
project for territorial and economic expansion.
Plate 8 The Lusitano Club,

Hong Kong EIII listf&MS
Alvares' arrival in southern China was twenty-one years later than

Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World in 1492. Unlike
Columbus' encounter with the 'uncivilized' natives on the 'virgin' land,
Alvares probably met with the neo-Confucian elites in the ethnocentric
Chinese world. He encountered a civilization that was entirely foreign to
him. It was an experience of Sinocentrism as contrasted to Eurocentrism.

Viewing the people he encountered from a superior ethnographic gaze,
Columbus was immersed in a kind of 'white supremacy' and treated the
natives as natural categories 'on the same level as cattle' (Todorov, 1982:
48). They were excluded as being subhuman or bestial. Quite on the
contrary, Alvares was received as no more than a foreign barbarian from
a faraway country by the self-sufficient, civilized Middle Kingdom. While
Columbus reified a pattern of centre/periphery relationships with the native
Americans after the colonial encounter, Alvares completely lacked any
'white superiority' to implement a mission civilisatrice (a civilizing mission)
when meeting with the Chinese.
After the encounter of the two peoples, the Ming Chinese often accused
the Portuguese of being cannibalistic. Cannibalism is naturally linked to
barbarity, ferocity, brutality, atrocity and bestiality. Above all, it is a term
for the uncivilized. Though the Portuguese might regard themselves as
representatives of Christian culture and as the privileged signifier of Western,
civilization, the Chinese nevertheless received them with a reverse,
ethnographic gaze. The Chinese 'identified the Lusitanian Other as a
special variety of goblin, bearing only a superficial resemblance to a normal
human being and coming from cannibalistic ancestry' (Fok, 1987: 144).
The Chinese considered the Portuguese people not just endowed with a
beastly nature, they were also inclined to bestial acts of eating human
flesh. In Chinese records, there are vivid descriptions of how Chinese
children were bought and prepared for food by the Portuguese (Yuan,
1988: 22-23). In the seventeenth century, the symptom of 'anthropophagic
devouring' appeared to be a popular trope for savagery, barbarity a n d
non-human action. It was bestowed specifically to relations of alterity/
periphery from the civility/centre.
In Columbus' first encounter with the native Americans, he associated
their physical nakedness with spiritual nudity. He gave them an oxymoronic
label 'noble savages' because of their ignorance of the value system in
exchanging commodities and their generosity in receiving the newcomers.
However, through the returning gaze of most Ming officials, the newcomers
were merely hairy goblins and cannibals. To the Chinese, they provoked
a feeling of repulsion. In an attempt to deny the Portuguese full humanity,
the Chinese construed their 'white brothers' as unsavoury non-humans
and erring barbarians. Given their unruly and predatory behaviour, the
Portuguese eventually fell into the category of bad people w h o were
children-eaters, kidnappers, slave-traders, smugglers and marauders (Fok,
1987: 152). They were the threatening Other imbued with a terrorizing
force to plague the integrity and stability of the country. The Portuguese
were described in Chinese texts as 'subversive elements', 'a malignant
disease between the stomach and the heart', 'a cause for future anxieties
[in Guangdong]', 'the hidden roots of [Chinese] future anxieties', and 'an
ulcer in the South [of China]' (Fok, 1991: 330-331). The trope of 'disease
in the body' indicated something the Chinese wanted to cure and eliminate,
but because of their formidable weaponry and their persistent desire to
trade and to Christianize the heathens, the Chinese became vulnerable to
this uncontrollable foreign 'disease'.
Problematic Sovereignty and Colonial Ideology
The year 1557 is generally accepted as the date of the Portuguese permanent
settlement in Macau, but its sovereignty has long been a matter of doubt.
In 1537, the Portuguese were active on Shangchuan Island (_LJl|l|) or, in
English, St John's Island, which is some 80 kilometres south-west of
Macau. This island is now a significant place for pilgrims because of its
connection with one of the great men of the age, St Francis Xavier, who
died there on 3 December 1552. In 1542, Shangchuan was abandoned
and the Portuguese were allowed by the Guangdong officials to use
Langbaiao (?il[=l?li) or in Portuguese Lampacao, an island near Macau, as
a base to conduct their trade with Japan. As Langbaiao was soon not
suitable for trade due to silted waters, the Portuguese preferred to settle
in Macau — an ideal place for convenient anchorage and for trade activities.
In 1553, perhaps by bribing local officials and under the pretext that their
ships had been wrecked, the Portuguese sought permission to go ashore
in Macau to dry their water-soaked goods. Coupled with personal gain
from bribery and sympathy, the Chinese officials allowed them to settle
there. Meanwhile, the Ming government built the Barrier Gate in 1573 in
order to isolate Macau from the Chinese territories, and in 1587 established
a civil magistracy to rule the Chinese in Macau. The Ming authorities
were tolerant of their presence due to two main factors: a pragmatic pro-
trade attitude towards deriving incomes from customs dues and taxes,
and the practical considerations of coastal defence against pirates and
local rebels (Fok, 1991: 328). However, it was believed that they were
sometimes involved in a combination of commerce and piracy.
As Fok Kai Cheong points out, the Ming policy towards the Portuguese
operation in Macau well deserved its title of the 'Macau Formula', but
this formula was never clearly stated as a formula in any official text.
Moreover, this very policy marked a deviation from any Ming-dynasty
pattern of trade and relations with other states in the Sinocentric world
order, and did not gain direct imperial endorsement through the Ming
Court (Fok, 1991: 342-343). Portugal was neither recognized as a vassal
of Ming China, nor was Macau ever ceded to Portugal as a colony. It is

therefore obviously incorrect for the Portuguese to declare that the Emperor
of China gave Macau to them. Perhaps the Portuguese had stayed there
long enough and made legalism retroactive. They could not prove the
acquisition of the right of sovereignty over M a c a u t h r o u g h official
endorsement, although they had settled there for some four hundred years.
With regard to the problematic issue on sovereignty, W. Robert Usellis,
an American, concluded in his research on 'The Origin of Macao' (in English)
for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Chicago in 1958:
From the purely historical point of view, however, it must be

concluded that the Portuguese were squatters who maintained
their position through a combination of weakness, corruption,
and hesitant policy on the part of the Chinese. (Usellis, 1995:
147-148)
More than a decade later, Lam Chee Shing, a Chinese, conducted

research in his doctoral thesis on Macau at the University of Hong Kong. ,
He maintained that it was incorrect to claim that the Portuguese held,
Macau by right of conquest or by imperial munificence. It was because
the Portuguese were only allowed to settle there by the Chinese local
government (Lam, 1970: 828). Unlike the Portuguese acquisition of other
colonies through aggression and violence, Macau was occupied and
colonized in an anomalous way vis-a-vis the usual pattern of colonization.
by conquest.
The sovereignty of Macau has long been a debatable issue. 22 As early..
as 1832, Anders Ljungstedt (1759-1835), a Swede, published An Historical^.
Sketch of the Portuguese Settlements in China and of the Roman Catholic
Church and Mission in China and Description of the City of Canton. It
was the first written history of Macau in English. Ljungstedt pointed out
the arrogance and the pretensions of the Portuguese, in particular the
absurdity of their claim to be sovereign masters of Macau when they still
conformed to the Chinese demand for an annual ground rent of 500 taels
of silver for the right to use Macau. He asserted that Macau was Chinese
territory and wrote:
As no covenant or treaty of peace ever appeared in public, it

remains an absolute impossibility to determinate the ultimate
limits of the conquest the Portuguese pretend to have made on
that Island [Macau]. . . . A town, called Cidade do nome Deos
de Macao, rose by degrees on the peninsula not by the grace
and concession of any of the emperors of China, for such is
denied, but by the success of the chivalrous arms of Portugal.
(Ljungstedt, 1992: 8)
After the publication, he was violently attacked by Portuguese historians

who regarded his assertion as fallacious. However, in the Foreword of the
1992 edition of the book, Father Manuel Teixeira (1912-), a renowned
Jesuit historian, refuted the claim and praised Ljungstedt's work as serious
and disinterested. He maintained that Ljungstedt's assertion of the
sovereignty of Macau was based on research of historical documents and
manuscripts, and his knowledge of Portuguese was a tremendous asset in
gaining access to Portuguese documents. After a lapse of 160 years, his
writing is looked upon as an invaluable source in studying the history of
Macau. He is now a traitor-turned-hero and his reputation rehabilitated.
Portuguese critics were prejudiced against Ljungstedt chiefly because his
historia upset the Portuguese claim of legitimate sovereignty over Macau.
In a different vein, Carlos Augusto Montalto de Jesus, a polyglot born
in Hong Kong (1863-1927) wrote another historical account on Macau
in English, which was first published in 1 9 0 2 , i.e. 70 years after
Ljungstedt's. Montalto's first edition of Historic Macao was greeted with
acclaim and the Senate of Macau even suggested that the author be given
a royal honour for his great work. Contrary to Ljungstedt's claim that the
Portuguese had no rights whatsoever in Macau, Montalto gave the version
'that the Portuguese had been invited by the Chinese to settle in Macao,
and that in the early days there was no ground rent' (Montalto, 1984:
vii). H e reiterated that the Portuguese obtained imperial sanction to
establish themselves in Macau, and that they acquired the possession
through legal documents (Montalto, 1984: 23). He immediately became
a hero in the Portuguese community because his version was Macau
government's favourable historia, and above all, he openly vindicated
Ljungstedt's claim that the Portuguese were in Macau on sufferance. His
writing thus honoured him to be a good subject in Portuguese colonial
ideology.
After some time, Montalto was tremendously disillusioned.about the
relationship between Macau and Portugal. He began the second edition
of Historic Macao to which he added several new chapters. It was precisely
those last chapters that instantly turned him from a national hero to a
sleazy traitor. The second edition appeared in 1926 in which his tone
sounded piercing to the Portuguese:
The history of colonization can hardly show another such case
of cruel expiation, of ill-requited loyalty. Civilization may well
stagger at such an irony of fate, so patiently endured for centuries
of martyrdom. But it obviously needs some catastrophic shock
to wake up the dozing nation [Portugal] to its sense of duty in
face of the stern logic of facts and the Nemesis of fate in full
swing. (Montalto, 1984: 506)
R a p t in t o t a l disillusionment, M o n t a l t o relentlessly flogged the

Portuguese for knowing and caring so little about Macau. He also criticized
them for being incompetent in meeting Macau's wants and suggested that
it would be preferable to haul down the Portuguese flag, and let the
territory be administered by the League of Nations. The last chapter was
thus seen as 'an ulcer' on the whole book and an open challenge to the
i m p o t e n t P o r t u g u e s e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n . T h e G o v e r n m e n t of M a c a u
immediately condemned the newest edition as a heresy and 'seized the
entire edition, and burned it in public. Anyone who had purchased a copy
was ordered to surrender it for destruction' (Montalto, 1984: ix). Despite
the fact that he was once condemned as a hero-turned-traitor due to the
furore provoked by the second edition, his work is indispensable for the
study of Portuguese settlement from the very beginning of the sixteenth
century to the early twentieth century.
Ljungstedt and Montalto appeared to be traitors of Portugal. It was
obvious that the English versions were meant for a wider circulation,
apart from the Portuguese readers. As Walter Benjamin aptly observes, "
history is 'a tool of the ruling classes' (Benjamin, 1968: 257). N o t only .-
does it tend to reflect the dominant ruling power, but it also comes to
terms with the victor and the ideology of legitimate rule. Seen in this light,
it is not the least surprising that Ljungstedt and Montalto were condemned.
It is because the history they had written did not celebrate the Portuguese
achievements but revealed the unbearable 'truth'. Under Portuguese colonial -
ideology, these two historians are inadvertently caught up in the web of
a hero/traitor p a r a d i g m . They dramatically vacillate in the praise/-.*
condemnation scenario through their publications, and also oscillate-K
between the ambivalent demarcation of 'a good subject' and 'a bad subject'
in colonial discourse.
In another literary genre, a Protestant missionary also hit a raw nerve
in the issue of the ambiguous sovereignty of Macau in 1835. In a journal
concerning the introduction of Christianity to China, the Reverend Walter
Henry Medhurst 2 3 recorded the ambivalent authority in Macau:
It is difficult to determine to whom the settlement [Macau]

really belongs . . . and Macao may be said to be under two sets
of rulers, both independent of each other. . . . While the
Portuguese have a governor appointed by the queen of Portugal,
and a senate chosen from amongst the inhabitants of Macao,
the Chinese have had a magistrate placed over them, who holds
his court in the native part of the settlement; and a Chinese
custom-house is established on the beach . . . (Medhurst, 1838:
292)
Macau is indeed a peculiar place in the history of China and in the

project of Portuguese colonization. It straddles two masters and becomes
the see-saw in power struggles. Moreover, it is torn between two systems
and falls into a Janus complex of having two controlling forces.
The Assertion of 'Perpetual Occupation'

It seemed that the Portuguese never paid attention to the issue of sovereign
rights over Macau until the British officially acquired these over Hong
Kong in 1841 by the Treaty of Nanjing. It could not be denied that
Ljungstedt's history of Macau had aroused the long ignored or perhaps
forgotten issue. It was only then realized that while Hong Kong was held
by right, Macau was held on sufferance. For the Portuguese, it was a
prime concern to clarify this matter, especially when a number of other
nations proceeded to sign treaties with China (America and France in
1 8 4 4 , Belgium in 1 8 4 5 , and Sweden in 1847). Britain's successful
acquisition of H o n g Kong in the wake of the infamous Opium War
ultimately gave the Portuguese unprecedented courage. They introduced
high-handed policies towards Macau and the faltering Qing government
of China.
In 1846, Portugal appointed a wayward governor to Macau, Joao
Maria Ferreira do Amaral. He was a captain in the Portuguese navy in
South America where he had lost his right arm in service. After taking
office, he implemented a series of reforms aimed at lessening Chinese
influence and interference in Macau. But worst of all, he made a disastrous
move that infuriated the Chinese to an unbearable extent. For purposes
of expanding the urban area, he ordered the removal of Chinese graves
near the Barrier Gate. The Chinese regarded the place as good feng shui
(JiUR),24 or favourable geomancy, for burial. Some tombs were removed
by force and some inevitably destroyed.
The Chinese popular system of feng shui is primarily concerned with
siting graves and houses. Graves stand at the centre of geomantic attention;
they are the abodes of the ancestors. As such, geomancy and ancestor
worship interlock and feng shui is an intrinsic part of the cult of the
ancestors (Freedman, 1979: 208-211). It is believed that the prosperity,
honours and riches of individuals and families largely depend on good
feng shui of ancestors' graves. Hence, the graves are the locus guarding
the good fortune of the living. They are therefore protected by the living
against any possible encroachment by others. C.K. Yang has even asserted
that geomancy is 'partly a means of averting possible evil influence from
the dead upon the progeny as well as being a means of inducing the
supernatural influence of blessing' (Yang, 1970: 34). Unfortunately, either

ignoring or perhaps without understanding the Chinese cultural matrices,
Amaral followed the same path of the Franciscans and Dominicans (will
be discussed in Chapter 3) in obliterating the Chinese deep-rooted practice
of ancestor worship and detrimentally dug up the graves — the very
direct sites for worshipping ancestors — for urbanization.
Amaral's strong policies in Macau soon turned out to be the core of
conflict and the Chinese retaliated by posting notices in the streets of
Guangzhou, which openly offered rewards for Amaral's head. A juggernaut
force created by him not only rolled over the Chinese but also drove
himself into a cul-de-sac. On 22 August 1849, he was assassinated by
Shen Zhiliang (^fcifeJE) and seven other people, who were all hailed as
patriotic heroes by the Chinese (Yuan, 1988: 141). Amaral's head and
only arm were hacked off and carried away for reward. In counter-
retaliation, Vicente Nicolau de Mesquita (who later became the governor
of Macau), crossed the border with a mere number of 32 soldiers and^
attacked the Chinese fortress at Baishaling (fitl^K). This was where they •
defeated the garrison of 400 men with formidable cannons and guns with,
which the Chinese could not compare. After some negotiations and foreign
succour, Amaral's head and hand were finally returned to Macau in a pig
basket — a gesture of utter contempt to the Portuguese tragic hero.
The Portuguese continued to spare no effort in strengthening the
position of Macau and in putting an end to Chinese dominance. It was
not until the Chinese quest for Portuguese cooperation to curb the opium ^
trade that put Macau in a bargaining position in its deteriorating relations^
with China. After the second Opium War (1858), Hong Kong was pressed^ -
to adopt control measures of opium. However, the British only agreed to
cooperate provided that Macau also did the same. It was precisely because
the ban on opium in Hong Kong would immediately throw the whole
lucrative business into the hand of the Portuguese. If the weakening Qing
government had not needed the Portuguese cooperation in levying opium
tax and in taking steps to control the opium trade on lines similar to
those being taken in Hong Kong, the Portuguese could not have achieved
the rights it so desperately demanded. On 1 December 1887, the Treaty
of Beijing was initialled in Tianjin, and ratified in 1888 confirming 'the
perpetual occupation and government of Macau and its dependencies by
Portugal, as any other Portuguese possession'.
Two decisive events in 1849 — the assassination of Amaral and the
subsequent storming of Baishaling by Mesquita — consolidated the
Portuguese ambition to exercise sovereignty over Macau de facto although
it did not assert de jure 'the perpetual occupation' until 1887. It was
exactly one hundred years later that on 13 April 1987 the question of
sovereignty was resolved by the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration. China

is to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Macau on 20 December
1999, i.e. 150 years after the de facto loss of sovereignty in 1849, and
two years later than the return of H o n g Kong by the British in 1997.
Amaral and Mesquita are significant personages in the Portuguese
colonial enterprise and have been extolled by the Portuguese as outstanding
governors. The statues commemorating these t w o colonialists were
belatedly sculpted by Maximiliano Alves in Lisbon. They were inaugurated
in Macau in 1940 as tangible expressions of Portugal's pride and as
chronicles of historic events. For the 'martyred' Amaral, an equestrian
bronze monument was erected at a prominent spot between the entrance
of the Lisbon Hotel and the Macau-Taipa Bridge; a bronze statue of
Mesquita was also erected in the central town square, Largo do Senado,
facing the Leal Senado. One may wonder why these two statues were put
up nearly a hundred years after their 'patriotic' contribution.
The inauguration of these statues had a direct reflection on Portugal's
historic moment. In 1940, Portugal celebrated its eighth centenary as an
independent nation on the Iberian Peninsula since 1139. Moreover, in 1940
Portugal enjoyed, for the first time since the late eighteenth century, a credit
balance in trade, owing to the fact that Portugal was neutral in World War
II. The Portuguese profited by selling raw materials, in particular tungsten,
to the warring states (Saraiva, 1994: 355). The whole nation seemed to
revive from the prolonged economic setback and was immersed in an
elevated mood of n a t i o n h o o d in celebrating the eighth centennial
anniversary of independence. Their national revelry also extended to Macau
— the erection of these two statues was a celebration for the expulsion of
the Chinese dominance and for the Portuguese colonial conquest of Macau.
The two statues readily have some overtones: firstly, they represent
the Portuguese nostalgia for the past glories in Macau. They are signifiers
of the Portuguese strong political foothold on Chinese soil. Secondly, on
a larger scale, they reignite the Portuguese bygone greatness being the
super power at sea. Thirdly, they help rekindle national spirit in the wake
of political insurgence (Portugal overthrew its monarchy in 1910 in a
revolution which led to a republic) in this faraway 'province'. The two
statues are an allegory of spiritual revival and serve to erase some
disjunction felt by the Portuguese. Through the establishment of these
monuments we can also trace the complexity in colonial relationship.
Portugal is deeply tied up with Macau which subsequently becomes an
arena in staging Portuguese colonial power, and gives meaning to Portugal.
In other words, the 'imperial centre' depends on the 'provincial margin'
for a kind of nostalgic reflection of its greatness in the past. The margin,
therefore, comes to valorize the centre.
Though the statues were inaugurated as signs of Portuguese national

glory, they reminded the Chinese of national disgrace. Specifically, the
invader of Baishaling was well remembered as an insult and his statue
was the target of venting revenge. The bronze monument of Mesquita,
once stood in the act of drawing his sword to lead the invasion against
the Chinese, was destroyed during the anti-Portuguese outcry on 3
December 1966. It was known as the '123 Incident' in Macau, 25 a historic
moment coincided with the fanatic climax of the Proletarian Cultural
Revolution in China.
The monument of Amaral has the same fate. Towards the imminent
demise of Portuguese administration, Lu Ping, the Director of the Hong
Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said in 1990 that the bronze statue of
Amaral was 'a symbol of colonialism' and must be removed before 1999
(Lee, South China Morning Post: 29 October 1992). Being yesterday's
hero of Portugal, Amaral is today's bandit/scum of China. It was removed
from the rotunda facing the new headquarters of the Bank of China
Building on 28 October 1992. The final fate of the five-ton statue was
shipped back to Portugal from where it had come.
Once being placed on a high pedestal so that it could be seen silhouetted
against the sky, the Amaral statue (Plate 9) represents a fierce authority
immersed with brute strength and overwhelming rage. It is an image of
irresistible force and unlimited power. Somewhat like a warrior saint,
J jj Plate 9 The Amaral Monument

Amaral is portrayed gallantly riding on horseback with a whip in his

(only) left hand and engaging in the climax of the battle to combat the
Chinese attackers. The horse rears up on the verge of jumping out of the
pedestal due to the commander's relentless whipping. For the Chinese, it
is a sheer representation of the very oppressor, massive and aggressive.
The Amaral statue is a masterpiece of Portuguese artwork. It breaks
the solidity of forms and is charged with an exaggerated tautness and
some sort of Baroque theatricality of dramatic, vigorous movement. The
human psyche of Amaral's infuriated agony and dauntless resolution to
trample down the Chinese, the prancing stride and the bulging muscles of
the horse are portrayed in a frozen action — a moment being arrested in
a snapshot effect. If the Amaral statue had been retained, it would have
served as a lesson for future generations to learn from a tangible colonial
iconography. It would have been the locus proper for school children to
gather around for an outdoor lesson on imperialism, colonialism and
hegemony. It would prove more interesting than the dry textbooks in
classrooms. Moreover, it would have become a historic witness to the
irretrievable past when the Portuguese overtly engaged in the project of
colonial subjugation in the era of high imperialism.
Although Amaral and Mesquita are condemned by the Chinese as the
emblem of Portuguese imperialism and suppression, they are looked upon
as icons of national greatness in Portuguese colonial history because they
helped assert the 'perpetual occupation' of Macau through high-handed
policies. The two statues are thus caught up in a Janus scenario (having
contrasting meanings) in the transition of a political power from the
Portuguese to the Chinese.
Opium-Trafficking and Slave Trade

The Portuguese 'perpetual occupation' of Macau was largely due to
Amaral's and Mesquita's patriotic contribution, and also consolidated by
the Chinese concession for their cooperation in curbing opium-trading.
The whole enterprise of opium trade was one of the most unsavoury
undertakings in colonial subjugation; perhaps it could only be surpassed
by the horrors of the slave trade.
In the eighteenth century, opium-smoking, like snuff-taking, was
comparatively insignificant in China. According to statistics, at the time
of the first Chinese prohibition edict issued in 1729, there were only
about 200 chests of opium being exported to China in a year (Cameron,
1991: 10). But in the year 1 8 3 5 - 1 8 3 6 , a total of 27 000 chests 26 were
unloaded in Guangzhou, and 34 million silver dollars left China to pay
for opium in the third decade of the nineteenth century (Wakeman, 1975:
126). Opium thus turned out to be the most valuable commercial crop in
the world and the basis of almost all commerce with China. By the end
of the nineteenth century, one out of every ten Chinese was thought to
have become an addict (Wolf, 1982: 258).
Not only did opium undermine the health of Chinese addicts, it also
drastically subverted the social order and created economic havoc through
the relentless outflow of Chinese silver into Western pockets. Although
the opium trade was covert and illegal, it was enormously profitable.
European powers as well as corrupted Chinese officials, therefore, continued
to reap enviable profits from trafficking opium, whether through trade or
bribery. The unbelievably spiralling consumption of opium and the Qing
government's anti-opium' drive finally led to two opium wars. The first
Opium War (1839-1842) enabled the British to seize Hong Kong island 27
and the second (1858) to possess the Kowloon peninsula. The British then
acquired a 99-year lease on the New Territories in 1898.
The Western nineteenth-century modernity in the wake of the Industrial
Revolution ushered in a period of profit plundering in Asia through *
powerful armaments and constituted an epoch of capitalism by selling
addictions. The history of addiction t h u s goes h a n d in hand with
exploitative capitalism under the pretext of mercantilism. The role of
capitalism can be taken as the determining motor of colonialism.
While the history of H o n g Kong is tainted with much political
expedience and even infamy in relation to opium-trading, the history of
Macau perhaps surpasses the pernicious import of opium by engaging in.
yet another sordid trade of trafficking in human slaves. Since the fifteenth'
century, the Portuguese were the major purveyors of the slave trade in
Africa28 for the expansion of sugar cultivation in Brazil (colonized by the
Portuguese in 1500). O n the other side of the world, fifteenth-century
China obstructed foreign commerce and prevented emigration in its 'closed-
door' policy. However, the conclusion of treaties after the first Opium
War removed these barriers. Political disorders and economic crises during
the late Qing d y n a s t y d r o v e m a n y wretched Chinese to seek job
opportunities and China proved to be a good source of labour for the
outside world. Under these circumstances, foreign entrepreneurs began to
recruit the Chinese labourers through the establishment of the 'coolie-
slave' trade.
The Indian word 'coolie' (denoting a degenerate race) means day
labourer. The coolie-slave trade, also known as the 'pig trade' (it is because
like pigs, human beings were stamped with a mark for identification), was
the most tragic experience of nineteenth-century Chinese. In the 1850s
Macau became the coolie trade centre to meet the world demand for
cheap labourers. In 1855, there were only five coolie barracoons, or

coolie-slave recruiting offices, which were called HfFft by the Chinese,
but in 1873 there were three hundred such barracoons operating in the
tiny enclave. Apart from the Portuguese who played an active role in the
slave trade, unscrupulous Chinese agents were also involved in recruiting.
There were as many as eight hundred broker-procurers engaging in this
profitable trade. Between 1850 and 1875 some 1 2 8 0 000 'contracted
workers' were recruited and shipped overseas (Yee, 1992: 71-73). The
two major destinations were Havana and Peru. In the middle of the
nineteenth century, Macau thus enjoyed a resurgence of prosperity after
the setback in economy in the eighteenth century.
We may recall that in the earlier encounter the Chinese considered the
Portuguese cannibalistic. This premonitory cultural recognition was cruelly
realized in a displaced fashion in the nineteenth century when the
Portuguese were in the process of 'devouring' the Chinese and made them
'disappear' through the coolie-slave trade. The nightmarish anxiety of
being 'eaten' by the barbarian Other was a matter of reality and the
Portuguese utterly revealed the symptom of 'anthropophagic devouring'
by shipping the Chinese away.
T h e abhorrent problem was at long last met with some humane
concerns from British and American statesmen, not to mention the Qing
government's lobbying to curb the trade. Having been aware of the
inhumanity involved in the dreadful trade, the British Cabinet addressed
some remonstrance to press the Lisbon Government to stop the undeniable
horrors of the slave trade in Macau. However, the Portuguese replied
'that the coolie emigration referred to, whether slave trade or not, flourished
as much in Hong Kong as in Macao' (Eitel, 1983: 500). It was alleged
that some 'reputable' London commercial firms and banks were involved
in the Macau dirty trade and had profited greatly. The British then took
serious measures and forced the Portuguese to cease the trade. Hong
Kong followed suit and played a positive role in suppressing slavery. The
Americans, in this instance, helped turn a bright chapter in the infamous
history of Macau by raising world denunciation against this despicable
trade. Above all, Joao de Andrade Corvo, Minister in charge of the navy
and foreign possessions in Lisbon, engaged himself energetically against
the trdfico de Culis, as it was called in Portuguese. As a result, an Ordinance
was passed in M a c a u on 29 December 1873 and came into force on
2 7 M a r c h 1874 to prohibit the trade 'for the sake of the [Portuguese]
nation's honour' (Borges da Siva and Radasewsky, 1992: 31).
Since its rise in 1848, the slave trade was 'the only real business' in
M a c a u for twenty-five years (William, 1966: 430) and contributed an
enormous profit to the Portuguese. Macau was indeed their colonial
fortune. The grandiloquent slogan of 'seeking Christians and spices' in

their eastward sail project emerges no more than a cynical slogan under
which is the objective of accumulating capital in the most unchristian
ways. The third quarter of the nineteenth century was perhaps the darkest
age of Macau under Portuguese administration.
Through belatedly benevolent interventions, the dehumanizing yet
lucrative trafficking of human cargo was finally outlawed, but the opium
trade stopped much later. The British export of opium into China only
ceased in 1917 and opium-smoking was outlawed in Hong Kong only in
1946. Both the Portuguese and the British benefited from these nefarious
traffickings in the name of 'mercantilism'. Macau and Hong Kong were
imprinted with pernicious histories of pillage during European global
imperialism and colonialism.
A Poetic Desire for Decolonization

As the twentieth century progressed, the desire to recuperate Macau increased .
and manifested culturally. After the establishment of the Republic of China
in 1911, there emerged a modern product of nationalism 29 whose defining
moment may be fixed on 4 May 1919. On this day, a new movement, known
as the May Fourth Movement arose. 30 It was dedicated to anti-imperialism,
national salvation and regeneration. In the context of the nationalist desire
for unification and the reintegration of other European enclaves back to
China proper, the yearning for the return of Macau to China was ardently ^
expressed in a poem by Wen Yiduo ( « — £ ) (1899-1946) in 1925. Wem-
was one of China's leading poets in the May Fourth period (from 1919 to
around 1930) and an extremely outspoken patriot. He was assassinated in
1946 while expressing his views as leader of China's liberal party. Wen's
' O u M u n ' (or 'Aomen' in Putonghua, 'Macau' in Portuguese) blends
nationalist sentiments with a poetic desire for decolonization:
«?HH»
mmimmmxxj • ^m \
mi • s i @ * > mi i
(Wen, 1984: 269-270)
'Ou Mun'
Do you know 'Ma Gang' is not my real name? . . .
I have left your tutelage for too long already, Mother!
But what they kidnapped is only my body,
My soul is still under your safe-keeping.
Oh! The Mother I have not forgotten in a dream that has survived
300 years!
Please call my pet name, call me 'Ou Mun'!
Mother, I want to come back, Mother!
In the poem, Macau is personified as a kidnapped child taken away

from his mother, China. Very often colonial subjects are constructed and
represented by Western writers as children and in need of a surrogate
parent to take care of their childlike mentality. The Chinese patriotic poet
also creates a mother-child relationship between China and Macau. The
nomenclature of 'Ma Gang', meaning the 'Bay of A-Ma' (Ma Gang #§$|
or Ma Jiao H^C are the Chinese transliteration of Macau), 3 1 is repudiated
by Wen because it is only a name given by the usurpers. Wen's yearning
for Macau's pet name 'Ou Mun' stems from a desire for repossession and
recontrol, and above all, decolonization. The gesture of naming, which
also resembles the cartographic discourse of map-making, 3 2 can be taken
as an imperative in the process of colonization. It is because naming
places, in a sense, re-creates places. It is a way to colonize and control
space, like Adam naming everything in Eden. Furthermore, it attempts to
produce and re-present a reformed and recognizable totality out of the
existing form. Significantly, naming is a way to acquire legality and
legitimacy, and an act of imperial possession.
Wen's poem is in effect a literary rallying of a nationalistic culture of
resistance. His insistence on referring to Macau's original name is of
additional significance in the vernacular as a resistance to Portuguese
presence. As Edward Said points out, 'One of the first tasks of the culture
of resistance was to reclaim, rename, and reinhabit the land. And with
that came a whole set of further assertions, recoveries, and identifications
. . .' (Said, 1993: 273) Unfortunately, Wen's desire for the reunification of
Macau and China would go unrequited. The kidnapped child recites his
wish to leave the usurper but his soliloquy meets with no response and
his mother makes no move to take him back, at least not until the 1987
Joint Declaration.
Anachronistic Decolonization and a 'Pre-PostcoloniaV Era
In the face of demands for decolonization during the early twentieth

century, Portugal became enmeshed in violence, chaos and rupture. After
overthrowing the monarchy in the momentous 5 October 1910 Revolution,
Antonio de Oliveira Salazar established the authoritarian Corporative
Unitary Republic in 1928, but refused to carry out a decolonization policy.
Eventually, in 1961 India invaded and occupied Goa, Damao and Diu
(Indian territories under Portuguese colonial rule). In the same year, various
guerilla movements in Angola declared war on Portugal, and in 1963
Mozambique and Guinea were also involved in anti-colonialist war against
Portugal. 3 3 From 1961 to 1974, some 9000 Portuguese soldiers were
killed and more than 25 000 wounded. Troubled by the colonial wars, the
leftist 'Carnation Revolution' on 25 April 1974 successfully ended the 46-
year totalitarian rule of Salazar and hastened to decolonize Portuguese
possessions in Africa and Asia. The new government advocated 'a policy
of good relations and friendship with all peoples on the basis of mutual
interest, non-interference, independence and equality among nations'
(Cremer, 1991: 131-132).
However, even before the process of decolonization in other Portuguese
colonies, Portugal had already relinquished much of its power in Macau
during the climax of China's Proletarian Cultural Revolution, specifically
after the anti-Portuguese '123 Incident' in 1966. At that time, Macau was
in a state of anarchy and the administration paralyzed. The Portuguese
settlers would have readily 'evacuated' had China simply requested them
to do so. However, Lisbon was informed that China wished Macau to
remain as it was, largely because the change in Macau's status might
shock the people of Hong Kong. The Portuguese, therefore, retained a
militarily and politically indefensible little colonial anachronism in Asia
(Hanna, 1969: 4). It was indeed an ironic inversion of the colonial
relationship because it was the radical Cultural Revolution in China that
allowed the colonial era in Macau to continue. The term 'revolution' is
often a synonym in the Third World for waves of brutal ruptures in
decolonization and independence struggles, but the Chinese Cultural
Revolution anachronistically tolerates the status quo of colonialism. Frantz
Fanon, the so-called founding father of modern colonial critique, remarks,
'Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is,
obviously, a programme of complete disorder.' (Fanon, 1971: 27) He is
of the opinion that decolonization is always a violent phenomenon because
it is the meeting of two opposed forces. But China's pragmatic decision
not to put an end to Portuguese colonization confounds Fanon's paradigm
of enmity between native and colonizer.
In 1979, Macau was given a special status: 'Chinese Territory under

Portuguese Administration', a peculiar formula that disavowed Macau's
status as a colony but admitted the reality of Portuguese administration.
The Joint Declaration, issued on 13 April 1987 between the People's
Republic of China and the Republic of Portugal, stated that China would
resume the exercise of sovereignty over Macau on 20 December 1999. It
also signified the real and symbolic decolonization of Macau out of an
anomaly of colonial acquisition.
Since P o r t u g a l ' s 1 9 7 4 military revolution aimed at a b r o a d e r
international relationship, the Portuguese were ready to comply with the
removal of the bronze statue of Amaral even before its flag would be
officially hauled d o w n in 1999. Apart from the political reasons, the
demolition of the Amaral monument was caught into the game of elliptical
feng shui. Speculation has it that when high officials of the Bank of China
examined the architectural design they believed the monument would
create bad feng shui. In other w o r d s , it would severely disrupt the
harmonious geomancy for their new headquarters, whose main entrance
was intended to face the waterfront without any 'obstruction'. They
maintained that when one looked from the entrance of the building, it
seemed Amaral's whip was flogging the Bank. Moreover, when one looked
from the statue in the opposite direction, it seemed as if the horse was
treading and stamping on it (Ming Pao Daily News, 29 October 1992).
The M a c a u government was therefore requested, if not pressed, to
dismantle the m o n u m e n t in order to make way for an auspicious
positioning of the Bank of China Building. In this case, feng shui creates
competition and conflict in the ordering of social relations in space. It
also masks a political desire for an early erasure of the colonial symbol.
Somewhat like Ljungstedt and Montalto, Amaral also falls into the hero/
invader paradigm in divergent cultural discourses. The monument becomes
a metonym for colonialism. It reminds the Chinese of a dismembered past
that is very painful, a past which they would rather not remember. The 'fiat'
for the removal of the statue by Lu Ping thus serves patent political
ideologies: it is the manifestation of Chinese political consciousness that
wishes to erase the unpleasant past and to shroud in an amnesia the
undesirable reminder of China's historical impotence. For the Chinese, the
history of Macau (and H o n g Kong) hurts and wounds. The erasure of the
colonial symbol is then one of the tasks of the culture of resistance since
the Chinese regard it as 'a mission' to restore a more congenial national
order at the fin de siecle than that provided by the colonial history.
The dismantling of the monument (Plate 10) marked a process of
'decolonization within a colonial context'. It was perhaps anachronistic
and prematurely celebratory to erase the imperial/colonial iconography
when Macau was still under Portuguese administration. The order was
considered anachronistic on the grounds that the Chinese government
exercised postcolonial power to install a new cultural order by removing
the colonial icon before the Portuguese official retreat. I would like to call
this peculiar genre an 'anachronistic decolonization' since it renders
problematic ideas of a linear progress to postcoloniality — a topic in
vogue in Western academies. As Simon During has it, 'The notion of
"postcoloniality" carries with it a theory of history. It segments world
history into three phases: the pre-colonial, the colonial and the postcolonial
itself. The will to use the term "postcolonial" is not simply driven by a
need for narrative order and global harmony, but contains a political
promise of liberation.' (During, 1992: 339) The 'post' does not signal an
'after' but rather marks an ongoing contestation enabled by the process
of decolonization. 'Postcoloniality' obviously connotes a condition that is
evenly developed rather than being internally disparate, disarrayed or
contradictory. The term 'postcolonial' therefore embraces a temporal
connotation. It implies a progression of events which marks history as a
series of stages along an epochal road from 'the pre-colonial' to
'colonialism', 'postcolonialism' and 'neocolonialism'. However, the removal
of the Amaral statue does not signal a phase of immediate 'liberation'.
Nor does this task of decolonization show a slightly later historical moment
after the colonial administration.
Plate 10 The Bank of China

Building and the Empty Pedestal
of the Amaral Statue
The demolition of the equestrian monument before the demise of

colonialism seems to underline a passage into a new era. It signifies the
closure of a prickly historical age and may also represent the desire for
a smooth transition to a postcolonial moment. However, it has created an
ambivalence partly because it pre-empts a chronological sequence of change:
colonialism - decolonization - postcolonialism. The physical disappearance
of the statue may suggest the symbolic castration of the Portuguese colonial
power. At the same time, it establishes an ambiguous locus of continuities
of Portuguese presence and discontinuities of its colonial discourse. Macau
has been in a historically and theoretically problematic context, which I
would call a 'pre-postcolonial era' that spanned from October 1992 until
December 1999. Although the oxymoronic rubric appears to be awkward
and somewhat eccentric, it precisely portrays the unique pre-postcolonial
ambience in Macau, where the Chinese have already displayed in advance
its political and cultural dominance.
A Resurgent Symbol: The Bank of China Building

If the Amaral equestrian monument once manifested the Portuguese colonial
authority, the new headquarters of the Bank of China Building in Macau
certainly represents China's resurgent power. 34 We can a p p r o a c h
architecture as a contemporary discourse. It embraces a wide semiotic
range and exhibits the entire spectrum of artistic practices, cultural
manifestations and political implications. Architecture is often inflected
by social and political utterances. It can facilitate different reading strategies
for cultural analysis.
Standing in its unchallenging monumentalism, the 37-storey Bank of
China Building was designed by Remo Riva35 and completed in 1991. It
embraces a classical tripartite division of base, shaft and capital. Decorated
with glittering silver glass, the central octagonal tower is flanked by attached
wings on both sides. The octagonal main tower is expressed by the use
of curtain walling. The wings are built with structural glazing strip windows
and Portuguese pink granite. Small strips in Barrocal white are employed
to modulate the elevation. It is characteristically capped by a prismatic
triangular capital, a fashionable marker of architectural postmodernity.
On the whole, it is a celebration of modern technology.
The new edifice dominates almost every view of the tiny enclave. It
is approximately 166 metres above the road level and is, for now, the
tallest structure ever built in Macau. 36 Its spectacular visual dominance is
readily symbolic of the resurgent power of the People's Republic of China.
It is not merely a skyscraper office building owned by the Chinese
government, but also a metonymic representation of the assertion of the

repressed political power. It is a tangible political landmark signifying its
looming authority and influence after some four hundred years of foreign
administration. Realistically, its growing significance is evidenced by the
fact that it became a note-issuing bank in October 1995. It is said to be
'like its sister in H o n g Kong, a statement of corporate success and
confidence in the future' (Prescott, 1993: 75). But unlike its 'sister' which
sits on the periphery of Central District in Hong Kong, 37 it occupies the
most prominent spot on the peninsula. Its excellent location at once reveals
complex political relationships between the two colonies and China.
The prime site may speak for the amicable Sino-Portuguese relationship
after the 1987 Joint Declaration. It also points to the different colonial
histories of the two places: while Portugal acquired Macau on sufferance,
Britain took Hong Kong by conquest. These different histories were now
reflected in the events surrounding their return to China. Hong Kong was
caught in heated debates between London and Beijing over transition
issues, but Macau was progressing much more smoothly towards the
reunification with China. Its prominent location can thus be considered
a political statement, and likewise, architecture is politicized to serve the
ideology of power.
The building now stands as a symbol of the importance of the Bank
of China in the world of international finance. Furthermore, it represents
China's commitment and presence in Macau in playing a key role in the
economic integration after the resumption of sovereignty. Architecture, as"
a cultural discourse, does not just exhibit the artistic expression of a~
certain epoch, but also suggests a symbiotic relationship between politics ^
and culture.
An Unprecedented Nostalgia
In addition to the architectural sphere, the struggle to represent Macau

has also been manifested in new narratives of Macau history. After the
1987 Joint Declaration, Macau received unprecedented attention from the
Chinese and Portuguese with regard to its colonial history and its syncretic
culture. In the past, the history of Macau written in Chinese language was
often included as a chapter or part of the history of Guangdong Province.38
In July 1988 Aomen Shilue (tHHiffi&), a short history of Macau, in its
own right, was published (in regular Chinese characters) in Hong Kong.
Shanghai also lost no time in publishing Aomen Sibainian ( S t P I H l f ^ ) ,
a 400-year history of Macau, in September 1988 (in simplified Chinese
characters). Ironically, the author of Aomen Sibainian admits in the epilogue
that he has never been to Macau. Both Aomen Shilue and Aomen Sibainian,
published by the Chinese at this specific moment, may again echo
Benjamin's aphorism stating that history is a tool of the ruling classes.
These two books can be seen as the precursor for celebrating the resurgence
of Chinese power in advance.
In 1992, Padre Benjamin Antonio Videira Pires, published a book in
Portuguese, Os Extremos Conciliam-se, (The Extremes Conciliate
Themselves), translated in Chinese as S ^ I R U S — MH^XitltM. It covers
a 400-year history of Macau and its cultural formation. Father Pires'
writing unveils two striking points. First, he reiterates that according to
some official records and a letter from the governor of Macau in 1846,
Macau was in fact given to Portugal 'forever' and 'it was not necessary
to pay annual ground rents'. It was decreed by the Ming Emperor Jiajing
(HW) (1522-1566) around 1557 in a ground ownership document called
e
Chapa de Ouro' (Golden Chop or Plate; in Chinese, ^§51 ).39 Unfortunately,
the whereabouts of this document was a riddle and it was probably lost
in the early nineteenth century (Pires, 1992: 93-101). Moreover, Pires
states that when Ljungstedt's 1832's edition of An Historical Sketch was
published, the said document had already been lost. The controversy
arises possibly because of the fact that Macau was 'given' in the pre-
modern and pre-high colonial era of the nineteenth century, and the
process was totally different from the usual pattern of colonization through
the signing of a treaty. It could be surmised that the said Chapa de Ouro
might have once existed and was lost, but it is now impossible to trace
the inaccessible past for proof of such an important 'gift' of Macau to
Portugal.
Secondly, Amaral is hailed as a 'hero' because he has successfully
driven out the Chinese custom-house from the Holy City. But the incidents
of Amaral's assassination by the Chinese and Mesquita's invasion of
Baishaling are totally left out of the narrative. Also, the sordid history of
the coolie-slave trade in Macau is absent in his historia. The colonial past
in Pires' text is mediated and his history of Macau is embellished to
privilege the Portuguese 'legacy' by sifting out undesirable realities.
In order to promote the cultural legacies of Macau, a number of
institutions were established and various publications launched. The
Cultural Institute of Macau was established in 1982; the Macau Foundation
in 1984; 40 the Orient Foundation in 1988; and the Institute of Cultural
Studies of M a c a u in 1993. In 1987 the Cultural Institute of M a c a u
published its first edition of Review of Culture. It is a trilingual (Portuguese,
Chinese and English) quarterly magazine covering the culture and history
of Macau. According to the editor, this cultural project aims at being 'a
servant to the cultural identity of Macau and the Portuguese presence in
the East, the agent of the closest relationship between the Portuguese and
the Chinese nations' (Review of Culture, 1st ed., 1987: 2). The Macau
Foundation also published a series of books (in Chinese) on M a c a u ,
notably the Panorama de Macau (Panorama of Macau) in 1994. As its
title suggests, this book gives a 'panoramic view' — geography, politics,
economics, culture, sociology, transition period, outside relations, and a
'who's who' — of Macau. Another notable publication was the Cronologia
da Historia de Macau (Chronology of the History of Macau) in 1995. It
chronicles the history of Macau up to the end of the eighteenth century.
Correios e Telecommunigoes de Macau (the P o s t Office a n d
Telecommunications of Macau) followed suit by publishing Macau
Patrimonio e Filatelia (Macau Heritage and Stamp Collection) in 1995.
This is a trilingual pictorial book on heritage architecture together with
matching stamps. 41 Even o Museu Maritimo de Macau (the Maritime
Museum of Macau) dug out a long-forgotten MA dissertation (1958)
from the University of Chicago, and published in a bilingual (Portuguese
and English) edition, The Origin of Macao in 1995. Above all, Chen f
Shurong ( K M I I ) of the Macao Daily News i n t r o d u c e d the r u b r i c .
Macaology in 1986, and since then it has become a popular academic
discipline in Macau.
It is only after the fate of Macau became clear that both the Chinese
and the Portuguese started to pay extraordinary attention to its evolution
before the anticipated decolonization. Macau becomes a place for nostalgia:
a nostalgia for its syncretic cultural heritage and its eccentric role in ..
history. The passionate interests in Macau seem to echo what W a l t e r s
Benjamin has referred to as only something is about to disappear becoming
an image. It is as if only the end can finally determine meaning and signify
a totality. A decade ago, such a flourishing development of publications
about Macau was totally inconceivable. It seems that those people had
been entranced by what Sigmund Freud called 'reverse hallucination'.
They did not see things which were actually there and yet suddenly, they
were awakened by the alarm clock (the Joint Declaration) and realized
the disappearance of Macau as the last Portuguese colonial outpost in
1999. In view of the uniqueness of this long neglected 'reverse hallucinatory
space', the authorities of the two nations hastened to make 'a nostalgic
epilogue' by textualizing every aspect of Macau.
A Punctum in History
The frontispiece picture may in a sense epitomize the 442-year colonial

history of Macau. Driven by zealous religiosity which is represented by
Father Manuel Teixeira in the foreground, the Portuguese began their

imperialist project of colonization, as symbolized by the Amaral equestrian
monument. The colonial rule's demise may be read in the crumbling
crevice on the base of the shaft. The towering Bank of China Building in
the background exemplifies the Chinese power before decolonization. In
other words, behind the mask of Christian propagation, there is the process
of colonization and before the process of decolonization there is already
an ambience of postcoloniality where the resurgent Chinese authority has
already displayed its 'interference'.
Roland Barthes used to argue that every truly moving photograph has
a single absorbing spot. This is a place that calls forth feelings and leaves
people moved. He called it the 'photographic punctum'. The punctum,
Latin for point or puncture, wounds and disturbs the consistency of
meaning, and is associated with an incongruous detail in the photograph
(Barthes, 1981: 25-27). In the frontispiece photograph, Father Teixeira's
image strikes a dissonant note amid the wrestling elements in the political
domain. He could be taken as an incongruous photographic punctum in
an otherwise 'unholy' history of Macau. In view of the conflicting politico-
cultural encounters, the messianic motif is specific in the Portuguese colonial
enterprise. Under the veneer of the civilizing mission, there is a
magniloquent self-representation of a divinely ordained task to guide,
elevate, rule and subjugate the native. Judeo-Christianity is manipulated
in the political terrain and may be interpreted as a punctum in the history
of colonization.
Once again, Father Teixeira reiterated da Gama's ideological trope of
some five hundred years ago during an interview in August 1992: 'The
Portuguese sought Christians and spices.' The whole project of eastward
p e n e t r a t i o n in e c o n o m i c g a t h e r i n g a n d p l u n d e r i n g is repeatedly
encapsulated with an ideological mask. The propagation of Christianity
thus activates an ideological cover, which Fanon would call a 'white
mask' for economic gathering and political domination in the mystification
of colonial rule. After all, the processes of colonization and decolonization
in M a c a u can aptly be described as almost an anomaly because the
phenomena do not fit in with global theorists' belief that colonization is
homologous to conquest and decolonization to revolution.
Notes
1 The 'Orient', or the 'East', is an ideologically laden term denoting an exotic or
imperialistic view of Asia.
2 The demand for spices, which were necessary as preservatives for meat and fish, was
great in Europe. In particular, pepper was the most important spice; ginger was a close
second. Like gold, pepper was often demanded in payment of taxes. On the Portuguese
trade, see Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (London: University
of California Press, 1982), pp. 2 3 6 - 2 3 7 .
3 Although Portugal was the first European country to initiate maritime exploration and
commercial e x p a n s i o n , the country remained heavily dependent on agriculture
throughout the course of its history.
4 Malacca (now Malaysia) was taken in 1 5 1 1 , the Indonesian islands of Amboina,
Ternate and Tidore in 1514, Ormuz (or Hormuz) on the Persian Gulf in 1515, Colombo
in 1519. Occupation of these key bases was followed by the construction of feitorias,
Portuguese forts and trading posts. See A.J.R. Russell-Wood, A World on the Move:
The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America 1415-1808 (Manchester: Carcanet Press
Ltd., 1992), Chapter 1.
5 Goa was very important to the Portuguese seafaring enterprise. Since there was little
timber in Portugal suitable for shipbuilding, most Portuguese ships were built in Goa
where there was abundant timber from the teak forests.
6 The first Luso-Japanese contacts took place in 1543 when a group of Portuguese
landed on the island of Tanegashima, Japan.
7 It is worth mentioning that the emblem of the medieval Military Order of St James of
the Sword was a cross in the shape of a sword, which is nowadays the coat-of-arms
of Pamela, Portugal.
8 Os Lusiadas is translated as The Lusiads in English, which literally means 'the
Portuguese'. It refers to the sons of Lusus, who was the mythical founder of Lusitania
(Portugal's old name). As the title suggests, this epic fiction is a celebration of the feats
of a people. The Portuguese nation is the real hero of the poem. Although Camoes'
work is a celebration of national pride, it nevertheless mingles criticism of maritime
imperialism and condemns the heroic ethic that it celebrates. See David Quint, 'Voices
of Resistance: The Epic Curse and Camoes's Adamastor,' Representations, No. 27,
Summer 1989, pp. 1 1 1 - 1 4 1 .
9 Os Lusiadas is apparently a pastiche piece of work, partly plagiarizing Homer and
Virgil. It is considered not the equal of the Odyssey or the Aeneid by some critics. His
status as one of the world's greatest poets is also in doubt. See Aubrey F. G. Bell,
Portuguese Literature (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1922), Chapter 4 on 'Luis de
Camoes.'
10 The references in the parenthesis are the number of Canto and stanza. Translations of
Os Lusiadas are from the verse version by J. J. Aubertin, The Lusiads of Camoens
(London: Kegan Paul, 1884).
11 The first bronze bust was put up in 1840 but damaged by vandalism. Unlike the old
one portraying Camoes with only one eye (he lost his right eye in fighting against the
Moors), the replacing bust is a more idealized version.
12 Carracks were the large, round sailing vessels that evolved during the sixteenth century
from late medieval m e r c h a n t vessels. Carracks were broad-beamed and heavily
constructed with square and lateen sails. They had as many as five decks at the stern
and a prominent forecastle.
13 In the sixteenth century, Portugal created a specific type of imperialism, i.e. an
imperialism of exchange. It was the barter or purchase of one type of (usually primary)
commodity for another. O n imperialism of exchange, see Perry Anderson, 'Portugal
and the End of Ultra-Colonialism,' New Left Review, N o . 15, May/June 1962, pp. 8 3 -
102.
14 It is a general term applied to non-Sinic foreigners, implying a lack of cultures.
15 The term 'Middle Kingdom' embraces a Sinocentric worldview. It denotes that China
is the centre of the world.
16 In Chinese history, the emperor of each dynasty called himself the 'Son of Heaven' and
represented the Supreme Divine Being to exercise authority on the subjects.
17 When Alvares died on 8 July 1521, he was buried at the foot of the very padrao which
he himself erected. Also, his son died during his initial visit and was buried there in
1513.
18 In some texts, Tamang Island is mistaken for Tuen Mun on the Kowloon peninsula,
Hong Kong.
19 It was believed that Rafael Perestrelo was the first Portuguese who arrived in Guangzhou
in May 1515, but Jorge Alvares' arrival in June 1513 certainly predated that of Perestrelo.
20 In fine arts, the term 'weight-shift' describes the disposition of the human figure in
which the weight of the body tends to be thrown to one foot, creating tension on one
side and relaxation on the other. It is also called 'contrapposto'.
21 Pax Lusitania means Portuguese peace. Pax is a period of international history
characterized by an absence of major wars and a general stability of international
affairs usually resulting from the predominance of a specified political authority (during
the Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century a vast empire of trade was built up by
Britain).
22 On Macau's long-disputed sovereignty, see Camoes C.K. Tam, Disputes concerning
Macau's Sovereignty between China and Portugal (1553-1993) (Taipei: Yongye
Chubanshe, 1994).
23 The Reverend Medhurst was sent out by the London Missionary Society to 'labour for
the benefit of China' in 1816.
24 Feng shui (which literally means wind [and] water) is the Chinese art and science of
placement. It uses design, ecology, intuition and common sense to create harmony and
to bring health, wealth and happiness. However, it also deals with competition and
conflict. Its objective is to achieve auspicious influence upon the living and the dead.
Freedman contends that feng shui should be exempt from the description 'superstitious'
and that it is a part of Chinese religion. See Maurice Freedman, 'Geomancy' in G.
William Skinner, The Study of Chinese Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1979), pp. 3 1 3 - 3 3 3 .
25 ' 1 2 3 ' is the diminutive date of 3 December 1966. The '123 Incident' was the leftist
insurgence against the authoritarian rule of the Portuguese and the Chinese rightist
force in Macau.
26 Each chest contained about 145 pounds of the drug.
27 The first Opium War leading to the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 between Britain and
China was the first in a series of treaties, which opened China to the Western world.
These treaties have been regarded as 'unequal treaties' by the Chinese because of the
one-sided privileges they contained. The opium trade continued unregulated until the
treaties of 1858 and 1860 were signed. These treaties legalized importation of opium
and imposed duties on them.
28 It was the search for gold and spices that promoted the early Portuguese voyages to
Africa, but they soon concentrated on the recruitment of African slaves, which proved
to be very lucrative.
29 By the 1920s nationalism replaced, or at least overshadowed, culturalism as the dominant
Chinese view of their identity and place in the world. On Chinese nationalism, see
James Townsend, 'Chinese Nationalism,' Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, N o .
27, 1992, pp. 9 7 - 1 3 0 .
30 On 4 M a y 1919, students in Beijing protested against the Chinese government's
A N ANOMALY IN COLONIZATION AND DECOLONIZATION 45
humiliating concessions to Japan during the post-World War I peace conference at

Versailles. The protest soon unleashed a series of demonstrations throughout the country.
The patriotic sentiments and the rising tide of nationalism thus became the 'moving
force' in the revaluation of traditional culture and the call for a reformed practice of
writing that was to be based on baihua, or the vernacular. See Chow Tse-tsung, The
May Fourth Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960).
31 'Ou M u n ' was renamed as 'Macau' by the Portuguese after their arrival. The toponymy
of Macau will be discussed in Chapter 3.
32 O n cartographic discourse, see G r a h a m Huggan, 'Decolonizing the M a p : Post-
Colonialism, Post-Structuralism and the Cartographic Connection,' Ariel, Vol. 20 N o .
4, October, 1989, pp. 1 1 5 - 1 3 1 .
33 On Portuguese colonial wars, see Eduardo de Sousa Ferreira, Portuguese Colonialism
in Africa: The End of an Era (Paris: The UNESCO Press, 1974).
34 The Macau branch of the Bank of China was founded in 1950. In 1980, the Bank of
China was described as a state-owned socialist enterprise. It is now one of the largest
and the most important banks in China. See David Strohm, 'The Bank of China: A
Review of its Role and Function in the People's Republic of China and the Hong Kong/
Macau Region,' Discussion Paper, China Economic Research Centre, the University of
East Asia, 1989.
35 Remo Riva is one of Hong Kong's leading architects. He won the territory's highest,*,
architectural honour, the silver medal, from the Hong Kong Institute of Architects in
1993 for designing the postmodern Entertainment Building in Hong Kong.
36 The second tallest building, Luso Building, was completed in 1983 with 26 floors. It
was as at that time considered by planners to have exceeded a desirable height.
37 The new Bank of China Building in Hong Kong is located at One Garden Road, which
is at the margin of the financial-commercial arena. The building is comparatively
difficult to access because it is entwined by flyovers.
38 For example, the history of Macau is included only as a section in Xiangshan Xuanzhi
(IflllfS!*) and in Qu Dajun's (E^ciÎ) Guangdong Xinyu (fiSCfiTio). It was not until
1751 that the first monograph of Macau, Aomen Jilue, or in Cantonese, Ou Mun KeL
Leok, (Slf^fEBS-) , was published. It was written by Yin Guangren (^P3ttt) and Z h a n g -
Rulin ('jJcfeSS), the then Chinese officials in Macau. It was translated into Portuguese
as Monografia de Macau by Luis G. Gomes and published by Quinzena de Macau in
1979. It was also annotated and revised by Zhao Chunchen ( l | # M ) and reprinted by
the Cultural Institute of Macau in 1992. Although it covers only a span of 200 years,
it is an indispensable and much-quoted source (from the Chinese perspective) in studies
of the early history of Macau, and the interaction between the Chinese and foreigners.
39 A Chapa de Ouro was an official Chinese document in gilt characters. The Portuguese
claimed that they had been given this honorific document as a solemn cession of
M a c a u to Portugal.
40 The M a c a u Foundation began full operation only in 1988 when it took over the
University of East Asia, which is now called the University of Macau.
41 M a c a u postage stamps are among the prettiest in the world.
'City of the Name of God
3 of Macau in China, There
Is None More Loyal'
The Toponymy of Macau

The Chinese name 'Ou Mun' (?HH) (or 'Aomen' in Putonghua) means the
Gate of the Bay. It has been commonly used for Macau since the Ming
dynasty (1368-1644).' Around 1564, Macau was called Porto de Nome
de Deos (Port of the N a m e of God) and Porto de Amacao (Port of
Macau) by the Portuguese. The name 'Macau' is believed to have derived
from A-Ma-Gau (35&l#l)3 or the Bay of A-Ma. 2 It is where the famous
Chinese temple, Ma Kok Miu (or Ma Ge Miao in Putonghua), is situated
and where the Portuguese first landed. The Portuguese came to rename
Ou Mun as 'Amacao' or 'Amagao', and afterward shortened it to 'Macau'. 3
According to Anders Ljungstedt, Macau was also known as Cidade
do nome de Deos do Porto de Macao and Cidade do Santo nomo de
Deos de Macao (City of the name of God of the Port of Macau and City
of the Saint name of God of Macau) (Ljungstedt, 1992: 12). C.A. Montalto
de Jesus, however, said that Macau was originally styled Povoagao do
Nome de Deos do Porto de Amacao na China (Province of the Name of
God of the Port of Macau in China) (Montalto, 1984: 34). The term
'province' is in fact a keyword in Portugal's colonizing project. As Perry
Anderson notes, 'Overseas Territories of Portugal are given the generic
name "provinces" . . . they are an integral part of the Portuguese State.'
(Anderson, 1962: 108) Macau was hence regarded as an overseas province.
It was included in a single national community of Portugal covering a
territory that was juridically one despite geographical separation.
Soon after the Portuguese had settled there, the Diocese of Macau
was established on 23 January 1576 at the request of King Sebastiao of
Portugal. It was founded by a Papal Bull, Super Specula Militantis Ecclesiae,
which was issued by Pope Gregory XIII. In the edict that founded the
Diocese, the Pope gave an official name to Macau: Cidade do Nome de
Deos de Macau na China (City of the Name of God of Macau in China).

On 10 April 1586, Macau was granted the privileges of a Portuguese city,
which were equal to those of Evora. But the naming of Macau has not
yet run its course.
When King Sebastiao died without an heir, Dom Henrique, who was
the old Cardinal and also his great-uncle, succeeded him. He ruled only
for a few months before being obliged to cede the throne to Philip II
of Spain, 4 who claimed the Portuguese throne in 1580. Philip II ruled
the Iberian colonial empire that stretched from Peru to Macau. It was
the first Empire that could appropriately use the expression, 'on which
the sun never sets'. During the Spanish Interregnum over Portugal (1580-
1640), 5 the flag of Portugal continued to wave in Macau as a sign of
faith and loyalty.6 When Portuguese rule was re-established after 60 years
under the Union of the Crowns by Spanish dominion, Macau, being
the most prosperous colony, made a great donation to the new monarch,
King Joao IV. He in turn gratefully decreed the name of Macau by adding
(
nao ha outra mais leal'. Hence the whole given name of Macau is 'Cidade
do Nome de Deus de Macau na China, nao ha outra mais leaV, or
'City of the Name of God of Macau in China, there is none more loyal',
and translated into Chinese as ^ c ± S ^ ^ M , Mifc&M. This honorary
and magniloquent title has been a motto ever since and occurs in its
coat-of-arms (Plate 11). It is also 'elevated' in the pediment of the Leal
Plate 11 The Coat-of-Arms of Macau

'CITY OF THE NAME OF GOD OF MACAU IN CHINA, THERE IS NONE MORE LOYAL' 49
Plate 12 The Leal Senado
Senado 7 (Plate 12) as a manifestation of Macau's religious and political

attachment to Portugal.
As a religious base, Father Antonio Cardim (a Portuguese missionary)
called Macau the 'Head of Christendom in the East' in 1644 (Francis,
1930: 2). It was also hailed as 'Rome of the Far East', the 'Mother of
Missions in Asia', the 'Christian City' and the 'Holy City' on the grounds
that it was the venue for 'carrying out the motto of the Portuguese
explorers: to propagate the Faith and the Empire and to bring the Gospel
of Jesus Christ and to win souls for the Church' (Teixeira, 1991: 43). It
was, moreover, extolled as the 'Marian City' because churches dedicated
to Mary have been named in many forms since the sixteenth century.
In these namings and renamings of Macau, it is not difficult to discern
the Portuguese desire to acquire legality and legitimacy, as well as their
ambition to possess and control Ou Mun. In addition, the toponymy of
'Macau' provided an analogue for the acquisition, management and
reinforcement of administrative power. Macau was thus re-produced and
re-presented out of a rather ordinary name into a new and reformed
totality. The regally decreed name and the e l a b o r a t e l y religious
nomenclatures of Macau also gave significance to Portugal and Rome. It
seems that Macau was not just a provincial 'trophy' but a sign of power
of the centre. It was some sort of a guarantor of that centre's stability and
SO MACAU: A CULTURAL JANUS
power in the East. By and large, the tiny enclave became the meaning of
Portugal and Rome but not the other way around. It illuminated and
valorized the imperial centre.
In short, Macau was once a religious city that prided itself on having
more churches and chapels to the square mile than any other city in the
world. Therefore, it was more Christian than any Western city. Seen in
this light, the West depended on the East for fulfilment of their religious
ideologies and Macau became the West's 'Eastern stage' for religious
reconfiguration. One may wonder why Macau was made a religious centre
in the East, apart from Goa. We may recall that the Reformation originated
in Germany and was led by Martin Luther (1483-1546), who in 1517
challenged the abuses connected with the sale of indulgences. The unity
of Western Christendom, with its centre at Rome, was thus shaken. The
Papacy then sought to counter the effects of the Reformation by launching
a reform movement called Counter-Reformation. 8 Its principal expressions
were the Council of Trent (1542-1563) and the foundation of the Society
of Jesus by Ignatius Loyola in 1534. Macau's relation to Christianity
started in this particular era of religious reshuffle, when the meaning of
Christianity was so dependent upon the proselytization that the East
became an essential part of reconfigured Western Christianity.
The Propagation of Christianity
Portugal was an avowedly Catholic country. During the Age of Discovery,

the spirit of the Great Crusades was essentially an anti-Islamic spirit and
a strategic outflanking of Muslim power. It is not until the era of the
Counter-Reformation in the Catholic world that the Portuguese propagated
the Christian faith as a State enterprise. The evangelizing spirit then began
to embrace Asia within its project of ecumenicalism.
The first entrance of Christianity into China, however, was not from
Portugal, but from the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (including Mesopotamia,
Persia and Central Asia). The exact time when Christianity entered China
was uncertain but the first introduction of Christianity was associated
with the name of Nestorius (died circa 451). He was the founder of a sect
condemned by the Catholic Church as heresy. In 635, Nestorianism 9 (:1c
Wi) reached Changan (now Xian, ffi$), the capital of the Tang dynasty
(618-907), via the famous silk route. However, it withered (together with
Buddhism) after some 250 years when Taoism revived. 10 The second
attempt to preach Christianity in China was linked with the Mongol
conquests that reached the heart of Europe. In the middle of the thirteenth
century, Pope Innocent IV (while in exile in Avignon, France) made gestures
"CITY OF THE NAME OF GOD OF MACAU IN CHINA, THERE IS NONE MORE LOYAL' 51
of goodwill to Mongol Khans with two purposes: first, to save the Catholic
church in Europe from Mongol cavalry; secondly, to win them as allies
against the Muslims. In 1292, the first Catholic mission was inaugurated
when Joannes de Monte Corvinto (1247-1328), a Franciscan, arrived at
Beijing. However, the proselytizing of Christianity came to a standstill
when the Mongols were driven out of the Middle Kingdom by the emergent
Ming C o u r t one h u n d r e d years later. All vestiges of Catholicism
disappeared with the departure of the Mongols who were mostly converts,
but not H a n Chinese (Leung, 1992: 15-16).
Subsequently, Christianity was introduced to China again on two
distinct occasions. The first was marked by the arrival of Matteo Ricci at
Macau in 1582, and the second by Robert Morrison's arrival at Macau
in 1807. The former represented the Society of Jesus and the latter the
London Missionary Society. In these two instances, Macau acted as a
bridgehead for Judeo-Christian beliefs.
When Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) first founded the Society of Jesus,
he and his followers envisioned a new world-Christendom of the Millennial^
Kingdom on earth. The Jesuits (members of the Society of Jesus) for many
years were the unofficial representative of the Portuguese King in the Far
East. They were characterized by the same spirit of high adventure and
strong crusading zeal as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. In
1565, they built a residence in Macau as a bridgehead for Christianity in
the Far East, with the main interest in China.
Unlike their counterparts in Goa who had exercised a kind of 'religious
terrorism' by destroying Hindu temples and persecuting those who would r
not follow their adjuration, the Jesuits in Macau did not carry out s u c r r r
religious absolutism. The Chinese Taoist Temple of Tian Hou (or Ma Ge
Miao), which is well preserved up to the present moment, attests to the
lack of such absolutism. The Portuguese toleration of the Chinese religion
was perhaps due to the fact that Macau and China were geographically
close and that they had not established a strong political foothold at that
time. In practical terms, the Chinese might teach them a 'lesson' for any
misdeed by closing the Barrier Gate and stopping the supply of food.
Starvation was an effective means of enforcing submission (Montalto,
1984: 40). In this context, the Barrier Gate was significantly endowed
with a deterrent role to chasten the Portuguese who relied upon the
Chinese for provisions.
One of the most notable Jesuit pioneers was Francis Xavier ( 1 5 0 6 -
1552), n who was canonized in 1622. He exemplified the lofty spirit and
mystic devotion that marked the inception of the Portuguese evangelization.
He set out for Goa to conquer the East for Christ in 1 5 4 1 ; he then
travelled to Malacca (1545) and Japan (1549). Soon he set sail for Macau
and landed illegally (without permission) on Shangchuan Island, 12 awaiting

to be smuggled to Guangzhou (Young, 1983: 21). Unfortunately, the
zealous friar died there in 1552, failing to fulfil his millennial dream. His
proselytizing fervour, however, continued to inspire other Catholic
missionaries.
During the third quarter of the sixteenth century, missionaries started
to throng to Macau. Various religious orders also founded branches there
in rapid succession: the Jesuits (1563-1565), 1 3 Franciscans (1579-1580),
Augustinians (1586-1589) and Dominicans (1588). 14 In 1581 Leonardo
de Sa, the first Bishop of China, arrived at Macau. Macau soon became
a strong Christian community, and the Diocese for China, Japan, Taiwan,
Korea and Cochin-China (now Vietnam).
Louis Althusser has contended that the Church is the number-one
Ideological State Apparatus (ISA),15 and that the ruling class depends on
the Church as an apparatus that functions massively and predominantly
by ideology (Althusser, 1971: 149). The Church deploys Christianity as
the legitimacy of knowledge and considers all heathen beliefs as heretic.
This legitimizing function necessitates the Church's establishing Christian
religious ideology as a monopoly so as to eschew the possibility of any
other religious beliefs. The Eurocentric legitimizing force hence constitutes
part of a process of constructing European cultural norms — a mission
civilisatrice — to be staged in the heathen land. In other words, the
attempt to Christianize the East, despite the possible good intentions of
individual clergy, may be viewed as a strategy to domesticate the non-
European colonized into malleable subjects. The Portuguese might see
their culture as a gift to the world, and their mission to introduce
Christianity as a civilizing one, but it was nevertheless exploited as a tool
to control, influence and subjugate. According to Perry Anderson, the
spreading of Christianity is pivotal to any colonizer (my emphasis):
It [Christianity] represents an ideal arrested threshold of

acculturation for the native. A colonial system needs a subject
population with a certain minimal level of Europeanization, for
the purposes of order and exploitation. On the other hand,
too great an assimilation of European culture and techniques
wpuld directly threaten the inequality on which the entire
colonial order rests. The Christian religion offers almost the
perfect device for securing the fruits of the first, without incurring
the dangers of the second. Religion is at once the least utilisable
but the most formally resumptive single sector of European
culture. It is also one of the most simplifiable. (Anderson, 1962:
104)
(
CITY OF THE NAME OF GOD OF MACAU IN CHINA, THERE IS NONE MORE LOYAL' 53
Anderson observes that religious conversion has a significant

psychological function. While it is a domestication of the indigenous
population, it is also a perfect device to free the Europeans of their terror
to parley with the utterly alien and fathomless alterity by Christianizing
them and including them in the same religious canons of the 'white'
culture (Anderson, 1962: 104).
The Partition of the World

The dawn of the sixteenth century was an age of maritime power, which
depended on the control of the seas. The two great powers on the Iberian
Peninsula, Spain and Portugal, soon had mastery over the Atlantic, the
Indian Ocean and the Pacific. They also became involved in missionary
activism. With a view to preventing national rivalry between the two
countries, Pope Alexander VI divided the world of all newly discovered
lands by issuing the Bull Inter Coetera (Among All the Things) in 1493.
The east was Portugal's sphere and the west Spain's. However, Spain was
not happy with the Papal partition and demanded that the two nations
should decide by themselves. Representatives of the two rival nations met
at Tordesillas, Spain and drew a different demarcation line in 1494. This
is known in the history of Spain as the Tratado de Tordesillas (the Treaty
of Tordesillas). There was, hence, a definite polarization of two regions
for the missionary groups to propagate the Gospel.
In Macau today, we can still discern a concrete emblem of this treaty
in the garden at the Leal Senado where there is a mud dune representing
the globe (Plate 13). It is clearly partitioned by a deep-etched cement
equator signifying the drawing of a line across the Atlantic Ocean, which
divides the world for the two powerful maritime nations. The mud dune,
being a reminder of the past glories of Spain and Portugal, also brings to
mind the absolute power of the Pope to exercise jurisdiction on both civil
and religious matters.
The imaginary line of division was meant to maintain peace, but
ironically it turned out to be the very issue of conflict between the rival
powers in establishing a universal Christian State in the subsequent
centuries. In essence, the symbol of the Treaty of Tordesillas at the Leal
Senado signified the beginning of religious conquest and colonization by
the two Iberian powers over the world, i.e. the partition of the world into
which China and Macau inadvertently fell.
In 1 5 0 1 , the second Papal Bull, Eximiae Devotionis (Excellent
Devotion) was issued. It imposed on the monarchs the duty of propagating
Christianity and of converting the natives to Christianity. This Bull also
Plate 13 Symbol of the Partition of the World
gave the privilege/right to the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs to present

to the Pope the personnel who would be sent to the discovered lands
and who would hold some official Church post. 16
In 1514, another Papal Bull was issued in order to consolidate the jus
patronatus, or the law/right of patronage. The Portuguese then claimed
the sole right in missionary work in areas where they had established
political rights in the East. This 'right of patronage' enabled Portugal to
'propagate the Christian faith with the pomp and prestige of ambassadors
and the force of arms' (Allan, c.1920: 170). The Bulls of 1501 and 1514
indeed exemplified a complete interdependence of the Church and the
State. The two Iberian powers also became Church-State Unions. Later,
the monopoly over evangelization by the Portuguese went unchallenged,
owing to the fact that neither Letter nor Bull of the Holy See could have
any authority in the mission enterprise unless it had received the approval
of the King of Portugal. Almost all missionaries were Portuguese. Those
from other European countries who took part in the mission practically
lost their national identity and became part of the entourage of the King
of Portugal. The King, therefore, assumed absolute ecclesiastical and secular
powers, which inevitably laid the seeds of hostility in the subsequent Rites
War in China.
Rites Controversy
After the Portuguese had conquered Goa, it was made a bishopric in 1534
and the Inquisition was established in 1560. In Goa (Cochin and other
fortified centres), the Portuguese followed the strategies of Columbus and

the Spanish conquistadors: they deprived the natives of the freedom to
retain their own religion and yet, forced conversion into Christianity was
regarded as a magnanimous and divine grace. The central missionary
tenet of Catholicism forbade any toleration of heathen faiths. It was
therefore not the least surprising that Hindu temples were destroyed and
there was no compromise with Hindu life or religion by the missionaries.
Contrary to the strategy of direct assault in Goa, the Portuguese began
the second stage to evangelize Macau and China by adopting a new policy
— they tried to empathize with the Cathay heathens. It was similar to the
schemes of Columbus' successor, Hernando Cortes, who conquered Mexico
through negotiation with the natives and by recuperating their belief
systems. The conquest was also assisted by understanding of their language.
The knowledge of the Other in a sense constituted an imperial power to
exploit, subjugate and colonize the Aztecs. 17 Cortes' strategy was strangely
repeated by the Jesuits in their evangelizing ambition. After a mission house
had been built in Macau, Alessandro Valignano, Superior of the Society*,
of Jesus, arrived in 1578. He was soon joined by Matteo Ricci, who came.
under the Portuguese Padroado, or Ecclesiastical Patronage.
Ricci, a proficient scientist and mathematician, arrived at Macau in
1582 from Goa. His arrival marked a historic moment for the introduction
of Christianity in China, and M a c a u , for the first time, served as a
bridgehead. In 1583 he left for Zhaoqing ( U S ) , the administrative capital
of the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi at that time and was, however,
expelled in 1589. He reached Beijing in 1601 and successfully gained,
favour at the imperial court and there followed a period of high hopes for,u
evangelization. In China (and in Macau), the Jesuits espoused the 'Policy
of Accommodation'. 18 They conformed to the Chinese etiquette, manners
and customs, and also studied the Chinese language for the sake of making
Christians. In 1671 Emperor Kangxi (M^) (1662-1723), the greatest of
the Manchu monarchs, issued an edict permitting missionaries to propagate
their religion with the proviso that they should not teach anything contrary
to the welfare of the Chinese State. Moreover, in 1692 the 'Edict of
Toleration' was issued by Kangxi, declaring that the doctrines, taught by
the Europeans in charge of Astronomy and the Tribunal of Mathematics,
were not evil and that people were permitted 'to go to the churches freely
to worship god' (Panikkar, 1959: 2 8 6 - 2 8 7 ) . The period between 1692
and 1707 has been called 'the Golden Period of Roman Catholic Missions
in China' (Allan, c.1920: 218).
The Rites War began shortly after Matteo Ricci's death in 1610 and
ended when Pope Benedict XIV issued the famous Bull Ex Quo Singulari
in 1742. The controversy was mainly an internal and intermissionary
dispute over concepts of philosophy, theology, and eschatology. Yet it

later turned into an open politico-religious power wrangle between China
and Rome. Europe also became involved, in particular the two rival colonial
powers in the Far East — Portugal and Spain. It was a battle of arguments
waged by the Jesuits on one side and the Dominicans and Franciscans on
the other. This touched the sensitive cords of Chinese culture and religious
beliefs. The Chinese were practically absent from the controversy at the
beginning. It lasted over a century and had an unfathomable impact on
the missionary history of Catholicism. During the prolonged quarrel,
Macau, being the only recognized gateway to China, played a significant
role in both civic and religious power struggles.
The bitter animosities among different orders arose because of a number
of reasons: (1) the spirit of nationalism; (2) institutional rivalries; (3)
adaptation of different methods; (4) doctrinal differences; and (5) the
different jurisdiction in papal decisions. In the dispute between Portugal
and Spain, the former was represented by Goa-Macau Jesuits and the
latter by Philippine Dominican and Franciscan friars. Although Philip II
of Spain ruled Portugal from 1580, a papal brief, Ex Pastoralis Officio,
dated 1585, laid down that 'no missionary was allowed to enter China,
except through Goa' (Panikkar 1954: 391). The decree, which conferred
on Portugal a monopoly in missions, inevitably aroused Spanish jealousy.
Apart from the national rivalry in relation to the Right of Patronage,
different preaching methods were another reason for hostility. While the
Jesuits (sometimes referred to as Riccians, after Matteo Ricci) tended to
attract the intellectual class and the literati through the means of science,
the Dominican and Franciscan friars entered China as mendicants (they
were also referred to as Mendicants) pledging the vow of poverty and
identifying themselves with the lower social class. Even though it was
their mutual ambition to preach the Gospel of God, the contrasting styles
readily hatched uneasy feelings between the Riccians and the Mendicants.
The quarrel also focused on two different theories of moral theology,
namely, Probabilism and Probabiliorism of Christian law.19 Worse still,
the discrepancies in ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Chinese rites,
specifically the two antagonistic decrees issued by Pope Innocent X and
Pope Alexander VII, plainly revealed the lack of consistency within the
Church in making a uniform decision. During the latter part of the dispute,
the intervention of the Missions Etr anger es de Paris (a French Catholic
institution) also caused political rivalry and hostility towards the Portuguese
Jesuits.
On the surface, the Rites Controversy was concerned with the Chinese
nomenclature of God as 'Tian Zhu' ( ^ c i ) or the 'Lord of Heaven', instead
of 'Tian' ( ^ ) or 'Heaven' and 'Shang D/' ( ± i f ) or 'Emperor Above'. 20
The Chinese observances of ancestor worship, reverence for Confucius,

and some o t h e r minor theological matters were also parts of the
controversy. 21 However, there were more decisive factors beneath these
religious quarrels.
Ricci's ecclesiastical triumph began to crumble after his death. This
was due to the lack of unity within the Jesuit Order. His immediate
successor, Nicolas Longobardi, was the staunchest opponent of the Riccian
method of accommodation. He wrote a treatise arguing that ancient China
had not had a knowledge of the true God. The situation was aggravated
when the Dominicans and Franciscans showed no compromise to the
Jesuits' strategy of accommodation, but raised the 'problems' at the Holy
See. 22 In 1645 Pope Innocent X issued a decree prohibiting Chinese
Christians from practising the Chinese rites. In 1656 Pope Alexander VII,
however, overturned the previous decree. He upheld and sanctioned the
practices that the Jesuits had so far favoured. Thus there were two different
p a p a l edicts on the observance of such rites, and the 'schismatic'
jurisdictions added fuel to the fire of the already acrimonious controversy.^
The Spanish Dominicans then sent Domingo Fernandez Navarette,
superior of the Dominican Missions, to Rome to appeal. Meanwhile, at
the suggestion of the Missions Etrangeres, the Holy See sent out to China
Charles Maigrot as Vicar-Apostolic (with much the same administrative
duties as those pertaining to bishops) to investigate the matter. At this
stage, the Missions Etrangeres entered the ecclesiastical battlefield and
became the open enemy of the Society of Jesus. But Maigrot's efforts were
a total failure and the bitter quarrel soon spread to Europe. The crux of^
the controversy was no longer over the rites in a faraway mission fields*"
Missionaries now became involved in the power struggle in the centres of
ecclesiastical authority and in the different interpretations of Christian
doctrines.
The dispute reached a boiling point in 1700 when the Jesuits sought
to skirt Papal authority. They made a desperate petition to Kangxi seeking
an affirmative answer of their religious conceptions of the Chinese rites.
Even though there were venomous attacks against the Jesuits by the
Dominicans and Franciscans, Kangxi was obviously in favour of the former
whom he regarded more as 'purveyors of cultures' than 'disseminators of
evil'. As such, the petition submitted 23 met with full support and Kangxi
issued a public declaration upholding the Jesuit Order. The controversy
then intensified.
Due to the bitter sectarianism within different Catholic orders, Pope
Clement XI sent a Papal Legate, Charles Thomas Millard de Tournon, to
fully investigate the prolonged fray in 1 7 0 5 . At the age of 36, the
ecclesiastical ambassador already held the titular rank of Patriarch of
Antioch, but the religious dignitary was unable to end the quarrel. This
was possibly due to the fact that he was totally ignorant of the Chinese
language and civilization. Moreover, his mission caused more trouble
since his appointment 'was regarded by Lisbon as a further infringement
on the Padroado' (Latourette, 1929: 142). It meant that the Tournon
mission constituted an effective violation of Portuguese ecclesiastical rights
in the East. Under these circumstances, the Jesuits could plead loyalty to
Lisbon's jus patronatus as a justification for questioning Tournon's
ecclesiastical authority.
The Papal envoy spent five bitter years in China and in 1706 Kangxi
ordered him to return to Europe. On his way to Guangzhou, Tournon
stopped en route at Nanjing where he published an ultimatum forbidding
the use of Tian and Shang Di for God. The ultimatum also forbade all
participation in Confucian and ancestral rites, and the placing of ancestral
tablets in Christian homes. Kangxi immediately arrested the Vicar of
Christ. He was then taken to Guangzhou and handed over to the Portuguese
in Macau.
The expelled Legate obviously became the avowed enemy of three
forces: the Emperor of China, the King of Portugal, and the Jesuit Society.
For Kangxi, the Legate was a defiant ambassador who challenged his
absolute power. For the King of Portugal, he contravened the 'right of
p a t r o n a g e ' of the Portuguese C r o w n and violated the r i g h t s of
evangelization. For the Jesuits, he shattered their missions and nullified
their establishment of the Church in China that had taken a century of
sacrifice, compromise, conciliation, patience and proselytizing zest. In
Macau, the imprisoned and invalid Legate led a miserable life in a Jesuit
college. Meanwhile, in recognition of his efforts, the Holy See decided to
make him a Cardinal. In January 1710, a papal messenger was said to
have eluded the vigilance of the guards. He entered Tournon's prison
lodgings and bestowed on him the insignia of a cardinal. But the Cardinal
was unable to enjoy his new dignity — he died in June 1710 at the age
of 4 1 . Rumour has it that he was poisoned.
After the Tournon fiasco, Pope Clement XI ratified Tournon's decision
by decreeing the Papal Bull Ex Ilia Die in 1715. It prohibited honouring
Confucius under pain of excommunication, and condemned the Chinese
rites and the Jesuits for being wrong in the eyes of the Church. As a sign
of rapprochement, the Pope later sent another Legate, Jean Ambroise
Mezzabarba, to assuage the Emperor and to ease the tension in 1720.
Mezzabarba tried to seek Kangxi's consent to let the Christians live in
China under the terms of the Papal decision with regard to the 'rites'. He
also tried to gain the Emperor's acceptance of the Pope's spiritual authority
over Chinese converts. The Son of Heaven, of course, rejected Mezzabarba's
requests. His mission was therefore another failure. He was asked to leave
for Europe and did so in 1721, taking with him the remains of the late
Cardinal Tournon.
The Pope's 'renewed requests' through Mezzabarba may be seen as
part of the process of creating a centre/periphery relationship via religious
culture between the Vatican and China. They may also be considered an
attempt to minimize differences in socio-cultural factors, by (super)imposing
the Eurocentric worldview on the Chinese. In addition, they appear to be
a kind of religious colonization and hegemony, and transterritorial
dictatorship desirous of constructing a reformed and nearly similar Other.
Christianity was hence manipulated as the only form of legitimate
knowledge, and the Vatican functioned as a worldwide disciplinary
institution to police and control.
In 1724 Emperor Yongzheng (MlE) (1723-1735) officially proscribed
the preaching of Christian religion and expelled foreign missionaries. On
the other side of the world, under Pope Clement XII, the Holy See made
a new inquiry into the issues. But the much disputed rites only came to
a total halt when Pope Benedict XIV exercised his absolute powers in
decreeing the Bull Ex Quo Singulari on 11 July 1742. The Bull compelled
every missionary to take the oath to fully obey the apostolic precept and
command; it was executed with full force in order to terminate the
acrimonious controversy. This saw the end of the grandiose missions of
the Jesuits because their hard-won trust and favour gained in the Imperial
Court were shattered by the Vatican's absolutism. The final blow came in
1762 when the Portuguese Prime Minister, the Marquis de Pombal, charged r
the Jesuits with disobedience and revolt against the Papal authority. H e '
ordered the Jesuit Missionaries out of Macau as part of the worldwide
vendetta against this Order.
Likewise, in 1784 Emperor Qianlong (1&M) (1736-1796) issued an
Imperial Edict forbidding all missionaries to enter China from Macau,
under pain of execution. Because of this anti-missionary edict, missionaries
had no alternative but to return to Macau. The Portuguese enclave was
thus not merely a retreat for missionaries, it was also the immediate
asylum that received China's banished foreigners. Moreover, it constituted
the only haven adjacent to China in which evangelization could take
place. It thus became a fulcrum of religious power wrestling between
China and the Vatican.
The Rites Controversy was a turning point leading to the setback of
the Portuguese propagation of Christianity and the disintegration of the
Society of Jesus. The expulsion of the Jesuits from Macau indirectly put a
stoppage to the missionaries' 'literary colonialism' since the Jesuit-run
Collegiate Church of St Paul's, founded in 1594, was closed down in 1762. 24
The College was considered the first European-style university in the

Far East for it was established well before the University of Hong Kong
(1911) and the University of Santo Tomas in Manila (1619), and it
conferred the degrees of Master of Arts and doctorates. The Jesuits brought
with them 7000 volumes of Western books to Macau. The college offered
a variety of subjects including Latin, Greek, grammar, humanities, arts,
theology, rhetoric, philosophy, arithmetic, music, and above all, Chinese
studies. Father Morales proudly describes the Collegiate Church of St
Paul's as 'a house of knowledge, a garden of sanctity and a school of
apostles' (Morales, quoted in Lam, 1970: 830).
In the words of Althusser, churches and schools are primary institutions
of the Ideological State Apparatus to 'interpellate' individuals into an
approved system. The physical and symbolic suture of the Church of the
Mother of God and the Jesuit college deftly creates a powerful force to
convert, control, police and legitimize Judeo-Christian discourse in Macau.
Indeed, the Jesuit college is an ally of the Church. Alongside religious
proselytization, education became an instrument of controlled acculturation.
On the role of the missions in education, Peter Worsley notes:
The education given by the Mission is largely an adjunct of its

primary aim to secure converts to the Christian faith . . . the
instruction received aims little higher than a sufficient literacy to
increase the pupils' understanding of the Scriptures . . .
Knowledge was inevitably seen as religious knowledge, for nearly
all education was mission education. (Worsley, 1957: 42-43)
The Jesuit college offered a pattern of colonial schooling in which

Western-centred curricula were taught. The theoretical stress laid upon
religion in mission education was deliberately designed to spread the word
of God and to consolidate imperialist domination. The Chinese studies
were, nevertheless, aimed at 'conquering' the Chinese for Christ and were
nothing to do with promoting the indigenous culture. Being the unconscious
bearers of Western civilization, the Jesuits were regarded as cultural
bricoleurs in bringing Western knowledge to the East, but they were also the
harbingers of literary colonialism in which they tried to socialize the Chinese
into Judeo-Christian beliefs, European languages, values and norms.
The Jesuits' fiasco in the Rites Controversy is indeed a long story. 25
To sum up, it was only a religious battle within a single common ideal
— the conversion of China to Christianity and the erasure of the Chinese
beliefs and traditions. Obviously enough, the core of the struggle was
centred on the issue of magisterium (the Church's teaching power). It was
one of the underlying reasons for the confrontation between the Son of
Heaven's absolute authority and the Vicar of Christ's universal religious
power. The clash of authority in the magisterium of the church and the
state was inevitable if both claimed to have absolute power to teach their
own ideologies to their subjects. Unprecedentedly, magisterium posed a
bitter challenge to the Emperor of China and the Pope at the Vatican. The
clash over different ideological tenets was thus transformed into a political
issue over the question of leadership in teaching. As Beatrice Leung has
stated, 'Actually the struggle for political authority was disguised as a
struggle over moral authority by Kangxi when he claimed that he would
not allow heterodox Western teaching to eclipse the orthodox teaching of
Confucianism.' (Leung, 1992: 289) Perhaps Kangxi was still muddled in
distinguishing political hegemony from a religious mask to teach.
After all, the Rites Controversy staunchly revealed the Vatican's concern
with the process of 'othering', and defined and encoded the Chinese as the
Other. It was not merely a clash of political and religious authorities
between the ecclesiastical and secular leaders, but also a clash of moral
compatibility between Christianity and Confucianism. The Jesuits' readiness^
to accommodate Chinese customs, language and Confucian rites was the*
very concession that the Vatican could not tolerate because they were seen
to be on the verge of corrupting Christianity in order to pander to the
heathens. The Jesuits' 'crime' was their disavowal of the papal epistemic
transgression in carrying out a magniloquent mission to civilize a very
civilized nation. By employing their particular strategy to evangelize China,
the Riccians were at risk of betraying Christianity. The Franciscans, who
regarded themselves as 'guardians' of the Church, 26 also ruined the Jesuit
mission in Macau and China.
The verdict issued by the Vatican constituted part of the European
imperialistic religious expansion and cultural hegemony under the veneer
of maintaining the integrity of faith. It was an imperialist strategy that
obliterated the native as possessor of an-other knowledge and producer
of alternative traditions and beliefs. The Vatican's verdict was further
constructed as the only possible spiritual framework in common with
European imperialism's paradigm of self/other duality. It accommodated
Catholicism as the centralizing cognitive structure of Western spiritual
belief, and equated its doctrines as a universal form of thought and the
only truth. Through ideological interpellation, the Vatican attempted to
construct the Chinese as a programmed, domesticated Other so that they
could be reinscribed according to the needs of the Vatican's power. The
Church, on the one hand, used Christianity to establish cultural hegemony,
and on the other hand, equipped itself as the putative centre in socializing
a culture. The mind of the Chinese was thus an alternative paradigm for
conquest and Christian culture became an important vehicle of establishing
legitimacy as the ruling idea.
The transplantation of Judeo-Christian spiritual discourse and Western

traditions was a colonizing project per se because it tried to impose a new
cultural order through religious acculturation. The aim to create an
ecumenical state by the Church was no more than an endorsement of a
cultural ideology and a project of religious colonization, de-culturation
and acculturation. Through this project, the 'pagans' were incorporated
and interpellated as the 'Chosen', and were made the very instrument of
pulling down their own customs and beliefs. Out of an overwhelming
desire to introduce the 'true' religion and to save souls, the propagation
of Christianity ironically created havoc for the Chinese cultural matrices.
The European missionaries also came to a cul-de-sac in theological
sectarianism.
T h e Pope's ideological aggression was axiomatic of religious
imperialism in its attempt to construct a reformed, recognized subject for
the glorification of the Vatican's self-authorized system of knowledge. In
addition, the introduction of the Inquisition pushed religious activities
towards ecclesiastical despotism, which condemned beliefs that were not
the ' n o r m s ' of the Vatican. In this respect, the Pope was the colonial
precursor proper since he tried to reinscribe religious practices within a
framework that answered to the needs of the Church's appropriation of
the Other. The monotheism of Christianity embraced such 'belligerent
righteousness' which, in the case of the Rites Controversy, was only a
shameful manifestation of intolerance that defiled the image of god as a
benevolent creator.
The thorny problem of the Chinese rites became, as an Augustinian
missionary would put it many years later, 'as delicate as glass; once you
break the glass you cannot join the pieces again' (Villarroel, 1993: 32).
The Holy See, however, did try to mend 'the broken glass' by lifting the
prohibition of the Chinese rites in 1939 by a decree of the Congregation
for the Propagation of the Faith, 27 but the stigma of the broken glass can
never be erased.
Ancestor Worship and Chinese Reactions to Christianity

As the Rites Controversy was partly an ideological and cultural clash
between Confucianism and Catholicism, ancestor worship was the core of
dispute among different Catholic Institutions. Why did this cultic behaviour
become the terrain of contestation and vie with the Vatican's religious
ideology? From the Chinese point of view, what was the impact of
Christianity?
Ancestor worship was a salient element in the indigenous classical
religious system during the period of Shang (1523-1027 BC), Zhou (1027-
256 BC), and H a n (around 200 BC) in China. The early cult of state
worship of ancestors and Heaven (or Gods) essentially crystallized itself
in the form of a quasi-religious ceremony and formed inseparable religious
rites. By offering ritual and sacrificial ceremonies in the state ancestral
temple, the emperors claimed legitimacy to rule and consolidated their
right both de jure and de facto to regal property and to the 'dragon
throne'. The ostentatious spectacle of ancestor worship was power politics
par excellence as it was ritualized to cement the political structure.
The cult of ancestor worship dates back to before Confucius' time
(551-479 BC). The Confucian School in particular upheld the practice of
ancestor worship in order to 'express gratitude toward the originators
and recall the beginnings' (Yang, 1970: 44). By reinterpreting the ancient
religious rites, the Confucianists transformed ancestor worship into a
secular means for the sake of cultivating moral values and advocating
remembrance of the dead.
Ancestor worship can be taken as religious sanction of secular interests**
because it anchors on supernatural premises to justify, encourage and'
p e r p e t u a t e the kinship system as the indispensable unit of social
organization. Needless to say, this theistic cult becomes a pervasive factor
in cementing the stability of social life. In addition, it is oriented towards
an almost completely didactic ideal to strengthen filial piety, and to
reinforce the cohesion and solidarity of the family by incubating reverence
and respect for one's ancestors. 28 The reviling of a person's ancestors in
China is, therefore, regarded as the worst form of abusive language.
Xiao ( # ) , or filial piety, may be viewed as the first and foremost^
cardinal virtue, and the central dogma of Chinese social life. The sense of
mutual respect and mutual dependence between parents and son are crucial
to the operation of the family as a continuing and strong unit. In this
respect, Hugh Baker suggests that ancestor worship has provided 'a ritual
sanction to back up the Generation-Age-Sex scheme of authority in the
family' (Baker, 1979: 91). For the traditional-minded Chinese, unbroken
fealty to ancestral spirits and obsequious faith in living parents are vital
sentiments in the kinship ethics. Indeed, ancestor worship is by far the
most important religious element in Chinese family life, since it represents
a continuing reciprocal relationship and a spiritual bond between the
living and the dead. It transcends class barriers as people from all walks
of life and from different religious beliefs would observe this practice
which in turn gives the cult its universal importance in Chinese culture.
It is also given an unassailable role in the Confucian orthodoxy to
consolidate an effective socio-political order. By and large, it is the very
machinery for a kind of 'reciprocal altruism' that helps impregnate an
infrastructure for affection, gratitude, respect, trust, and above all, filial
piety. Nowadays, the observance of ancestor worship is considered a way
to show moral propriety and filial duty. It is also seen as a chance to ask
for continued blessings and for aversion of calamities from the departed.
Given the religious sentiments of ancestor worship, the Vatican spared
no effort to exercise its religious absolutism that was buttressed by the
central missionary tenet, which forbade compromise of heathen faiths.
Likewise, the religious colonialists in Portugal strongly condemned the
Jesuits' toleration and laxity. With regard to the Portuguese religious
colonization, Perry Anderson writes:
Portuguese colonial ideology is, more than any other, an exercise

in pure magic. It is an immense effort to abolish concrete ethnic,
linguistic, geographical, economic and social differences within
a single, mystic unity. The means used to achieve this end is the
classic instrument of magic: incantation. The subject, unable to
effect any operations in the real world, renounces its effort and
instead changes himself, by incantation. The verbal luxuriance
is an end in itself. It is an intoxication to which the subject
delivers himself: as the exaltation of the periods mounts, the
world progressively dissolves and a new, entranced vision is
formed. A swooning verbal profusion has substituted itself for
reality. Within it, any logical operations are henceforth possible:
the world becomes pure malleability. (Anderson, 1962: 115)
Obviously enough, that 'single, mystic unity' of ecumenicalism was the

vital dogma of Christianity but the Chinese were immune to Judeo-
Christian religious incantation and intoxication. China successfully
challenged and subverted the Vatican's attempt at religious 'malleability'
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As one dimension of the
Portuguese total colonial enterprises, religious activism was a fiasco in
China and Macau.
The Vatican's antagonism to the Chinese rites was based on the
assumption that the practices were idolatrous, and that the Chinese were
severely corrupted by superstition. They were thought to be unfortunate
to have remained in ignorance of the Revelation. But the Emperors'
antagonism to the Vatican's prohibition of reverence to Confucius and
ancestor worship was based on their renunciation of Chinese kinship
relations, thus breaking up the very kernel of the Chinese concept of
genealogy and lineage. A the same time, this would upset the socio-
political structure and cultural matrices. 29 Worse still, the condemnation
of the ancestor cult directly amounted to an encouragement to political
revolt and filial disobedience. 30
The Vatican regarded ancestor worship in China as a phantasmic

representation of the superstitious heathen and deemed that it must be
eliminated. However, from the Emperors' point of view, Christianity was
no more than a xiejiao (fPll), or a deviant sect. It was believed to be
riddled with magical practices and subversive intentions, which upset the
laws of the country and stirred up the common people. Not surprisingly,
Christianity came to be classified in the same category as the heterodox
Bailianjiao (SSIiSO, or the White Lotus Cult. It was taken as a threat to
the stability of the state and must be suppressed.
Proclaimed to be universal and perfected, Christianity posited itself as
the absolute religion in which God was exalted as the transcendental deity
above the finite world of human beings. God's divinity was rooted in his
contempt for the secular world and hence for the supreme Emperors of
China. The emphasis upon the transcendent nature of Christianity
necessarily separated Catholic Europe from ' p a g a n ' China in the
seventeenth century. The conflict between the polytheistic Chinese world i
and Judeo-Christianity, and Chinese hostile reactions to the Christian ;
faith, as Jacques Gernet has pointed out, were due to the missionaries'
incapability to accept another system of knowledge and to compromise
with another kind of humanity:
The fact is that there exists a real and fundamental difference

between the eternal realities which are the objects of religion
and the transitory realities of this world, just as there is no
common measure between man's eternal soul and his perishable ^
body. These distinctions seemed so natural to the missionaries '**
that they could not conceive them to be absent from the minds
of the Chinese, or if they did happen to notice that absence,
they did not follow up its implications. They were incapable of
admitting that their own mental framework might not be
universal and that highly developed civilizations could have been
established upon quite different bases. (Gernet, 1985: 140)
For Gernet, the hostility towards Christianity could not simply have
been a xenophobic reaction and a rejection to new ideas as it had so often
been suggested. Rather, Christianity had developed self-claimed universal
doctrines which were essentially incompatible with the mental and socio-
political system of a scholarly and developed civilization where dominant
ideas, morality, religion, politics were mutually related and echoed one
another (Gernet, 1985: 247). Given the differences in languages, social
forms and moral, political and philosophical, as well as religious traditions,
the encounter of Christian missionaries and Chinese literate elites
undoubtedly caused a great disjunction between the two mental universes.
The monotheism of Christianity, in one way or another, embraced an

'overweening pride' to represent a universal cognitive structure of belief,
but failed to recognize the cultural complexity of Chinese traditions and
tolerate any form of thought which was outside the mental categories of
the West.
The condemnation of ancestor worship and reverence to Confucius
was, in essence, an attempt to rupture Chinese indigenous customs and
practices. It was also an endeavour to re-create and reconstruct a collective
memory through the device of religious proselytization. Moreover, it was
a form of expropriation of the native's cultural heritage and a negation
of cultural relativity through an enactment of the Vatican's fantasies of
power.
Ancestor worship attained, and still retains, an indispensable
importance in China's socio-cultural matrices. The denounciation of this
cultic behaviour ran counter to so much that was an integral part of
Chinese culture. At all events, the disputes revealed fundamental difference
between Western and Chinese conceptions of the world and of man. The
conflict between the Chinese monarchs and the Holy See was even turned
into a political power struggle in a religious context.
Christianity, Gunboats and Cannons

After Kangxi's, Yongzheng's and Qianlong's incessant ban on Catholicism,
the p r o p a g a t i o n of Christianity w o u l d have withered if P r o t e s t a n t
evangelists had not come h a n d in h a n d w i t h Western imperialists/
expansionists who forcibly knocked on China's door at Macau again. Like
early Portuguese pioneers, British Protestant missionaries were driven by an
extraordinary evangelical zeal by the end of the eighteenth century. While
the Portuguese sought Christians after the Counter-Reformation, the British
were driven for converts after the Industrial Revolution that began in
England in 1760. This economic revolution not only accelerated the output
of industrial goods but also triggered off a religious crisis. Christianity lost
some 'aura' in the West due to the introduction of power-driven machinery
into industry, and the East became the alternative stage for Christian
culture. In 1792 the English Baptists organized the first Protestant mission
and the London Missionary Society was founded in 1799.
For the second time in history, Macau served as the bridgehead for
Christianity in China, but the second introduction of Christianity was
buttressed by powerful gunboats and cannons. Just as Catholic missionaries
came to China in alliance with Portuguese commerce and diplomacy,
Protestant missionaries were inseparably associated with British trade and
the British government. Among them was Robert Morrison, the first
Protestant missionary who arrived at Macau in 1807 (he resided in Macau
until his death in 1834). Being a Sinologist, he worked in the East India
Company as a Chinese interpreter. His principal literary achievements
were his translation of the Bible into Chinese 31 and the compilation of a
dictionary of Chinese and English.
Morrison's translation of the Bible into Chinese in 1819 was of
paramount significance in promoting Christianity. It also created a specific
acculturating effect; the advocacy of Christianity became part of the British
colonization project by allowing the Chinese to read the Bible in their
own language. The translation was thus an important process to acculturate
the Chinese into a foreign religious culture via their native language. The
translated Chinese Bible cannot fail to recall the distribution of the Bible
two years earlier by the British outside Delhi in 1817. The Bible was
translated into the 'Hindoostanee Tongue' for the Indians to read. Anund
Messeh, one of the earliest Indian catechists, said to his fellow countrymen, *
'These books, teach the religion of the European Sahibs. It is T H E I R '
Book; and they printed it in our language, for our use.' (Messeh, quoted
in Bhabha, 1985: 145) The translation of the Bible into the natives' own
language is, therefore, an 'interpellative' ambition, and is a crucial strategy
in British colonialism.
For Homi Bhabha, the distribution of the Bible outside Delhi in India
in 1817 is emblematic of 'an insignia of colonial authority and a signifier
of colonial desire and discipline' (Bhabha, 1985: 144). Moreover, the ;
miraculous effects of the Bible represent the most artful technologies ofv
colonial power:
The immediate vision of the book [the translated Bible] figures

those ideological correlatives of the Western sign — empiricism,
idealism, mimeticism, monoculturalism (to use Edward Said's
term) — that sustain a tradition of English "national" authority.
It is, significantly, a normalizing myth whose organics and
revisionary narrative is also the history of that nationalist
discipline of Commonwealth history and its equally expansionist
epigone, Commonwealth literature. Their versions of traditional,
academicist wisdom moralize the conflictual moment of colonialist
intervention into that constitutive chain of exemplum and
imitation, what Friedrich Nietzsche describes as the monumental
history beloved of "gifted egoists and visionary scoundrels." For
despite first appearances, a repetition of the episodes of the book
reveals that they represent important moments in the historical
transformation and discursive transfiguration of the colonial text
and context. (Bhabha, 1985: 147)
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Protestant missionary

activities in India and China were a prominent feature of British relations
with Asia, and the British political supremacy in the East synchronized
w i t h P r o t e s t a n t i s m . In this era of so-called high imperialism and
colonialism, the translation of the Bible into Hindoostanee Tongue and
Chinese language became an appurtenance of civil authority and order of
British imperialism to colonize and acculturate the people in the East.
In the context of Macau and China, however, the British installed a
more complex formula than in India — the combination of the Chinese
Bible and opium. As the Bible represented the discourse of civil address
by introducing righteousness and salvation through the acceptance of the
word of God, opium offered intoxicating effects that mesmerized people's
t h o u g h t and weakened their bodies. Hence, the sublime effort to
Christianize the heathens was juxtaposed with the profane address to
devastate their health. Both addresses were nevertheless endorsed with the
idea of British imperialism and colonialism in pursuit of profit and empire.
Their proselytizing project was taking place in Portuguese Macau before
Hong Kong was claimed in 1841. The Sinicized Bible was politicized and
used as an instrument to 'colonize' spiritually. It was also manipulated as
an appurtenance of secular authority in colonial engagement. Opium and
the Bible were intriguingly put side by side to the extent that it was hardly
possible for the Chinese to refuse the equivalence of the Christian God to
the ecstatic opium.
Lutheran Protestants' evangelization was intended to 'intoxicate' the
Chinese and make them into malleable subjects. The intoxicating effects
of the Bible are well reminiscent of Karl Marx's atheistic aphorism: 'Religion
is the opium of the people' (Marx and Engels, 1957: 38). For Marx,
religion and opium share the same characteristics to mesmerize people
with illusory happiness. British proselytizing thus synchronized with the
introduction of opium, and the conflation of Protestantism and opium
was specific to the British penetrative power in Macau and China. These
t w o paradoxical processes of displacing Chinese culture immediately
revealed the disjuncture between the grandiose rhetoric of the translated
Bible and the reality of economic exploitation and political hegemony.
In the main, Robert Morrison was the colonial harbinger for the
Union Jack par excellence. He was simultaneously a Chinese interpreter
for the London-based East India Company, and a Protestant missionary
of the London Missionary Society. The trade of the East India Company
was mainly involved in trafficking opium on which the company's fortunes
rested. Morrison's endeavours were, however, chiefly engaged in religious
proselytizing. He therefore involved himself in this-worldly opium and
other-worldly Catechism. His contradictory involvement in opium and
Protestantism constituted the very incongruity of British imperialism. In

particular, the Protestant missionary assumed a role of upholding
righteousness, ethical standards and public conscience by fighting opium,
gambling, prostitution, concubinage, the custom of foot-binding, and so
on.
Apart from straddling two spheres of the profane and the sublime,
Morrison later struggled for the third after-life space — a burial place for
his wife (Mary Morrison died in 1821) and other Protestants in Macau.
Since the turn of the nineteenth century, the Catholic authority strongly
opposed the influx of Protestant newcomers to the Holy City, not to
mention that they denied them a burial place. Shann Davies writes:
In the early nineteenth century, these Anglo-Saxons had taken

over the commercial life of Macau, but in death they were still
outsiders. Only Catholics were allowed to be buried within the
city walls; Protestants were placed in graves scattered over the
surrounding hillsides or on islands in the Pearl River delta, where 7
they were vulnerable to desecration. The British tried for a long
time to secure a suitable burial ground without success. (Davies,
1986: 72-73)
Prior to 1821, deceased Protestants were not allowed to be interred

in the 'Catholic soil' of Macau. Protestant burials had to take place
in hillsides beyond the city wall (which was already Chinese territory)
where the Chinese also buried their dead. However, it was considered
a desecration by the Chinese for foreigners to be buried there. As Austin
Coates points out, 'Once a body had been laid to rest amid one of
these affrays, and the burial party returned to the city, it was wiser
not to inquire the subsequent fate of the grave.' (Coates, 1987: 75) It
was because the grave might sooner or later be dug up and destroyed
by the Chinese. Torn between the powerful Catholic community and
the Chinese xenophobic sentiments, Morrison finally succeeded in
establishing a Protestant cemetery in Macau in 1821. His unfailing efforts
enabled his wife, son and later himself among many other Protestants
to be interred there. In fact, the Protestant cemetery, now called the
Old Protestant Cemetery, was the symbol of contestation for the 'after-
life' between Catholicism and Protestantism. It was unmistakably the
contested terrain of power struggles of 'life and death' between the
Portuguese and the British in Macau.
With the opening of the Treaty Ports after the first infamous Opium
War (1839-1842) between Britain and China, Protestant missionaries found
their first footing by gaining entry to these ports in China. Although the
London Protestant missionaries might come with the good intentions to
promulgate the Gospel of God, they were considered the appurtenance of

the hegemonic imperialists. The Protestant evangelists' mission civilisatrice
was often met with suspicion, to say nothing of occasional hostility. It
was very natural for the Chinese to feel that these foreigners (traders and
missionaries) came to offer them opium with one hand and the Bible with
the other, and both were backed up by powerful guns and warships. The
incongruous juxtaposition of opium and Christianity at once created an
anomalous relationship between ideological inducement and economic
exploitation. It was not unreasonable for the Chinese to suspect missionaries
and converts as spies in disguise for European powers, and such scenarios
inevitably caused suffering and loss of life to both Western missionaries
and local converts.
Before the Rites Controversy, the Jesuits had successfully made contacts
with the Chinese literati (gentry and officials) in Beijing. They gained
favour in the Imperial Court by introducing Western scientific knowledge,
such as astronomy, mathematics, hydraulics, mechanics and geography.
The Protestant missionaries, however, came with the opium traders who
were the victors of the Opium War. Their preaching of Christianity could
hardly find a ready ear.
The unfavourable situation for promulgating the Gospel was further
aggravated by the Taiping (^C^F) Rebellion (1850-1864). It was headed
by a Chinese Christian convert, Hong Xiuquan (yftH^) (1814-1864), a
native of Guangdong Province. Hong claimed he was the new messiah,
the younger brother of Jesus Christ and also Emperor. In 1853 he set up
the capital in Nanjing with a revolutionary aim at bringing in a new era
which he called Taiping Tianguo ( ^ T ^ H ) , or the Heavenly Kingdom of
Great Peace. In earlier phases of the movement, members maintained
Christian discipline to read the Bible and observed strict compliance with
the Ten Commandments. They adopted new progressive reforms by
forbidding pagan idolatry, and above all, stopped opium sale and use.
However, the millenarian project soon crumbled chiefly due to his
followers' unruly discipline, internal corruption and extreme anti-foreign
feelings. The Heavenly Kingdom erupted as an uncontrollable force that
stormed over 16 provinces and destroyed more than 600 cities in 14 years
(Yee, 1992: 76), thus shaking the Manchu throne of the Qing dynasty.
During the Taiping insurrection, missionaries and converts sought asylum
in Macau but most of them re-entered China when the first foreign legations
were established in Beijing in 1865. Once again, Macau offered a safe
shelter for the desperate at the door of China and was a haven for
refugees.
The Taiping Rebellion brings to mind what Homi Bhabha has argued
on the ambivalence of mimicry in the mode of colonial discourse. Bhabha
is of the opinion that mimicry is a strategy of colonial subjection which

articulates a desire for a 'reformed, recognized other . . . as the subject
of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite' (Bhabha, 1984:
126). It also creates ambivalence in relations of power because the native's
'inappropriate' imitations of this discourse have the effect of menacing
colonial authority. Although Hong Xiuquan is appropriated and produced
in the likeness of a Protestant, he is never quite the same; the result is a
double articulation in which 'the representation of a difference . . . is itself
a process of disavowal' (Bhabha, 1984: 126). The colonial mimicry then
produces a set of resemblances and at the same time invokes a challenge
to the authority. In Bhabha's mimic scenario, Hong challenged 'authentic'
Christianity by proclaiming himself the brother of Jesus and eventually
displaced Protestantism. He can be understood as a Chinese manifestation
of Bhabha's 'mimic man'.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Protestant missionaries
flocked to the Treaty Ports. They were free to reside under the cover of
extraterritoriality and also under the effective political patronage of Western
powers. In this respect, K. M . Panikkar says:
Thus was Christianity not only identified with Europe, but

reduced to the position of a diplomatic interest of Western Powers
in their aggression against China. The missionaries were clothed
with extra-territoriality and given the right to appeal to their
consuls and ministers in the "religious" interests of Chinese
Christians. No greater disservice, as history was to show, could
have been rendered by its proclaimed champions to the cause of
the Church of Christ. (Panikkar, 1959: 291)
As such, missionary activism was under the tutelage of colonial

discourse and synchronized with economic, military and territorial
penetration. The Protestant missions gained their foothold from the
humiliations of China after various wars and became part of foreign
aggression. The Church was not unreasonably considered a partner in
Western imperialism. The symbiotic relationship of proselytizing missions
and opium was one of the main factors that led to the ensuing xenophobia.
The subsequent Boxer Rebellion (HfOlS), which emerged against foreigners
and missionaries in 1900, could be understood from this perspective.
Chinese Christian converts were then considered 'secondary devils',
'secondary barbarians' or 'running dogs' because they were taken as
supporters of foreign aggressors and betrayers of the nation.
The Opium Wars knocked the Chinese door open for opium and at
the same time for Christianity again. Protestant missionaries unfortunately
seemed to have assumed wrong timing in their civilizing efforts: this was
the period when there were inflated hostile feelings towards Westerners
because of the humiliating Opium Wars, and missionaries benefited by
receiving a considerable portion of the unconscionable indemnities exacted
from China. Furthermore, the Taiping Rebellion, which caused havoc to
the socio-political order, was led by a Chinese Christian proselyte. For the
Chinese authorities, Christianity was the disruptive element proper and
the cause of all troubles. The propagation of Christianity in China was
stigmatized by political and economic intrigues. To paraphrase Perry
Anderson: 'The placid process of christianization has been changed into
a stealthy instigation of disaffection.' (Anderson, 1962: 107) Through
unscrupulous manipulation, proselytization was regarded by the Chinese
as a form of cultural and political hegemony.
The civilizing efforts of the Portuguese and the British could be
interpreted as imperialism's epistemic violence, which suppressed
polymorphous difference in order to construct a new subjectivity under
an authorized system of knowledge of the West. The imperialistic expansion
of Western culture underlined universalism and positivism, and achieved
a position of hegemony, at least in the intellectual arena. In this way,
Western knowledge became a form of colonial discourse. The indigenous
customs and traditions — that had taken on a symbolic significance as an
assertion of national reality and identity — were no longer tolerated.
The missionaries brought with them a Eurocentric worldview and the
dominant spiritual discourse that inscribed a fixed non-dialectical religious
order in an attempt to create a pattern of centre/periphery relationships
in culture. They magniloquently espoused the divinely ordained task to
rule, guide and elevate the heathen Chinese for Christian civilization.
Although the West was indeed able to offer the benefits of its moral and
intellectual skills, their messianic Utopia was, after all, inseparably linked
with colonial subjugation and exploitation. It also created ruptures in
cultural meanings when the natives' long conditioned n o r m s were
interferred. Therefore, it was not unreasonable that the propagation of
Christianity by both Roman Catholics and Lutheran Protestants were
met with prejudice, skepticism and hostility.
In addition to the causes mentioned above, one other reason may
perhaps relate to the Chinese cultural complexities towards religious beliefs.
The salient element in the Chinese religious systems is the spirit of
pantheism and eclecticism (this will be discussed in Chapter 4) where a
whole pantheon of deities has been developed to meet different human
needs. However, Christian doctrines embrace the monopoly of truth and
revelation, the attitude of moral superiority and a belief in the exclusive
righteousness. These doctrines are alien to the Chinese mind and are
somewhat unacceptable to the Chinese traditional value systems.
'CITY OF THE NAME OF GOD OF MACAU IN CHINA, THERE IS NONE MORE LOYAL3 73
Autonomization of the Chinese Church

After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and with the rise of nationalism
against unequal treaties and imperialism, the propagation of Christianity
encountered yet another serious setback. In Shanghai, the Anti-Christian
Federation was founded in 1922; this coincided with the Anti-Religious
Federation, which was organized by the students of Peking University.
The 1920s' anti-Christian sentiment was apparently the continuity of
anti-imperialism and xenophobia of the late Qing. For the Chinese,
Christianity had become the accomplice of oppression and was regarded
as another manifestation of superstition, only under a foreign garb. They
denounced Christianity as 'a handmaid of capitalist exploitation of China',
'an ally of capitalism and imperialism' and 'an instrument for oppressing
weaker nations' (Panikkar, 1959: 296).
Under the regime of the Republic of China (before fleeing China to
Taiwan in 1949), the Nationalists and Christians seemed to have come to
terms with each other for a short honeymoon period. Many high officials,
including Dr Sun Yat-sen and Generalismo Chiang Kai-shek, were
Protestant converts. However, the Nationalist-Christian relationship added
the fuel to the Nationalist-Communist estrangement and caused hostile
attacks in the Communists' anti-Christian campaign. The Communists
regarded Christianity (and all other religions) as the 'opium of the people'
and 'tools of imperialism', which were used to hypnotize the Chinese and
weaken their will to resist foreign aggression. The Catholic Church in
China also became the target of antagonism as it was accused of peddling
'mental opium', and the Vatican was considered one of the imperialist
powers. Christianity, under the patronage of imperialism, not surprisingly
failed to attract Chinese souls. The missions also failed to avoid
identification with Western cultural aggression.
The anti-Christian attitude had continued and was carried on to the
establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 when the anti-
imperialist mood reached yet another peak. The irreparable clash between
Christianity and Communism was crystallized in the incompatible
ideological tenets, i.e. religiosity versus atheist Marxism-Leninism.
Moreover, the secular conflict between Catholicism and Communism was
the very form of the church-state status of the Vatican, which turned
out to be the clash between imperialism and patriotism. The new
government therefore demanded complete control over religion for three
reasons: to be rid of a foreign religion and a foreign sovereignty to dictate
terms in China; to prevent the natives' 'loyalty' from being diverted to
the head of another sovereign state; and above all, to maintain and sustain
national autonomy. Consequently, missionaries were expelled; church
property was confiscated and the Catholic Church in China was ordered
to split from the Roman Curia. 32 However, as a sign to show compliance
with the spirit of the constitutional 'freedom of religion', the government,
theoretically at least, set up an 'independent' church.
In 1 9 5 3 , the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) was
established under duress, 'forcing priests and laity to sign a statement
pledging allegiance to the PRC and rejecting loyalty to Rome' (Spae,
1989: 224). Tainted with Sinicization and indigenization, the CCPA was
essentially laden with a political task to lead their followers in support of
Party and state goals, but Bishop Fu Tiesha, spokesman for the CCPA,
reiterated, the Chinese Church is 'not a schismatic Church and an
independent Church' (Spae, 1989: 225).
It is plain to see that the CCPA is an exact repetition of the
establishment of the Church of England in the sixteenth century. China,
in creating the 'Patriotic Catholic Church', is the first sovereign state in
the m o d e r n age to throw down the gauntlet by cutting ties with the
Vatican after Henry VIII of England unprecedentedly had done so in
1534. Without the consent of the Holy See, the autonomous Church has
self-elected and self-consecrated local bishops. It is an undaunted move to
achieve religious independence from the 'colonization' of the Vatican.
T h e establishment of an official 'independent Church' was an
ostentatious challenge to the Vatican's claim to universal religious authority
and the Pope's absolute spiritual authority par excellence. It was also an
a l t e r n a t i v e strategy in resisting the Vatican's divine and secular
interventions, 33 that is, to swerve from the papal authority. Furthermore,
the establishment of the CCPA was a revenge taken on the establishment
of Vatican-Taiwan diplomatic relations. 34 There was, of course, religious
struggle between o r t h o d o x y and heterodoxy. Those who wanted to
maintain their spiritual relations with the Pope were ironically regarded
as 'schismatic', and had to go underground in order to show integrity to
the universal Church. Being an independent Church, the 'Patriotic Catholic
Church' in China today is yet another thorny issue that may give the Holy
See more excruciating headaches than the Rites Controversy.
An Oasis of Catholicism
Catholicism has been the dominant religious practice in Macau since

the Diocese of Macau was established in 1576. Macau was the starting
point for the Society of Jesus to launch its ecumenical project for the
Millennial Kingdom in the East. It was also the arena where the Lusitanian
monarchs exercised their spiritual dominance and political influence in
Asia, apart from Goa. If Goa was once considered 'the centre of the
Church in the Orient', Macau was no doubt 'the bridgehead for Christianity
in China'.
Though earlier missionaries were spurred by great zeal to proselytize
within one religious communion, their mission civilisatrice appeared to be
only an 'arrested threshold' (Perry Anderson's term) in socializing the
Chinese with Christian doctrines and Western traditions. Moreover, it
turned out to be a project to negate the cultural and religious relativity
as a result of their monotheist ideal of ecumenicalism. Out of the four
separate occasions when Christianity was introduced in China, Macau
twice played a pivotal role as the base for Catholicism and Protestantism.
It was the West's 'Eastern stage' for the reconfiguration of Christianity.
The aftermath of the two decisive revolutions — the Counter-Reformation
and the Industrial Revolution — constituted part of the underlying forces
for the propagation of Christianity in the East, and these two revolutions
subsequently had a great impact on Macau. It emerged as a Christian
Janus of Catholicism and Protestantism, and was torn between two methodsr
of introducing Christianity that were buttressed by the two maritime
powers — Portugal and Britain. Unfortunately, the 'Christian City' twice
failed to help acculturate China with Christianity and, to some extent,
betrayed the given grandiloquent title.
Today, regardless of what is going on between the Vatican and China,
the Catholic Church in Macau has established itself as an important agent
in rendering welfare services to the residents. There has been close
cooperation between the government and the Church in providing social-
services in such a way that the Church complements the government and^
shares the responsibility of aiding the poor and the underprivileged.
Notably, Macau Caritas (founded in 1951 by Father Luis Ruiz, a Spanish
Jesuit) has become the principal welfare agency offering various kinds of
charity and extending professional assistance in Macau.
Since the break in relations between Beijing and the Vatican in 1957,
subtle exchanges between them have recently led to direct dialogue with a
view to reaching an agreement to open diplomatic relations. It was hoped
to initiate new talks on the issues of the Vatican's ties with Taiwan and
the sole rights of the Holy See to appoint bishops to the Church in China.
The Pope has been prepared to repair the wounds. During the Fourth World
Conference on Women held in Beijing in September 1995, the head of the
delegation of the Holy See passed on the 'cordial and respectful good wishes
of Pope John Paul II' to the Chinese government (Seidlitz, South China
Morning Post: 30 September 1995). But these good wishes are certainly
far from being enough to dissolve the Beijing authorized 'Patriotic Catholic
Church' which had four million members by offical count in 1998.
Despite the fact that its holy nomenclature is inseparably linked with
religion, M a c a u has nowadays lost its aura as the bridgehead for
Christianity in China, especially after the independent 'Patriotic Catholic
Church' came into being. However, somewhat true to its self-fulfilling
name, 'City of the Name of God of Macau in China' is the only Chinese
territory (under Portuguese regnant authority) where Roman Catholics
can 'openly' survive and thrive. It is an oasis of 'orthodox' Catholicism
which is still the dominant religious practice and is to be tolerated for
another 50 years after 1999, as stated in the Macau Basic Law.
Notes
1 Macau is also known by the Chinese name Haijing Ao ( ^ I t f f i ) or Sea-Mirror Bay, a
name suggested by the shining water surface of the pre-polluted bay of Praia Grande.
In addition, it has some poetic literary names — Xiangshan Ao (If ill Si) or the Bay
of the Odorous Hill; Lianhua Dao (Sl-fbll) or Island of Water-Lilies; Lianyang (8Iv¥)
or Ocean of Lotus-Blooms — designating its geographical vicinity to Zhongshan County
C^LLllS) (then called Xiangshan Hill), and its cartographic shape being like a lotus
flower. O n the name of Macau, see Yin Guangren and Zhang Rulin, Aomen Jilue,
annotated and revised by Zhao Chunchen, Anotaqao e Revisao sobre Ou-Mun Kei-
Leok (Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1992), pp. 2 1 - 2 3 and Graciete Batalha,
'This name of Macau,' Review of Culture, 1st Edition, 1987, pp. 7 - 1 3 .
2 A-Ma is the Goddess of the Sea, Tian Hou. The prefix ' A in A-Ma and A-Ma-Gau is
simply a way to show endearment but has no specific meaning.
3 The Chinese a t t r i b u t e d a playful version to the name ' M a c a u ' , which is a n e a r
homophone to a Cantonese foul language 'What?' — a rude reply to the Portuguese when
they asked the natives what the name was when they first arrived. See Yuan Bangjian
and Yuan Guixiu, Aomen Shilue (Hong Kong: Zhongliu Chubanshe, 1988), p. 3.
4 Philip II of Spain was the son of Isabel of Portugal (daughter of Joao III). Isabel
married to Charles V of Spain. On the crisis after the death of King Sebastiao, see Jose
Hermano Saraiva, Historia Concisa de Portugal (Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau
e Editora Montanha das Flores, 1994), pp. 159-168.
5 During the Spanish Habsburg dominion over Portugal between 1580-1640, Portuguese
moral and economic decay reached its peak, but the Iberian trade enterprise in Asia
had seen its best days. On the Habsburg era in Asia, see James C. Boyajian, Portuguese
Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs, 1580-1640 (London: The John Hopkins University
Press, 1993), pp. 1-17.
6 Spain did not seem to have paid much attention to Macau during the sixty-year
subjection of Portugal, but it was averred in many patriotic Portuguese chronicle and
literature that Macau was so loyal to Portugal that it never hoisted the flag of Spain.
7 The Leal Senado, or the Loyal Senate, is the Municipality of Macau and has the status
of a town council dealing with mundane matters of municipal government. As an
institution, the Leal Senado began in 1585, but the present building was rebuilt in
1783 and the facade was added in 1876. It is said to be one of the best examples of
Portuguese architecture in the territory.
8 Nowadays, it is often referred to as the Catholic Reformation, suggesting that its aims
were not merely anti-Protestant.
9 The chief feature of Nestorianism was a belief that in Jesus the divine and the human
existed as two distinct persons. On the tenets of Nestorianism, see Kenneth Scott
Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (London: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, 1929), and James Legge, The Nestorian Monument of Hsi-an Fu
(New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1966).
10 Taoism flourished and achieved considerable success during the Han and Three Kingdoms
periods (from the third century BC to the third century AD), but at the beginning of the
fifth century, Buddhism began to eclipse Taoism and thrived. In 845, however, an
ardent Taoist emperor issued an edict proscribing Buddhism and Nestorianism. Taoism
thus revived.
11 Francis Xavier was born in Spain and was the co-founder of the Society of Jesus.
12 Nowadays Shangchuan Island is a famous place for Catholic pilgrimage and a church
dedicated to St Francis Xavier was built on the spot where he died.
13 The first Jesuit, Father Belchior Nunes Barreto, arrived at M a c a u in August 1555.
However, it was only in 1565 that the Jesuits set up the first residence and chapel,
where the Church of St Anthony stands today. See Pursuing the Dream: Jesuits in
Macau (Macau: Tipografia Martinho, 1990). See also Special Issue on the IV Centenary
(1594-1994) of St Paul's in Review of Culture, N o . 2 1 , 1994 (in Chinese).
14 There is an obvious typographical error in Father Teixeira's article 'The Church in
M a c a u ' (Cremer 1991: 41) in which he anachronistically stated that the Dominican'"
branch was founded in 1558. In fact, the Spanish Dominicans arrived at M a c a u on 23
October 1587 and their establishment was officially recognized/approved in the first
Provincial Chapter celebrated in Manila on 10 June 1588. See Father Salvador Luis,
The Spanish Dominicans in the Delta of the Pearl River (Hong Kong: Rosaryhill
School, 1987), pp. 2 - 3 . See also Monsenhor Manuel Teixeira, IV Centendrio Dos
Dominicanos em Macau 1587-1987 (Macau: Fundaâo M a c a u , 1987), p p . 5-6.
15 According to Althusser, the ISA institutions include: church, school, family, different
parties in the political system, trade union, communications and cultural endeavours.
For him, ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to
their real conditions of existence. See Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and
Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 'Ideology and Ideological^
State Apparatuses.'
16 The Bull Eximiae Devotionis of 16 November 1501 was extracted from Enciclopedia
de la Cultura Espanola, Tomo IV; Leon-Pujol (Madrid: Editora Nacional), p p . 6 9 9 -
700. It was translated for me by Father Segundo Vicente.
17 O n the conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico by Cortes, see Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest
of America: The Question of the Other (London: H a r p e r a n d R o w Publishers,
1982).
18 Ricci's Accommodation Policy was mainly engaged in 'permissions' and 'omissions'.
The permissions were to allow the new proselytes to continue practising the Confucian
rites and traditional Chinese customs. The omissions were to avoid explaining some
Christian central dogmas, which were alien to Chinese beliefs. See George S J . Minamiki,
The Chinese Rites Controversy from Its Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago: Loyola
University Press, 1985), Chapter 2, 'The Position of Mateo [sic] Ricci.'
19 Probabilism held that it is lawful to follow an opinion favouring the freedom from the
law even if that opinion is less probable than the one favouring the law, as long as the
opinion is solidly probable. Probabiliorism maintained that the law must always be
followed unless the opinion favouring the freedom from the law is more probable,
mere probability not being enough. During the dispute, the moral system of Probabilism
was favoured by the majority of the Jesuits, while Probabiliorism by the Dominicans.
See Fidel Villarroel, ' T h e Chinese Rites C o n t r o v e r s y : D o m i n i c a n Viewpoint,'

Philippiniana Sacra, Vol. XXVIII, N o . 82, 1993, p. 30.
20 The Chinese term for God was settled without too much difficulty by the decision to
use 'Tian Z h u ' , or the Lord of Heaven.
21 The less important questions were, for example, 'Should Christians be permitted to
contribute to community festivals in honour of non-Christian divinities?', 'Could masses
be said for the souls of the non-Christian ancestors of Christians?', etc.
22 The terms 'the Holy See' and 'the Vatican' are similar but not quite. The Holy See
refers to the supreme authority of the Catholic Church and is a collective body consisting
of the Pope and the central office in Rome. It is the real head of the Catholic Church.
An elected Pope is thus invested with the authority of the Holy See to administer the
universal church. The Vatican is used to represent the Supreme Pontiff, the highest
leader of the Catholic Church.
23 On the full text of the Jesuits' petition and Kangxi's reply, see Arnold H. Rowbotham,
Missionary and Mandarin: The Jesuits at the Court of China (New York: Russell and
Russell, 1966), pp. 1 4 5 - 1 4 6 .
24 It was after a span of 2 1 9 years that in 1981 tertiary education revived through the
inauguration of the privately-owned University of East Asia by a Hong Kong business,
the Ricci Island West Company. It was taken over by the Portuguese government and
became a public university in 1988. It was renamed the University of Macau in 1991.
As such, Macau lags behind Hong Kong in colonial education where the University of
Hong Kong has trained a large cadre of local officials to staff government and commercial
institutions.
25 See George S.J. Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy from Its Beginning to Modern
Times (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985).
26 The Franciscans often take a guardian role to maintain integrity in faith, in particular
this Order has been designated by the Pope as 'Guardian of the Holy Land' in Jerusalem.
27 In reaction to all the Supreme Pontiffs' unanimous condemnation of the Chinese rite
practices (which were decreed on at least six solemn occasions: Innocent XII [1697],
Clement XI [1704, 1710, 1715], Clement XII [1733], and Benedict XIV [1742]), Pope
Pius XII lifted the prohibition of the Chinese Rites on 8 December 1939 by a decree
of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (in Latin) in Acta Apostolicae
Sedis, 32 (1940), pp. 2 4 - 2 6 . The preamble of this famous Instruction has been translated
by Villarroel and is worth quoting here:
It has been found out that in some Oriental religions, certain ceremonies,
though in antiquity linked to pagan rites, at present, with the changes of
customs and mentality brought about by the passing of time, keep only a civil
significance of piety towards ancestors, love of country and courteous relations
towards neighbour, (quoted in Villarroel, 1993: 54)
Pope Pius XII's toleration came nearly 250 years later than Emperor Kangxi's 'Edict
of Toleration' which was issued in 1692 permitting the missionary activities in China.
Like Voodooism, which is a m i x t u r e of Catholicism a n d Haitian native beliefs,
Catholicism is hence 'contaminated' by yielding to the Chinese theistic cult of ancestor
worship.
28 The term 'ancestor worship' is different from 'worship of the dead'. The only dead to
be worshipped are one's own departed predecessors. Other people's dead are not
worshipped.
29 The importance of this cultic behaviour could be seen in the Qing Code where even
the kinship-renouncing Buddhist monks were obliged to observe mourning rites for
their dead parents as a last gesture to show filial piety. See C. K. Yang, Religion in
Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 53.
30 On the Chinese perspective towards the proselytization of Christianity, see Zhang
Wenyin, Aomen yu Zhonghua Lishi Wenhua (Macau: Macau Foundation, 1995), pp.
119-134.
31 Before Morrison arrived at Macau, Marshman, an earnest clergyman, had already
translated a 'crude' version of the Bible into Chinese with the help of an Armenian,
Lassar, who was born in Macau, and a Catholic missionary who had been in China.
The crude version was nevertheless helpful in the preparation of Morrison's later
version. See Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1929), pp. 210-211.
32 The Roman Curia in the Vatican City State is something like the headquarters of the
transnational institution, and the Pope is a transnational leader of Catholicism.
33 The core of the conflict of authority apparently comes from the dual status of the
Vatican as being both a sovereign state (the Vatican City State was created in 1929)
and as the spiritual leader of a universal church.
34 One of the obstacles to reconciliation between China and the Vatican is the Holy See's
diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
The Rendezvous
4 of a Virgin Trio
Religious Culture in Macau

If culture is understood as the ensemble of various 'approved' values,
beliefs, ethnic myths, memories, and behaviourial guidelines, religion is
certainly one dimension of culture. In defining religion as a cultural system,
Clifford Geertz writes:
It [culture] denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings

embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed
in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate,
perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes
toward life. (Geertz, 1973: 89)
Geertz is of the opinion that human behaviour and experience are guided
by systems of significant symbols, and culture is the very symbolic
dimensions of social action. Moreover, religious symbols, ethnic myths,
and memories are crucial for the continuing hold of national cultures. In
this respect, Anthony D. Smith argues that ethnicity is largely mythic and
symbolic in character. Myths and symbols are seen as cultural attributes
which inspire and sustain collective experiences of a sense of dignity,
solidarity, and identity for human populations; hence the 'myth-symbol'
complex is vital in social and cultural processes (Smith, 1986: 13-31).
Religious culture plays an important role for the task of influence and
surveillance through the spiritual stress of the idea of ultimacy. Religion,
as Christian Jochim recapitulates, 'has been defined, for example, as a
"belief in ultimate reality", a "state of ultimate concern", a "means of
ultimate transformation", and a "set of symbolic forms and acts that
relates us to the ultimate conditions of existence"'(Jochim, 1986: 4). In
this vein, religion is a spiritual terrain in which the quest for the meaning
of life lies. It also represents a secular power designed to 'colonize' and

civilize human populations through the belief systems.
Although Macau is bestowed with a sanctified name — 'City of the
Name of God', it is not a one-sided 'facade' embracing only Judeo-Christian
religious practices. Rather, it is an arena where a whole assortment of
multitudinous Chinese religious deities flourishes. 1 It is a two-faced site
exemplifying a Janus scenario, which is specific to Macau's social fabric
and cultural matrices due to Portuguese administration.
M a c a u has miraculously survived the Chinese contemporary state
hostility towards popular religion and feudal superstitions in different
historical periods, and was unscathed in religious assaults. Formidable
hostility to religion was first fed by intellectual anti-traditionalism that
was associated with the May Fourth Movement (1919) in the 'new' China,
followed by the Nationalists' Superstition Destruction Movement (1928-
1929). After the Communist take-over in 1949, iconoclastic nationalism
and Marxism-Leninism became a state ideology. During the traumatic
Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), a ferocious anti-traditionalist onslaught
on religious beliefs and practices was carried out with unprecedented
intensity. This involved the destruction or conversion of temples, shrines,
and ancestral halls. Many historical monuments and a wide variety of
exquisite religious structures were mercilessly smashed and destroyed. As
a result, there were not many well-preserved temples left on the Chinese
mainland.
Graced by its somewhat peculiar historical situation, Macau has
become a haven in preserving Chinese temple-architecture. The extant
temples are 'undisturbed' by any political movements and have even been
taken care of by the Portuguese authorities. These temples have thrived
and prospered and are valuable relics in Chinese territory under foreign
rule. The so-called colonizers ironically turn out to be preservers of the
Chinese cultural heritage.
After the Diocese of Macau was formally founded in 1576, Macau
was believed to have built the most churches in the world vis-a-vis its tiny
size. The proliferating construction of churches was necessarily a civilization
of spectacle and surveillance. It was also a manifestation of ecclesiastical
power through architectural gestures. Under the mystically religious
Portuguese administration, Catholicism had been the dominant religious
discourse, but could it eclipse, or erase, some of the indigenous beliefs?
M a c a u is basically a Chinese community permeated with a rich
indigenous religious culture even though the Portuguese have incessantly
tried to introduce Christianity since their arrival. Within Chinese culture
there is a multiplicity of religious varieties embracing different liturgical
traditions and distinctive features. However, one can demarcate the Chinese
THE RENDEZVOUS OF A VIRGIN TRIO 83
religious systems into Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religion. 2

All of these constitute Chinese religion as a unified cultural tradition.
Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism have long been known in China as
the Three Teachings or Three Great Religions. They form the mainstream
of what anthropologists would refer to as a culture's 'great tradition'.
Folk religion, on the other hand, is considered 'little tradition' (Redfield,
1956: 67-104). Even though there are polymorphous beliefs, the Chinese
religious systems have developed a matrix that allow differences in beliefs
(and rites) to complement one another. In fact, some religious similarity
is expressed as if it were religious difference (i.e. the role of Tian H o u and
Guan Yin).
Macau is a marginalized part of China — both geographically and
culturally — yet the harmonious coexistence of polymorphous religious
beliefs makes it a microcosm for the study of its religious culture. In
Macau, we can trace some religious cults invented by both the Portuguese
and Chinese authorities to serve particular class or ethnic interests, and
they survive and flourish as part of the cultural heritage. If M a c a u is
extolled as the 'Marian City' (because most of the churches in Macau are
dedicated to Mary in various guises), it is also justifiable to call it the
'City of Tian Hou' (the Taoist Goddess of the Sea), and the 'City of Guan
Yin' (the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy). These three virgin divinities from
different religious sects form an unchallenging trio in dominating the
religious culture. They are attributed important roles by the two national
authorities in the contestation of socializing and standardizing two different
cultures inside a geographically insignificant enclave. They ostentatiously
share the balance of power relations and each occupies 'a sacred space'
with a view to acculturating and civilizing the two peoples. Let us now
turn to examine the Facade of the Church of the Mother of God, better
known as the Ruins of St Paul's. This is where Portuguese colonial power
and control are exercised through a myth-symbol complex and where
Judeo-Christian 'ruling ideas' emanate.
The Fagade of the Church of the Mother of God
The Church of the Mother of God is commonly known as the Church

of St Paul. 3 The Chinese call it ^ £ E , meaning the Big Sao Paulo.
( H E is the Chinese transliteration of Sao Paulo). Since the college next
to it was called St Paul, the Church was thus taken for St Paul's. The
Jesuits, who were often called 'Paulists' in the East, first built the Collegiate
Church of St Paul's in 1594. After two fires in 1595 and 1601 respectively,
it was re-erected in 1602. Tradition holds that Father Carlos Spinola, an
Italian priest, designed the Church. 4 Peter Mundy, an English trader and
traveller, recorded in 1637 that the excellent workmanship of the roof of
the Church was the fairest arch that he had ever seen (Mundy, 1919:
162). The Facade was completed in 1640 and its design might owe
architectural inspiration to the Gesu, a Jesuit c h u r c h in R o m e .
Unfortunately, the third disastrous fire in 1835 turned the whole building
complex into rubble but the Facade and the walls remain. The fire-baptized
Facade, with a measurement of 27 metres high, 23.5 metres wide and 2.7
metres thick, has since stood atop an asymmetrical flight of staircase,
surviving natural disasters and witnessing the vicissitudes Macau has been
experiencing.
The Facade (Plate 14) has long been hailed as 'a sermon in stone', but
can the majority of lay Christians understand most, if not all, of the
religious symbolism? Do the general public have a clear idea of how
Christian doctrines are represented on each tier? Is the Facade merely a
display of a theological potpourri? The Facade is perhaps the most
frequently mentioned landmark in Macau, and yet its iconography is
often misinterpreted, mistakenly speculated upon, and hypothetically
described. It is a unique piece of art and a bricolage of various ethnic
elements. It is rich with cultural overtones and represents one aspect of
the Portuguese strategy to acculturate the Chinese with Christian culture.
Plate 14 The Ruins of St Paul's

The Facade begins with the triangular pediment (1st tier, Plate 15)'
crowned by a simple Latin cross on a rectangular base. At the centre of
gravity is a bronze Dove — the usual Christian symbol of the Holy Ghost.
It is surrounded by carvings of four Stars, the Sun (on the right of the
Dove) and the M o o n having a crescent within the circle (on the left),
which implies that the 'Incarnation occurred at a definite point of time'
(Hugo-Brunt, 1954: 337). These pictorial symbols are, however, redolent
of other connotations. The Dove is also an attribute of chastity (Hall,
1974: 109). It is, therefore, a piece of architecture steadfastly consecrated
to honour the Virgin Mother of God. The Star has different symbolic
ideas: Christ is described as the 'bright star of dawn' (The Bible, Rev. 22.
16) and the Virgin Mary as stellar star. The Star is hence a double
attribute of Jesus and Mary. The Sun is an attribute of Truth personified
because all is revealed by its light and Jesus once said he was the light of
this world. The Sun is also an attribute of the Virgin Mary since the
Woman of the Apocalypse (Mary) is 'robed with the sun' (Rev. 12:1).
A crescent moon was the ancient attribute of both the Virgin Diana
and the moon goddess Luna in the Roman era. It is also an attribute of
Mary's chastity as the crescent moon often symbolizes chastity under the
feet of the Virgin Mary. In addition, medieval theologians were inclined
to associate the imagery in an Old Testament text, the Song of Songs,
with Mary. They claimed that the two Latin phrases, 'pulchra ut luna,
electa ut soV or 'beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun' (6:10), symbolized
the Virgin Mary (Hall, 1974: 327). In this spirit, the Sun and the Moon
are favourite attributes of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception.
In the pediment, these usually and widely accepted symbols already
create ambiguity and confusion in interpretation. Although the church
was under the patronage of Mary and was in fact dedicated to her, the
Dove and constellation-sculptures were not, pace Hugo-Brunt, 'oriental in
conception' (Hugo-Brunt, 1954: 337). Rather, they were Greco-Roman
attributes of God and His Mother. These symbols have characteristically
double attributes; thus the pictorial composition in the pediment is a
trenchant manifestation of a double dedication.
On both sides of the pediment, there are a total of four short obelisks
which are topped by spheres. Hugo-Brunt suggests that they have no
structural significance, but are merely aesthetic devices. The seemingly
meaningless obelisks are, again pace Hugo-Brunt, highly symbolic. An
obelisk is not only associated with the phallus, fertility, regeneration and
eternal life, but also alludes to the support of the sky and protection
against evil spirits (Olderr, 1986: 95 and Vries, 1976: 348). These four
obelisks are full of religious allusions that are emblematic of the guardians
who protect the Church from evil. Also, an obelisk was once the sign of
GO
lyrniyyr -
COHHICI tlkH
owl JHCH to OHi root PEDIMENT

Plate 15 The Pediment (First Tier)
military power of the Egyptian pharaohs. This 'pagan' symbol has willy-
nilly come to signify the ecclesiastical power of the Church and its
supremacy.
At the centre of the second tier (Plate 16) stands a bronze statue of
Jesus Christ in a classical shell-like niche, whose right hand points towards
Heaven and whose left hand once carried the orb of Kingship. The statue
is surrounded by friezes of fleurs-de-lys (or lilies) and chrysanthemums —
both denote purity. The lily, in particular, has been the symbol of purity
since antiquity. There is a conspicuously stylized chrysanthemum below
the statue that might have associations with the Japanese Christians who
fled religious persecution to Macau in the early seventeenth century. 6
Since the golden chrysanthemum is the 'emblem of the sun, Japan' (Olderr,
1986: 25), it becomes the symbol of Japan and the imperial family. This
motif perhaps serves as a reference to the Japanese who might have
helped build the Facade.
The second tier is divided into sections by four columns of composite
capital" and is flanked by two gables. On both sides of the statue of Jesus,
the instruments of the Passion are displayed. On the right, as one looks
up, there are a ladder, three nails, a reed and a Roman standard (or a
flag). On the left, there are a pair of pincers, a hammer, a scourge, a
crown of thorns and two lances. These Christian symbols are 'a favourite
motive [sic] (= motif) in Jesuit churches' (Hugo-Brunt, 1954: 337).
In between each pair of the composite columns is an angel. The angel
on the right carries the scourging pillar, which is a religious symbol of
spiritual strength and steadfastness (Rev. 3:12) and hence becomes an
attribute of the allegorical figures of Fortitude and Constancy. The angel
on the left bears a Cross, with the Latin inscription abbreviated to 'I.N.
R.I.' (Iesus Nazarenus Rex ludaeorum) or Jesus of Nazareth, King of the
Jews. 'I.N.R.I.' is thus a reference to Christ's sacrifice.
On the right of the gable is a sheaf of wheat, which, together with
a vine, symbolize the eucharistic elements. On the left gable is a rope,
which has been mistaken as 'a brazen serpent' (Jones, 1969: 380). The
serpent is a symbol of evil and a biblical synonym for Satan but on
this tier its symbolic iconography appears inappropriate in relation to
Christ's Passion. A rope, however, is in close association with Christ's
Passion because Christ was bound by the soldiers who arrested him (John
18:12). Hence a rope becomes one of the Christian symbols of the Betrayal
in the process of salvation.
At each end of the tier is a simple obelisk (without a sphere). At the
base of the right obelisk is the inscribed name of St Paul 'SPAULO' and
on the left is St Peter 'SPEDRO'. However, the statues of the two Apostles
were never put into these places which might have been earmarked for
_,
!0
t
them. 8 At both ends there are two smaller obelisks that feature a wide-
mouthed lion on each base. It is speculated that the lion motif is an
allusion to Chinese traditions (Xu, 1994: 3). Both Father Manuel Teixeira
and Hugo-Brunt described the smiling 'Oriental' lion as a symbol of
strength in China being extended to denote qualities of strength and
courage. However, the lion is not exclusively 'Chinese' and 'Oriental'.
Again pace Hugo-Brunt, it is not 'out of place in the careful symbolism
of the facade' (Hugo-Brunt, 1954: 337). The lion is a common symbolic
beast in Western religious and secular art and has various attributions. In
the Middle Ages it was a symbol of the Resurrection because, according
to the bestiaries, the cubs when born lay dead for three days. Like Jesus'
entombment for three days, they were only brought to life when their
father breathed in their faces (Hall, 1974: 193). The two lions on this tier
(and at both ends of the third tier) are imbued with religious implications,
despite the claim that they constitute 'a sort of meaningless gargoyle'
(Jones, 1969: 380). The portrayal of lions on the Facade at once creates
ethnic ambiguity because lions are also used by the Chinese as decorative
motifs for the purpose of warding off devils. Once again, a total of six
stars appear on the bases of this tier — one on each panel under the
angel, two under each gable. The whole tier is filled with pictorial symbols
in dedication to Jesus Christ in his mission as Saviour of humankind.
The third tier (Plates 17 and 18) is the climax of the entire composition
of the Facade. The whole tier is conspicuously dedicated to the Virgin
Mary and is associated with the promotion of a new cult. The bronze
statue of the Virgin as the Mother of God is enshrined in the central
niche, thus exemplifying the importance of her cultic role. The Marian
cult, or the cult of Mary, was often condemned and called Mariolatry, a
word derived from idolatry. Her role as the 'Mother of God' was not
extensively recognized until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an era of
religious ardour. The growth of this cult, according to James Hall, seems
to have grown over the centuries as the Christian Church was in need of
a mother figure. It was the object of worship that also lay at the centre
of many ancient religions. The emergent cult also serves, to some extent,
as a remedy to the Church's traditional hostility to woman, an attitude
for which Eve is a justification (Hall, 1974: 323).
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, however, was much
disputed by medieval theologians. Among the monastic Orders, the
Dominicans denied the possibility of Immaculate Conception while the
Franciscans upheld it. During the seventeenth century, this doctrine gained
ground and was particularly fostered by the Jesuits. The Church of the
Mother of God was, therefore, a consolidation of an 'approved' doctrine
and an outward expression of the Jesuits' advocacy of the cult of Mary.
_n
iTl
1*3 °
isLJl*L-î^,.-»»k«
ll--,
i%
^r3
hi
M I \ * / ItV ®m INCH i® om root
Plate 18 The Third Tier (the Third Storey) — Right

This architecture also crystallized the unassailable status of the Jesuits in

Macau where they launched their 'civilizing mission' to save souls as part
of the Portuguese colonial enterprise.
O n the Marian tier, there are two different postures of the Virgin
Mary. The centre-stage bronze statue has her hands crossed on her breast.
The t w o small ones, which awkwardly interpenetrate the cornice lines,
are in an attitude of prayer. The design of the statues is no arbitrary
choice; however, the two specific gestures strictly conform to doctrinal
requirements of art representation which was generated by the supportive
Jesuit Order. As James Hall points out:
In the art of the seventeenth century, especially in Spain, the

stimulus provided by the Counter-Reformation to the veneration
of the Virgin led to a new type of the Immaculate Conception
which rapidly established itself. The form was codified by the
Spanish painter, writer and art-censor to the Inquisition, Francisco
Pacheco (1564-1654) in his Art of Painting (1649). . . . He laid
down that she (the Virgin Mary) be represented as a young
woman of twelve or thirteen years, dressed in a white robe and
blue cloak, her hands folded on her breast or meeting in prayer
. . . (my emphasis) (Hall, 1974: 327)
The postures of the Virgin Mother of God prudently reveal a Spanish

code of a censored Immaculate Conception. The design not only
meticulously executed the theologians' devotion to Madonna, but also
created new expressional forms in art in the seventeenth century.
As Mary has emerged as the most powerful of the saints in interceding
with God and dispensing gifts to supplicants, the design of the Marian
tier explicitly endorses the theological connotation of her new interceding
role. The two interpenetrating small statues of Mary, in particular,
accentuate the notion of divine intercession. The Virgin Mother of God
has also been regarded as a 'Co-Redeemer' in the mystery of salvation. 9
For this reason she is placed at the centre of gravity under Jesus and the
Holy Ghost. The Marian tier can, therefore, be looked upon as a celebration
of the emergent cult of Mary.
The statue of Mary is placed on a pedal and surrounded by a border
of stylized roses and lilies. These flowers allude to her purity and are
associated particularly with the Virgin Mary. A seraph head in the middle
of the arch may serve as the symbolic guarding of the Virgin. The central
niche is flanked by three big angels on each side in attitudes of
veneration — the top two are praying, the middle two playing musical
instruments and the lower two swinging incense. With regard to these
angels, none of the writings on St Paul's probe the following questions:
why do the six angels occupy such a prominent position on the Facade?
Why are they adolescents and not infants? Why have they no haloes?
Although angels are often found in medieval art through prophetic
and apocalyptic depiction, the cult of Angels only became popular in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their outstanding position on the
Facade may speak for the influence of the emergence of the cult. Baroque
angels in Western art are typically winged infants. The adolescent winged
angels are just a kind of departure from Baroque fashion. We can see the
unknown artist's insistence on Byzantine depiction of the sexless angels
who tend to be feminine in appearance and are dressed in loose draperies.
In Renaissance paintings angels usually wear haloes, but the popularity of
halo falls out in post-Renaissance art. These six angels, together with the
two on the second tier, are examples of an eclectic hodgepodge of different
styles. While the designer exemplified the importance of the cult of Angels,
he transgressed the Baroque fashion for adolescent angels but remained
faithful to the post-Renaissance tendency to leave the haloes out. The
seraphim above the statue are also an unusual portrayal. A seraph head
is often covered with six wings, but now it has only two. It is much
simpler in form, perhaps due to the limited space in the border. All in all,
the depiction of the angels and the seraphim on the central bay convincingly
displays an unusual, if not new, expression in art in seventeenth-century
Macau.
The Marian tier is divided by six columns of the composite order,
three on each side of the niche. On both sides of the central bay are
sculptures mainly dedicated to the Virgin Mary. On the right side near the
angels is a cypress tree (or a cedar), possibly signifying the Tree of
Knowledge and alluding to the idea of virginity in general. The equivalent
on the left side is a fountain, which symbolizes spiritual life and salvation.
It is also an attribute of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. To the
left of the cypress is a seven-headed winged chimera (or dragon). Above
its head, there is a small statue of the Virgin Mary. This scene suggests
that the Mother of God tramples on the devilish dragon. The composition
of these two panels obviously reflects an important role given to her by
the Church. The Tree of knowledge seen beside the Virgin and her symbolic
trampling on the dragon may refer to a medieval theology — the coming
of the Second Eve to bring about the vanquishing of Satan. Near the
statue, there are five Chinese characters which read £ # 8 * 1 1 1 1 or 'The
Holy Mother tramples on the dragon's head'.
The translation of 'dragon' into the Chinese 'long' (f|) immediately
imposes an evil Christian symbolism upon an auspicious Chinese motif.
In Chinese tradition, the dragon is an emblem of benevolence. It is also
a symbol of royalty. The Holy Mother of God could not possibly trample
on a Chinese benevolent being. The inscription, therefore, has no indigenous

ethnic Chinese flavour in its narration of the scene. Instead, it directly
reflects the word of God to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, i.e. the
woman shall crush the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). In Christianity, the
dragon is an emblem of the Devil. It symbolizes heresy and paganism
(Olderr, 1986: 40). Moreover, the Latin word draco refers to both dragon
and snake (Hall, 1974: 109); the two animals are interchangeable to
denote evil. Hence she may symbolically stand on a serpent or a dragon
representing the conquest of evil. This composition also reflects an
ideological trope which suggests that Christian culture conquers the 'heretic
pagans' in the East. In other words, it manifests overweeningly the defeat
of 'Oriental barbarism' by Western civilization.
Seen in this light, the motif of dragon is endowed with contrasting
semiotics in Chinese and Christian cultures. The panel also creates an
ambiguous and confusing representation in different ethnic interpretations.
Furthermore, the scene, 'The Holy Mother tramples on the dragon's head'
virtually consolidates the Virgin as the predestined one to bring about the
redemption of man from the 'sin of Eve'. Her role as the 'Second Eve' is
thus reiterated. Visually, this panel renders an asymmetrical effect because
there is no Chinese inscription on the equivalent side of the carrack panel.
On the carrack panel, the Portuguese nau10 (or the big ship, in full
sail), with the Virgin as the Star of the Sea above it, bears multitudinous
symbolic meanings. The early Christian priests and apologists likened the
Church to a ship in which the faithful were borne to safety/salvation, as
the ark of Noah was an apt original source. Also, a ship is considered a
place of worship because the word 'nave' (the long central part of a
church) is derived from the Latin word navis, i.e. a ship. The depiction
of a carrack may also be an acknowledgement of the Portuguese chivalry
in sailing to the East for the propagation of trade and Christianity.
Furthermore, it might commemorate the return of a missing ship that
carried a very profitable cargo, from which a huge amount of money was
donated for rebuilding the Church after the second fire. The carrack, with
the interpenetrating Virgin as the divine protector of mariners and the
sea, may serve as a chronicle of this event (Hugo-Brunt, 1954: 338).
The next panel on the right side is an irregular one with two plastered
scrolls. Within it there is a prostrate skeleton which is pierced by an
arrow and a scythe. The skeleton now replaces the skull, the medieval
symbol of death. The skeleton was in fact a fashionable symbol in the
seventeenth century that signified man's mortality and the transience of
life. Together with the scythe and the arrow, they are the personification
of death. An arrow is also taken as the carrier of disease, especially the
plague. On the equivalent left side there is a devil with claws, tail and
wings. It is agonizing and arrow-stricken, which points to 'the temptations

of the world' (Teixeira, 1979: 24). On each side of these two panels, there
are didactic Chinese inscriptions:
On the right &5E#*&3HP

On the left &*KA&Jg
Translated into English as:
Remember death and you shall never sin

The Devil tempts man to commit evil
The composition and inscriptions of the Chinese language are really

ugly, but one would miss this point in the English translation. The two
sentences are not a proper couplet because they are without rhythm and
not symmetrically paired. They are perhaps composed by non-Chinese
scholars as the wording seems arbitrary. Together with S ^ S H I I S I (The
Holy M o t h e r tramples on the dragon's head), we can discern that'the
calligraphic strokes of these characters are written without any scholarly
elegance. They might have been written by someone with marginal
calligraphic skill, or by the Japanese Christians who sought religious
asylum in Macau.
The Chinese characters on the Facade may speak for some specific
effects. First, they level the hierarchy of the Portuguese ideological construct
in this sacred space 'to preach'. Secondly, indigenous Chinese language is
'elevated' and made use of by the Jesuits for socializing the natives into
Christian culture in their own words. Thirdly, it may signify the baknce
of power relations between the two peoples in Macau. In essence, the
native language is manipulated in the colonizing project of spiritual
conquest.
On the right side of the fourth panel, between the two obelisks, there
is a crown pierced by two crossed arrows. The crown is an emblem of
sovereignty, divine and earthly, and also of the Christian martyr. This
composition may allude to the victory of martyrdom over death as the
great persecution of Portuguese missionaries and converted Christians in
Japan began in 1614. Many Christians were martyred between 1620 and
1637. Father Antonio Cardim, the then Rector of the Collegiate Church
of St Paul's, proudly praised Macau as 'the fostermother of martyrs'. In
1640, when the news was received of the martyrdom of sixty-one
Portuguese and Chinese Christians in Japan, Macau celebrated their death,
not with mourning, but with the tolling of church bells and a twenty-day
festival (Francis, 1930: 3). Seventeenth-century Macau indeed basked in
extreme religious fervour and mystic devotion, as evidenced in this artistic
expression. On the equivalent panel is a dove that may stand for sacrifice,
good tidings, and peace. Each side of this tier is decorated with five
obelisks, the end ones bearing again wide-mouthed lions.
All the panels in this tier have sculptured floral motif in the predella.
There is a tabernacle door flanked by flowers under the dove; a chalice
surrounded by flowers under the devil; a tree ripe with grapes 11 under the
carrack; a candelabrum with seven candlesticks 12 under the Fountain of
Life; some flowers under the cypress, a branch of olive-leaf13 held by a
hand under the chimera-dragon; a monstrance for the Host surrounded
by flowers under the skeleton, and a window flanked by flowers under
the crown. On the base of each composite column and the t w o tall
obelisks on each side, there is a stylized chrysanthemum. Again, reference
may be made to Japanese ethnic identity.
In the western corner of the third tier, Father Spinola's effigy was
sculpted on a stele, which was placed between the lion and the gargoyle.
The stele is exactly above the foundation stone on the entrance tier. It
seems to suggest that Father Spinola was the mastermind of the design of
the Church.
The fourth tier (Plate 19) is much simpler than the three tiers above.
It is supported by ten columns of Corinthian order and contains three
large windows. The architectural treatment is mainly based on geometrical
decorative elements. The frieze above each of the two flanking windows
is decorated with seven stylized roses (again, the biblical 'seven' is
emphasized) which accentuate the dedication to the Virgin. There are four
bronze statues of Jesuit saints who are put in the classical niches as
characterized by the shell-like motif. In an eye-catching position, the central
window is flanked by two palm trees, which Hugo-Brunt finds 'difficult
to interpret, for it [the palm-tree symbol] might refer to the Martyr's Palm
or Palestine or be an obscure reference to the Far East' (Hugo-Brunt,
1954: 339). In fact, the palm tree embraces a variety of interpretations.
As a stimulus to the devotion of Mary, Bernard of Clairvaux ( 1 0 9 0 -
1153), who was a medieval theologian and later canonized as a saint,
interpreted and amplified the Song of Songs14 as an elaborate allegory in
which the bride of the poem was identified with the Virgin Mary (Hall,
1974: 324). Since the sixteenth century, this Old Testament text has
become a favourite source for theologians to draw metaphors to apply to
Mary and the praise, 'you are as graceful as a palm-tree' (Song of Songs,
7: 7), naturally equates Mary with a palm tree. Hence, a palm tree comes
to be an attribute of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, as well as
an attribute of chastity. It also occurs frequently in art as the attribute of
the Christian martyr and was even adopted by the early Church as the
symbol of the Christian's victory over death (Hall, 1974: 231). Perhaps
= = # ! >-
OI
to §
T
LU
;* .*
•J
due to the significant iconography, these two palm trees occupy a focal
position and they are used to preach through their 'hidden' symbolic
meanings.
On the sides of the palm tree are St Ignatius Loyola (left), and his
follower, St Francis Xavier (right). On the farther side are Francis Borgia
(left) and Aloysius Gonzaga (right). St Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) was
the founder of the Society of Jesus and St Francis Xavier (1502-1552)
was known as the 'Apostle of the East'. 'S. IGNA' and 'S. R C . O ' are
inscribed at the base of these two statues respectively. The prefix 'S'
denotes that they are saints. On the outside are St Francis Borgia and St
Aloysius Gonzaga. Their inscriptions are 'B. RC.OB.' and 'B. LUIS G.'
respectively. The carving of a 'B' stands for Blessed. St Francis Borgia was
beatified in 1634 and St Aloysius in 1605. Apparently, the beatified saints
were put on the Facade before they were canonized in 1671 and 1726
respectively. By and large, this tier celebrates the Jesuits' established
foothold in seventeenth-century Macau where they almost 'monopolized'
missionary activism.
The entrance tier has three doors. The central door is called the Gate
of Faith. It bears significant reference to the Virgin because the frieze is
carved in Latin 'MATER DEI', or 'Mother of God', which unmistakably
testifies to the dedication of the Church and the Virgin being the patron
of it. The left door is called the Gate of Hope and the right door the Gate
of Charity. There are Latin inscriptions of the Jesuit monogram 'I.H.S.'
for Iesus Hominum Salvator, or Jesus Saviour of Humankind, on these
doors. It is not difficult, therefore, to identify that this is a Jesuit Church.
There are ten ornamental columns of Ionic order symbolically supporting
this storey and realistically separating the panels, which are expressed in
r e c t a n g u l a r a n d d i a m o n d g e o m e t r i c p a t t e r n s . The e n t r a n c e tier
unequivocally confirms that this architecture is the House of God, and the
Fortress of Faith, Hope and Charity.
In the western corner, a foundation stone (Plate 20) commemorates
the event with the following Latin inscription:
VIRGIN I MAGNAE MATRI
CIVITAS MACAENSIS LIBENS
POSVIT. AN. 1602
It means 'To the Great Virgin Mother the City of Macau willingly placed
this in the year 1602'. It appears evident that the inscription is another
statement of the Jesuit's 'emergent' advocacy of the cult of Mary.
As we can see, the whole Facade is in a liturgical and iconographical
arrangement: while God (the Trinity) is in the centre of gravity, the Virgin
Mary (as the arch-intercessor) and the saints (as mediators) are placed on
Plate 20 The Foundation Stone
lower tiers. The hierarchical order implicitly denotes that the Virgin Mother
of God and the saints are possible 'channels of grace' from the stern
'divine judge' in Heaven.
In the main, the Facade steadfastly speaks for the Jesuits' devotion to
embody the notion of salvation. Its contrived design is much beyond the
intention of 'a sermon in stone' because it embraces a large collection of
'hidden symbolism' that is foreign not only to non-Christians but also to
some C h r i s t i a n s . The overwhelmingly rich semantic and syntactic
dimensions perhaps remain an aporia between the religious elites and the
general public. Moreover, the 'fashionable' symbols are significant because
religious traditions may ebb and flow over time. The symbol-saturated
Facade best illustrates the Portuguese attempt to exemplify the vital role
of myths and symbols as the corpus of a belief system: while it is a
bricolage of cross-cultural elements and architectural expressions, it is a
meeting point of different civilizations and an ethnic mosaic per se. There
emerges a kind of collage existence and reveals an epoch of extreme
religious fervour to acculturate the heathen Chinese by means of Western
Christianity.
Even in its ruins, the Facade is a testimony to the heyday of Macau.
It witnesses the glory of the Jesuits that is gone. Cryptically it seems to
evoke a mood of intense desolation and mysterious melancholy. After
climbing up a broad staircase of seventy steps in front of it, one would
expect to enter into a magnificent interior part of a church. However,
somewhat similar to a kind of 'surrealist' device, the stairs only lead to
the threshold of the 'free standing' Facade. Behind it, there is only 'a
world without meaning' (Plate 21 ).15 This sensation of unexpectedness
and eerie feeling of emptiness are not unlike the contents of a dream work
in Surrealist paintings in Europe in the early 1920s. The surrealist quality
Y
«.:
jmStibk
fiiilli!
Plate 21 The Back p .
of the Facade of St msr
Paul's
of this architectural work of art immediately creates a most haunting

allegory of the Jesuits' mission in the East: the intensity of their evangelical
efforts and their ultimate frustration of fruitlessness.
Nowadays, almost as much a symbol of Macau as the Eiffel Tower
is of Paris, the Facade is one of the most renowned landmarks. In the
'Expo 9 8 ' held in Lisbon, a 18-metre high synthetic replica — two-thirds
the height of the original — was reproduced in exact details as a
'frontispiece' to the Macau Pavilion (Plate 22). This was the first (and the
last) time that the 'last Portuguese colony' made its autonomous debut in
an international exposition, and the Facade was endorsed as a distinctive
symbol of Macau on the world stage.
Ma Zu Ge or the Temple of the Goddess of the Sea
If the Church of the Mother of God is seen as a Portuguese attempt at

socializing the native Chinese into a foreign culture, Ma Zu Ge (tlfflKJ)
certainly shows the Chinese state's subtle intervention in standardizing the
cult of Tian Hou into a national cultural practice. Ma Zu Ge (Plate 23),
better known as Ma Ge Miao (or Ma Kok Miu in Cantonese) (4IH)H),
or the Temple of A-Ma, or the Temple of Barra, 16 is dedicated to Tian
Plate 22 The Replica of the Fagade in the 'Expo 98', Lisbon
Plate 23 Ma Zu Ge
Hou ( ^ / p ) , the Goddess of the Sea. She is also the patron goddess of
fishermen, sailors and maritime merchants. 17 This Taoist deity first emerged
as a minor and regional spirit, but h o w and why was she transformed
into the nationally prominent status of Tian Hou, or Empress of Heaven,
or Consort of Heaven, who eventually parallels, if not challenges, the
religious power of Guan Yin and the Virgin Mother of God in Macau?
Tian Hou has various names. She is also known as Tian Hou Niang
Niang (Xf^M%); Ma Zu (Jiffl); and A-Ma (5541). She was the spiritual
representation of a living maiden, called Lin M o (#S£) (960-987), who
was born into a seafarer's family in Putian (Hf EH), Meizhou (?lj+l), Fujian
Province ( S S t ) . Hagiography has it that during her childhood, she never
cried or showed any emotion. At the age of 13, she became exceptionally
pious after having met a Taoist bonze who gave her charms and secret
lore. When she was 16, she fell into a deep trance one day and exercised
her magical power by saving her father and elder brother from shipwreck
— an incident that reinforces the precepts of filial respect. She refused to
be married to an older man chosen for her and committed suicide. Her
suicide may account for the means of her early death in the Tian H o u
myth. After her death, fishermen along the Fujian coast began to report
that they had been aided by the apparition of her image to safety (the
earliest appearance of her apparition was reported in 1086). She was soon
recognized as a shaman or medium capable of supernatural feats, and was
primarily looked upon as queller of disorder on the seas and guardian of
coastal stability.
Although Tian Hou originally emerged as a parochial water-spirit
during the tenth century, 18 she was absorbed as a significant Taoist cultic
figure. Like the processes of beatification and canonization in the Catholic
Church, the 'deification' of Lin M o into the state-approved pantheon was
governed by well-established procedures. It began with an imperial decree
citing the deity of her ability to tame the sea and to bring order to the
coast. After she had been recognized by the Chinese state authorities as
a sea deity, she was given a number of titles, but not until 1278 was she
ennobled as Tian Fei (^ffi), or Celestial Concubine. This honorific title
bestowed upon Lin Mo was, in a sense, the evidence of the striving
ambitions of the emperors of the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1280)
who propagated a cult alongside the expansion of the empire southward.
In other words, the coming into being of the cult of Tian Hou was closely
connected with the imperial state's geographical expansion and its cultural
hegemony in the southern peripheral regions.
During the Qing dynasty, Emperor Kangxi granted her an illustrious
title, Heavenly, Saintly Mother ( ^ ± S # ) , in 1680. She was raised to a
celestial position and given an imperial appellation Tian Hou in 1684.
Emperor Qianlong reiterated her exalted status in 1737. Through processes

of p r o m o t i o n and sanction by the Imperial Board of Rites, she was
eventually incorporated into the official pantheon of the state religion,
and came to join the mainstream of Chinese culture. 19 She became an
'approved' Taoist deity, as well as the leading Sea Goddess of national
importance in South China.
In view of the appellation conferred on Tian Hou, one can understand
how the Chinese state authorities played an important role in the religious
standardization of culture: they helped promote a regional spirit to the
celestial status of Empress of Heaven. The elevation of Lin M o to Tian
Hou well illustrated a mystic tendency to define a female deity as an
eternal bride or celestial consort. This was compatible with the secular
conceptualization of Heaven as the Supreme Emperor. Apparently, people
tended to endow other-worldly divinities with human marital bonding
and imperial hierarchic sentiments. The ennoblement, in essence, revealed
the Chinese state's conscious propagation of a local cult and its implicit
control of a folk belief through imperial sponsorship. As James L. Watsom
writes:
[I]t becomes apparent that the state intervened in subtle ways to

impose a kind of unity on regional and local-level cults. The
mass of peasants were seldom even aware of the state's
intervention. A surprisingly high degree of uniformity was
attained through the promotion of deities that had been
sanctioned by the Imperial Board of Rites and recognized by the
emperor himself. (Watson, 1985: 293)
The standardization of gods and rituals is taken as a key element in

fostering cultural unity despite ethnic diversity. After the myth of Tian
Hou had been integrated as an official cult, it spread all along the coast
of China, from close proximity to government administrative centres.
This transversal flow, as suggested by Kenneth D e a n , helps play 'a
politically significant role in defining the parameters of local n o n -
governmental collective action' (Dean, 1993: 32). This water deity also
became a symbol of coastal pacification. 20
Tradition holds that the subsequent offshoot of the cult of Tian H o u
in barely inhabited Macau was in the last quarter of the fifteenth century.
There are five versions of the same legend21 as to how the maiden goddess
came to M a c a u , but there is no mention of the reason why she was
'imported' to settle there. The five versions of the legend show a certain
degree of uniformity concerning the migration of a poor Fujianese maiden
who begged to be taken a dangerous sea journey to Macau. She successfully
overcame a violent storm on a small junk and safely landed on the spot
where the Temple was built. The episode strongly suggests that Tian Hou
in Macau is the direct 'manifestation' of Tian Hou in Fujian.
The reason behind Tian Hou's 'settling' at Barra Hill may need some
sociological and anthropological contextualization. When Macau was still
an isolated place, some Fujianese fisherfolk migrated there. 22 It was not
uncommon to have disastrous typhoons and tropical storms in the rough
South China Sea, and shipwrecks were a frequent hazard. The cult was
thus propagated in order to construct a mythic power, which the fishermen
could invoke for protection from storms and abundant catches of fish.
The offshoot of this cultic belief in Macau was hardly accidental. It was
the state strategy to foster a C h i n a - w i d e cultural system and to
conceptualize popular thoughts and rituals as a national culture. The
outwardly unitary symbolic character of Tian Hou, nevertheless, concealed
significant political manipulation in this tiny enclave in South China.
Tian Hou is a multifarious deity. Given her unmarried status (which
turns out to be the paragon of virtue), she is linked in a sororal relationship
with spinsters. Paradoxically, she is also perceived as a fertility goddess
to assume a divine interceding role for gynaecological and childbearing
problems. Her virginity is parallel to Guan Yin's and the Virgin Mary's
chastity and becomes a shared feature in different religious cultures. Even
though she is generally regarded as a Taoist deity, some commentators
maintain that she is consciously created to 'offset' the popular Buddhist
Guan Yin (Watson, 1985: 298), who is also venerated as the saviour of
shipwrecks. In addition, she shares some specific characteristics with the
Virgin Mother of God who has been apostrophized as the 'Star of the Sea'
and 'Port of the Shipwrecked'.
The emergence of the cult of Tian H o u coincided with the growing
popularity of the cult of Mary. The propagation of the two cults began
around the twelfth century. As we can see, people from both hemispheres
of the world were consciously involved in the making of a female divinity
out of the patriarchal world order to calm the sea. Perhaps due to increased
sea transport and maritime activities at that time, people from disparate
religious cultures had similar mental capacities to develop cross-cultural
characteristics of their own divinities. These deities were so similar to one
another that they became more or less identical counterparts.
The Temple of Tian Hou is situated at A-Ma-Gau, or the Bay of A-
Ma. It was first built in the Ming dynasty in 1488. The present structure
was built during the reign of Emperor Wanli (HM) (1573-1619). It was
periodically renovated and reconstructed. The Temple predated the arrival
of the Portuguese navigators. When they landed for the first time, they
used A-Ma-Gau as a reference point to rename the city as 'Amacao' or
'Amagao', which evolved to an abbreviated version of 'Macau'.
As John A. Brim points out, temples have been an important focus of

religious life and contribute to the system of maintaining alliance cohesion
(Brim, 1974: 102-103). The migration of Tian Hou to Macau thus offers
a kind of community-integrative function. In particular Ma Ge Miao has
served as a focus for community and religious activities. It also helps
sustain the Fujianese ethnic, linguistic and regional identity in Macau.
Needless to say, it provides a linking bond in ritual celebrations, i.e. Tian
Hou's birthday on the 23rd day of the third lunar month when fishing
people gather together for a common goal — safety and prosperity at sea.
Through collective rituals, the sea community of Fujianese fishermen and
the Tanka boat people 23 can attain integration into the land community.
In this vein, Ma Zu Ge constitutes a symbol of a transformed and invented
autochthony for Macau's floating population.
The image of the junk is crucial in the cult of Tian Hou as folklore
holds that a junk carried her to Macau. In the courtyard, there is a
Fujianese junk carved in bas-relief on a large boulder which commemorates
the legend (Plate 24). The carving is said to be more than 400 years old
and was sculpted at the time when the Temple was built (Tang, 1994:
151). On the stern of the junk there is a flag bearing four Chinese
characters: f'J^^cJU or 'Safely crossing the great river'. These inscriptions
invoke auspicious connotations to overcome the titanic force of the sea.
Plate 24 The Fujianese Junk in Bas-Relief

The junk, which looks remarkably like a Portuguese lorcha (or ship),
may parallel the carrack on the third tier of the Facade of St Paul's where
the Virgin Mary is in an attitude of prayer above it. The nautical tool
plays the role of a decorative motif as well as a sign of good omen and
blessings from the divine grace. It is obvious that the rough sea brings
shipwreck and causes loss of life to both the Portuguese and Chinese
communities in Macau. Both peoples manifest their desire to overcome
the sea in their own religious cultures. The junk and the carrack are
inseparably linked to sea adventurers whose lives and properties depend
so much on safe journeys. These two forms of the same motif create
different ethnic identifications but embrace the same aspiration for the
safety at sea. In both Portuguese and Chinese cultures, the junk and the
carrack are employed in artistic and religious expressions, which provide
examples of cultural and ethnic polyphony 24 in different historical and
social contexts.
The temple complex is a mishmash of scattered small temples and
shrines all over the slopes of Barra Hill, thus breaking the usual unity of
form in Chinese temple-architecture. Its chaotic disregard of conventional
temple structure and its detachment from architectural symmetry tellingly
reflect a 'daring' innovation in traditional design. It consists of the portico,
the courtyard, and four small temples (equivalent to chapels in a church).
The roofs are covered with glazed tiles with the characteristic Chinese
upturned eaves. While three temples are dedicated to Tian Hou, the fourth
one (at the top of the whole temple complex) is dedicated to Guan Yin.
This arrangement clearly suggests the hierarchical preference given to
Tian Hou who is commonly regarded as the patron goddess of Macau.
Guan Yin, therefore, becomes 'comparatively' less important than Tian
Hou.
Contrary to the architectural codes of the Facade where hierarchical
order is indicated from the top to the lower tiers, Ma Zu Ge shows the
hierarchy from the lowest point. On the Facade, at the centre of gravity
of the pediment is the Dove (signifying the Holy Ghost), the second tier
is Jesus Christ, the third tier is the Virgin Mary and the fourth tier are
Jesuit saints. The Temple, however, turns the architectural expressions for
hierarchy upside down — the top temple is not necessarily dedicated to
the highest-ranking deity. These two sacred spaces well exemplify that in
Portuguese and Chinese cultures ecclesiastical hierarchy is expressed
conversely in architectural arrangements.
The entrance of the Temple is guarded by two mythological stone
lions. As the lions on the Facade allude to Jesus' entombment for three
days and symbolize the Resurrection, the lions here are symbolized in
Chinese culture as auspicious and guardian deities that ward off evil
spirits. In this way, the same motif creates culturally differentiated

polyphonies.
At the main entrance in the portico, there is an arch and above it,
there are two dragons fighting for a huge pearl. The dragon is portrayed
as a combination of a carp's body and a dragon's head. This is in fact
another ethnic Chinese portrayal besides the snake-like form. 25 For the
Chinese, the imaginary dragon is regarded as 'a benevolent being who
brings prosperity and fertility and happiness to the world' (Hodous, 1929:
140). It is an emblem of imperial authority and 'the stamp and symbol
of royalty' (Werner, 1932: 284). By contrast, the dragon is a malevolent
being in Christian tradition and is a symbol of Satan as depicted on the
Facade. The dragon thus embraces opposite connotations and is represented
in conflicting images in different cultures.
Facing the entrance is the first subordinate temple dedicated to Tian
Hou. There is a Chinese couplet carved on two round pillars in praise of
her:
Translated into English as:
The holy heavenly virtue bountifully flows to the 'Mirror

of the Sea' 26
The motherly Empress' beneficence pours over 'Lotus Hill'2"7
The couplet is mellifluous and elegant in the vernacular, but one

misses the rhythm and skilful syntax in the English translation. Contrary
to the Chinese inscriptions on the Facade, this couplet was composed
with a more sophisticated literary language and with a careful selection
of the poetic names of Macau. There is also a great variety of lyric
Chinese poems, couplets and aphorisms inscribed all over the temple
complex. 28
To the right of the first temple before the stairs, there is a small shrine
dedicated to Tu Di (±iife, literally Soil-Earth), the Earth God, or the
Protecting Spirit of Rural Places (Plate 25). Tu Di is in fact very low in
rank in the hierarchy of the Taoist spirit world and his supernatural power
is limited. He is often enshrined in a miniature niche on the ground. Why
is the image not put on an elevated throne that is suitable for a minor
spirit? Legend has it that during the Ming dynasty when Emperor Taizu
(icffl) (1368-1399) was on his travels, he found that all the tables in an
inn were occupied by guests, except the one on which the image of Tu Di
JM* W i * *Qte
ri^JP
% & • > -
!•!
•n
Plate 25 The Shrine of Tu Di
was exposed. He then put the image on the ground and began his dinner.
After he had left without putting the image back on the table, the inn-
keeper did so, but the spirit appeared to him in a dream and told him that
he did not dare to contravene the Emperor's order because he was not
asked to go back to his place. Tu Di was so inferior that he was not even
endowed with any supernatural properties or rebellious courage to oppose
a living emperor, the Son of Heaven. Since then, the custom arose of placing
Tu Di on the ground, without any stand or platform (Werner, 1932: 528).
The legend not only accounts for the custom of placing Tu Di on the
ground but also illustrates how the hierarchy of power relations of this
world is projected onto the other-world. The 'two worlds' are looked upon
as a unified space with human sentiments.
On the right side of the courtyard, there is the main temple chamber
dedicated to Tian Hou. It is the biggest and the most refined architecture
of the whole temple complex. The image of Tian Hou is seated on the
altar and is robed in an elaborate Chinese bridal costume; there is also
gorgeous fringed head-dress hanging over her face (Plate 26). She is
Plate 26 Tian Hou at the Main Temple Chamber
unusually flanked by two Buddhist tutelary deities who are placed on the
side altars. They are the images of Di Cang Wang (JftSU) (right) and Wei
Tuo 29 ( # K ) (left). One may wonder why they are placed together and
why they are guarding the Taoist goddess.
Di Cang Wang, 30 or the King of the Subterranean Kingdom, is the
Chinese manifestation of Kshitigarbha, the Buddha of Nether Regions.
He visits Hell on errands of love and mercy and has an immense
compassion for the suffering souls. Wei Tuo, commonly known as the
God of Justice, is the Chinese manifestation of Veda (divine knowledge).
He is actually a Hindu deity but regularly invoked by the Chinese Buddhists
as defender of the Buddhist faith and protector of monasteries. In the
Buddhist world, Wei Tuo is the Prime Minister of Di Cang Wang and
this 'political' relationship may speak for their co-presence as guardian
deities usually flanking Guan Yin. They are Buddhist divinities but have
now 'transgressed' the religious boundary to guard Tian H o u . Their
transgression virtually blurs the demarcation between Buddhism and
Taoism, and reflects the Chinese penchant for eclecticism in religious
figures. At any rate, the juxtaposition of the images of fearful and terrific
form (Wei Tuo) and of pacific and calming form (Guan Yin and Di Cang
Wang) may point to a counteracting principle — harsh justice tempered
by mercy and compassion.
After a few flights of stairs, one can find the third temple, which is
much simpler than the previous two. Its altar is carved under a big rock
that serves as the back wall and forms a kind of balustrade over the altar.
This temple enshrines only Tian Hou who is also draped in an elaborate
Chinese bridal dress. It is so simple that it has no door and there are not
even guarding lions at the entrance. Although it is less popular than the
two bigger temples, it has significant symbolic meanings. It is believed
that a small temple for Tian Hou was first built on this very spot in 1488,
which predated the whole temple complex (Lei, 1988: 22). Why was the
'primordial' temple built on such a rocky site? In Chinese tradition, the
rock (or stone) is not only regarded as the source of human life, but also
denotes permanence, solidity and integrity. It is held to be the dwelling
place of gods (Cirlot, 1990: 274). This belief may suggest why 'a divine
abode' had first been built on this formerly steep and rocky spot before
two more temples were erected on the lower flattened area.
On the way up the hill, there is a small shrine for a stone-sculptured
image of Maitreya, the Coming Buddha. He is better known as the
Laughing Buddha (Plate 27). He sits down with feet pendent, and holds
a rosary in his left hand and a mystic bag in the right. The bag is one of
his attributes and hence his nickname 'cloth-bag priest'. The representation
Plate 27 The Laughing Maitreya

stunningly emphasizes the bodily lower stratum and imparts to him an

extremely peculiar image among the Buddhas. He is obese and half-naked.
He has a large mouth, long-lobed ears, chubby cheeks and small eyes. The
broad smiling face symbolizes his boundless forgiveness and the huge
abdomen his tolerance of the undesirable. In addition, the Laughing Buddha
seems to challenge the authoritative falsifications and pathetic seriousness.
He also furnishes a carnivalesque mode of reversal to liberate humankind
from the 'official' concept of the world. The carnival-grotesque image
readily brings to mind the Rabelaisian notion of the material bodily
principle in grotesque realism, which puts the hierarchy upside-down. 31
The image of Maitreya indeed parodies the prevailing artistic genre of the
Indian type. It is a totally ethnic Chinese invention dating from the early
Song dynasty (around 960). But we can see a 'serious' version of Maitreya
in the Trinity of Buddha in the first hall of Guan Yin Tang.
The highest subordinate temple, Guan Yin Ge or the Garret of Guan
Yin, is dedicated to Guan Yin (Plate 28), the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy.
Above the altar, there are four Chinese characters embroidered on a red
cloth which read: ~KW^f& or 'Great Compassion, Great Mercy', the
attribute for her compassionate providence. In addition, She is looked
upon as 'the captain of the Bark of Salvation, . . . the boat which ferries
Plate 28 Guan Yin at Ma Ge Miao

the souls of man across the sea of life and death to its final rest in the
Pure Land . . .' (Werner, 1932: 226). For this reason, Guan Yin, also
taken as the Goddess of Navigation, comes to be venerated in Ma Zu Ge.
Together with Tian Hou, she assumes the role of protecting mariners
crossing the sea, and metaphorically helps those who 'sail across' mundane
life to the eternal shore of Heaven.
Guan Yin is not flanked by the usual guardian deities — Di Cang
Wang and Wei Tuo. Instead, there is a porcelain image of Guan Yu (ffl
33) on the left hand altar. He is better known as Guan Gong (S1&), a
ducal title bestowed on him. Guan Yu (162-220 AD) (Plate 29) was a
historical hero of the Three Kingdom era in the third century. 32 He is also
one of the popular characters in the Chinese classic novel, Sanguo Yanyi
( H i i ^ i or The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), which was written
around 1394 by Luo Guanzhong. Guan Yu had long been systematically
forged as a symbol of loyalty and guardianship by the imperial state in
Plate 29 Guan Gong at

the Garret of Guan Yin
different dynasties. The earliest temple dedicated to him was established

in 713 in Hubei (SJdt). Like Tian Hou's 'metamorphosis', Guan Yu also
transcends a particular territorial identity and obtains a divine status in
the Taoist pantheon. The cult of Guan Yu shows yet another typical
example of the process of apotheosis common in China.
Guan Yu is represented holding a da dao (^cTJ) (or guan dao H7J;
it was named after him because legend has it that it was designed by him).
This traditional Chinese weapon was one of his attributes. In 1594, Guan
Yu was ennobled as Guan Di (Ifl'iff, 'Di' means ruler or king). This title
honoured him as Supporter of Heaven and Protector of the Kingdom. In
1813, he was grandiloquently canonized as Wu Di (iiS'Sr), in recognition
of his military prowess to defend the country from external threat. As late
as in 1856, the Qing government granted him another great appellation,
'Guan the Great Sage and Teacher'. 33 He is also one of the patron deities
of literature, 34 and in this respect he holds a book as an attribute. Guan
Yu is venerated by the literati chiefly because he was traditionally credited
with the ability to repeat the Chun Qiu Zuo Zhuan (#©(5:f# or The
Spring and Autumn Annals) 35 from beginning to end.
In addition, he is deified as Wu Cai Shen (S^Mtt), the Military God
of Wealth. 36 Given the specific cultural attributes of Guan Yu as one of
the wealth gods, C.K. Yang argues that Chinese religion virtually produces
no prominent cult against avarice or the devious acquisition of wealth.
The deification of Guan Yu as the Military God of Wealth thus entails
ethical connotations, i.e. to acquire wealth through the proper channel;
and to dispense it with moral tenets (Yang, 1970: 79).
The Chinese state authorities incessantly legitimized the myth of Guan
Yu. The various honorific titles posthumously conferred on him evince
the importance of this cultic figure, who is by and large one of the most
popular folk deities. He is looked upon as the very personification of
integrity and the embodiment of the paragons of righteousness, loyalty,
courage, justice, and generosity. He also assumes a multifarious role as
tutelary guardian of all brotherhoods, secret societies, and the police force,
not to mention that he is taken as the icon to ward off evil spirits. The
historical mortal has gained recognition from Taoism, Buddhism and
Confucianism. It attains full stature as the supernatural protector and a
symbol of Chinese national culture. Prasenjit Duara even contends that
no god is more identified as a representative of Chinese culture than Guan
Yu (Duara, 1988: 779-795).
On the right side of the Garret of Guan Yin, there are two tablets
inscribing Shi Gan Dang (5"®Cir), the Stone that Dares to Undertake, and
She Ji Zhi Shen ( t t S ^ t t ) , the God of the Soil and Harvests (Plate 30).
They are actually very minor Taoist deities 3 ' serving as guardians. Neither
Plate 30 The Aniconic Representation of Shi Gan Dang and She Ji Zhi Shen
are represented in anthropomorphic forms but are in stone tablets with

inscribed Chinese characters for identification. Shi Gan Dang is commonly
represented by an aniconic form of a stone as an antidote to malign and
inauspicious influences. In the complex pantheon of Chinese deities, why
is an inaminate object — the stone — elevated and 'canonized' with
supernatural powers to ward off evils? The origin of the custom can be
traced back to the period of feudal states when certain people of those
states had the surname of Shi (5"), meaning stone. They adopted the
words 'Gan Dang' as their family motto in expressing their bravery and
undaunted courage (Werner, 1932: 427). Later this family motto Shi Gan
Dang (the stone that dares to undertake/oppose) was, by mistake perhaps,
transferred to the actual stone which was assigned supernatural powers
that 'dare to undertake'. Although the stone is represented in an aniconic
form, it shares the same characteristics of a stone-carved lion in playing
a guardian role .38
She Ji is different from Tu Di who is only confined to a small section
of territory. She Ji controls a bigger area, which can even be a province.
Both Tu Di and She Ji have come to be responsible to Cheng Huang (feSc
PI), the City God, or the Guardian Divinity of the Walls and Ditches, who
is equivalent to the Celestial Mandarin of a city or town in human life.
He is held responsible for peace and order in the territory he governs.
Needless to say, Cheng Huang has more powers of jurisdiction because
both Tu Di and She Ji are his 'subordinate officers'.39 Cheng Huang has
in turn to report to the King of Hell.
We can discern that Taoism has established a 'divine' hierarchy for a

vast and complex system of gods. Like Greco-Roman mythologies, these
Taoist divinities are given responsibility for every conceivable aspect of
human life, and each locality has its own particular 'official' deity. As
Holmes Welch has noted, the spiritual hierarchy of immortals, divinities,
gods and goddesses from the lowest to the highest is an analogue of the
bureaucratic hierarchy of secular society — it is a kind of spiritual
bureaucracy that mirrors the civil one, so that in a sense two parallel
bureaucracies govern people's lives (Welch, 1957: 137-139). M a Ge Miao
is the very arena showing the system of bureaucratic hierarchy of the
spiritual world, which is modelled on this world.
The two mortals-turned-divinities, Tian H o u and Guan Gong, may
well suggest a mode of compromise between the Chinese state authorities
and local cult worship. They illustrate that Taoism goes hand in hand
with the imperial power to 'legitimize' regional beliefs. Taoism has not
only successfully developed a mechanism and a liturgical framework that
allow it to incorporate popular cultic figures into the universal Taoist
pantheon, but it has also maintained an integration with political order.
The processes are perhaps the most illustrious examples of Chinese
deification of historical figures vis-a-vis the elevation of Mary to the
'Mother of God' and the propagation of the M a r i a n cult during the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The commonality in apotheosis staunchly
reveals that myths and cultural symbols are not static but susceptible to
changes and transformations in different historical contexts.
Similar to a Christian church, which usually houses a variety of saints
in chapels and niches, Ma Ge Miao also displays a proclivity of enshrining
an assortment of divinities. But unlike the Christian church that never
honours any deity from other religions, this Taoist Temple is patently
dedicated to Buddhist deities — Maitreya, Guan Yin, Di Cang Wang and
Wei Tuo. The eclectic hodgepodge signifies a balance of power relations
between Taoism and Buddhism, and speaks for an interplay of mutual
influences. The Temple is a hybrid site that transgresses the intended
designation for Tian H o u but it contains a multiplicity of religious
meanings. It eloquently exemplifies the notions of religious syncretism
and eclecticism, 40 and is a fine example of a Taoist temple dedicated to,
and confounded with, a whole gamut of popular deities, regardless of
religious and doctrinal differences.
While the Facade manifests an encapsulation of Christian theology,
Ma Ge Miao offers a combination of Taoist-Buddhist ideas and constitutes
a microcosm of Chinese religions. Given these cultural idioms in Macau,
worshippers from both Taoism and Buddhism, and even those without a
clear idea of what religion they belong to, will gather together to pray for
divine blessings. The whole pantheon of deities provide them with chances
to select and adopt what suits best their fancy, or meets their requirements.
Indeed, Ma Zu Ge announces religious toleration of disparate beliefs and
attracts people from different social strata. It is unmistakably an intersection
of Taoism and Buddhism, and an arena showing the polytheistic tradition
of the Chinese belief systems.
Guan Yin Tang or the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy

If the promotion of the cult of Tian H o u is seen as the Chinese state
strategy to standardize a religious culture at the periphery, the reinforcement
of the cult of Guan Yin is another means of enculturating the natives of
Macau. It is a way to incorporate them into the mainstream of traditional
beliefs. In Macau, the 'sea people' mostly identify with Tian Hou whereas
the 'land people' identify with Guan Yin.41 The sea community and land
community may look upon Tian Hou and Guan Yin as two different
versions of the same deity and the two sectors of people come to sustain
a relationship of mutual exchange.
Situated in Wang Xia Village,42 Guan Yin Tang (HHf i?0, or the Temple
of Guan Yin (Plate 31), is the earliest and oldest temple in Macau dedicated
to Guan Yin ( H # ) . This deity is the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, who is
also associated with saving mariners from shipwreck and healing disease.
The Temple was built during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and the
present structure dates back to 1627. Since then there have been successive
renovations and repairs. The existing Ming-dynasty structure probably
exemplifies the finest Chinese classic temple-architecture in Macau.
Guan Yin Tang is a focus of local religious celebrations and rites of
passage. It consists of prayer halls, spacious courtyards, an interconnecting
complex of small temples and side halls. It is like a big labyrinth. At the
entrance to the main hall, there are superb tiled roofs with rows of
porcelain figures — a bricolage of mythological, historical and Buddhist
narratives — on the ridge-poles. The main building comprises three
successive halls and altars. Although one can derive from the name of the
Temple, which is undoubtedly dedicated to Guan Yin, the first two halls
are, however, in honour of the Buddha; only the third one is devoted to
Guan Yin. On both sides of the central building, there are semi-detached
wings containing administrative offices, residences of caretakers and monks,
and meeting rooms. In the left wing, there are several halls housing the
spirit tablets of the deceased. They are arranged along the walls in tiers.
In the right wing, there are several rooms and alcoves serving as funeral
parlours. At the back of the temple complex, there is a garden which
Plate 31 Guan Yin Tang
marks a historic moment in Chinese history. On 18 June 1844, the Treaty

of Wang Xia — the first treaty between China and the United States —
was signed by the Chinese Imperial Commissioner, Qi Ying (3fH) and
Washington's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Caleb
Cushing, on a stone table under a pavilion there.
The first hall enshrines the Three Precious Buddhas of the Pure Realm
of the Western Paradise. The three Buddhas, known as the Buddhistic
trinity, are in fact the manifestations of Lord Buddha. In the centre of the
altar, there is the historical Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha. He is better
known as Sakyamuni 43 (c. 563-483 BC), who is flanked by Amitabha and
Maitreya. Sakyamuni Buddha (the Enlightened One) is represented
e n t h r o n e d on a lotus flower, which is a symbol of transcendence.
Unconventionally, there is no urna, or the mark in the centre of the
forehead, which signifies the third eye of spiritual wisdom. Nevertheless,
the image is portrayed with an Indian touch — curly hair in spiral knots
which symbolize no end and no beginning. Furthermore, it is topped by
an ushnisha, or the curly knot, The ushnisha (= usnisa) is a symbol of
enlightenment and represents the Buddha's identification with the axis
mundi, or the world axis. On the left is Amitabha and in Chinese He is
A Mi Tuo Fu (P^SfPbW), the Buddha of the Past. He is also known as the

Buddha of the Western Paradise. On the right is Maitreya and in Chinese
He is Mi Le Fu (Sli&flfe), the Buddha of the Future. Maitreya is the
expected messiah of the Buddhists, i.e. the nearest correspondence of the
Buddhist god to Jesus Christ. The representation of Maitreya here is a
more 'serious' version than the one with a grotesque body type in Ma Zu
Ge. The facial depiction of the three Buddhas are identical. This strongly
reinforces the notion of the trinity; the three are the same as one — not
one, and yet not different. The Buddhistic trinity — past, present, and
future — is reminiscent of the trinity in Christianity — the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, that is, three persons in one substance.
The second hall is in honour of Guang Ming Wang Fu (Ttîfffi), the
Glorious Universal Buddha, who is often called the Eternal Buddha. He
sits on a lotus flower base and is in an attitude of meditation, which is
suggested by his mudra, or hand gesture.
The last and largest hall enshrines the image of Guan Yin, who is to
be found in almost every Chinese temple in Macau. Guan Yin is generally
considered a bodhisattva, 4 4 and is looked upon as an incarnation of
Avalokitesvara, 45 or the Lord Looking Down with Pity. There are two
origins of the cult of Guan Yin, one from India and one from China. The
Indian account holds that Bodhisattva was a male divinity and was highly
revered by the Mahayana School from the third to the seventh centuries.
He generally saved people from shipwreck and acted as a sort of Saviour
to the faithful. He bore some similarities with the Hindu God Vishnu and
played a role similar to that of the Virgin Mary. When he was about to
enter Nirvana (S5H), or salvation, to attain Buddhahood, he was believed
to postpone his entry in order to listen to the miseries of the world and
to save humankind out of extreme compassion. Given this 'postponement',
he is not yet the 'Enlightened One'. He remains an 'in-between' divinity
who is characteristically endowed with an interceding role and shows
immense compassion and mercy to the humankind. He is thus given the
title 'Great compassion, great mercy'.
According to the Chinese origin, Guan Yin was a female divinity. 46
Hagiographical account has it that she was the third daughter of Miao
Zhuang Wang (fc!>#t3E), a ruler of the northern kingdom in ancient China.
When she was young, she determined to devote herself to religious life,
and adamantly refused to be married. It appears that the refusal to engage
in sexual relations is the paragon of virtue that eventually leads to
'sainthood' of Guan Yin, Tian Hou, and the Virgin Mary. The plots of
their hagiographies share several traits. Contrary to her father's wish, she
entered into a nunnery where her father put her to perform degrading
duties. In spite of the punishment, she was even more devoted to her
v o c a t i o n . H e r father then ordered her to be executed but she was

miraculously transported back to life on a lotus flower, which denotes her
t r a n s c e n d e n c e from m o r t a l i t y ; hence the lotus flower is a salient
identification of Buddhism.
In the hall dedicated to her, Guan Yin is crowned with an elaborate
headgear and enrobed in a pink and white dress mottled with lotus flowers.
She is flanked by two attendants-in-waiting, Jin Tong (^fes), or the Golden
Lad, and Yu N u (3£^C), or the Jade Maid. On the altar, there is a small
statue of Guan Yin, who is portrayed having many arms at the back
forming a mandala-like fan, and inside each palm of the hands there
is an eye. This representation is known as 'A Thousand Arms and A
T h o u s a n d Eyes Guan Yin' ( i 1 ? - ^ I R H # ) . Why is she portrayed with
so many arms and eyes? Hagiography has it that Guan Yin's father had
fallen ill, and in order to show her extreme filial piety she cut an eye
and an arm and mixed them into medicine which subsequently saved
his life (Hodous, 1929: 72-73). 4 7 This episode undoubtedly represents
her as the very incarnation of the greatest virtue of feudal Chinese —-"
filial piety. When her father recovered, he ordered a statue to be erected
in her honour 'with completely formed arms and eyes' (:iîfeffll). But
the artisan misunderstood the order as 'with a thousand arms and eyes'
{=f^=fW) (Werner, 1 9 3 2 : 226). The Chinese sounds of 'quart9 £
(complete) and 'qiart ^c (a thousand) are so similar that a misunderstanding
is not impossible. Hence, Guan Yin is revered in this particularly Chinese
image of 'A T h o u s a n d Arms and A Thousand Eyes'. 48 The legend of
the artisan's inadvertent mistake is perhaps a pretext for the Chinese
to recuperate the Buddhist deity and reinvent it as an 'autochthonous'-
representation.
Similar to the portrayal of 'the Virgin and Child' in Christian art,
another popular image of Guan Yin depicts her as a young beautiful
w o m a n carrying a child in her arms. This portrayal is known as 'Guan
Yin Sends a Child' ( H # 5 ^ ^ ) — a representation that undoubtedly suggests
her role as goddess of fertility. However, this depiction is not exclusive
to the cult of Guan Yin. In a study of the cult of Tian Hou in Fujian, it
is observed that there is a ritualistic performance called 'Tian Fei Sends
a Child' (JUGM?) (Dean, 1993: 222). Thus, apart from their roles
associated with the sea, these two cults again are similar in that the two
virgin goddesses are regarded as patronesses of childbearing.
O n both sides of the hall near the wall, there are a total of eighteen
Luo H a n s (fUSt), 49 nine on each side. Luo Han is derived from Sanskrit
'Arhan' or 'Arhat' 5 0 who has passed through the different stages of the
Noble Path (or the Eight-fold Path), and can teach others how to attain
perfection. In China, Luo H a n is used to designating all famous disciples
of Sakyamuni; in particular He is connected with Hinayana Buddhism

(Werner, 1932: 259-261). These eighteen Luo Hans in Guan Yin Tang
are taken as patrons and guardians of Buddhism. The Bodhisattvas and
Arhans correspond to the saints and disciples in Judeo-Christianity, and
the hierarchy in ecclesiastical ranks is common to both religious beliefs.
On the left wing of Guan Yin Tang, there is a Chinese painting of
Maitreya, which at once reminds us of the stone-sculptured Maitreya
in M a Ge Miao. Their grotesquely indulgent body shapes and obese
facial types are very similar except that the Laughing Buddha here is
represented not sitting and holding a rosary but standing with his right
hand touching the protruding abdomen, and the left hand holding a bag
as his attribute.
The Chinese invention of Guan Yin with a thousand arms and eyes
and M a i t r e y a with an exposed a b d o m e n apparently creates n e w
expressional forms in art. Specifically, it articulates a unique modification
of B u d d h i s t deities a u t o n o m o u s of I n d i a n influence. T h e t w o
representations constitute a sense of autochthony and entertain the idea
that Chinese artistic creation is never a perfect mimicry of external practices.
Both M a Zu Ge and Guan Yin Tang enshrine a great variety of
Chinese deities and reflect the significance of myths in culture. According
to Bronislaw Malinowski, myth is not an idle rhapsody; neither is it an
aimless outpouring of vain imaginings. It is a hard-working cultural force
serving as 'a pragmatic charter' to buttress social institutions (Malinowski,
1954: 101). On the importance of myth, he says:
It [myth] fulfils a function sui generis closely connected with the

nature of tradition, and the continuity of culture, with the relation
between age and youth, and with the human attitude towards
the past. The function of myth, briefly, is to strengthen tradition
and endow it with a greater value and prestige by tracing it
back to a higher, better, more supernatural reality of initial
events. Myth is, therefore, an indispensable ingredient of all
culture. (Malinowski, 1954: 146)
These two temples serve primarily to maintain integrity; codify and

enhance belief; safeguard and enforce morality in the Chinese socio-cultural
ambit. In broader exegesis, they also exhibit eminently rich cultural
connotations and political overtones, i.e. the evolution of cultic beliefs;
the eclecticism of Chinese religions; the toleration of heterogeneity; the
process of deification; the Sinicization of Indian influence in art forms; the
imaginary hierarchy of the spiritual world and the Chinese state's strategy
to foster a national religious culture. These two temples cogently exemplify
the complexity in Chinese religious culture.
Two 'Civilizing' Forces

Just as the Facade survived the vicissitudes since the church complex was
destroyed by fire in 1835, so did Ma Ge Miao and Guan Yin Tang remain
intact and unscathed during the Nationalists' religious assault and the
Communists' anti-superstition campaign. The three landmarks have become
unique religious heritage sites, which speak for subtle cultural adaptations.
They are also the spiritual solace for people to express mundane anxiety
and to beg for consolation through the ontological and philosophical
quest for life's meaning. While the Facade tellingly reveals the Portuguese
religious conquest as one dimension of their colonial ideology, the two
temples manifest the Chinese political penetration and intervention in
religious disguise. They serve as a counter point to the 'foreign' religion.
The Facade is a monumental marker of the Lusitanian project to
disseminate Western legitimacy of knowledge — Christianity, whereas the
two temples are tangible signs exhibiting the Chinese imperial state's
historical imposition of a unified culture. The three venues exercise
surveillance and control by manipulating the 'myth-symbol' complex.
Moreover, they constitute as two 'civilizing' forces for both the Chinese
and Portuguese authorities to reinforce influence through religion. As we
can see, there is a synchronizing relationship between religious culture
and political ideologies.
The Virgin Mary, Tian Hou, and Guan Yin all assume the same
interceding role with the Supreme in Heaven. They form a 'trinitarian'
relationship to enculturate and acculturate51 the people in Macau behind
the mythical notion of salvation in the after-life. The development of the
three cults is concomitant with the establishment of Macau as a strategic
place by the two national authorities. These cults are, in essence, 'invented
traditions' and cultural manoeuvres of memory, symbol and myth for the
purpose of socialization. They are also used for the inculcation of religious
beliefs to serve different state (and ethnic) interests. They provide an
overall framework of meaning for different ethnic communities, and
significantly foster group cohesion and a sense of identity. The cultural
values therefore hinge on the 'invented traditions', which in turn echo
vernacular myth-motifs and styles. The invention of tradition, as Eric
Hobsbawm has put forward, 'inculcate[s] certain values and norms of
behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the
past' ( H o b s b a w m and Ranger, 1983: 1). These cultic practices are
ritualized, standardized and institutionalized by the intelligentsia and state
elites in order to generate an 'unchanging' and 'invariable' religious
structure. These cults help assure collective dignity, national identity and
solidarity. Above all, religious praxis is advocated for the purpose of
122 MACAU: A CULTURAI JANUS
intensifying the respective national bonding of the two peoples in Macau.

Religious allegiances are hence manipulated as the strongest organizing
element in maintaining political alliances.
In Macau, the proliferation of polymorphous Chinese beliefs may
reflect the Portuguese failure in introducing Christianity, and the Chinese
rejection of the Christian faith. One may ask why the zealous missionaries
were so ineffective in seeking Chinese converts in the 'Head of Christendom
in the East', where only a very small number of Chinese practised
Catholicism.' 2 This is especially so when compared to Spain's success in
making Catholicism a national religion in the Philippines. We may recall
that Christianity, as the absolute religion, changed Chinese mores, ruptured
accepted ideas, and above all, threatened to undermine the Chinese socio-
political order. Moreover, the preaching of Christian missionaries
contradicts Chinese dominant traditions and religious visions of the world.
In Chinese culture, the harmonization/syncretism of the Three Teachings
of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism (sL%kf\~~) has fostered a unified
cultural tradition since the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644). 5 3 It was
believed that there was only one truth (or the Way) but in the history of
humankind it evolved into many manifestations. The three religions actually
taught the same truth, or identical doctrines, only in different ways. The
unity of the Three Teachings hence became the mainstream of Chinese
culture's 'great tradition' and this specific Chinese sensitivity engendered
religious toleration and compromise among one another's belief systems.
Christian missionaries, however, laid a strong emphasis upon the
transcendent and universal nature of their religion, to say nothing of their
rejection of all temporal power and pagan beliefs. The differences between
monotheistic Christianity and polytheistic Chinese attitudes inevitably
created difficulties for missionaries to gain followers among the majority
Chinese in Macau. As Jacques Gernet has pointed out, in China there was
a hierarchy of deities and cults fixed by the state, and as a result, there
emerged a dominant tradition which integrated religion with political
order. However, Christianity fell outside this tradition and despised all
worldly values. Despite extensive evangelical efforts, 'Christianity was
impossible to integrate within the system of Chinese religions' (Gernet,
1985: 115). Because of this pantheistic spirit of Chinese religions, the
exclusive righteousness of Christianity could not erase or replace Chinese
culture's 'great tradition'.
Although Christianity appeared not appealing to the Chinese in Macau,
missionaries could still win some new recruits by attracting them with
money and presents. According to Chinese sources, early Chinese converts
in Macau were mostly poor and illiterate people, who would receive
financial aid annually after conversion. The literate were given even more
money (Zhang, 1995: 121-122). Thus the most frequent charge levelled
against missionaries by the Chinese officials were that they bribed the
Chinese in Macau into conversion and corrupted them with their gifts in
order to spread their 'deviant' belief.
At all events, M a c a u is a cultural juncture that constitutes a Janus
dimension of two distinct religious cultures: the Buddhist-Taoist and Judeo-
Christian beliefs. If the Ruins of St Paul's are the Lusitanian 'facade' of
Macau, M a Ge M i a o and Guan Yin Tang are no doubt the Chinese
'facade'. For some four centuries, the tete-a-tete of the virgin trio has
surprisingly exhibited a harmonious coexistence in Macau's socio-religious
milieu. Though their 'trinitarian' relationship converges into East-West
religious forces, none can eclipse the other. They are constructed as the
personification of the common religious ideology of extreme compassion
and mercy. Also, they help foster a sensibility for the Portuguese and
Chinese to tolerate cross-cultural attributes and infusions. Given their
'intertextual' nature and mutually complementary characteristics, different
ethnic groups in Macau tolerate one another's divinities and these specific
religious experiences eventually coalesce into a collective 'tradition' in
cultural vicissitudes.
Notes
1 According to the D e p a r t m e n t for the Preservation of Heritage in the C u l t u r a l

Institute, there are a r o u n d eighty Chinese temples in Macau. This figure, however-,.
excludes the altars and niches which are often found in streets or at the entrance to
households.
2 Folk religion designates the unwritten religious beliefs and practices of average people
within traditional Chinese society.
3 St Paul was looked u p o n as the first great Christian missionary and was a favourite
patron saint of M a c a u and Goa.
4 Father Spinola could not have supervised the construction because he left Macau for
Nagasaki in 1602 and was martyred there in 1623. See Special Issue on the IV Centenary
(1594-1994) of St Paul's in Review of Culture, N o . 2 1 , 1994 (in Chinese), pp. 2 7 - 4 0 .
5 Plates 15 to 19 are reproductions from M. Hugo-Brunt, 'An Architectural Survey of
the Jesuit Seminary Church of St Paul's, Macao,' Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. 1,
N o . 2, July 1954.
6 The venomous friction between the Japanese government and the Portuguese missionaries
began during the rule of Tokugawa lyeyasu, who assumed the shogunate in 1600. The
Japanese government came to suspect that the missionaries were trying to override
local political authority and to instigate internal dissension, which seemed to threaten
Japan's traditional social fabric. The Japanese then took a first step towards expelling
the Portuguese from Nagasaki in 1635. The Sakoku edict of 1638 finally put the full
measure of expulsion into law. The suppression prompted many Japanese Christians
flee to Macau in the first quarter of the seventeenth century and Japan terminated its
trade with Macau in 1639. See James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the
Habsburgs, 1580-1640 (London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 2 3 3 -
235.
7 A composite capital is composed of Ionic volutes and Corinthian acanthus-leaf
decoration.
8 There are some inaccurate descriptions on the Facade. Father Antonio Cardim, the
then Rector of the Collegiate Church of St Paul's, incorrectly reported in 1644 that the
Facade included bronze statues of St Peter and St Paul. Most probably he only saw the
tentatively proposed structure but not the completed work. Also, it might be due to a
shortage of fund that the two bronze statues were never cast. Anders Ljungstedt,
moreover, mistook the statue of Jesus on the second tier for that of St Paul in his 1832
publication. Nevertheless, it is somewhat ironic that there was no statue of St Paul
being put on the Facade of the Church which was also meant to honour him.
9 The Catholic Church now avoids using the term 'Co-Redeemer' which would offend
other Churches.
10 Nau is a generic term for sailing vessel; it is most often applied in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries to the carrack.
11 Grapes are a symbol of the Eucharistic wine which in turn denotes the blood of Christ.
12 A candelabrum is a symbol of spiritual light and salvation. The 7-armed candelabrum,
embracing a cosmic or mystic significance, may allude to the seven Churches in Asia
and the seven spirits that stand before Christ's throne (Apocalypse 1:4).
13 The olive-leaf, symbolizing peace, may derive from the story of N o a h . The dove
carrying an olive-leaf in her beak came to N o a h who then knew that the waters had
become low on the earth (Genesis 8:11).
14 Nowadays, the Song of Songs is considered a collection of love poems that are recited
at wedding celebrations.
15 Behind the Fagade was where the nave and the crypt of the Collegiate Church of St
Paul's once existed. Excavation was carried out in 1991 for building an open-air
'museum', but the appearance at the back of the Facade would not be affected.
16 The Portuguese call it the Temple of Barra because it leans against a Colina da Barra,
or Barra Hill. But the Chinese characters ' M a Zu Ge', inscribed at the entrance,
testifies to and proclaims the 'official' nomenclature.
17 On the origin of Tian Hou, see Wolfram Eberhard, Local Cultures of South and East
China (Leiden: Brill, 1968), p. 4 0 2 . See also Li Xianzhang, O Culto da Deusa A-Ma
(Macau: Museu Marftimo de Macau, 1995). O n Tian Hou in Macau, see Z h a n g
Wenyin, Aomen yu Zhonghua Lishi Wenhua (Macau: The Macau Foundation, 1995),
pp. 248-262.
18 The earliest known Tian Hou Temple in Fujian dates back to 1122. See David Johnson
(ed.), 'Origins of the Tien Hou Myth,' Popular Culture in Later Imperial China (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985).
19 Tian H o u continued to gain favour even after the fall of the Qing dynasty. In 1929,
for instance, the Republican government issued an order that Tian Hou Temples
t h r o u g h o u t the c o u n t r y were to be kept in good order. See Chen Ta, Emigrant
Communities in South China (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1939), p. 239.
20 Tian H o u can be viewed as a symbol of coastal pacification because the crumbling of the
Ming dynasty and the early efforts of the Qing dynasty to establish control over South
China resulted in a period of chaos for the coastal people of Guangdong and Fujian.
21 There are five different versions of the same legend concerning how Tian Hou arrived
at Macau. They are recapitulated and translated by Manuel Teixeira in The Chinese
Temple of Barra: Ma-Kok-Miu (Macau: The Information and Tourist Department,
1979). On an early Chinese version, see Yin Guangren and Zhang Rulin, Aomen JHue,
annotated and revised by Z h a o Chunchen, Anotacao e Revisao sobre Ou-Mun Kei-
Leok (Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1992), p. 24.
22 It is believed that the Fujianese fishing people were the first inhabitants of Macau.
23 The Tanka are a minority m the South China fishing community in Guangdong Province.
24 The Bakhtinian notion of 'polyphony' originally formulated in reference to the complex
play of ideological voices in the work of Dostoevsky. This music-derived trope calls
attention to the coexistence of a plurality of voices that do not fuse into a single
consciousness but exist on different registers, generating dialogical dynamism among
themselves.
25 The Chinese have a special preference for the carp, which symbolizes affluence,
endurance, courage, voracity, longevity, etc.
26 M a c a u is k n o w n poetically as Mirror of the Sea ( i i S ) , which suggests the shiny
surface of the (pre-polluted and pre-reclaimed) bay of Praia Grande.
27 Lotus Hill ( 3 P $ ) is another poetic name for Macau which designates its cartographic
shape being a resemblance to a lotus flower, with the land bridge forming its stem and
the peninsula itself the bud or flower.
28 On the details of the Chinese poems and inscriptions, and their English translation, see
Manuel Teixeira, The Chinese Temple of Barra: Ma-Kok-Miu (Macau: The Information
and Tourist Department, 1979).
29 Wei Tuo, a tutelary deva (spirit of heaven) borrowed from India and Tibet, is a military
Bodhisattva.
30 Di Cang Wang is not to be identified with Yan Lo Wang ( B L U i ) (Yama), God of Hell.
Di Cang Wang is held to be Over-Lord of Hell and is senior to Yan Lo Wang who,
with his ten judges, is in a subordinate position under him. See E.T.C. Werner, A
Dictionary of Chinese Mythology (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1932), p. 4 9 8 .
31 On the concept of grotesque realism, see Mikhail Bakhtin, Rebelais and His World
(Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1968), Introduction.
32 Guan Yu is often represented in a group of three, flanked by Zhou Cang {MM) (right),
his bodyguard, and Guan Ping ( M T ) (left), his adopted son.
33 O n G u a n Yu's posthumous titles since 220 AD, see Edwin D. Harvey, The Mind of
China (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1933), p. 264.
34 Wen Chang ( 3 t e ) (755-805 AD) is generally known as the Taoist God of Literature.
Other patron deity is Lu Tongbin ( S P S C ) , one of the Taoist Eight Immortals who is
honoured by the scholars as the God of Inkmakers.
35 It covers a time span from 722-468 BC recording historical events of some 250 years
by a number of writers.
36 On the various Gods of Wealth in Chinese folk beliefs, see Basil M. Alexeiev, 'The
Chinese Gods of Wealth,' a lecture delivered at the School of Oriental Studies, the
University of London (published by the School of Oriental Studies in conjunction with
the China Society, 1928).
37 On various Taoist deities honoured in Macau, see Huang Zhaohan and Zheng Weiming,
Taoist Religion in Hong Kong and Macau (Hong Kong: Calvarden Ltd., 1993).
38 Incidentally, I found the same motif of a stone as guardian to the main image in a Jain
temple in Jaislmer, India. In this light, Shi Gan Dang is not an exclusively Chinese
ethnic invention.
39 On Tu Di and Cheng H u a n g , see Ramon Lay Mazo, 'T'u-Ti Shen — Gods of the
Earth,' Review of Culture, N o . 5, 1988, pp. 60-64.
40 'Syncretism' denotes the reconciliation or fusion of conflicting religious beliefs or
principles, whereas 'eclecticism' means the selection of doctrines or elements from
various and diverse sources for the purpose of combining them into a satisfying or
acceptable style.
41 On the demarcation of boat people and land people in Macau, see Rui Brito Peixoto,
'Boat People, Land People: Approach to the Social Organization of Cultural Differences
in South China,' Review of Culture, No. 2, 1987, pp. 9 - 1 9 . See also Rui Brito Peixoto,
'Art, Legend and Ritual: Pointers to the Cultural Identity of Chinese Fishermen in the
South of China,' Review of Culture, N o . 5, 1988, p p . 7 - 2 2 .
42 Wang Xia Village was the only settled area before the Portuguese arrived. 'Wang' ( H )
in Chinese means look, and 'Xia' ( I ) represents Xiamen (W-fl). It can be surmised
that the settlers were from the coastal areas of Xiamen and Fujian and they named the
place as a nostalgic expression to look back at their native place.
43 Sakyamuni is a Sanskrit expression meaning Sage of the Sakya clan, that is, the Buddha's
clan.
44 In Sanskrit, 'Bodhi' means enlightenment, and 'sattva' means of essence. Bodhisattva
embraces the idea of grace, and is the image of perfect compassion and perfect
knowledge. It is virtually the emblematic representation of human ethics. Bodhisattva
can be considered an 'apprentice Buddha' or 'Buddha-in-the-making'.
45 In Sanskrit, 'Avalokitesvara' means all seeing one and ail hearing one. 'Avalokita'
means looking on, and 'svara' means sound. The Chinese translation of Guan Yin
means 'looking on, or heeding, the sound or cry of the world'.
46 Before the Tang dynasty (618-906) Guan Yin was honoured as a male figure. Some
images at the Dunhuang Grottoes in Gansu Province, however, are androgynously
portrayed.
47 There is another version saying that she only 'cut the flesh from her arms' and mixed
into the medicine. See C.A.S. Williams, Chinese Symbolism and Art Motifs (Rutland:
Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1988), pp. 2 4 1 - 2 4 4 .
48 'A Thousand Arms and A Thousand Eyes Guan Yin' does not necessarily have one
thousand in number, but only means 'many'.
49 The eighteen Luo Hans are the personal disciples of the Buddha.
50 In Sanskrit, 'Arhan' or 'Arhat' means 'Destroyers of the Enemy (i.e. Passions)', 'Deserving
and Worthy', or the 'Worthies'.
51 The term 'enculturation' denotes a process by which an individual learns the traditional
content of a culture and assimilates its practices and values. It is the process of
socialization of one's own culture. In a slightly different vein, 'acculturation' is a
process of intercultural borrowing marked by the continuous transmission of traits of
elements between diverse peoples, and thus results in new and blended patterns. To
acculturate is to cause (a people) t o adopt the culture of another.
52 Today, there are about 24 000 Catholics, constituting 6.7% of the total population.
Among these Catholics, 69.6% are of Portuguese nationality. Buddhism is the dominant
religious belief constituting 1 6 . 8 % .
53 Lin Zhaoen (tWkJH) (1517-1598), whose birthplace was the same as Lin M o , lived
in a period when syncretic forces flourished. He advocated and manifested religious
syncretism of the Three Teachings in its clearest and most detailed form in Chinese
history. See Judith A. Berling, The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao-en (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1980), Chapter 3 'The Heyday of Syncretism.' See also
Bartholomew P.M. Tsui, Taoist Tradition and Change (Hong Kong: Christian Study
Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1991), pp. 2 8 - 3 4 .
Colonial Stereotypes,
5 Transgressive Punishment
and Cultural Anthropophagy
The 'Twain' Meet

'Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet . . . ' .
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Neatly dividing the world into two fixed entities — the East and the West
— is perhaps to simplify the world of humankind which constitutes a
t o t a l i t y of i n t e r c o n n e c t e d p r o c e s s e s , m a n i f o l d e n c o u n t e r s a n d
confrontations. Concepts like 'nation,' 'society,' and 'culture' do not only
embody multifaceted human linkages, connections and contacts, they are
also the contested outcome of many contradictory relationships. 'The
West' as a society and civilization is postulated to be independent of and
in opposition to 'the East'. This appears to be part of the dominant
strategy of colonial power, and inevitably creates false models of reality.
Also, the attempt to specify separate cultural wholes and distinct boundaries
equally denies a temporally and spatially changing and changeable set of
human relationships.
H u m a n societies, as pointed out by Alexander Lesser, are not closed
systems, but rather open systems in which h u m a n aggregates are
'inextricably involved with other aggregates, near and far, in weblike,
netlike connections' (Lesser, 1961: 42). From such a perspective, Eric
Wolf maintains that the world is seen 'as a whole, a totality, a system,
instead of as a sum of self-contained societies and cultures' (Wolf, 1982:
385). Wolf's concept of culture is largely predicated on the connectedness
of human aggregates and on the responsive interaction to larger economic,
political and ideological forces.
The idea of the East, or the Orient, is an artifact of the European
imagination of its 'Other'. The division of the East and the West thus
constitutes an imaginary geography. The difference of the Orient becomes
the starting point for theories, descriptions, accounts and generics. Edward
Said's notable cultural criticism of Orientalism, a discourse crystallized in
the late eighteenth century, is the very study of how ideas and images
were represented and constructed by the West. As a discursive formation
centred on fundamental othering, Said's thesis is extensive, but central to
it are two main points: first, images stress the Orient's radical separation
from and in opposition to the West; secondly, images invest the Orient
with a timeless essentialism (Said, 1978: 4 3 , 70).
In his study of Orientalism as a mode of Western authoritative discourse
of power-knowledge and way-of-thinking-about-East, Said contends that
while 'manifest Orientalism' is an academic discipline focusing on the
Eastern geography, people, customs, history and languages, 'latent
Orientalism' relates to a style of thought that produce a set of essentialized
'common knowledge' about the East. It is expressed in generic prejudices,
stereotypes of people and ideas. This style of thought is constructed, if not
concocted, as an all-encompassing representation of the Orient. It is also
seen as a form of knowledge about the Orient. Orientalism as a dialectical
process, as argued by James G. Carrier, 'is not merely a Western imposition
of a reified identity on some alien set of people. It is also the imposition
of an identity created in dialectical opposition to another identity, one
likely to be equally reified, that of the West.' (Carrier, 1992: 197) In other
words, the disciplines of Orientalism create a set of interrelated, essentialist,
and reified understandings that people have of themselves and of others.
Orientalism is a Western style for dominating, articulating, restructuring
and having authority over the East. The Orient thus becomes the West's
imaginative 'Other', which at once poses an insinuating danger and creates
an ambivalent scenario. In the words of Said, 'The Orient at large . . .
vacillates between the West's contempt for what is familiar and its shivers
of delight in — or fear of — novelty.' (Said, 1978: 59) It is this kind of
ambivalent vacillation that makes the East a place of phobia and fetish.
In essence, Orientalism is Western ethnocentrism and a repository of
Western fantasy; in particular the latent Orientalist discourse creates an
Eastern generic in support of the West's superiority. This Western
'knowledge of the Orient' puts the West on top in a series of binary
relationships. The Orientals might be thought and assumed to be 'irrational,
depraved (fallen), childlike, "different" ', by contrast, the Occidentals would
be regarded as 'rational, virtuous, mature, "normal" ' (Said, 1978: 40).
These disjunctive representations nonetheless reinforce the difference and
create an unbridgeable gap between East and West. They also produce the
East in a displaced and de-centred way that is inferior to the West.
Orientalism, developed as a discursive construction, provides powerful
evidence of the complicity between politics and knowledge.
COLONIAL STEREOTYPES, TRANSGRESSIVE PUNISHMENT AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOPHAGY 129
Said's argument of a semiotic of Orientalist power may introduce

a new topic in the territory of colonial discourse — the stereotype,
proposed by Homi Bhabha. Bhabha's colonial stereotype is the fixed form
of difference as well as an arrested, fetishistic mode of representation.
For Bhabha, stereotyping is crucial in the colonial system in that the
colonized is produced as a fixed reality that is at once knowable and
visible. Somewhat like the Orientalist discourse, the stereotype is 'a much
more ambivalent text of projection and introjection, metaphoric and
metonymic strategies, displacement, over-determination, guilt, aggressivity;
the masking and splitting of "official" and phantasmatic knowledges to
construct the positionalities and oppositionalities of racist discourse'
(Bhabha, 1986: 169). The stereotype is thus a mediated representation
of a given reality, the disavowal of difference, and the scenario of colonial
fantasy. It creates the ambivalent polarity between the colonizer (West)
and the colonized (East). It vacillates between identification and alienation;
fear and desire; phobia and fetish; fantasy and defence in the discourse
of colonialism.
Bhabha identifies the stereotypical signification with Fanon's epidermal
schema — fetishistic and scopic, and Lacanian Imaginary — narcissism
and aggressivity. He argues that these four forms of 'identification' become
'the fullness' of the stereotype and constitute the dominant strategy of
colonial power (Bhabha, 1986: 164). Bhabha's stereotype is in effect an
intertextuality of contemporary cultural critiques and theories in relation
to colonial discourse.
Macau is a space of colonial encounters which Mary Louise Pratt
would call the 'contact zone' or the 'colonial frontier'. By 'contact zone",
Pratt means 'the space in which peoples geographically and historically
separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations,
usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality and intractable
conflict' (Pratt, 1992: 6). Pratt's coinage of the 'contact zone' invokes the
spatial and temporal co-presence and interaction of peoples whose
trajectories now intersect. Given its characteristics as a contact zone for
the East and the West, Macau has been the place where 'the twain meet'.
The following section thus examines colonial stereotypes of this crossroads
through literary texts.
Western Literary Stereotypes of Macau

Bhabha's colonial stereotype apparently encompasses negative attitudes.
Stereotyping, which is often based on partial 'truths', is not necessarily
wrong. However, this fixed pattern of representation is easily misleading
a n d renders twisted images of members of a community. When the

stereotype is taken to prejudicially exaggerate distortions, create false
expectations and reinforce misjudgment, it would become an imperialism
of the mind which is fed by what it absorbs. It would also blunts readers'
critical sensibilities for an awareness of different cultural matrices.
Since its founding in 1557, Macau has often been contrived and 're-
presented' as an exotic place by Western writers, who incessantly pander
to the myth of the mysterious and seductive Orient. Through the Orientalist
construct, this colonial space has somewhat become the West's Other.
There are paradoxical images of Macau reflected in a range of cliches and
stereotypes in missionary journals, travel memoirs, travellers' tales, poems
and novels.
In its heyday, Macau was beautifully reported by Father Antonio
Cardim, an ardent Portuguese Jesuit and the Rector of the Collegiate
Church of St Paul's, w h o wrote in 1644:
Macao is put together of very fair buildings and is rich by

reason of the commerce and traffic that go on there by night
and by day; it has Noble and Honourable Citizens, it is held in
great renown through the whole Orient inasmuch as it is the
store of all those goods of gold, silver, silk, pearls, and other
jewels, of all manner of drugs, spices, and perfumes from China,
Japan, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Siam, Cambodia, Macassa, Solor,
and above all for that it is the Head of Christendom in the East.
(Cardim, quoted in Francis, 1930: 2)
The seventeenth century was the Golden Age of Macau. It was not
only portrayed as a prosperous commercial centre with good people, but
was also likened to 'Rome in the Far East'. Contrary to these paradisal
images, William Hickey, who visited Macau in 1769, wrote the following
spiteful account:
I, therefore, after dinner went on shore to this miserable place

[Macau], where there is a wretched ill-constructed fort belonging
to the Portuguese, in which I saw a few sallow-faced, half-
naked, and apparently half-starved creatures in old tattered coats
that had once been blue, carrying muskets upon their shoulders,
which, like the other accoutrements, were of a piece with their
dress. These wretches were honoured with a title of soldiers.
Not only the men, but everything around, bespoke the acme of
poverty and misery. Satisfied with what I had seen, and nothing
tempted by a printed board indicating the house upon which it
was fixed to be "The British Hotel," where was to be found
"elegant entertainment and comfortable lodging," I did not even
take a look within, but walked as fast as my legs could carry me

to the sea side, where Maclintock, as disgusted as myself with
Macao, had procured a boat, in which we returned to our own
really comfortable apartment on board the "Plassey". (Hickey,
quoted in Quennell, 1975: 121-122)
In Hickey's memoirs, Macau in the eighteenth century was a disgusting

port. He creates a binary opposition between the outside and the inside,
that is, the shore of Macau and the cabin of the sail boat, and makes a
contrasting comparison of the Other's world with his own world. Hickey's
impression of M a c a u thus constitutes familiar polarities favouring the
West while the East is miserable, poor and uncivilized. In addition, with
the same colonialist gaze as Christopher Columbus, Hickey describes the
Asians (as suggested by their 'sallow-faced' appearance) in Macau as
'creatures' and 'these wretches'. He patently denies them the status of
human beings, but puts them in the category of animals because the word
'creatures' totally negates their humanity. It implies that they have no
souls and that they are not even subhumans. The Orientalist's aloof
contempt is overtly exhibited towards the sallow-faced people in Macau.
In 1829, Harriet Low (later Mrs Hillard), an American lady of twenty
years of age, arrived at Macau and recorded its exotic beauty in her diary:
Macao from the sea looks beautiful, with some most romantic
spots. We arrived there about ten o'clock, took sedan chairs and
went to our house, which we liked the looks of very much. The
streets of Macao are narrow and irregular . . . All the paths are
of flat stones, and are as smooth as a floor. You ascend five
flights of steps and come to an observatory, from which we
have a fine view of the bay and harbor, and can see all over the
town. Round the observatory there is a terrace, and there are
many pretty plants. With this little spot and a few birds I shall
get along very comfortably. I had no idea there was so pretty
a place here, but I want some one to enjoy it with me. (Hillard,
1900: 28)
Like a supplement to Father Cardim's description, Harriet Low's Macau

is an Arcadia full of idyllic purity and undefiled by any human foolishness.
Her views on Macau readily remind us of Miranda's ironic, if not naive,
remark in Shakespeare's The Tempest when she first meets the Europeans
to w h o m she expresses wonder, admiration and excessive optimism:
O, Wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't! (Act V.I: 182-184)
Similar to Miranda's unmediated exaggeration, Low's picturesque

portrayal of Macau also endorses a kind of 'New World' beauty and
Utopian admiration. However, what Low admires is the scenery of Macau
whereas Miranda is fascinated with the people from Naples. But Macau
is made analogous to Naples and the South China boat girls are depicted
like Miranda's 'beauteous mankind' in Robert Elwes' travel journal:
The town is quite in the Portuguese style, and is very prettily

built and situated, running, like Naples, in a curve round the
bay. . . . While we lay off the town, little Tanka boats came out
to the steamer for passengers, rowed by young girls, with as
fresh red faces as many country girls in England. They are better-
looking than most of the Chinese, not that their features are
very handsome, but they are good-tempered, and their laughing
mouths show fine white teeth, affording a contrast to the sallow
complexions and indented eyes which generally characterize the
Celestial race. Their figures are round and plump, their hands
and feet generally small and well formed, and the latter are
never bandaged up and deformed like those of the higher classes.
(Elwes, 1854: 336)
Elwes' Macau is indeed attractive — with a perfect crescent bay and

unsullied Tanka girls who look like English country girls but possess
distinctive South China features. Above all, it is a haven which eschews
the custom of foot-binding of the Chinese elite class.
Following Robert Morrison's arrival at Macau in 1807, Protestant
missionaries thronged to evangelize the heathens in the East, and Macau
served as a base. In a journal concerning the introduction of Christianity
to China, the Reverend George Smith, who arrived in 1844, gave the
following Arcadian impression of Macau:
The view of Macao is very striking, as seen from the harbour,

and the place itself forms the most delightful residence open to
foreigners in China. Having been for two centuries in the
possession of the Portuguese, it presents to the eye the aspect of
a European city, with its assemblage of churches, towers, and
forts. . . . The European houses are spacious and of handsome
exterior. . . . Macao, in many respects, resembled a fashionable
watering-place in England, and abounded with the comforts,
the refinements, and even the luxuries of European life. (Smith,
1972: 67-68)
For the Reverend Smith, Macau had already been Europeanized and
resembled England. It was the missionary station proper for proselytizing
the natives with Protestantism. His rosy picture of M a c a u , like Father
Cardim's, was also shared by Laurence Oliphant. He was the private
secretary to Lord Elgin, and they arrived at Macau in 1857 on a special
mission to China and Japan. He wrote:
Its [Macau's] air of respectable antiquity was refreshing, after

the somewhat parvenu character with which its ostentatious
magnificence invests Hong Kong. The narrow streets and grass-
grown plazas, the handsome facade of the fine old cathedral
crumbling to decay, the shady walks and cool grottoes, once the
haunt of the Portuguese Poet; his tomb, and the view from it,
all combined to produce a soothing and tranquillizing effect
upon sensibilities irritated by our recent mode of life. (Oliphant,
1970: 66-67)
Macau is described here somewhat like the 'lost Shangri-la' where the
narrow streets, the Ruins of St Paul's and the Grotto of Camoes become
elements for sentimental nostalgia of Macau's past greatness. Moreover,
M a c a u ' s antiquity is c o n t r a s t e d with H o n g K o n g ' s o s t e n t a t i o u s
magnificence. During Lord Elgin's 1857 sojourn in M a c a u , another
correspondent, George Wingrove Cooke, even stated in his letter (first
published in 1858) that Hong Kong could not compare with Macau's -
admirable environment:
Macao is open to the sea-breeze, which Victoria is not. . . .

Macao also has shady gardens and pleasant walks and rides,
and is the only place where the poor Hongkongian can go to
change his atmosphere. Macao possesses the grave of Camoens,
which may be an important fact to some people. But I agree
with the American poet, who has pencilled upon the tomb, "I
can't admire great Camoens with ease, Because I can't speak
Portuguese". (Cooke, 1972: 70)
Even though Cooke was fascinated with Macau's sea-breeze and shady
gardens, he was somewhat contemptuous of one of the greatest Portuguese
poets, Luis Vaz de Camoes. The language barrier was seen as a pretext
for negating the literary achievement of Camoes w h o composed the
Portuguese epic, Os Lusiadas. His impression of Macau oscillated between
admiration and contempt.
Macau was also admired by Sir John Bowring, the then Governor of
Hong Kong (1854-1859), who wrote an eulogy to M a c a u in 1849:
'Sonnet to Macao'
Gem of the Orient Earth and open Sea,
Macao! that in thy lap and on thy breast
Hast Gathered beauties all the loveliest,
O'er which the sun smiles in his majesty!
The very clouds that top each mountain's crest
Seem to repose there, lingering lovingly.
How full of grace the green Cathayan tree.1
Bends to the breeze and now thy sands are prest
With gentlest waves, which ever and anon
Break their awakened furies on thy shore!
Were these the scenes that poet looked upon;
Whose lyre though known to fame knew misery more?
They have their glories, and earth's diadems
Have nought so bright as genius' gilded gems!
(Bowring, quoted in Teixeira, 1980: 7-8)
Macau is hailed as the 'Gem of the Orient Earth' which is juxtaposed

with the 'Pearl of the Orient', an eulogistic title given to Hong Kong. In
the sonnet, Sir J o h n keeps circling around the image of the Arcadian
landscape. He is fascinated with the tropical ambience of the open sea,
the breeze, the gentlest waves, the smiling sun, the clouds, the mountain,
and the green banyan tree — a typical Orientalist fantasy. Above all, in
the last stanza he exaggerates Macau's heyday glory, which in fact declined
from the time that Hong Kong began as a free port and took trade away
from Macau. The prosperity of Macau was practically wiped out by the
establishment of the deep-water port of Hong Kong as a British colony.
It seems as though retribution had fallen upon Macau where the harbour
was easily silted up by the detritus brought down by the Pearl and West
Rivers.
Although Macau was economically eclipsed by Hong Kong, it turned
out to be a favourable recreation venue for Hong Kong merchants and
residents. The Reverend John Turner, a missionary in China, visited in
1890 and wrote, 'The usual resort of foreigners seeking the benefit of the
sea-air in the hottest weather is the ancient Portuguese colony of Macao.'
(Turner, 1982: 137) At the turn of the twentieth century, Macau was still
constructed in a traveller's guidebook as an exotic tropical resort with
irresistible charm:
Many a picturesque view is to be obtained, the fine sweep of the

Praya Grande being universally admired.
The streets are kept beautifully clean and the public and private
buildings are often gaily coloured.
All lovers of poetry and literature will cherish Macao as being
at one time, the residence of the celebrated Portuguese poet
Camoens. The climate is pleasant and there is but little bustle
and noise; so being within convenient reach of Hongkong and
Canton [or Guangzhou in Putonghua] it forms a pleasant retreat
for those who are seeking rest and quiet. (Ball, 1905: 2)
Apart from the textual images of Macau, its visual images have been
introduced to Westerners through the paintings and drawings of George
Chinnery and other nineteenth-century artists, such as Thomas B. Watson
(Chinnery's pupil), Marciano A. Baptista, James T. Caldwell, William
Prinsep and Auguste Borget. Chinnery (1774-1852), 2 an Irish artist, was
active in Macau between 1 8 2 5 - 1 8 5 2 and his artistic creation mainly
reflected the vivid portrayal of the Lusitanian/Iberian churches, street
scenes, the Tanka minority, and his friends. 3 Since he left London for
India in 1802, he was completely isolated from his artistic contemporaries.
Hence, his works have been considered to be of only moderate interest by
Western art critics who maintain that his oeuvre is outside the mainstream
of European art. Despite these comments, Chinnery left an invaluable
'visual' chronicle of nineteenth-century Macau, which was virtually a
charming fishing village dotted with beautiful churches. Given his long
sojourn in Macau, it is believed that he tried to seek refuge on the South
China Coast from double embarrassments: his financial problems and his
estranged wife. In Bits of China, William Hunter perhaps verifies this
conjecture, 'Macao was then the asylum of the East, open to all, bond or
free, and thus it became a proverb, Macao is the paradise of Debtors and
of Tan-Kas [sic].9 (Hunter, 1911: 272)
Contrary to Macau's comparatively positive image as a station for
evangelization, an ideal tropical resort and a fishing paradise, it was also
described as a lawless haven for piratical activities by George W. Cooke.
He wrote in 1857:
The vessels employed in this convoy service were Portuguese

lorchas [ships]. These vessels were well armed and equipped.
There were no mandarin junks and no Portuguese ships of war
to cope with them or control them, and they became masters of
this part of the coast. It is in the nature of things that these
privateers should abuse their power. They are accused of the
most frightful atrocities . . . They became infinitely greater
scourges than the pirates they were paid to repel . . . It is
alleged, also, that complaints to the Portuguese consul were [in]
vain . . . Rightly or wrongly, the Chinese thought that the

consul was in complicity with the ruffians who were acting both
as convoy and as pirates. (Cooke, 1972: 130)
For Cooke, M a c a u was a base for piracy and the Portuguese were
both the police and bandits in the South China Sea. Alexander Michie
also described M a c a u as a piratical centre. In his travel reminiscences
written in 1897, he contended that it was an asylum where people feared
no law, human or divine (Michie, 1900: 295).
In a travel journal written by Henry Norman (first published in 1895),
there is a chapter called 'Macao: the Lusitanian Thule' 4 in which Norman
makes a degrading generic description of the Chinese in Macau: 'the
Chinaman [is] the greatest gambler on earth' (Norman, 1907: 191). In
addition, Macau is ironically dubbed 'the Monaco of the East' (Norman,
1907: 190), which constitutes a contrasting image to Father Cardim's
'Head of Christendom in the East'. Similarly, in a travel book called The
Hong Kong Guide, (first published in 1893), Macau is proudly extolled
as 'the centre of the gambling spirits of South China' (The Hong Kong
Guide, 1982: 135). What is highlighted as the chief allure in Macau are
the casinos which are not allowed in Hong Kong.
In addition, Norman gives a racist impression of the Chinese language,
'Macao is a tiny haven of rest, where the street is free from the detestable
ceaseless chatter of Chinamen, where the air is fresh and the hills green'
(Norman, 1907: 184). The word 'chatter' denotes the sounds of monkeys
and apes. The description of the 'chatter' of incomprehensive noises
immediately serves to mark real h u m a n beings as creatures, if not
barbarians. Like George W. Cooke's inability to understand the Portuguese
language in appreciation of Camoes' poems, Norman is also handicapped
by his ignorance of the Chinese language, but their linguistic deficiencies
turn out to be the reason for their contempt of the 'sounds of Babel'.
Norman's Macau is actually a hell on earth, where the legalized coolie
trade flourishes:
. . . [D]uring these twenty years uncounted thousands of coolies

were decoyed, entrapped, stolen, and pirated to Macao, kept
prisoners in the gloomy "barracoons," whose grated windows
are still everywhere visible, theoretically certified as voluntary
contract labourers by an infamous profit-sharing procurador, and
then shipped to toil, and starve, and rot, and die in mines and
fields and plantations everywhere . . . (Norman, 1907: 185-186)
Given the 'manifold villainies' of Macau, Norman pertinently points

out, 'Like Satan, Macao was "by merit raised to that bad eminence" '
(Norman, 1907: 185). He reiterates, 'whenever one wickedness was stopped

in Macao it was quick to find another' (Norman, 1907: 188). Above all,
he laments John Bowring's exaggeration and hypocrisy by extolling Macau
as the 'Gem of the Orient'.
Having engaged in all wicked dealings — opium-trafficking, the sordid
trade in coolies and licensed gambling business 5 — the Portuguese
government of Macau gathered a great revenue and furnished a respectable
annual tribute to the needy mother country. This is a further example of
the paradoxical 'centrality' of the province, Macau, to the imperial centre,
a situation in which it is turned into the site of Portugal's celebration of
its national pride and past greatness by the erection of statues (as discussed
in Chapter 2). Under these circumstances, Macau readily foregrounds one
side of its Janus faces as the guardian of the colonial state: as Portugal
declines, Macau is increasingly called upon to 'protect' it financially and
culturally.
The colonial relationship between Portugal and Macau stood in stark
contrast to the colonialist ideal represented in Rudyard Kipling's 7-stanza'
poem, 'The White Man's Burden' (1899), in which he elaborates the
paradox and the theory of Empire building from the ideological perspective
of a mature imperial power. The White Man is, according to Kipling,
laden with the paternalistic duty to rule and take care of the 'Half devil
and half child', and 'seek another's profit,/And work another's gain'. But
the ageing imperial centre, Portugal, like all colonial powers in reality,
failed to realize this idealized function and reaped a tremendous profit
from its subject people. Portugal not only failed to 'Fill full the mouth of
Famine/And bid the sickness cease', but also, in the words of Montalto,
'knew so little about M a c a o , cared so little, and was so incompetent in
meeting Macao's wants' (Montalto, 1984: viii).
After the turn of the twentieth century, some texts still fervently
employed familiar colonial tropes to sustain story lines. In a different
literary genre, Stella Benson's The Little World (1928) — a traveller's tale
of Southeast Asia — gives the impression that Macau is the place where
'Portugal lies drugged and asleep in the arms of China' (Benson, 1928:
44). Here is an excerpt:
And fire, born of a Chinese sun, has devoured the cathedral,

except for its facade which stands stark and stricken, with sunny
space as much behind it as before. But the Chinese temples
stand, their ferocious porcelain sky-lines bristling with dragons
and dolphins, their dusty and slovenly altars presided over by
absent-minded but complacent Buddhas. And the Chinese fan-
tan6 dens stand — are encouraged by the Portuguese Government
— and there you can go and take rather monotonous risks with
a spare dollar and watch the Chinaman as he best loves to be
— with his head bent over a board on which all that he has lies
in danger . . . . (Benson, 1928: 45)
Benson's decaying Macau is an imperiled Arcadia. It is beset by licensed

gambling, which is encouraged by the Portuguese. 7 The 'Chinaman' is
stereotyped as the only species who loves gambling. The images of the
fire-devoured Church of the Mother of God and the 'absent-minded'
Buddhas are ironically juxtaposed to suggest their inability to protect the
city from degeneration.
After a lapse of some 30 years since Benson's portrayal, Macau's
contrasting characteristics are poignantly stitched together. In Asia's Bright
Balconies (1962), a travel book, Colin Simpson recapitulates t h e
paradoxical images of Macau by juxtaposing the nomenclature of 'City
of the Holy Name of God' with 'The Wickedest City'. 8 As the title of the
chapter 'No Place Like Macao' suggests, Macau is a schizophrenic place
where 'the ice-cream sundae has been sprinkled with marijuhana', and
'the city which prides itself on having "more churches and chapels to the
square mile than any other in the world" also happens to be one of the
last places in Asia where you can see teenage prostitutes sitting in the
doorways of open brothels; and one of the principal smuggling ports for
heroin and opium' (Simpson, 1962: 123). Simpson's Macau is embedded
with a range of contrasting stereotypes and cliches mingling churches and
brothels, convent schools and opium houses, Jesuit missionaries and
prostitutes. It is a place scattered with stucco houses, cobbled streets,
frilly balconies, junks, sampans, palaquins, three-wheeled bicycles, casinos,
and pawnshops — signs of the pre-modern East. Here is a disheartening
portrayal of a native:
There was a pathetic, painfully thin boy who was a drug addict
if I ever saw one, who could not get a job at all because he did
not look strong enough to carry anything. He could not keep
still for a moment; if he wasn't scratching his neck he was
stamping his bare feet or going to the edge of the wharf to spit
in the water. He was as dirty as he was distraught and it was
almost certain that he had TB and that he was hopped and
hoping to get enough jobs to make a pataca; though I did not
know then that you could buy heroin — illegally, of course, but
you could buy it, a tiny white paper packet of poor-quality stuff
— for a pataca, which is the Macao equivalent of the Hong
Kong dollar. (Simpson, 1962: 134)
While Chinese women in Macau are categorized as prostitutes, massage

girls and sampan girls, who are immediately turned into objects of sexual
desire, Chinese men are depicted as zombie-like beggars, emaciated coolies,
spiritless drug addicts, drug-peddler, procurers and pornographers. They
are portrayed as the most debased inhabitants. Simpson then goes on to
make an abrupt generalization, 'The really good Chinese ones in Macao,
I was told, were blind women. 5 (Simpson, 1962: 148) He also consolidates
his 'observation' by quoting a remark from Dr Adolpho Jorge, an eminent
lawyer, that Macau is a receptacle for ' "human refuse t h r o w n out of
Communist China" ' (Simpson, 1962: 167). All in all, Simpson constructs
the native subjects into stereotyped objects by negating their individuality
and subjectivity, and configures the colonial realm as a mirror that reflects
the colonialist's self-image. In his travel memoirs, Macau is textualized as
a pastiche of human vices and foolishness. It is fed into the entire Orientalist
discourse in the colonialist signifying system.
Gavin Black's The Golden Cockatrice (1974) is a pulp detective story
set against the backdrop of Macau. In a similar vein, it is apparently
mapped onto the second degree stereotypes and propagates the theme of
a wicked city, which is enveloped by a sinister aura. Macau is constructed
through the recurrent image of gambling. It is described as 'the Far East's
Las Vegas' (Black, 1974: 15). Black falls in line with the colonial penchant
for the motifs of gambling and sex which are the indispensable ingredients
in the make-up of the story. Through the first person n a r r a t o r , Paul
Harris writes, 'Outside of the new China all Chinese gamble. It is more
important to them than food, and food is more important t h a n sex.'
(Black, 1974: 27) The Chinese in Macau are thus associated with the
lower bodily principle, which is in turn attributed to the uncivilized Other.
There are only two types of women: sampan girls wearing blue denims
and young Chinese women in cheongsams showing a great deal of thigh.
They are fed into the colonial paradigms as exotic sexual objects to
attract the Caucasians.
As the title suggests, Macau is made analogous to a cockatrice, a
fabulous monster, which is hatched by a reptile from a cock's egg, and
whose gaze alone is invested with the most deadly powers. A cockatrice
is also synonymous to a prostitute. In this way, the title cannily condemns
Macau as a pernicious, prostitute-ridden monster, which is hatched by the
reptile, that is, the Portuguese. However, unlike the legendary cockatrice,
Macau can offer chances to reap illegal profits and is dubbed the golden
cockatrice by the writer:
Macao . . . though strategically situated to become a hotbed of

intrigue of all kinds has apparently kept itself pleasantly sleepy
by sticking to pretty innocent smuggling, the import of illegal

gold, gambling and a straightforward vice trade not yet controlled
by international syndicates. (Black, 1974: 18)
Not only does Macau provide 'a nicely concentrated distillation of the
world's delights' (Black, 1974: 24), it is also a city of intrigue. Even the
Chinese heroine, Wei Linfen, who is first disguised as a sampan prostitute,
is actually a Soviet agent of high espionage rank. Macau, after all, becomes
the unerring choice as the backdrop for modern thrillers.
The p a r a d o x of Western stereotypes of M a c a u is nowhere more
succinctly captured than in a poem by Wystan H. Auden (1907-1973), an
English poet (who became a US citizen in 1945). He visited Macau in
1938 and wrote:
'Macao'
A weed from Catholic Europe, it took root
Between the yellow mountains and the sea,
And bore these gay stone houses like a fruit,
And grew on China imperceptibly.
Rococo images of Saint and Saviour
Promise her gamblers fortunes when they die;
Churches beside the brothels testify
That faith can pardon natural behaviour.
This city of indulgence need not fear
The major sins by which the heart is killed,
And governments and men are torn to pieces.
Religious clocks will strike; the childish vices
Will safeguard the low virtues of the child;
And nothing serious can happen here.
(Auden, 1958: 59)
The poem trenchantly epitomizes Macau's historical anomalies and

socio-cultural changes. The first stanza encapsulates the Portuguese
eastward expansion. Auden rebukes Portugal for giving China 'a weed'.
'A weed from Catholic Europe' espouses a biblical reference and implies
a flogging of Portugal's imperialism and colonialism. One may recall
Christ's Parable of the Weeds in the Bible (Matthew 13.24-30) in which
the weeds (the people who belong to the Evil One) are sown among the
wheat (the righteous people) in a man's field by his enemy while he is
sleeping. A weed is often associated with disorder (Vries, 1976: 496) and
symbolizes sin; the lower qualities driving out the higher (Olderr, 1986:
147-148). The opening sentence, as is obvious, condemns the Portuguese

civilizing mission as 'a weed'.
Sixteenth-century Macau was a barren place sparsely inhabited by
fisherfolk. It was in fact a 'virgin land' comparable to the 'New World'.
It was a simple fishing port, a field for growing 'wheat'. After the arrival
of the Portuguese, Macau was gradually transformed into a centre of
opium-trafficking, coolie-slave trade, gold-smuggling and arms-dealing,
let alone the legalized gambling syndicates. The grandiloquent mission of
propagating Christianity and in saving souls, for Auden, is only 'a weed'
sown by Catholic Portugal. Portugal is alluded to as the enemy, or more
pertinently, Satan. The 'gay stone houses' denote the Lusitanian churches,
which proliferate 'like a fruit'. 'Fruit' is the attribute of abundance (Olderr,
1986: 54), hence churches increase in great numbers and they carry the
promise of spiritual abundance and heavenly bliss. 'And grew on China
imperceptibly' embraces biblical and historical implications. China is made
analogous to the farmer in the parable w h o falls asleep (referring to a
historical moment of its dormant closed-door policy during the Ming
dynasty) and therefore he fails to perceive that a weed is sown by his
e n e m y . T h e w e e d g r o w s in a b u n d a n c e in his field. The a d v e r b
'imperceptibly' is appropriately chosen here to allude to China's inert
foreign policy and its ambivalent toleration of the Portuguese presence.
The second stanza juxtaposes two sets of contrasting images: Catholic
saints and gamblers; churches and brothels. Macau — the City of the
Name of God — was once hailed as the 'Eastern Vatican' or the 'Rome
of the Far East', but its flourishing gambling business gains its fame as the
'Monte Carlo of the Orient'. The holy city-turned-gambling ghetto is not
without ironic, if not dramatic, ambience in colonial vicissitudes. The
antithetical images of churches and brothels are the allegory of virtues
and vices that coexist simultaneously. The poet does not condemn human
foolishness and weakness, which are humankind's fallible nature. Rather,
he wittily suggests that the saints would intercede for gamblers who could
eventually gain their 'fortunes' in the other-world, that is, bliss in heaven,
and that the benign God is lenient to 'the indulgent child'.
T h e last t w o stanzas are treated with Rococo light-heartedness
embracing the themes of sensuality and triviality: in the 'city of indulgence',
'nothing serious can happen'. The poet suggests that in the Holy City, evil
will be pardonable. However, beneath the veneer of this playful poem,
there are serious overtones. It is full of sarcastic sentiments and is a
critique of the Portuguese 'poisonous presence' (as suggested by the weed)
in Macau, which has eventually become a place for gambling and sensuous
pleasure. Even nowadays casinos and the Crazy Paris Show at the Hotel
Lisboa are still the main attractions for tourists and sensation-seekers.
Auden's 'Macao' brings to mind Wen Yiduo's 'Ou Mun' (as discussed
in Chapter 2). The two poets coincidentally evoke the image of the East
as an i m m a t u r e child and metaphorically signify its dependence,
backwardness and irrationality. Wen's Ou Mun is a kidnapped child who
wants to be reunited with his mother; whereas Auden's Macau is an
indulgent child being vulnerable to childish vices. Both authors suggest
that Macau is in a state of childhood, but obviously Auden falls into the
discourse of Orientalism that Eastern Macau is chaotic and uncontrollable
when compared with the Occident.
The Evocation of the Child/Mistress Imagery

Like Wen and Auden's evocation of the child imagery in their poems,
Austin Coates (1922-1997) also adopts the trope of child/mistress to
represent Macau in City of Broken Promises (first published in 1967). It
is a historical novel set at the peak of Western imperialism and colonialism
during the last quarter of the eighteenth century in Macau. Coates
narrativizes the 'true' story of Martha, a Chinese orphan from a Santa
Casa da Misericordia, or the Holy House of Mercy. The little girl is
adopted by Monsieur Auvray, but soon after his death she is badly treated
by her adopted mother. She is sold when she is thirteen years old to the
East India Company as pensioner or entertainer, an euphemism for
prostitute. At the age of fourteen, Martha becomes Thomas van Mierop's 9
unmarried child-wife. Here is the narrator's generic description:
Her eyes, up-tilted and almond-shaped, and her pale,

exceptionally smooth skin suggested that she was Chinese; yet
the way she wore her fine black hair, and her black dress, short
and shapeless, was more European than Chinese. Still no more
than a child, could she have been one of the servants' daughters,
influenced in some way by the Portuguese? . . . She was very
pale, in the manner of the southern Chinese, and had a round
little face which he [Mierop] now began to observe was full of
determination, and she had dimples. (Coates, 1967: 21-22)
Through a fetishistic gaze, Martha is stereotyped and exoticized with

a set of Asian characteristics: up-tilted and almond-shaped eyes, pale
smooth skin, fine black hair, round little face, dimples, and above all, no
more than a child. These racial stereotypes perhaps render the image of
an 'outlandish doll' and constitute a kind of epidermal fetishism that
fosters Mierop's furtive fascination with miscegenation. M a r t h a is
sensualized as an Oriental siren and reified as an object of desire.
The child imagery appears to be a favourite trope in literary works.

For instance, Dora Spenlow is constructed as a child-wife in Charles
Dicken's David Copperfield in which she is incapable of giving birth
and dies. Coates also portrays a childlike pensioner who lacks the
subtle sensitivity to understand the painful motherly love for a deceased
son:
The child had died two months ago. Since then, domestic matters
and trade had re-absorbed her [Martha's] life, and his [Mierop's]
gravity and emotion belonged to a moment in time which for
her was already over. (Coates, 1967: 147)
M a r t h a ' s far-too-quick 'amnesia' is in great contrast to Mierop's

unspeakable agony. While she is represented as childlike and somewhat
'irrational', he is mature and 'rational' in feeling the pain of the newborn
son's death. W h a t is also suggested here is the Orientalist discourse, that
points to the supposed 'callousness' of the Oriental and the 'cheapness' of
life in the East.
The novel evokes certain persistent tropes that contrast the East with
the West. Macau is illustrated as the 'half devil and half child' (Kipling's
phrase, denoting the colonized). It is a place reeking of 'its feasts and
processions, its pride, superstition and ignorance, its priests, prostitutes
and borrowing idlers, its climate of sanctity and decadence' (Coates, 1967:
158). But Britain is represented as the protector and benefactor of Macau,
just as Thomas van Mierop 'patronizes' Martha. Not only does Coates
accord Macau with familiar Oriental images: cobbled hillside streets,
pigtailed Chinese, child prostitutes, motifs of foot-binding, palanquins
and opium, he also describes it as a world of shutters, screens and
curtains, which symbolize the concealment and impenetrability of the
inscrutable East. The imagery of concealment is a constant recurring
theme. It also signifies Martha's agoraphobia and social ostracism. She
is literally, culturally, and metaphorically the captive, the colonized Other.
She lives in a most sealed off 'Oriental harem' which is a colourless
dull ghetto of confinement.
Martha is stereotypically fed into the Orientalist ideology: an orphan,
no legal surname, no identity, a child wife (14 years old) and an ostracized
whore behind the curtains. She«is illiterate, subaltern, 10 submissive and
dependent. By contrast, her Western benefactor is an Englishman of Anglo-
Dutch parentage. He has a puritanical upbringing and is rich, educated
and mature (24 years old). He also has a house — a symbol of autonomy
and identity. In addition, Mierop exists in an open world since he regularly
travels to Canton (Guangzhou) for trade fairs. Martha, on the other
hand, is in a closed world because she is obliged to remain perpetually

immured in the house.
M a r t h a has been Mierop's mistress for fifteen years. He wants to
break the conventional taboo by openly marrying her and taking her back
to England. The Western partner is thus constructed as a messianic hero
who rescues the Eastern 'child' from a hellish situation. Coates delineates
two distinctive polarities between the East and the West, and demonstrates
an unbridgeable gap between the two hemispheres through disjunctive
representations. This conflicting structure readily endorses the power
relations and is redolent of what Abdul R. JanMohamed would call the
'Manichean allegory' which is the central trope in colonialist literature.
JanMohamed defines the Manichean allegory as the 'opposition between
the putative superiority of the European and the supposed inferiority of
the native' (JanMohamed, 1985: 63). The rendering of essentialistic and
reified images of the West and the East has inevitably, if not naively,
overlooked social and cultural specificities and the protean phenomena of
this changing world.
The Punishment of the Western Intruder
Despite some essentialistic images of the Orient displayed in City of Broken

Promises, the novel simultaneously reveals a dialogic voice to satirize,
criticize and react against the dominant colonial ideology of earlier times.
Coates presents the plot as a rhetoric of realism and reconstructs the
crucial years in Martha's life from 1780-1795. During this period, her
story is mapped onto the history of Macau and Hong Kong, in particular
the opium trade engaged by the East India Company. But under the
seemingly unified structure, the text conceals an argument against the
West's experience in Macau. It also hints that the colonial instruder is
punished for transgressing into the East.
As a defining characteristic of the novel, Mikhail M. Bakhtin theorizes
an important category in literature — dialogism, i.e. a constant interaction
between meanings. It suggests that novelized discourse is riddled with
'unofficial' or unconscious voices that contest, subvert and parody dominant
discourses (Bakhtin, 1981: 426). The emergence of these 'unofficial' voices
very often has the revolutionary potential. They help expose the arbitrary
nature of official construction of 'the real' and fracture the unified surface
of texts.
Literary texts and cultural production are often regarded as ideological
because they usually reflect the dominant ideology. However, it is possible
that they are not monologic and do not contain a unitary ideological
perspective. Rather, they may be dialogic and mingle with many social
voices. Although there seems to be an inseparable relationship between
texts and ideology, dialogism in literary works may challenge and overturn
ideology. We may well see textual materials as sites where multiple voices
of culture and different systems of authority interact in order to display
diversified perspectives.
As the plot unfolds, Mierop returns from Canton (Guangzhou) one
April, he has contracted 'a recurring form of dysentery' (Coates, 1967:
204). He is so weak that Surgeon Duncan advises him to depart for
England where 'only climate can cure' (Coates, 1967: 210). The dysentery
he has contracted suggests that his physical vulnerability is detrimental to
his transgression of the Orient. Before he leaves, he arranges for a secret
marriage to take place inside the room of his house because Father
Montepardo has refused to marry them in the Roman Catholic Church.
They are married by the authority of God alone, whose benignity, they
believe, is greater than his representatives on earth. The marriage is of •*
paramount significance to Martha because through it she gains a Western
appellation and an identity. She is now Martha Mierop.
Mierop eventually leaves Macau — he is 'ousted' from the East to
return to the West. On board the ship heading for England, he is critically
sick but manages to tell Ignatius to convey the last important message to
Martha — 'USE MY NAME' (Coates, 1967: 259) and he puts 'my beloved
wife M a r t h a Mierop' (Coates, 1967: 262) on his will. He dies before
reaching his homeland and is buried at sea. He leaves a sum of ten
thousand pounds, his house and everything inside the house for Martha.
His 'forced' departure and subsequent death willy-nilly runs counter to 4
the romantic and exotic structure of this colonialist novel.
After Mierop's death, Martha is no longer an ostracized pensioner.
She has now a legal surname, an identity and a house of her own. She can
advance from a world of screens and shutters into the open doorway.
With her new inherited fortune, she wants to build a ship that is big
enough to go out to the great sea. The trope of 'a ship' hence signifies her
desire to leave the 'harem'. She wants to wander like a ship in the ocean
where there is a sense of liberation and freedom from human constraint.
A ship is built in her name, Martha Mierop, but the painter, Kwai Suk
[Uncle Kwai], nonchalantly drops the patterned stencil of the vertical
doorpost character T into the sea, as he believes the barbaric simplicity
of the single-stroke character is not quite right to fit the space allotted to
it. Consequently, the name of the ship becomes: MARTHA MEROP.
The painter's silly mistake actuates the dramatic and climatic pretext
of Martha's symbolic metamorphosis and Mierop's ultimate extinction.
The 'Martha Merop' now transcends the shadow of Thomas van Mierop.
Through the nomenclature of the ship, Martha has also attained a new
identity as Martha Merop by dropping the phallic T in Mierop, which
is a sign of posthumous castration of Mierop. In addition, the T represents
Martha's first person pronoun and it is detached from Mierop. Martha is
now independent and is not a parasite on Mierop any more. As Mierop
is inadvertently and unconsciously 'killed' by the painter, Martha is 'reborn'
with a renewed identity. She miraculously transcends from a 'no name'
orphan to become Martha Merop. Mierop's death enables her to emerge
as a uniquely identifiable person. Although M a r t h a is portrayed as a
childlike figure of an Orientalist romance and a symbol of the feminine
Oriental Macau, she becomes the richest lady trader of the inner harbour
waterfront and a generous benefactress of Macau at the end of the novel.
Although the narrative is immersed in fantasies of familiar Oriental
stereotypes and colonial tropes of earlier times, the insignificant character,
Kwai Suk, becomes an 'unofficial' voice at the denouement. He is the
agent who turns this text into a kind of vindication against Western
imperialism and colonialism. Above all, Kwai Suk renders a dialogic
perspective, which suggests a victory of the colonized through the symbolic
killing of the colonial intruder.
The Western imperial hero is 'cordially robbed' of his life and all of
his properties. His experience in the East can be interpreted as an allegory
of punishment for crossing the boundary of 'inscrutable' Macau. Moreover,
his punishment has already been extended to his son who dies in infancy
— a symbolic allusion in which Mierop fails to 'put down new roots' in
the East. He is unable to assume the role of fatherhood, which signifies
that the West is no longer a father figure.
Coates falls foul to employ a set of Orientalist stereotypes. His novel
apparently encompasses Western ethnocentrism and imperial ideology in
colonial discourse. This helps demarcate the world as two opposite modes
of representation and concocts a binary contradiction. He demonstrates
a generic contrast of the East in support of the West's superiority. At the
same time, he also reveals a dialogic voice to oust the imperial aggressor
out of Macau. He unconsciously reworks the Oriental theme at the end:
he parodies the West-East polarities, shatters some stereotypes and
celebrates the triumph of 'Eastern' Macau over 'Western' England.
Cannibalism, Carnivalism and the Mastication of the

Barbarian Other
Contrary to colonial stereotypes, which are fixed patterns of representation

in literary texts through an 'outside' perception, cultural anthropophagy 1 1
is a reverse phenomenon. It is an 'inside' strategy to counter outside

forces. Macau has been a Portuguese settlement since 1557. Similarly,
Brazil had also undergone a long colonial period (1500-1820) under
Portuguese control 12 but declared independence in 1822. 13 A century after
the Portuguese left, Oswald de Andrade, a Brazilian modernist of the
1920s, remarked, 'Only cannibalism unites us.' In this postcolonial/
neocolonial context, the Brazilian modernists called for ' C u l t u r a l
Anthropophagy', that is, a cultural resistance to counter the fait accompli
of Portuguese presence. It is virtually a cultural technique to appropriate
the colonialist domination by metaphorically devouring the colonizer.
The satiric allusion through cannibalism is a pivotal metaphor for cultural
independence. It also constitutes part of a strong anti-colonialist sentiment
in Brazil. Belatedly, cultural a n t h r o p o p h a g y was boosted after the
Portuguese colonial authority had ceased for more than a hundred years.
It seems to be an a posteriori ideology to legitimize the already 'impure'
cultures.
For the Brazilian modernists, cannibalism 14 transcends an authentic
native tradition of literally eating h u m a n flesh. It takes on a renewed
vigour towards cultural syncretism. Metaphoric cannibalism can then be
considered a carnivalized response to cultural colonialism, which at once
takes on a parodic and strategic role in cultural production. Since there
can be no ' p u r e ' culture undefiled by alien influences, the vogue of
' a n t h r o p o p h a g y ' can speak for cultural assimilation and cultural
interchange. As a result, any nostalgic return to an original purity is
impossible. Cultural anthropophagy goes beyond the notion of an anti-
colonialist impulse, but denotes the process of swallowing foreign stimuli,
carnivalizing them, recycling them as a renewed force in a context of
neocolonial cultural domination.
Metaphoric cannibalism readily brings to mind Bakhtinian carnivalism
in literature. Bakhtin emphasizes the parodic qualities of carnival festivities
in which the inversion of roles, power, and inequality from norms of
etiquette and decency is essential in human existence (Bakhtin, 1968: 8).
He elaborates and associates the notion of carnival with literary genres.
He calls the transposition of the spirit of carnival festivities into the
language of literature 'the carnivalization of literature' (Bakhtin, 1984:
122). The carnivalesque, as Bakhtin maintains, offers a t e m p o r a r y
suspension of hierarchy and prohibition. It represents a kind of subversion
of social order and translates a symbolic egalitarianism through the
switching of roles.
In analysing key Bakhtinian categories, Robert Stam argues that
the carnival aesthetic aptly offers a corrective to certain Eurocentric
prejudices:
Bakhtin's oxymoronic carnival aesthetic, in which everything is

pregnant with its opposite, implies an alternative logic of
nonexclusive opposites and permanent contradiction that
transgresses the monologic true-or-false thinking typical of
Western rationalism. (Stam, 1989: 22)
Carnival thus transcends its literal definition as a collective celebration

but metonymically gives symbolic resistance to internal hegemonies of all
kinds. Bakhtin's notion of 'carnival' cogently refers to the decentralizing
forces that militate against official power and ideology in literary genres.
In essence, both cannibalism and carnivalism have certain parodic
features in c o m m o n . These two concepts assume the inevitability of
a p p r o p r i a t i o n , which d o m i n a t e s and actualizes a culture after being
'contaminated' by foreign influences and alien infusion. Andrade's aphorism
— 'only cannibalism unites us' — hence engenders a sensibility to coexist in
harmony with other cultural variables in a carnivalistic spirit of role-inversion.
Brazilian cultural anthropophagy, in one way or another, shares
similarities with the Chinese cultural phenomenon of Sinicization, which
is an intercultural process to harmonize 'the barbarian Other' through
cultural syncretism. Anthropophagy was a common trope for savagery,
barbarity and n o n - h u m a n action. The anthropophagous symptom is
applied specifically to alterity from the self-claimed central civility.
However, the Chinese were often considered 'eaters' of their conquerors
and colonizers, who became assimilated into Chinese culture after they
had settled on Chinese soil (for example, the Yuan and Qing conquerors).
In a sense, China has long practised cultural mastication on its intrusive
enemies by incorporating, appropriating and naturalizing them.
The colonial ambience in Macau has ushered in new historical reality
that subverts the conventional patterns of Chinese and Portuguese cultures,
but the Chinese 'cordial mastication' of the Portuguese finally constitutes
a cultural assimilation and becomes an ambivalent resolution within a
peculiar condition of cultural asymmetry. Timothy Mo's The Monkey
King (first published in 1978, winning for it the Geoffrey Faber Memorial
Prize in 1979) well illustrates metaphoric anthropophagy in Chinese cultural
fashion. The novel is set in Macau and Hong Kong in the 1950s. While
it deconstructs familiar colonial stereotypes and overturns Orientalist
essentialism, it also demonstrates a kind of cannibalistic and carnivalistic
hermeneutics. The question is: how does the so-called colonized become
the cannibal and devour the intrusive Portuguese?
The Monkey King has a direct reference to one of the great Chinese
literary w o r k s , Xi You Ji ("HSIiE or The Record of a Journey to the
Western Paradise). It was written by Wu Chengen (^7?tS) and was first
published in 1592. This classical work is a mythological account of the

adventures of a historical figure, Xuan Zang ("2"^) (602-664 AD). Xuan
was a Buddhist monk who travelled in 629 AD from Xian, China to
Nalanda, India. Its chief mythic character, Sun Wukong 15 (f^fp^), or the
Monkey King, is an animal-turned-god. He possesses transcendental powers
of seventy-two metamorphoses into human or animal forms. He also has
an unusual ability and agility in averting undesirable circumstances.
T h r o u g h intertextuality, M o (1950-) portrays a witty, mischievous
Portuguese, Wallace Nolasco, as the title protagonist. Strictly speaking,
Wallace is not a Portuguese, but rather a Macanese — a hybrid Portuguese
of Macau. 1 6 Although the Nolascos are not 'quite' Portuguese, they like
to call 'themselves Portuguese, a courtesy title' (Mo, 1990: 3). The
Nolascos' identification with the privileged Portuguese rather than the
'subjugated' Chinese, to some extent, reveals their unease at being called
Macanese as it is a less prestigious title. Their fetishization of Portugueseness
also suggests the asymmetrical power relations of the two peoples in
Macau — the 'colonizer' versus the 'colonized'.
Given the overlapping of cultural references and mixed social situations,
Wallace constantly meets with ethnic prejudice from the Chinese whom
he is consciously 'self-alienated' — 'on the whole Wallace avoided intimate
dealings with the Chinese . . . he found the race [the Cantonese in Macau]
arrogant and devious. Worse, they revelled in the confusion of the foreigner:
turning blank faces to the barbarian and sneering behind his back' (Mo,
1990: 3). In order to avoid such opprobrium associated with mixed
ancestry, Wallace was 'keen on demarcation, he cut the [Chinese]
neighbours at every opportunity' (Mo, 1990: 4). Under the colonial context,
this emergent Creole minority cannot and does not want to identify with
the Cantonese in Macau.
After centuries of mixed marriages with the Cantonese by his
forefathers, Wallace has lost most of the distinctive European features of
his ' s h a d o w y buccaneer ancestors'. He can also speak 'impeccable
Cantonese' (Mo, 1990: 3), the regional language of Guangdong Province.
H e is actually very much Sinicized genetically and linguistically.
Metaphorically, he has already been partially 'masticated' by the Chinese.
W h a t remains of his Portugueseness is perhaps the surname, Nolasco,
which gives him a sense of retaining the Portuguese national identity.
The Intrigue of Miscegenation and the Manipulation of

Chinese Myths
When Wallace is instructed to marry Poon May Ling, he accepts the offer
even though it is not his own ideal choice. He does not have the least
'colonial desire' (Robert Young's term, denoting a furtive fascination with
miscegenation and interracial sex) of transgressing into the 'exotic' Chinese
world by marrying a Chinese girl, nor does he espouse the distinctive
Portuguese colonial ideology of panracialism through a mixed marriage.
But the Nolascos in Macau are on the wane and Wallace is so desperate
that he has to make a compromise 'out of necessity as well as filial piety'
(Mo, 1990: 8). The poor 'Portuguese of Macau' has to succumb to reality
out of his wishes.
For Mr Poon, it is a dilemma to arrange the marriage for his daughter,
but in securing Wallace he has achieved a balance:
. . . [T]o have married May Ling, the daughter of a second

concubine, into a respectable Cantonese family would have been
an impossibility. Alternatively, setting her sights lower within
the Chinese community would have been a major loss of face.
Under the circumstances, a poor Portuguese was a creative
solution. It would be possible to economise on the initial capital
outlay of the dowry to balance out defrayments on an additional
mouth. Wallace might also have his uses in certain business
projects Mr Poon had in mind. And while not a celestial, Wallace
was not a real faan guai lo, a foreign devil. (Mo, 1990: 8)
Wallace's father has died before the marriage takes place and leaves
no house, no status, and no legacy for him in Macau. Wallace becomes
an impoverished orphan, a suggestion that he is a dependent Westerner.
M r Poon, however, owns a big old house at mid-levels in Hong Kong. It
is a four-storey mansion built in the latter part of the 1880s on a steep
hill above the bustling Western District (Mo, 1990: 5). Mr Poon's property
immediately yields an image of an independent Easterner.
It is Mr Poon's intrigue to include Wallace through 'formal induction
into the household' (Mo, 1990: 8), that is, Wallace is married to his
bride's family and has to live with the Poons, and above all, his offspring
is coerced to adopt the surname 'Poon'. As a result of this cultural practice
which the Chinese call ru zhui (Aft:), his offspring will become Mr Poon's
direct descendants and will lose the Portuguese identity forever, not to
mention that the agnatic tie with 'Nolasco' is to be cut. 17 In Chinese
culture, the practice of ru zhui is not unusual. Some rich families of higher
social status, or those without a male child for the continuity of a family
line, would prefer to 'induce' a son-in-law rather than to marry a daughter
away. A Chinese bachelor with good family background, however, would
refuse this kind of marriage because it would be considered a 'loss of face'
and a disgrace to ancestors if the continuity of the lineage were violated
and the agnatic link disrupted. For Portuguese culture, however, it is

common for a newborn baby to adopt the mother's surname. M r Poon
cleverly manipulates this cultural difference in the surname practice for
the fulfilment of the Chinese ideology of kinship system and for the
proliferation of the Poon genealogy. Wallace's compromised marriage does
not merely symbolize the melting colonialism in Macau. His cohabitation
with the Poons also signifies an assimilation into the Chinese community.
In the household of the Poons, Wallace tries to introject and emulate
the legendary King of the Monkeys, Sun Wukong. Here is a lecture he
gives to Ah Lung's two sons (Ah Lung is Mr Poon's eldest son):
That monkey was really clever . . . He could even make himself

invisible if he had to. He was so brave but sometimes he got up
to bad mischiefs, so his master, the priest, made an iron band
to go round his head to control him. But monkey always manage
[sic] to get himself out of the trouble he got into in the end.
(Mo, 1990: 69)
Anthropologists often emphasize the myth-symbol complex as being

vital in inspiring and sustaining collective experience for the continuing
hold of a national culture and identity. But the Chinese ethnic folk-
memory of the Monkey King is deployed by Wallace to colour attitudes
to his life in order to combat the Chinese in return. He models on the
mythic motif and seeks to reinterpret it for his own personal use. His
strategy has nothing to do with an assertion of Chinese identity or a
search for Chinese cultural heritage. The popularly shared mythic*'
knowledge of the Monkey King is, however, absorbed and incorporated
into the ideas and actions by Wallace to resist the deployments of Mr
Poon's patriarchal control. He tries to be a chameleon in fashioning an
identity, which leads to a malleable sense of self to suit his own purposes.
In a similar vein, Maxine Hong Kingston also employs the Monkey
King in her novel, Tripmaster Monkey (1989), which is set in America.
Kingston and M o intricately interweave their novels with Chinese mythic
sources in order to sustain story lines and to give substance and shape to
particularized contemporary experiences. In Tripmaster Monkey, the
Chinese American hero, Wittman Ah Sing, overtly admits, 'I've got to tell
you the real truth . . . I am really: the present-day U.S.A. incarnation of
the King of the Monkeys.' (Kingston, 1989: 33) In America, Wittman is
capable of monkey-like transformations, antics and iconoclasm. Whereas
he introjects the Monkey King in the American world, Wallace consciously
identifies with Sun Wukong in the Chinese world. Both Wittman and
Wallace depend on Chinese mythic power in the face of an identity crisis.
The Monkey King's Ordeal

Wallace is marginalized and almost relegated to the bottom of the pecking
order in his father-in-law's enormous mansion. He first becomes the enemy
of the amahs who often conspire to make life difficult for him. The core
of the estrangement is that they simply do not like 'a Portuguese in the
household' (Mo, 1990: 11). Wallace's outsiderness is the very source of
dislike. He has no alternative but tries to ignore their provocation, and
endures their ministrations and racial discrimination in silence. For M r
Poon, Wallace is only a parasite who, unlike Fong, Mr Poon's daughter-
in-law, Ah Lung's wife, brought a sizeable dowry with her to the family.
As such, the Western hybrid partner is dependent on the Eastern affluence.
It is the reversal of the colonial hierarchy where the West patronizes the
East.
At Robinson Path, the domestic tyrant is seemingly benevolent to
Wallace. But Wallace keeps silent about the dowry that he is anxious to
have. There is a comic scene when Mr Poon shows Wallace a gold fob
watch that he says he intends to give to him:
Tears flooded Wallace's eyes. He weighed the watch, heavy

in his palm, while the old man scratched at one of the links. He
pulled it out of Wallace's hand.
"Now I keep this for you, safe and sound in my drawer.
These day very unsafe to carry this sort of thing around . . . "
(Mo, 1990: 9-10)
He is told by Ah Lung that his father has shown the watch for over
fifty times. Now he realizes the chance of having the watch is scant. The
old man only shows this effective bait in a compulsive-obsessive way
when it deems necessary.
Wallace is dramatically bullied in the Chinese N e w Year. It is the
Chinese custom for married people to give a red packet of money as a
sign of luck to unmarried people, children and amahs. He is very desperate
because 'the tiny inheritance had brought with him from Macau was
almost exhausted' (Mo, 1990: 23). He considers many 'fund-raising'
methods for this important occasion. One way is to ask for immediate
payment of the dowry, which is part of the contractual obligations. But
he knows it is an irretrievable tactical blunder because once the dowry
becomes a point of necessity he is immediately degraded. At last he decides
to 'repossess his wedding gift' (Mo, 1990: 24), the gold fob watch, and
to pawn it for an urgent loan. His decision to steal the watch is the only
solution to the New Year plight. He is hopeful that the in-coming flow
of lucky money from the elders would probably balance the out-going, or
perhaps Mr Poon's New Year gift would be big enough to redeem the
watch.
At the end of the New Year day, Wallace has an impressive pile of red
envelopes:
He opened one of the envelopes.

A button fell out.
Wallace stared at it as if to misdoubt the evidence of his
own eyes. It was definitely a button. A brown button with four
holes. (Mo, 1990: 32)
It is indeed a farcical scene. He is comically duped by Ah Lung who

gives him a four-hole button as 'largesse'. But to his great disappointment,
even one red packet which looks like containing paper money turns out
to be a one-cent bill,18 the smallest denomination used only in accounting
transactions, and in one packet, only a few coins roll out. From all the
red packets, there are only 20 dollars in total, with which there is absolutely
no hope of redeeming the stolen watch. So he burns the pawn ticket in
the washroom and flushes away the evidence, just as the Monkey King
manages to get himself out of the trouble.
Having committed this mischievous prank, Wallace tries to draw closer
to May Ling and uses new intimacy as a form of revenge in the domestic
battle. This intimacy effectively pushes the marriage beyond its original
mercenary limitations. He also wants her to quit the image of 'the typical
know-nothing, say-nothing, play-girl Hong Kong wife' (Mo, 1990: 36).
He encourages her to read books, study English, brush her teeth three
times a day, drink milk with tea and put on cosmetics. It is Wallace's
'civilizing mission' to Europeanize his Chinese wife. In spite of a change
of strategy, Wallace still finds himself confronted with the silent disapproval
of the Poons. He feels he is the odd man out in the big mansion. Moreover,
Mr Poon is not happy as May Ling shows no sign of pregnancy. For M r
Poon, both of them fail in their primary duty to produce descendants and
thus fail to be a potential vehicle of his own immortality. There is an
invisible battle going on between them. As an efficacious revenge, 'he
[Wallace] would not give something for nothing' and decides that ' M r
Poon could expect no grandsons from him in the immediate future' (Mo,
1990: 58). The unfortunate Macanese soon becomes 'a licensed eccentric'
(Mo, 1990: 84) in the Chinese household. The East-West estrangement is
intensified.
Meanwhile, Mr Poon offers him a job. Employment not only gives
him a sense of purpose, but also erases the image of being a parasite in
the family. However, he is involved in a road repair contract scandal and

becomes the victim of an obscure guilt. M r Poon then sends the couple
to 'have a holiday' in the New Territories — a kind of exile to the road-
blocked village — where Wallace miraculously undergoes a passage of
renewal. In the rural retreat, Wallace gradually cultivates an intimate
relationship with M a y Ling and complements, 'You were good. . . May'
(Mo, 1990: 117) and 'I said it again: you were being good little wife to
me this day.' (Mo, 1990: 119) Wallace's renewed amor is utterly different
from the previous strategy used to counter the domestic battle. May Ling
now turns from being 'not an ideal choice' to 'a good little wife'. The
countryside also provides a space for Wallace's self-construction and self-
fulfilment. Using his engineering skills which he has learned at Foochow
[China], he and M a y Ling successfully sets up a lake for boating with
entrepreneurial genius. Like the Monkey King, Wallace goes through a
purgatory journey to an unknown space, overcomes all kinds of tribulations
and achieves reinvigoration.
After years of cultivation in the New Territories, the shrivelled old Mr
Poon summons them back to look after things for him. He trusts him
with unprecedented responsibility: the keys to his desk, drawers and chests
are kept by Wallace, all except the teak coffer (where there is a watch),
which he keeps in his room. The dotard then creates an opportunity for
him to 're-steal' the watch:
As he flicked the black beads he dislodged a small key underneath

the frame. Memories revived. He put the key to the top tray in
the bureau. To his enormous surprise, there was a fob-watch in
there, identical in all respects to the one he had pawned. He
swung it by the chain and wound it. It ticked sweetly. He dropped
it into the breast-pocket of his pyjama jacket. (Mo, 1990: 178)
He eventually has the watch that he should have had a long time ago.
He is somewhat complacent because he is the victor in the watch battle
and outwits the miser. After the old man has passed away, he leaves May
Ling a stipend of three thousand dollars a year and Wallace 'would receive
two thousand, on condition he used the family surname [Poon] in his
business dealings' (Mo, 1990: 199).
Wallace's acumen, cleverness, adaptability and stoic endurance are
certainly the attributes of the Monkey King. After Mr Poon's death, he
has no more 'iron band' to go round his head and nobody will control
him. He survives all hardship, humility and hypocritical treatment, but
can he be proclaimed the ultimate victor in the novel?
The Ultimate Victor

Although M o seemingly celebrates the chameleon adaptability of the witty
title hero, he portrays him as a total loser! The Chinese patriarchal figure,
Mr Poon, is the ultimate winner even though he has died. Not only does
he win a beautiful battle, he also actually defeats the Macanese without
his knowing of it and gives the 'captive' an illusion of winning. No matter
how clever Wallace is, he falls into two intriguing 'traps' in the crafty
domestic battle.
First, when Wallace inherits his father-in-law's legacy, he is obliged to
use the family surname 'Poon' instead of 'Nolasco' in doing business. This
very condition on the will unveils the old man's overt intention to
incorporate Wallace's business acumen in the Poon family. It is also his
desire to engulf his hybrid son-in-law and to deprive him of his Portuguese
identification. Wallace is virtually enmeshed in an identity crisis. Secondly,
a baby boy is born to him after Mr Poon has died, 'If anything, it [the
infant boy] looked like Mr Poon, reincarnated' (Mo, 1990: 210). The
'reincarnation of Mr Poon' suggests that the baby is biologically Sinicized,
and that a new member is added to the Poon's genealogical posterity. The
newborn is coerced to adopt the surname Poon and will observe the filial
duty of ancestor worship — a vital cultic behaviour of the whole Chinese
socio-cultural system. Hence, Wallace loses continuity in the Nolasco
lineage and fails to realize a botanical metaphor to grow a family tree
of the Nolasco. His offspring is called Poon Cheung Ching, 'Runner
through the Universe', and not Wallace Nolasco, Junior. And Cheung
Ching's future brother will be called 'Cheung Tsin'; no more 'Clarence'
and ' H o g a n ' as Wallace has chosen for Ah Lung's sons, Kwok Kei and
Kwok Chung, respectively. The newborn will be completely assimilated to
the Chinese community, in name and in appearance.
Posthumously, Mr Poon strips Wallace's national bond with Portugal.
He also disrupts the agnatic link between Wallace and his son. As Wallace's
Macanese identity gradually erodes and melts into the Chinese cultural
matrices, his son also loses his only Portugueseness by forsaking the
surname 'Nolasco'. Both father and son are symbolically 'eaten' by the
Chinese when they virtually give up their Macanese identity and Portuguese
nationality.
At the denouement, Wallace is in a dream participating in a gorgeous
Chinese banquet where a living monkey is served. The monkey's head is
protruded through a hole in the top of the cage. Its head is shaven,
leaving a tonsure in the centre of the skull. The monkey's cranium is
hammered so that its bone can be peeled away easily. Seething oil is then
poured into his skull. An expectant rattle is heard while diners are ready
with their ivory chopsticks and curved spoons for the brain marrow. He
wakes up at this horrible moment.
The novel then ends, 'Beside him May Ling swallowed in her sleep.
He pulled a blanket over her and waited for the dawn.' (Mo, 1990: 251)
As soon as he marries May Ling, he is likened to entering into, what I
would call, a 'cultural cage'. He falls prey to the Chinese intrigue of
Sinicizing the barbarian Other. Wallace's dream patently manifests his
latent anxiety of being trapped as 'food' to be consumed. But the gesture
that 'he pulls a blanket over May Ling' symbolizes his true acceptance
of his Chinese wife and hence his willingness to be assimilated in the
Chinese world. The nightmare and 'the pulling of the blanket over M a y
Ling' suggest that he is unable to escape from the 'cage' but is torn
between ambivalent feelings. Furthermore, his renewed intimacy towards
May Ling will refrain from revenging himself on Mr Poon 'for not giving
something for nothing'. He will fulfil Mr Poon's great expectations for
spreading the Poon genealogy. Like the Monkey King in Xi You Ji, w h o
cannot escape from the Buddha's control, Wallace is, too, unable to avert
M r Poon's 'cordial mastication'. Though he is able to quell all sorts of
tribulations with monkey-like tricks, he is the sheer 'victim' of cultural
anthropophagy.
Satiric Elements and a Return to the Centre

The novel can be seen as a satire on a highly distinctive Portuguese
colonial ideology in which miscegenation is officially hailed as the benign
consummation of Portuguese panracialism. Perry Anderson has pointed
out that certain periods of Portuguese imperial history have been marked
by fairly extensive miscegenation (this is particularly true of Brazil).19 The
celebration of racial fusion and tolerance by means of miscegenation thus
becomes the distinctive and decisive pattern of Portuguese presence in
Africa and Asia. It is from this insistent ideology that Portuguese men are
encouraged to 'love women of all colours' (Anderson, 1962: 110). However,
the mixed marriage as illustrated in The Monkey King fails to celebrate
the Portuguese panracialism. Instead, it is manipulated by the Chinese in
the process of Sinicization through the marriage practice of ru zhui.
In addition, the novel is carnivalized and exemplifies a reversal in
Orientalist relationship. The East (represented by the domineering M r
Poon) becomes the cynical exploiter of the West (represented by the
Portuguese/Macanese Wallace). The East is no longer constituted by the
stereotypically weak modalities of childhood, poverty and dependence.
Rather, the Eastern partner is dramatized as a masculine force which is
mature, crafty and affluent. By contrast, the Western hybrid partner is

poor and dependent. He loses the aura of having 'white' superiority,
money, and power as the patronizing West. Through a mixed marriage
the Western partner becomes the East's subjugated Other. The novel is a
caricature of the conqueror/native relation in the binary opposition.
The relationship between Mr Poon and Wallace is not just father- and
son-in-law, but rather insider and outsider, eater and eaten, victor and
victim. Such binarism constitutes another kind of colonial discourse that
subsumes what is outside'the self and makes the strange familiar. The
nightmare of being devoured bears resemblance to the literal consumption.
As Maggie Kilgour says, 'The most basic model for all forms of
incorporation is the physical act of eating, and food is the most important
symbol for other external substances that are absorbed.' (Kilgour, 1990:
6) Wallace, the alien barbarian, is finally subsumed and drawn into Chinese
society by means of the food metaphor. Mr Poon's strategy for control
and domination plainly indicates a version of Sinocentric colonial discourse
to incorporate the Portuguese/Macanese for total unity and oneness under
the surname 'Poon'.
Mr Poon's cannibalistic antagonism of eating his son-in-law can also
be envisioned as Saturn devouring his children, which metonymically
points to the desire of the reunion with the One. Saturn is the Roman
God of Sowing who preys upon his own children. The myth of Saturn,
according to Maggie Kilgour, is a return to an earlier form of existence:
'the idea of return is both idealized as a return to communion with an
originary source and a primal identification, and demonized as regression
through the loss of human and individual identity: one returns to the
father by being eaten by him' (Kilgour, 1990: 11). Seen in the light,
Sinicization is fully achieved through the cannibalistic subsumption and is
an assimilation from 'a centre' to 'a periphery'. Wallace thus restores a
unity and becomes identified with a return from a state of 'alienation' and
'in-betweenness' to 'the centre' — the dominance of the Chinese
community.
A Field of Wheat' and "Weeds'

In an attempt to understand Macau's cultural matrices, we depend on
various forms of texts which are indispensable sources for exploring the
interrelations and interactions of history, culture and power relations. As
Bakhtin has emphasized, literature is an inseparable part of culture. It
cannot be understood outside the total context of the entire culture,
precisely because it is correlated with socio-economic factors which in
turn affect culture as a whole (Bakhtin, 1986: 2). A reading of different

textual materials is a way to gain a dialogic perspective on Macau's
diversified cultural m a n i f e s t a t i o n s . It can also p r o m o t e a deeper
understanding of a culture's sense of reality.
The images of M a c a u have been incessantly stereotyped and
prejudicially reinforced with persistent tropes by Westerners. In colonialist
literary texts, some essentialist representations are often illustrated in
disjunctive manners. Macau is extolled as the 'Eastern Vatican' and the
'Christian City', but is also dubbed the 'Wickedest City' likened to a
cockatrice. While it is represented as a 'lost Shangri-la' for recreation, it
is also constructed with debased descriptions as Europe's shackled Other.
It is portrayed as a receptacle for the Chosen religious dignitaries and the
condemned villains. Moreover, the contrasting juxtaposition of casinos
and churches is still self-stereotyped as the main tourist attraction: 'Macau
is reputed to have more gambling tables than Monte Carlo as well as
more churches than the Vatican' (Welcome to Macau, 1993: 133). These
binary images may easily lead to a distorted scenario and render blinkered
opinions.
The trope of Macau as 'woman and child' is also a common feature.
It creates a dialectical opposition to support the father-figure of the West,
and also reinforces the Manichean notion that the West is the patron/
giver of the East whereas the East is the recipient of the West. This
unreflective stereotyping nevertheless postulates a masculine and feminine
relationship between the West and the East. Colonialist literature thus
serves the West's self-legitimating superiority by depicting the East as
culturally and morally inferior, that is, a world at the boundary of
civilization. These colonial stereotypes may partially lack cultural
authenticity, and tend to warp our view and weaken our understanding
of the multifarious aspects of culture.
In City of Broken Promises and The Monkey King, the authors dissolve
certain familiar stereotypes and expose the imperial nightmare: in both
novels, the two Chinese female protagonists send their Western partners
to symbolic destruction. They become unconscious voices that subvert the
Western imposition of a reified image of the East. Both authors work
against the grain by breaking the domination/subjugation of the West
over the East paradigm. They t u r n Orientalism upside-down with
metaphoric cannibalism and Bakhtinian carnivalism. Not only has Macau
been textualized as a Janus-faced arena for mingling 'wheat' with 'weeds',
it has also been reinforced as the paradoxical colonial prototype in various
types of literary production. O u t of these productions, there emerges a
multiplicity of voices speaking for the complex social process under
Portuguese rule.
Notes
1 The Cathayan tree or the tree of Cathay (China) is the banyan.

2 O n George Chinnery's artistic creation, see George Chinnery: His Pupils and Influence
(Hong Kong: The Urban Council, 1985). On his chronicle of the images of Macau, see
Patrick Conner, George Chinnery: Artist of India and the China Coast (Suffolk: Antique
Collectors' Club, 1993), Chapter 13 'Macau'.
3 Chinnery also painted for William Hickey, the author of the famous memoirs, and
Harriet Low, the diarist. In turn Chinnery's name recurs in Low's journal.
4 The title suggests that Macau is Portugal's distant, mysterious and mythical region.
'Thule' means the mystic centre.
5 Apart from being a centre of coolie-slave trade, Macau was also known as the Oriental
Monte Carlo. Under the governorship of Captain Isidoro Francisco Guimaraes ( 1 8 5 1 -
1863), all kinds of gambling were introduced and licensed.
6 'Fan-tan' is a Chinese game played with buttons.
7 The gambling tax has been the principal income of Macau since licensed gambling was
introduced in the 1850s. In 1934 the government granted the first monopoly on casino
gambling to Tai Hing Company. In 1962, the casino monopoly franchise was switched
to Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau (STDM) and is valid until 2 0 0 1 .
Gambling and betting are the economy's mainstay and gambling tax contributed about
5 0 % of the total income of Macau. See H u a n g Qichen and Zheng Weiming, An
Economic History of Macau (Macau: Macau Foundation, 1994), p. 2 7 6 . See also
Macao Daily News, 24 May 1998.
8 'The Wickedest City' was the heading of an article on Macau in Holiday Magazine,
February 1955.
9 Mierop is a common Dutch surname. Holland, with a strong force of 1300 men,
invaded Macau on 24 June 1622 but was defeated by a handful of Portuguese priests,
citizens and African slaves. That day was the Feast of St John the Baptist w h o thus
became the patron saint of Macau. June 24 has since been a public holiday in Macau.
10 The word 'subaltern' simply means 'of inferior rank'. However, in a series of Subaltern
Studies between 1982-1987 regarding Indian history, it has both political and intellectual
connotations. Its implied opposite is 'dominant' or 'elite', that is, groups in power. On
subalternity, see Ranajit Guha and Gayatri C. Spivak (ed.), Selected Subaltern Studies
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1988).
11 The term 'anthropophagy' simply means 'cannibalism'. However, the word 'cannibalism'
was commonly used only after it was passed into Spanish language and entered the Oxford
English Dictionary in 1796. Anthropophagy is a formation of two pre-existing words:
eaters/of human beings. While the Greeks coined 'anthropophagi' for a nation presumed
to live beyond the Black Sea, the Spaniards used 'cannibals' to refer to an existing new-
found people — the 'Canibals' — who were native inhabitants of an island called 'Caniba'
in the Caribbee Islands. Their defining characteristic was their consumption of human
flesh. This ethnic name is nonetheless used to define their social behaviour and becomes
a generic description. Moreover, cannibalism has an etymological derivation. The word
'canibal/cannibal' was derived from the Latin 'canis' which means dog. The cannibals
are thus described in the manners of dogs and are excluded as being human. See Peter
Hulme, Colonial Encounters (London: Methuen, 1986), Chapters 1 and 2.
12 The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in 1494 between Portugal and Spain. It placed
part of the Brazilian coast within the Portuguese sphere of proselytization even before
Brazil was discovered six years later (1500) by Pedro Alvares Cabral.
13 Although Brazil declared i n d e p e n d e n c e in 1 8 2 2 , Portugal only recognized its

independence in 1825. After Brazil had declared its independence, Portugal relapsed
into poverty and debt.
14 Cannibalism as metaphor is perhaps a popular trope in Eastern and Western traditions;
it is a cultural symptom which refers specifically to alterity/periphery from the dominant
civility/centre. It is also the ultimate marker of utter difference in a Manichean opposition
of civilized/savage, cultured/barbarous, and rational/irrational dichotomy.
15 Sun Wukong is a philosophical-religious and very Buddhist-oriented name. It means
'Aware-of-Vacuity' (or Emptiness), which implies satiric allusion to his witty antics and
foolish pranks.
16 On the Macanese, see Ana Maria Amaro, Eilhos da Terra (Macau: Instituto Cultural
de Macau, 1993), and Special Issue on the Macanese in Review of Culture, N o . 20,
1994.
17 Most people in Portugal have three to four surnames, comprising parents' a n d
grandparents' on both sides. The Portuguese system allows a wide margin for the use
of surnames. On the contrary, the traditional Chinese system is almost agnatic and
coercive in the surname practice, which is deeply marked by patrilineality. This socio-
cultural contradiction in the surname system provides an interesting, if not humiliating,
compromise of Wallace in naming his son. On naming practices between the Chinese
and Portuguese, see Joao de Pina-Cabral and Nelson Lourenô, 'Personal Identity and
Ethnic Ambiguity: N a m i n g Practices a m o n g the Eurasians of M a c a o , ' Social
Anthropology, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, June 1994, pp. 115-132.
18 The one-cent bill became obsolete in Hong Kong on 1 October 1995.
19 The Portuguese ideological tolerance towards mixed marriage directly reflects a shortage
of Portuguese women abroad.
Midway Sojourners,
6 Macanese Moments
and Stoical Settlers
The River and the Sea

While Macau lies at the estuary of the Pearl River into which flow the
waters of South China's three great rivers: the East, N o r t h and West
Rivers, Portugal lies along the Western seaboard of the Iberian peninsula
on the Atlantic Ocean. Lisbon, its capital since 1255, is located at the
mouth of the Tagus River which immediately joins the sea and was once
the starting point for numerous maritime discoveries. The significant
similarity of Macau and Portugal is their intrinsic relationship with the
river and the sea.
The river is a symbol of fertility, life and peace. The sea is a symbol
of flux, eternity and liberty. The river also shares in the symbolism of the
sea, or the ocean, which represents the cosmic forces: the source of all life.
However, they both have a Janus-like nature which fosters a paradoxical
effect: as a benefactor, the river and the sea are associated with regeneration,
purification and universal life; as a monster, they stand for death, untamable
wildness, fruitlessness, unbounded desolation and immense illogic. The
sea, in particular, alludes to the longing for adventure and spiritual
exploration (Olderr, 1986: 95 and Vries, 1976: 406). Although Macau
and Portugal are far apart, both share the characteristics of being
impregnated by the river and the sea, and the two peoples are inseparable
from seaborne trade and commerce. Due to historical grafting, the two
peoples have encountered and in some instances they reveal their ardent
attachment to the river and the sea. Their sea-loving sensitivity is very
much reflected in literary production; motifs of the river, the sea and the
ocean often provide story lines to different literary genres.
Macau had long been a port before the Portuguese settled there in
1557 and before Hong Kong became a 'free port' in 1841. The Fujianese
traders and fishing people began to use Macau as a port during the Yuan
dynasty (1279-1368) and they were believed to be the earliest known

settlers in the enclave. Macau was then a favourable shelter for fishing
boats and trading junks to replenish with food and water before venturing
onto longer journeys. The inner harbour also offered a safe haven for
fishermen in stormy weather. Geographically, Macau has always been a
port in the most literal sense: a meeting point, a stepping stone, a contact-
frontier, and a doorway of South China. The port phenomenon hardly
lends a sense of permanence; it only serves as a threshold and a temporary
rendezvous for human contacts. However, in reality, it is also considered
a permanent shelter and a final destination.
Macau may be read as a site where a specific subjectivity and identity
have developed. Cultural traditions also invariably form a collective identity
constituted by historical circumstances and cultural characteristics, such
as customs, language, religion, symbols and mythologies. The notion of
'identity' alluded to here draws on Anthony Smith's understanding of
identity. It relates mainly to a sense of community based on history and
culture. In order to achieve an individual identity and self-respect, a people
need to identify with a community and coalesce into a collective 'tradition'
(Smith, 1986: 14). The sense of self is thus viewed through the prism of
the community's heritage. The concept of 'identity' is not only a sense of
one's self as an individual (personal identity) but it is also a bearer of a
particular cultural 'heritage' (cultural identity). A collective cultural identity,
in effect, points to 'those feelings and values in respect of a sense of
continuity, shared memories and a sense of common destiny of a given
unit of population which has had common experiences and cultural
attributes' (Smith, 1990: 179). More broadly, Jonathan Friedman has put
it thus:
It [cultural identity] is not practised but inherent, not achieved

but ascribed. In the strongest sense this is expressed in the concept
of race, or biological descent. In the weaker sense it is expressed
as heritage, or as cultural descent, learned by each and every
individual and distinctive precisely at the level of individual
behavior. This latter is the most general Western notion of
ethnicity. The weakest form of such attribution is referred to in
terms of lifestyle,' or way of life, which may or may not have
a basis in tradition. (Friedman, 1994: 29-30)
For Friedman, cultural identity, sometimes known as ethnicity, is

something that individuals have and that is the basis of a certain kind of
social identity. Personal identity is hence not independent of the social
context but almost entirely defined by it.
Nurtured by Chinese historico-cultural currents, Macau has acquired
MIDWAY SOJOURNERS, MACANESE MOMENTS AND STOICAL SETTLERS 163
a specific cultural identity, which is predicated on the fleeting matrices of

transience and flux, but also on the sentiments of stoicism and compromise.
By examining Chinese, English and Portuguese contemporary texts —
novels, poems and films — this chapter explores the influence of the river
and the sea in cultural manifestations. The questions at issue are: how
does the 'seascape' of Macau enhance its cultural complexity? H o w do
the manifold relations between texts 1 and the disjunctive cultural space
illustrate the notion of rootlessness and rootedness? As Macau is an in-
between point at the intersections of different spaces, times and speeds,
one may wonder how the Macanese moment is articulated, and how the
Chinese residents of Macau situate themselves in the midst of colonial
vicissitudes.
City of Threshold and Exile
Culture is externalized in multifaceted layers. The physical environment

tends to increase cultural complexity. As Ulf Hannerz has it:
Complexity along the dimension of externalized forms seems

like a more manageable notion. Simpler cultures use several
such forms — speech, gesture, song, dance, adornment, and so
forth, operating largely in contexts where human beings are in
one another's physical presence. We have also come to realize
that meanings can be 'out there' in the environment, by way of
indications about it which people make to one another. Thus,
nature can carry culture — desert, forest, sea, wild plants and
animals are invested with meanings. (Hannerz, 1992: 8)
Cultural complexity, Hannerz maintains, is reproduced in the natural

landscape and cityscape, apart from traditional endeavours. In line with
his argument, the identity of Macau is no doubt very much bound up
with its 'seascape' in its peninsular environment. In An Insular Possession
(1986), Timothy Mo opens his long historical novel on Macau and Hong
Kong with a sweeping description of the Pearl River, which is salient in
fostering a historical backdrop for these two places, and is also intricately
entangled with historical and cultural currents:
The river succours and impedes native and foreigner alike; it

limits and it enables, it isolates and it joins, k is the highway of
commerce and it is a danger and a nuisance. Children fall off
fragile native craft; drunken sailors topple from the decks of the
Company's chequered ships . . . Where the river rises thousands
of miles inland it seems already pregnant — with silt, with life,

and with the opposite of life . . . The river winds a sinuous
course through lazy, rumpled hills, thinly covered with scrub
and here and there some crazy, crooked conifer stark against
that margin where sky silhouettes hill-edge. There are no
habitations especially evident, although it is the foraging human
hand which has left those hills so bare of wood. Bandits make
their lairs here in artful caverns or concealed depressions where
their settlements lie unseen from the river . . .
Only on the river is there life and traffic of a sort, though
this, too, is sparse and on the water as well predators are not
unknown. But the river flows on, gathering strength and volume
from a thousand tributaries, and as it swells so does its capacity
to bear life and the commerce of life . . . But then the sun lifts
the mist, parts the curtain, and there you are, nearer your
destination than you thought, though the fierce current has almost
taken you too far down-stream. (Mo, 1986: 5-6)
Mo's dialectical narration of the river brings to mind the Platonic

metaphysical binary schema of the pharmakon, which Jacques Derrida
has discussed in 'Plato's Pharmacy' in relation to the problematic of
writing. 2 The Greek word pharmakon appears eloquently appropriate for
the task of tying all the opposite connotations in Mo's opening narration
of the Pearl River, which is 'pregnant with silt and with life'. The Western
metaphysics of the pharmakon produces the dialectic of opposites, or
alternation, and constitutes a paradoxical effect. Derrida writes:
This pharmakon, this 'medicine,' this philter, which acts as both

remedy and poison, already introduces itself into the body of
the discourse with all its ambivalence. This charm, this
spellbinding virtue, this power of fascination, can be — alternately
or simultaneously — beneficent or maleficent. (Derrida, 1981:
70)
N o t only can p h a r m a k o n mean remedy — a beneficent drug or

medicine that repairs and produces, accumulates and cures — it is also a
poison that destroys and harms, displaces and aggravates the ill. The
pharmakon is always caught in the mixture of contradiction and good/
evil polarity. It can never be simply beneficial; nor can it be a harmless
remedy. The river and the sea patently and indisputably share the dialectical
properties of the pharmakon and produce polar opposites. M o brings out
the image of the river that alternates between ambiguity and reversibility:
while the river invigorates and on which 'life and the commerce of life'
depend, it also threatens life to both the Chinese and foreigners.
The river is closely interwoven with the history of 'children' and

'drunken sailors', that is, the Chinese and the Portuguese. The Portuguese
are also identified as bandits who occupied Macau as their lairs 'in artful
caverns or concealed depressions', under the pretext of erecting sheds for
drying goods which had allegedly been damaged in a storm. (The tropes
of 'sailors' and 'bandits' denoting the Portuguese in M a c a u are also
commonly used in many Chinese texts.) The river, which forms a confluence
upon the estuary, mingles the t w o peoples — the Chinese and the
Portuguese — in Macau, and later 'another group of barbarians, called
the English' (Mo, 1986: 6) in Hong Kong. The seaborne forces bring the
foreigners from faraway lands to dominate Macau and Hong Kong, and
constitute a colonial history at the river's mouth. M o makes use of the
imagery of the typhoon to denote the colonial rule and implies that Macau
and Hong Kong are ravaged by the typhoons while '[i]n the tranquillity
of Canton [Guangzhou] one would never suspect the savage onslaughts
the islands were suffering' (Mo, 1986: 10). The mother country, which
nurtures the estuary with the Pearl River, may not be aware that the river
also threatens her 'children' by bringing in European imperialism and
colonialism. The river can indeed create a Janus-like force which at the
same time 'succours and impedes native and foreigner alike' (Mo, 1986:
5). Moreover, the river, swirling with people and incidents, becomes the
cradle for a sea culture. It is characterized by a metaphoric phenomenon
of drift and anchorage, and literally renders a scenario of people leaving
and staying.
Macau's relationship with the Pearl River has borne a sea culture
which is fostered by a sense of flux and drift. It is even dubbed the
'Drifting Island' by a Chinese female poet, Yi Ling ( H i t ) , the pen name
of Zheng Miaoshan (IP&W), born in Macau in 1965. In a collection of
Chinese poems under the title of Liu Dong Dao {\M3)]fk or Drifting
Island), Yi Ling produces the theme of Macau's 'drifting' phenomenon by
deploying an array of images in connection with the sea: the bay, the
muddy seawater, the rugged beach, seagull, the moving water surface,
boat people, sailor and samurai (the Portuguese and the Japanese), current,
seashore, waves, ships, the Pearl River estuary, the myth of the sea, and
so on. In the title poem 'Liu Dong Dao', she concludes:
mmwmmmm
(Yi Ling, 1990: 35)
Above the nestless roof beam

The swallow swoops by
Over rolling waters and an island
Countless glances downward
Decry the traces of tears on the waves of the sea.
(Translated by Eugene Chen Eoyang)
The nestless roof beam may allude to China where people, like the
swallow, had to flee and make another 'house'. Peninsular Macau becomes
the immediate haven for many desperate souls and the 'traces of tears'
may imply the historical changes, which are witnessed by the people
there. For the poet, people in Macau are drifting and they are not willing
to anchor themselves as residents. The coinage of the 'Drifting Island' —
signifying its insecurity, impermanence and inability to retain people —
explicitly points to its liminal position as a midway transit, a threshold
to the outside world.
Macau as an indispensable stepping-stone to the outside world can be
evidenced in Lynn Pan's autobiographical novel, Tracing it Home (first
published in 1992). It was set after the Communist took over China in
1949. As the subtitle of the book suggests, it is an account of 'journeys
around a Chinese family'. The revisit to Macau as a nostalgic family
memory occurs around 1978. Accompanied by her father, Pan decides to
spend a weekend in Macau because this is the place where her mother
met her when she fled from Shanghai to reunite with her father in Hong
Kong. When her father gambles at the Hotel Lisboa, she sets off for a
walk by herself to see the Christian City which 'is said to have more
churches and chapels to the square mile than any city in the world' (Pan,
1993: 28). Again the emblematic images of casinos and churches are
juxtaposed.
Later, they take a tour of the city by taxi and her father tells the
driver to stop at a building, which is the place of an unforgettable family
memory:
That's it,' my father said to me, as he tapped the driver on

the shoulder to stop.
'What?'
'The hotel. The hotel where your mother waited for your
boat from China.' We had both got out of the car.
I looked where he pointed his finger, and saw a narrow,
rather seedy building standing within a few yards of the quay.
Long windows with dark brown shutters gave on to the river.
Music came across to us from a radio, and a young voice
somewhere sang. As a warm, tropical breeze carried the smell
of the sea towards me I heard my father say, 'When your exit

permits came through, I had already left for Malaya. Your mother
remained in Hong Kong, but she couldn't get you children to
join her there — with all those refugees pouring in from China,
visas into Hong Kong were like gold dust. So Macao it had to
be; the idea was to get you here and then smuggle you into
Hong Kong somehow.'
My mother didn't exactly know when we were arriving.
'On a tugboat from Canton, in two, maybe three weeks' time'
was all that was known. She travelled to Macao alone, and took
a first-floor room in an inn. It was seedy even then, with scabs
of damp on the walls. But it had those long windows, and they
faced the river. At those windows you could see the boats come
in. She brought a chair, making a little distance between herself
and the window so she might take in the entire harbour. There
she sat, morning and afternoon, gazing down on the water and
the boats chugging in. She kept her eyes open, even when the
day darkened. How long was it before she spotted our boat?
Five days? Ten? I do not know. The only detail I remember her
recounting is of her burning a green mosquito-repelling coil in
a saucer and laying it down at her feet. And I did not know,
standing there below those windows with the taxi waiting, why
that single memory should bring me close to tears. (Pan, 1993:
28-29)
The descriptions of 'the smell of the sea', 'a tugboat from Canton',
'the river', and 'the water and the boats' are cannily knitted with Pan's
narrative. They are inseparably linked with the story line of her own
experience. The images of the sea and the b o a t readily bring in
reminiscences of a sense of flux and a tumultuous history of the 'new'
China, and also suggest an era of fleeing. Macau (but not Hong Kong)
is the immediate 'Arcadia'. T h o u g h 'seedy', the Chinese can have a
temporary sojourn there in the midst of torrential persecutions following
the tidal wave of changes. 'That single memory' in front of the hotel in
Macau may arouse not only national changes but also personal destiny.
Being back in the place where she first left her motherland and where she
began her 'nomadic life' in the diaspora, she is perhaps rapt in pondering
private and public history and shreds her sentimental tears for the
unpleasant past.
Macau is the venue where Pan begins her exile. From Macau she
moves to Hong Kong, then migrates to Malaysia and is later admitted to
Cambridge University in Britain. However, her exile goes on like a circle.
She comes back to H o n g Kong as a journalist. When she wants to take
up an assignment to cover the Canton Fair for a trade magazine, she gives
up the idea because the Malaysian authorities will not allow her to return
to Malaysia if she sets foot in Communist China. So she goes back to
England and changes her nationality to British for a British passport. 'To
be British would make it easier for me to visit China' (Pan, 1993: 20).
Starting from M a c a u , Pan changes her nationality from Chinese to
Malaysian and then to British. Her 'nomadic' and deterritorialized
subjectivity well illustrates that she is a chameleon in scrambling for a
suitable nationality for survival. She is also the archetype of the post-1949
drifting personage that seeks to anchor somewhere to 'take root' after
having become diasporized.
Macau is the 'first port of call' for the Pan family's nomadic venturing.
It is a jumping-off point for their disastrous exodus from Shanghai, where
they leave their fortune and their big house after the cataclysmic change
in 1949. The image of the house is significant in Pan's narrative. Among
the places which Pan's father wants Hanze, the trusted old family steward,
to show Pan when she visits Shanghai is their enormous mansion at 116
Route Winling:
The list began with 'Picardie Apartments'. I knew what that

was; one book I had read, the memoirs of a diplomat in Old
Shanghai, described it as one of those 'modern non-plus-ultra
apartments' in the French Concession.
Seeing me glance at the list, Hanze explained, They are
your grandfather's buildings, you see. The one we're in now,
this Hengshan Hotel, used to be the Picardie Apartments, in
fact. Quite a coincidence, that you should be staying here, in
this building which the late master [Pan's grandfather] raised in
1934.' (Pan, 1993: 23)
The conversion of the Picardie Apartments into the Hengshan Hotel

is indeed a sad vicissitude for the Pan family. The converted hotel was her
grandfather's property but they were ousted after it had been confiscated.
Ironically, she has now to pay when she stays there. After the Communist
take-over, they have to give up their grand mansion, and to begin their
life in the diaspora. Their house is confiscated, thus signifying their being
totally uprooted from Chinese soil, and deprived of a national identity.
They become rootless, like duckweed, and have to float to other places.
Apparently, the house is the nostalgic object in the Pan's family memory
but human relations are even more memorable. Pan receives the first ever
written letter from his father since she lived away from home some fourteen
years but the letter only focuses on Hanze, the old family retainer, who
paid for his loyalty with twenty-four years of penal labour in the Chinese
Gulag:
So he [Hanze] stuck by me [Pan's father] loyally, unable to

break the age-old mould in which the master-servant relationship
has ever been cast. You would not have expected criticism from
such a man, the proof of whose devotion to me was his utter
silence in the face of my foolhardiness. In his acceptance of his
master — the man as he was, with all the shortcomings of his
youth and impetuosity — he evinced a loyalty you will not find
easily in today's world. (Pan, 1993: 25)
Most probably, this life-long fidelity and perennial loyalty belong

only to the 'good old days'. The house and loyalty are two significant
nostalgic elements that simultaneously indicate a past family experience
and illustrate a contrast of h u m a n affectivity in this fast-changing
postmodern era at the fin de siecle.
In Tracing it Home, post-1949 Macau virtually fails to offer a sense
of security and permanence. It is merely considered a sanctuary for midway
sojourners, a stepping-off place for refugees and a site of political asylum.
Unlike Hong Kong, Macau's historical eccentricity enables it to shelter the
Chinese refugees without 'visas'. The enclave succours the desperate and
offers help, though minimally, through charitable organizations, like a
Santa Casa da Misericordia (izMUt) or the Holy House of Mercy,
established in 1569, Kiang Wu Hospital Charity Association ( t t $ l l f $xM
# # ) , established in 1871, and Tung Sin Tong Charity Association (|n]#
^ ) , established in 1892. As a result, this tiny fishing port ferries many
refugees to other places, and indeed saves many lives.
Peninsular Affectivity
Portugal has been traditionally constructed as a seafaring nation and the

Portuguese are trans-oceanic and an ocean-going people. The maritime
component of the national mentality is evidenced in their national anthem,
C
A Portuguesa3, in which the Portuguese people are hailed at the start as
the heroes of the sea (Os Herds do Mar). Given the sea has been a
favoured subject in literary production, Fernando Pessoa3 (1888-1935), a
Portuguese modernist poet, also penned his panegyric to the Portuguese
Sea:
'Mar portugues'
O mar salgado, quanto do teu sal
Sao lagrimas de Portugal!
Por te cruzarmos, quantas maes cboraram,
Quantos filhos em vao rezaram!
Quantas noivas ficaram por casar

Para que fosses nosso, 6 mar!
Valeu a penaf Tudo vale a pena
Se a alma nao e pequena.
Quern quer passar alem do Bojador
Tern que passar alem da dor.
Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,
Mas nele e que espelhou o ceu.
(Pessoa, 1971: 78-81)
'Portuguese Sea'
The salty sea, how much of your salt
are Portugal's tears!
Because we crossed you, how many mothers wept,
How many sons prayed in vain!
How many fiancees remained unwed
That we might make you ours, the sea!
Was it worthwhile? All is worthwhile
If the mind is not narrow.
Whoever sails beyond Cape Bojador
Must sail beyond grief.
God gave the sea dangers and depths,
But what was mirrored in it, was heaven.
In the first stanza, Pessoa laments the destructive force of the Portuguese
Sea, in which sailors and venturers are often drowned. H e portrays a
forlorn picture at home where 'mothers wept'; 'sons prayed' and 'fiancees
remained unwed'. However, in the second stanza, he contends that it is
worth exploring the sea and is full of Christian faith to overcome the
boundary of grief, as suggested by Cape Bojador.4 The poem unequivocally
positions the sea as a pharmakon structure. Even though the Portuguese
Sea is threatening, it is profitable because after surviving dangerous
journeys, there is hope of fortunes and of winning souls for Christ.
The seafaring Portuguese inevitably bring with them to the tiny
peninsula a kind of sea-mania and a port mentality. The sea is looked
upon as a source of titanic energy, but it is also imbued with an image
of floating and drifting. It is this specific sea-loving mentality that hatches
a sense of temporariness and provisionality, which implies that human
relations also 'float' and fail to anchor permanently. We can trace this
fleeting and shallow relationship in Henrique de Senna Fernandes' short
story, A-Chan, A Tancareira, (Ah Chan, the Tanka Girl) (1978). Senna
Fernandes (1923-), a Macanese, had written a series of novels set against
the context of Macau and some of which were made into films.
A-Chan, A Tancareira is set in Macau during the Second World War.

The heroine of the title is not a Tanka by birth. She was sold at the age
of six by her poor parents and later resold to an old Tanka woman. The
Tanka (WM) are a small ethnic group of boat people in South China.
They are often marginalized as a race inferior to the Chinese and
pejoratively put at the lowest social stratum. They are not even included
in the list of China's 56 national minorities. The Tanka hence carry a
disparaging stigma. Like most Tanka in Macau, A-Chan earns her living
by ferrying passengers in the inner habour. At 20 she meets Manuel, a
Portuguese, who is stranded in Macau because of the Sino-Japanese War.
He soon has sex with her. After the surrender of the Japanese, Manuel
has to leave Macau and return to the sea, but takes with him their
Eurasian daughter. A-Chan is finally abandoned. The plot is simple and
falls in line with the familiar structure of the Caucasian-Asian romance.
The story also appears to be a cliche of the Madame Butterfly type: a
Chinese boat girl and a Portuguese sailor, juxtaposing the submissive
Oriental woman with the flirtatious white man. Let us recall how Song
Liling in M. Butterfly considers the love affair between Cio-Cio-San and
Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly:
Consider it this way: what would you say if a blonde homecoming

queen fell in love with a short Japanese businessman? He treats
her cruelly, then goes home for three years, during which time
she prays to his picture and turns down marriage from a young
Kennedy. Then, when she learns he has remarried, she kills
herself. Now, I believe you would consider this girl to be a ^
deranged idiot, correct? But because it's an Oriental who kills
herself for a Westerner — ah! — you find it beautiful. (Hwang,
1989: 17)
T h e archetypical East-West r o m a n c e of Madame Butterfly is,

nevertheless, a favourite version for Western audiences. In addition, the
story brings to mind o fado castigo, or the typical fado,5 which often tells
a sad story of a woman's unreserved love to a man who does not totally
deserve to be loved. Given this culturally specific tragic romance, no
wonder A-Chan, A Tancareira, tinged with familiar Orientalist touch and
shading, won the 1950 literary prize from the University of Coimbra in
Portugal. 6 Perhaps the panel of judges found it very 'beautiful'.
Despite this old formula, Senna Fernandes infuses the story with a
distinctive element of what I would call 'duckweed affectivity' that is hinged
on the ideas of transience and rootlessness. This duckweed phenomenon
is accentuated by the recurrent motifs of boat and ship in the harbour of
Macau. The story is symbolic of the port mentality of Macau where there
is only temporary anchorage for marine vehicles and where human affects
and relations also drift and float in the peninsular environment. Macau
sets people adrift and is a place for impromptu meetings.
For Manuel, Macau is only one of the ports that he visits. He knows
that sooner or later he has to leave and it is impossible for him to settle
there. He appears to be a Don Juan incarnation and is not serious in
'love'. His only 'obsessive idea is to return to the sea' (fo mar era entdo
a sua ideia obsediante3) and 'his soul always yearns for the ocean' Cquando
toda a sua alma pedia o ocean) (Senna Fernandes, 1978: 10). Moreover,
he can never forget the sea which is 'his eternal mermaid' ('a sua eterna
sereia3) (Senna Fernandes, 1978: 11). In a word, the sea is beyond
everything to him. 'He knows that he cannot stay with the Tanka girl
forever because the sea is his destiny' (sSabia que nao podia ficar para
sempre ao pe da tancareira, porque o seu destino era o mar3) (Senna
Fernandes, 1978: 15). The sailorman is rapt in a perpetual ocean-going
mentality. He is like a duckweed craving for the sea without any destination
and anchorage. He is a wanderer on the high seas.
A-Chan is always reified like an item of livestock and has been sold
twice. The sale and resale may suggest her mutant identity between the
land and the sea. She is an unlucky wretch with no parents, and was sold
to the lowest social stratum. In a sense, she is the victim of a double bind:
colonized by the Portuguese and marginalized by the Chinese. She has no
house but she does have an egg-shaped boat left by her surrogate Tanka
mother. If a house represents a solid, concrete possession, a boat is no
doubt emblematic of movement and change. She is the very personification
of duckweed moving to and fro in the inner harbour of Macau.
A-Chan was brought up with estranged feelings and is used to accepting
what fate brings to her without complaint. She is socialized into this
duckweed sensitivity which is concomitant with the port mentality of
M a c a u . The i m p r o m p t u rendezvous with Manuel besottedly has a
mesmerizing effect upon her. She gives herself to the sailorman who is the
first man in her life. She knows he may have many girlfriends but is fixed
in a typical concubine mentality to accept bigamy or perhaps polygamy
and fashions herself as a subservient slave/mistress fated to 'share' a man.
She is concocted as an ideal Oriental for Caucasian sexual consumption.
In truth, their dalliance is an illustration of duckweed affectivity par
excellence. Manuel is no Rene Gallimard and is not hunting for a fantasy
of an ideal Oriental woman like Gallimard in M. Butterfly. Neither is A-
Chan a Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly — she lacks the kind of
intensified love to die for the unworthy man. She is not Gallimard's
feminine ideal but is a Tanka girl of the lowest rank in South China's
social stratification. She is 'ugly' Cfeia3), 'ignorant' (Hgnorante3), and has
'slanting eyes' (colhos obliquos3), 'flat big nose' ('nariz cbato, grosseiro3),
but Manuel likes her because she serves him 'in the tender manner of a
submissive slave' ('mas que terna expressao de escrava submissa3) (Senna
Fernandes, 1978: 11). Her slave-like submissiveness is her only attraction
to him. A-Chan thus becomes his slave/mistress, an outlet for suppressed
sexual urges. The story is an archetypical tragedy of miscegenation. Just
as the Tanka community despises A-Chan's cohabitation with a foreign
barbarian, Manuel's colleagues mock his 'bad taste' Cgosto degenerado3)
(Senna Fernandes, 1978: 15) in having a tryst with a boat girl. Despite
bitter criticism, they just want to live in a kind of ephemeral temporality.
In the catastrophe, Manuel goes back to Portugal and takes their
daughter, Mei Lai, with him on board the ship. A-Chan bids him, 'Take
care . . . Take care . . .' ('Cuidadinho . . . Cuidadinho . . .3). The last scene
totally lacks passionate affectivity and intensity of love as exemplified by
Cio-Cio-San and Gallimard in Madame Butterfly and M. Butterfly
respectively. The sailor only 'feels that he loses an inestimable thing which
cannot be substituted' ((E sentiu que perdia qualquer coisa de inestimdvel ^
que jamais poderia ser substituida3) (Senna Fernanes, 1978: 18). As such,
the Tanka girl is nonchalantly reified and dehumanized as a thing (coisa).
Manuel reduces human relations to mere consumption not even of her
physical beauty (which has been denied in the description of A-Chan), but
of her 'Orientalness' of being slave-like and submissive. As for A-Chan,
she is well aware that she can never keep her lover. She is ultimately
forced to face the inevitable separation but her affection is not ruffled by
any sign of anger, indignation, expectation. On the contrary, she accepts -
abandonment in a state of silent sacrifice and with stoicism. Unlike Cio—
Cio San, A-Chan lacks the passionate and intense emotion to commit
suicide for the sake of the ocean-going sailorman.
The story is predicated on a duckweed encounter: Manuel and A-
Chan come to know each other on the sea but they are also parted by the
sea. They are but 'ships that pass in the night'. 7 The couple do not belong
to M a c a u and are just like duckweed who happen to be there. Their
'floating' presence is rootless. Their relationship can be seen as an allegory
of transient affection in the peninsula where human relations are floating
and drifting.
A Flaneur's Amor
In contrast to duckweed affectivity, peninsular Macau fosters a passionate

love, as shown by Francisco Frontaria, the Macanese protagonist in the
film Amor e Dedinhos de Pe, (Love and the Little Toes) (1992), directed
by Luis Felipe Rocha. The film is in Portuguese but laced with some
Cantonese. It is based on the novel of the same title, which is also written
by Henrique de Senna Fernandes, 8 first published in 1986. Set in the
Portuguese/Macanese community in Macau at the turn of the twentieth
century, the film touches the issues of cross-cultural contacts between the
Portuguese and Chinese. It also portrays the 'metamorphosis' of Francisco,
and his love to Victorina Vidal, who is a demure and obstinate lady.
Francisco is a flaneur in the film. He is a dandified trifler who frequently
swindles money from his aunt Beatriz, and indulges in gambling, drinking
and smoking. Early in the film, he and his friends put on Chinese opera
masks in a carnivalistic spirit to join a party. A mask represents
dissimulation, ambiguity and hollowness (Olderr, 1986: 86). His
masquerading may suggest that he is trying to transform reality from one
level to another, and to conceal his ambiguous hybrid identity. Francisco
meets Victorina in the party where he says to his friends that she is ugly
and squint-eyed (feia e vesga) after she has refused to dance with him. He
even gives her a rather insulting nickname, 'varapau3 (literally meaning a
beanpole), alluding to her skinny and shapeless stature.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to gamble with his friends and to ridicule
the upper class society, Francisco pretends to marry Pulcritude, the daughter
of the rich Saturnino family. On the wedding day, he does not turn up
until very late and upon his arrival in a richly ornate palanquin, he
announces that he does not intend to get married and scoffs at the whole
audience. In this scene, he assumes a different personality by wearing a
clown-like costume and holding a red Chinese fan, and above all, he is
accompanied by a troupe of Chinese musicians. He thus depends on the
Chinese cultural accoutrements to disguise and hide his Portuguese
identity and social self.
Twice in the film, Francisco brings in elements of Chineseness to
Portuguese/Macanese social occasions and these two scenes are significant
to understand the mentality of the Macanese. Let us first recall Timothy
Mo's The Monkey King where 'the Nolascos called themselves Portuguese,
a courtesy title, and thanks to the unremitting clannishness of the Chinese
were so known' (Mo, 1990: 3). Wallace Nolasco, his father and Francisco
are Macanese, but they are more insistent on their Portugueseness than on
their Chineseness, that is, they identify with the colonial power but not
the colonized. As R.A. Zepp writes:
In Macau's early years, when the Portuguese upper class looked

down on the Chinese as second class citizens, the Macanese
naturally identified with the Portuguese, that is, they tried to
consider themselves more Portuguese than Chinese. Up to the
present day, they have maintained an intense patriotism towards

Portugal . . . (Zepp, 1991: 160)
Although Francisco is caught in the dilemma of being neither a

Portuguese nor a Chinese, he is more attached to the dominant class in
his social circle. His playful uses of the Chinese mask and fan precisely
relate to his superficial assimilation to Chinese culture: he only makes use
of them as a diversion of mocking. In the film, we can discern two distinct
cultural spaces — the superimposing culture of the Portuguese and the
indigenous Chinese 'way of life'. They inherently remain apart as two
separate cultural entities. In addition, as an 'emergent' cross-ethnic minority,
Francisco in effect constitutes a 'third space' (Homi Bhabha's term) between
the colonizer and the colonized and represents another level of existence
in Macau. He straddles two cultures and does not quite belong to either
one.
After the mock-wedding episode, Francisco is beaten severely by a
gang hired by Pulcritude's brother. From that point on, he begins his
downfall, like Lucifer. In order to earn a living, he has to work for a
Chinese owner in a gambling house. Unfortunately, he has contracted
some kind of disease 9 that makes his feet become rotten and stinky. Given
the critical condition that he can hardly walk, he goes to a Chinese
herbalist for consultation. He is soon dubbed with the nickname (Chico
pe fede3,10 or stinky foot Francisco.
The two separate episodes — working for a Chinese and consulting
a Chinese herbalist — may suggest that he tries to take on a culture and
identify with the Chinese. However, his proficiency in Cantonese does hot
make him feel comfortable in the Chinese community chiefly because of
his European features. He is enmeshed in an identity crisis due to the
creolization 1 1 of two languages and racial features associated with his
mixed ancestry, which is generated out of a hybridized colonial space.
After contracting the disease, he becomes a debased invalid and is
ostracized by his friends. In the most desperate state, he is picked up by
Victorina in the street. She takes him home and nurses him with Samaritan
care. Despite the fact that the whole Portuguese/Macanese community
babbles about the living together of the 'Varapau3 and eChico pe fede3,
Victorina is impervious to all hypocritical accusations and continues to
take care of him. As the plot unfolds, Francisco's aunt has died leaving
him a legacy, and he also recovers from his rotten stinky feet. In the
novel, they get married, have three children, and 'live happily ever after'.
The ending of the film, however, subverts the romantic denouement
of the literary work. In the last scene, they are on the balcony that faces
the sea. The sea may denote the purification of Francisco's physical disease
and mental emptiness. They seem to be struck by an unknown force and

spend a night of intimacy. The dandy only then comes to experience a
sublime love and understands the meaning of life after drifting and roving
for so long in his life. But he realizes that he is a notorious rascal and has
already been outcast by Portuguese/Macanese society like a leper. It would
only cause irreparable disgrace to Victorina if he continued staying with
her. Under these circumstances, he does not want to defile her reputation
and make her a social outcast with him. It is ironically out of intense
affection that the flaneur feels obliged to go. At the catastrophe of A-
Chan, A Tancareira and Amor e Dedinhos de Pe, the male protagonists
leave the heroines, but their departure utterly embraces o p p o s i t e
connotations. Manuel is essentially a flirting sailor whose love is shallow
and selfish, but Francisco is overwhelmed with passionate love and his
departure is intended to recuperate Victorina's dignity.
The film ends with a lonely fishing junk, which signifies immense
desolation and unbounded loneliness for both of them. The imagery of the
sea perhaps suggests that Francisco has to drift in the bitterness of life,
like duckweed, but it may also imply that he is purified by the sea and the
junk carries him to spiritual exploration. The flaneur is at last enlightened,
but he is drowned in a sea of pain to leave the one he deeply loves.
What is particular to the film is the representation of a leisured 'creole'
class12 — the Macanese who indulge in a distinct enjoyment of the pleasure
of colonized Macau. Francisco and his friends are playboys, triflers,
loungers and flaneurs, who saunter aimlessly and rove about like empty
souls. The flaneur, as defined by Walter Benjamin, is a by-product of
modernity (specifically in Paris in the early twentieth century). He likes to
stroll along the arcades — an invention of industrial luxury — which
become a city, even a world, in miniature for the flaneur to roam about,
and which is also his favourite sojourn. The leisurely quality of the arcades
'fits the style of the flaneur who goes botanizing on the asphalt' (Benjamin,
1983: 36). Benjamin's theory of the arcades project 13 is actually a theory
of modernity, and in a way demonstrates that each mode of economic
p r o d u c t i o n carries with it a specific mode of cultural r e c e p t i o n .
Coincidentally, Paris and Macau cradled the pleasant nonchalance of the
flaneur at the turn of the twentieth century. If a flaneur is the emblem of
the emptiness of modernity, Francisco is the very indolent flaneur in
Macau who feels immense emptiness and goes botanizing on the calgada,
or the cobbled-stone streets. 14 He demonstrates the 'receptive' life that is
relatively linked with the sea. The Portuguese maritime supremacy was
the precursor of modernity from which a new racially mixed class — the
Macanese — came into being after centuries of miscegenation.
There are many shots of the temples of Guan Yin and Tian H o u , and
the Taipa House Museum, 15 which eclectically infuse the film with Sino-
Luso shading and suggest that Macau is a hybridized place. The Chinese
architectural heritage — Lou Lim Ioc Garden — is also turned into a tea-
house with musicians playing all kinds of Chinese musical instruments for
the Portuguese leisured class. The film thus stitches together the two
cultures and presents a colonial space of hybridity and syncretism. 16 Above
all, it illustrates the cultural and ethnic differences between the Macanese
and the Portuguese on the one hand, and the Chinese on the other.
Throughout the film, the Chinese are all relegated to the working class
and portrayed as subservient servants to the Macanese/Portuguese. There
are no wealthy or educated Chinese; perhaps only the old herbalist is a
dignified Chinese personage. The colonizers are thus represented as the
privileged minority, whereas the colonized are concocted as their shackled
Other in colonial discourse.
The opening and ending scenes of the film are shots of the sea. They
form a framing motif of the filmic production and point to the importance-^
of the sea in fostering a story that is etched in the p h a r m a k o n effect of -
death and regeneration of the self. It is through the purification of the sea
that Francisco attains his enlightenment in love and in life. The sea also
becomes a binding motif for grafting together the Portuguese and the
Chinese in Macau.
A Macanese Dilemma
Francisco's hybrid identity in Amor e Dedinhos de Pe brings to mind >-
Philip, a Macanese in Madeleine Polland's Mission to Cathay (1966).
Polland narrativizes the Jesuits' initial mission in Macau and Zhaoqing
County, north of Guangdong Province, but at the outset she touches the
issue of identity crisis of a Macanese.
After arriving at Macau in 1582 from Goa, Matteo Ricci soon realizes
the necessity to adapt to a society and civilization so different from his
own. He tries to adopt Chinese traditions and to acquire the Chinese
language in order to engage in a dialogue with the educated classes and
ruling circles for the purpose of propagating Christianity. He starts learning
the monosyllables from Philip. Although Philip is a Macanese, he cannot
speak fluent Portuguese but speaks 'a mixture of Italian and bad Portuguese'
(Polland, 1966: 16), besides having some knowledge of speaking 'pidgin
Chinese' — the more rudimentary secondary language. As R.A. Zepp has
observed, the Macanese are an ethnic group without a true mother tongue
because 'they will learn to speak a street Chinese without ever achieving
total mastery over its reading or writing, they may learn to read and write
Portuguese in school without acquiring a good command of the spoken

language' (Zepp, 1991: 161). Interacting between two cultures, Philip is
not just a racial Creole, he is also a linguistic clown in the ambivalent
colonial space.
He is a pathetic figure in the novel and perhaps mirrors many Macanese
nowadays. Being a 'sign' of difference, Philip is torn between two cultural
traditions and is marginalized by both societies as he is neither well-
versed in Portuguese nor Chinese. We may recall that Caetano Veloso, a
Brazilian popular singer-composer, has written a lyric song-poem called
'Lingua317 ('Language') in praise of the poetic capacities of the Portuguese
language. In 'Lingua' he quotes a citation of a famous poem by Fernando
Pessoa, 'Minha pdtria e minha lingua3 ('My homeland is my language'),
and puts emphasis on language as a marker of one's nationality, 'A lingua
e minha pdtria3 ('The language is my country'). The collage of these two
citations, in essence, illustrates the importance of speaking one's own
language as a way of asserting an identity. It also foregrounds Simon
During's aphorism, 'a choice of language is a choice of identity' (During,
1987: 43).
Language as a component of national identity is in fact a modern
ideological construct. As Eric Hobsbawm has noted, the identification of
nationality with language is characteristic of the ideological construction
of nationalist intellectuals, and national languages are almost always semi-
artificial constructs and occasionally invented (Hobsbawm, 1990: 54-57).
The construction of a national language is specifically a phenomenon in
conjunction with the emergent nationalism towards the end of the
nineteenth century. The advocacy of a genuinely spoken 'national language'
is not only a process in the formation of proto-nationalism, it is also a
reflex of Western modernity itself. Moreover, a national language becomes
a crucial variable in the concept of culture. One of the structural
prerequisites for the project of a national 'imagined community' (Benedict
Anderson's phrase) is thus hinged on the creation of linguistic unity as a
form of communication and as a cultural order. The emphasis on the
Portuguese language by F e r n a n d o Pessoa can be seen as 'linguistic
nationalism'. It is a national rhetoric contingent upon the new nationalism
in the 'modernizing' process after the 1910 Revolution overthrew the
Portuguese monarchy.
In retrospect, Philip's linguistic incompetence certainly denudes him
of a distinct identification, given the argument that language becomes
central to the modern definition of nationality and carries the mark of
national identity. He cannot identify with the Portuguese community and
is totally incapacitated from assimilation into Chinese society. He is
involuntarily enmeshed in an identity crisis at the crossroads of Portugal
and China. Moreover, he is no longer a 'centred subject' in the Portuguese

colonial project. He fails to maintain either a unified personal identity, or
a national identity on which the former, at the historical Macanese moment
under discussion, depended. Polland poignantly laments Philip's incapacity,
owing to his deficiency in linguistic ability, to bridge the gap between the
two cultures. As a hybrid progeny in Macau, he is, to paraphase Bhabha,
'a problematic colonial representation' (Bhabha, 1985: 156), and drifts in
a liminal state between the two dominant cultures.
In the novel, Philip 'boasted his Portuguese blood and some small
measure of education' (Polland, 1966: 20). Hence Ricci looks upon him
as i n t e r p r e t e r a n d teacher of the Chinese language. To his utter
disappointment, Ricci finds out that Philip has been teaching him 'the
Chinese of the coolies and the shopkeepers' (Polland, 1966: 23). Philip
only knows the vulgar Cantonese slang, but not the scholarly language of
the M a n d a r i n s . W h a t Ricci wants to learn is the official form of the
Chinese language — Mandarin — so that he can contact the elite and the
literati (gentry and officials) in China. Perhaps it would be totally out of .
the question for Ricci to urge Chinese Mandarins and the Viceroy of
Zhaoqing to learn Italian or Portuguese languages for receiving the word
of God, but he has to condescend learning the scholarly Chinese language.
Ricci's linguistic powerlessness crystallizes the loss of his cultural advantage
as a godsend figure, and Polland trenchantly highlights the relative weakness
of the West during the tete-a-tete with China.
Unlike the structure of Indo-European languages, the Chinese language
has the distinctive, if not peculiar, features of lacking inflections and
possessing no grammatical categories systematically differentiated by r
morphology. That is, there appears to be nothing to distinguish a verb
from an adjective, an adverb from a complement, or a subject from an
attribute. As Jacques Gernet has pointed out, there is a remarkable
parallelism between the Chinese language and Chinese modalities of
thought. These particular linguistic characteristics may have played a covert
role in orienting human reasoning, intellectual traditions and vision of the
world, all of which differ markedly from those of Europe (Gernet, 1985:
238-247). Apart from the social organization and political ideologies of
China, linguistic structures and philosophical logics constituted yet another
considerable obstacle to Christianization in seventeenth-century China.
The novel also pinpoints the indispensable position of Macau where
the Mission House serves as a supply base. From Zhaoqing, Philip has to
go back to Macau by sea so as to bring the necessary materials, and to
raise silver taels to maintain their living. Macau is emphasized as the
bridgehead for Christianity and the bastion for missionaries. The Pearl
River is the very conduit for this grand project.
A Bohemian's Adventure
Since Vasco da Gama's adventurous spirit is the subject of eulogy in
C a m o e s ' Os Lusiadas, the spirit of roving in search of adventure is
extensively represented in Portuguese writings. In O Senhor Ventura (Mr
Ventura) (1989) 18 , Miguel Torga (1907-1995) openly proclaims in the
Preface that the Portuguese are 'vagabonds of the world' ((os andarilhos
do mundo3) (Torga, 1989: 1) and they like to venture for better or worse
in life. Set around the 1940s in Portugal, Macau and China, it is a
picaresque novel and the title tellingly suggests that the protagonist,
Ventura, is a daring venturer who risks his life in distant places and
wanders without a definite home. He is dominated only by an impulse to
venture and does not follow the usual rules of social life.
The protagonist is an Alentejano (from Alentejo, Portugal) who joins
the military service at the age of 20 in Lisbon. Soon after his involvement
in killing a man during a quarrel, he is sent to Macau as a punishment.
His banishment also brings to mind Camoes' exile in Macau from India
in 1556 after he literarily provoked the Governor there. We may recall
Colin Simpson's Asia's Bright Balconies (as discussed in Chapter 5) in
which Adolpho Jorge contends that Macau is a place for 'human refuse
t h r o w n out of Communist China' (Simpson, 1962: 167). His cynical
remark may be equally applicable to Portugal as Macau is also a destination
for deportees thrown out by the colonial metropolis, that is, a receptacle
for Portugal's 'human refuse'.
On arrival, Ventura is assigned to the military, but he totally ignores
military discipline and enjoys breaking rules for a dangerous yet free
lifestyle. Meanwhile, he comes across Julia, the daughter of Dr Acursio,
who is secretary to the Governor of Macau. He begins flirting with her
and often sneaks out to her room at midnight and comes back before
daybreak. One night he suddenly makes an abrupt decision to leave her,
'I'm not of your class. Goodbye!' (fNao sou forma para o teu pe. Adeus!3)
(Torga, 1989: 14). After that night he becomes a 'deserter' of love and a
deserter of the military service. For him, Macau cannot fulfil his desire for
adventure. It is only his stepping-stone to go into China. Soon he is
involved in all kinds of vice in various parts of China and is eventually
deported by the Chinese officials after he has been caught red-handed
when processing heroin.
His Promethean mentality reflects Karl Marx's profile of the bohemian
in the context of industrial modernity (around 1850) in Paris. According
to Marx, the rise of this class is predicated on 'the whole indeterminate,
disintegrated, fluctuating mass' (Marx, 1917: 73) and 'their uncertain
existence, which in specific cases depended more on chance than on their
activities, their irregular life whose only fixed stations were the taverns of
the wine dealers — the gathering places of the conspirators — and their
inevitable acquaintanceship [sic] with all sorts of dubious people place
them in that sphere of life which in Paris is called la boheme' (Marx and
Engels, quoted in Benjamin, 1983: 12). In the wake of modernity, as the
bohemian in Paris leads an irregular life in taverns, the bohemian in
Alenjeto is intoxicated by adventure like his forefathers. Ventura leads a
daring life in breaking rules for quick money. He is a member of a
venturing class, which is itself a product of a particular Portuguese maritime
capitalism.
Although Portugal gathered immense revenues from its colonies, the
domestic, metropolitan economy stagnated and declined as it failed to
deploy its accumulated capital to advance industrial capitalism. Overseas
expansion only demoralized domestic industry and agriculture, and the
economic decline in Portugal ushered in an adventurous avarice towards
making quick money to supplement the crumbling metropolitan economy.
As Perry Anderson says, 'The stimulus to conquest did not come for any,
industrial elan: it was not internal and "natural" but external and artificial.
It can accurately be called reflex-colonization.' (Anderson, 1962: 102)
The Portuguese did not produce anything at home, in agriculture or
manufacture, and the once opulent nation in Europe became flagrantly
poor. Portugal thus failed to exploit its modern maritime capability, which
constituted the fabric of Portuguese culture. Ventura can be seen as an
emblem of the emptiness of a maritime economic culture which is
characterized by a sense of uncertainty and by a vision of exploring in the *
sea. H e is urged by a desire to venture, like a vagabond, and he takes"---
every chance to make money, either legal or illegal.
T h o u g h he is involved in a multifarious web of vicious dealings,
Torga celebrates him like the hero in a modern epic. He is idealized and
extolled as a symbol of youthful abandon and impetuous courage, and
the adventurous hero proper (Torga, 1989: 1, 71). Much in the same way
as Vasco da Gama's atrevimento — the word suggests boldness and
insolence — in C a m o e s ' Os Lusiadas (V:42), Ventura's rebellious
presumption and his daring transgression of the East are turned into an
image of Portuguese pride and achievement in the modern age. Torga's
Ventura is simply a displaced version of Camoes' da Gama and is an utter
parody of the epic hero. He is more a villainous opportunist than a hero;
he has done nothing good for his country but is impetuous in killing and
fighting. He has no sense of responsibility and discipline, as evidenced in
his deserting the military service in Macau. But his criminal sagacity and
nonchalant venturing are glorified. Torga crowns him with a Luciferian
halo as if he were the patron saint of the unyielding adventurers. I would
rather call him o vildo de sempre, or the constant villain, the bohemian
and trifler of maritime modernity.
In various texts so far discussed, Macau seemingly carries a culture
characterized by the phenomena of rootlessness, impermanence, flux, and
temporariness. Conversely, some Chinese literary works demonstrate an
aspect of rootedness and anchorage. The 'drifting' peninsula is depicted
as a final stop where people show ambivalent sentiments and yet there is
also an attachment towards Portuguese colonial administration.
City of Anchorage and Endurance
In the epilogue of Liu Dong Dao, Yi Ling perhaps makes a hasty conclusion
that Macau can never retain people [as residents] and the people in Macau
are merely guo ke (HL^S), or travellers, who rove and pass by (Yi Ling,
1990: 110). We should bear in mind that not all 'travellers' and midway
sojourners in Macau are as lucky and rich as Lynn Pan and her family
that they can emigrate elsewhere because they have fled with money from
Shanghai. In this refugee haven, however, many wretchedly poor Chinese
just settle there, confronting the exploitative employers and earning a
mean living by participating in the most dangerous light industry — the
manufacture of firecrackers.
Contrary to the image of duckweed drifting which is hatched by the
sea, Chang Zheng's novel, Wan Mu Chun ( H T | V # or All Woods in Spring)
(1976), portrays the Chinese refugees' unyielding stoicism and endurance
which are also carried by the sea to Macau. The novel, written in Chinese,
is set in the late 1950s on Taipa, an outlying island off Macau, and
represents a different aspect of the residents. Chang Zheng ( # ? • ) , the pen
name of Zhang Zheng ('jKif), was born in Beijing in 1 9 3 1 . He was
formerly an actor, film director and playwright in Hong Kong. This
cameo reveals to us the downtrodden fate of the firecracker workers and
announces Taipa as a real 'hell' with unreserved sympathy. 19
During the 1950s and 1960s, the manufacture of firecrackers, matches
and joss-sticks constituted the main income of Macau (Macau only stopped
producing firecrackers in the early 1990s). Among these three light
industries, firecracker manufacturing ranked as the chief economic sector
and on Taipa, there were five such factories. Before Chang Zheng's writing
of the plight of the firecracker workers, Colin Simpson has already provided
a vivid and disheartening picture in his travel memoirs:
There are cracker factories where machines do everything

[in Australia]. But the closing of the power-filled crackers that
are made in Macao was done by hand. Children did this work,
and some of the children we saw doing it did not look more
than six years old . . .
We saw these children at their cracker work, each perched
on a tiny stool at a small table, or just a packing case, and on
this a round bundle of crackers as big as a dinner-plate . . . They
worked, very deftly and quickly, closing the ends of the power-
filled crackers with a tool like a small punch. They were paid
10 avos a bundle . . .
Tourists were their bonus . . . I knew what would happen
if I dropped the coins in my hand—they would scramble and
fight for them . . .
There were twelve cracker factories in Macao and its island
of Taipa. The industry is not fully mechanized because child
labour on this piece-work basis is so cheap . . .
These little cracker-workers were all of school age, and
obviously they weren't at school. Yet we passed many schools.
In fact, it was one of Macao's boasts that it had "more schools
to the square mile than any other city in the world" just as it
claimed to have more churches to the square mile. (Simpson,
1962: 137-138)
Simpson gives us a dialogic perspective and complements the historical

context against which Chang Zheng's novel is set. While the former
constructs a kind of tourist exoticism, the latter narrativizes the Taipa
residents' sordid experience with social and realistic concern. The workers
usually work eleven hours a day (from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.) in sweltering
summer temperatures of over 32 degrees Celsius. They work in a small *'
cage-like hut, which is made of wooden planks (the size is 6' x 15' with
eight to nine people packed together with highly explosive powders).
During the peak season they are often ruthlessly forced to work overtime.
Since they have been constantly exposed to the poisonous explosive
powders, most of them suffer from tracheitis, emphysema, asthma, and
blood vessel blockage. Most strikingly, many of them have lost the lines
of their fingertips which have been worn away as a result of the kneading
process involved in making the firecrackers, not to mention that their skin
and lips are blackened. The workers are mostly refugees from nearby
provinces. They are so poor that they cannot even maintain a living on
the M a c a u peninsula but have to adjust themselves and settle in the
simplest shelters on Taipa. It is perhaps an impossible dream to 'drift'
anywhere else. For them, the Macau peninsula is already a place of luxury
and Taipa the only place they can survive.
The workers are in effect barricaded in a double bind: colonized by
the unchristian greedy Portuguese, and marginalized and exploited by the
unscrupulous Chinese employers. On the one hand, the author laments

the exploitative nature of capitalism, which is buttressed by the Portuguese
authorities on Taipa (in the novel, the author just calls the Portuguese 'big
foreign magistrate' and Taipa 'an outlying island') 20 and their oppression
of the zombie-like workers. On the other hand, he portrays a realistic
female identity in the male-dominated society. The representation of the
female protagonist is totally different from the stereotypes in colonialist
literature as discussed in Chapter 5, and also 'deviates' from the Chinese
pulp fiction prevailing in Hong Kong during the 1960s and 1970s in
which women are often turned into commodified objects for men's
voyeuristic fantasy and sexual consumption. 2 1
What is significant in this novel are the deconstruction of the Confucian
belief in fate, the incredulity expressed towards the Buddhist concept of
r e i n c a r n a t i o n , the M a r x i s t d e m y s t i f i c a t i o n of s u p e r s t i t i o n , the
condemnation of gambling, and possibly the advocacy of feminism. The
protagonist, Luo Shaojian ( H i ^ H ) , is only 23 years old, but she has 17
years working experience in a firecracker factory. At the age of 6, her
grandfather died during an explosion in the firecracker factory and she
has to work in order to help pay the spiralling loan which her parents
have borrowed from a loan-shark for the burial. Shaojian is among the
first generation born in Macau and like many other children, she spends
her childhood in the dangerous firecracker factory. Soon, she has contracted
a respiratory disease because of inhaling the explosive powders. She is
illiterate and cannot understand many things, but what haunts her most
is why all the firecracker workers lead such a terrible and dangerous life,
in particular her three uncles, the elder brothers of her father, and some
relatives who were consecutively killed in fatal blasts. Her father consoles
her that life is predetermined by fate and her mother reiterates that the
poor are destined to have a bitter fate. They persuade her to accept fate
with stoicism, because fate cannot be changed (Chang Zheng, 1976: 6).
Her father also asks her to worship gods and propitiate the Unknown for
the sake of attaining well-being and avoiding calamity.
Shaojian does not believe that fate is predetermined and devotion can
divert danger because her second uncle was even more devoted than her
father but was still killed in an explosion. She does not even believe in the
efficacy of wooden stucco images and often quarrels with her father for
wasting money on worshipping the idols. One day, she argues with her
father:
fixAXAmlf fa rsfflj!? ^t:Ji?Mffi*S£fa«ias^]fa

* * S # * P f e ! (Chang Zheng, 1976: 23)
As firecracker workers, we spend the meagre amount of money,

earned at great risk with blood and sweat, to burn joss-sticks
and worship the gods in the hope of being safe, but the disasters
still occur. Our bosses also burn joss-sticks and worship the
gods in the hope of being wealthy, and the only consequence
has been that over the 10 years or so, the factories have increased
in numbers, and the factory areas have become bigger . . . Since
we perform the same ritual to burn joss-sticks and worship the
gods, why do these wooden stucco idols only "answer the bosses'
prayer" while they are "useless" for us!? These are merely idols
which have no flesh and blood, but even if they were efficacious;
they obviously "detested the poor, loved the rich". They wouldn't
be worthy of our worshipping them!
Shaojian's rationalistic a r t i c u l a t i o n is not unlike the M a r x i s t

demystification of superstition. Although her father cannot think of any
arguments against hers, he continues spending the hard-earned money on
joss-sticks and paper money for the daily ritual.
As the plot unfolds, Shaojian's ailing mother and another woman are
blown to death in the same terrible working environment. She and the
other workers can no longer suppress their grief and indignation. T h e y :
form a team to d e m a n d improvements in w o r k i n g conditions and'7'
compensation for those who are killed and injured in accidents. They are
supported by all the other workers who threaten to go on strike. However,
Wu, the factory manager and loan-shark, argues that it has nothing to do
with the factory, and that the workers' bad fate is the only cause for the
recurrent blasts. In order to displace responsibility for the calamity, he
quotes the Chinese popular contemporary adages: 'death and life have
their determined appointment (or fate); riches and honour depend upon
Heaven' ( £ ^ E & # § t f t 5 c ) as a justification (Chang Zheng, 1976: 66).
This saying originated in the text of Lun Yu {Wim or The Analects).
Confucius spoke of fate thirteen times in Lun Yu. The concept of fate, or
in Chinese (ming ( ^ ) , was a part of early Chinese culture. The acceptance
of this cultural legacy was reflected in the many statements about fate
made by Confucius, Mencius and subsequent Confucians. Hence the belief
in fate or predeterminism as a course of events preordained by Heaven —
the supreme ruling power. The notion of predestination, therefore,
advocates stoic acceptance of life that is controlled by Heaven; Heaven in
turn acts as the governor of man's fate. This concept may nevertheless
mesmerize human beings' will to tackle troubles and even discourage their
struggle for a better 'fate'.
Meanwhile, Wu wants to suppress Shaojian's attempt to form an
alliance with the other workers in order to negotiate with the two bosses.
But at the outset he tries to convince, if not threaten, her father:
Kfaffi*ttWJAT > %mmmn > mgitsbm ° immm >

AfaHgABi> #^ûcr±sfaT > ffliiftHis> mmm
(Chang Zheng, 1976: 123)
In truth, if the matter is aggravated, the bosses will not be too

affected, at most it'll cost them a little money. You people will
suffer the most — being sacked, put into prison, beaten, and
even beaten to death. Do you think it is worth doing so??
Actually, whether a person is rich or poor, it is predetermined
by fate. If the God of Hell wants to take away one's life, how
can one survive any longer? It is important, however, to burn
more joss-sticks and to worship the gods in order to prepare for
the next life!!
It is clear to see that Wu combines the Confucian concept of fate and

the Buddhist belief in reincarnation as a strategy to consolidate the ruthless
exploitation and to discipline the workers. The Buddhist doctrines have
been incorporated into the Confucian concepts since the eleventh century
(Yang, 1970: 125), and among the common people, the Buddhist precepts,
which are consonant with Confucian ideas, are firmly implanted in their
moral life. In this case, Wu intriguingly manipulates the Confucian-Buddhist
metaphysics in order to convince them to disregard present adversities
and personal danger, and to pursue in improving their lot in reincarnation.
After Wu's 'lecture', Shaojian's father is baffled. He does not want to
participate in the negotiations with the group and simply disappears. He
r e m e m b e r s t h a t w h e n he and other w o r k e r s tried to demand an
improvement of the working conditions some years ago, they were besieged
in the Vegetable Market and were beaten severely. He knows their demand
is of no use since the employers are backed up by the Taipa Portuguese
magistrate who is their godfather. Moreover, they conspire with an army
of rascals who are loan-sharks and will press workers to repay debts as
a threat for their 'misconduct'. Worse still, there are severe rules to punish
them if they do not conform to the harsh factory regulations.
When Shaojian comes back after the negotiations without being beaten,
her father feels it is almost a miracle. For the first time, he realizes that
the rituals of burning incense and worshipping the Unknown are perhaps
superstitious, and that the workers should advocate a rationalistic and
agnostic approach to the disasters rather than seeking help from the
supernatural. H e suddenly takes the wooden image outdoors and hacks
it into pieces — an act of destroying the symbol of superstition. He agrees
with her that fate may not be predestined but that human being can
somehow change fate.
As a way to pacify the workers, a new Welfare Association of the
Firecracker Workers is 'magnanimously' organized by the factory owners.
Even though it has only survived for some twenty days, Shaojian detects
their bogus intention of promoting benefits for the workers — it is in fact
the agent aiming at trapping people into gambling and superstition. She
denounces their ruthless intrigue and superstitious inducement. A team,
headed by her, is thus formed in protest of the Welfare Association and
she says to the second boss:
w^mn&tm > 3c*sc#ft*M££}ts£*fti - m - °

HM > im r*H>j fassfF3XA?¥#*T$ > & £ * ¥ £ >
fgW ! (Chang Zheng, 1976: 147)
. . . It is nothing to do with worshipping or not, but the primary

cause of those disasters is whether there is any improvement in i%
safety in the factory. Of course, it is 'very kind' of you all to
remind us to pray for safety. When it is dangerous, that is
because we workers are not devout enough in our worship, and
it's our predestined fate to die, and actually it's nothing to do
with the terribly unsafe factory conditions. Now, everybody can
see, what damned gas it all is!
For a long time, the owners relentlessly disclaim responsibility for the
unfortunate happenings by emphasizing that only those who previously
led a bad life will suffer this life as a punishment. Shaojian challenges the
employers' authority and pulls off their masks of deception. Although
they are angry with her, they are stunned by her polemic. Her anti-
predeterminist attitude and her dialectical approach to the plight tactically
dislodge their unscrupulous manipulation of religious ideology as a strategy
to suppress, control and fool the workers.
One night Shaojian and four other workers gather together at the
Taipa-Macau pier seeking a solution to the owners' intrigue. In this
episode, the narration is punctuated with the imagery of the sea, which
is metaphorically employed to suggest a change of mood. 'The breeze
at night is blowing softly and the rippling waves are moving as an advent
to the coming of the tide. It is totally dark everywhere.' (®:MJ$P$M
® > y l T b M M > l E M i i i j * ° raJHHJEK—H' ° ) (Chang Zheng,
1976: 167). The beginning description precedes the intransigent struggle
against the exploitative suppression. 'A huge wave is approaching,
splashing sea water around them, but five of them remain motionless
as if nothing has happened.' ( - M A l W / l f f ^ > i & & 7 —PNffl^W
W ° ) (Chang Zheng, 1976: 167). They are puzzled as to how to dislodge

the negative influence of the Association. 'The sea breeze is blowing again,
spraying their faces with moisture and they just feel refreshed!' ( X T E
-p*?$jit« > *M«fa7jc* > i i « ± > \nmt\txmmm^
% ! ) (Chang Zheng, 1976: 172-173). They feel refreshed simply because
a new idea strikes Shaojian and she knows how to tackle the deadlock.
'A wave is splashing, like a colossal batch of shining pearls, but more
like many smiling faces.' {-\Wi%i£WM > J i f t l ^ f c i ? ^ > « ± H , » a *
tilf^'T^SÎfe ° ) (Chang Zheng, 1976: 174). The splashing seawater seems
to baptize them with new hope. Thus the sea breeze, the waves and
the tidewater are intersected to imply the change of natural forces
concomitant with the human faculty to fight back the undesirable with
titanic determination. They now smile because they think of forming
a Workers' Union themselves as a counter strategy to the evil Welfare
Association.
The workers successfully press the owners to compensate them for the
loss of life and for i m p r o v e m e n t s in their w o r k i n g c o n d i t i o n s .
Unprecedentedly a union is also founded by the workers themselves for
their real benefit. But this doesn't happen until after two developments:
Shaojian is attacked by four rascals from the so-called Sports Association
and at the same time the 'recalcitrant' workers are beaten up by a bunch
of henchmen; there is a disastrous explosion resulting from experimentation
with a new kind of explosive powder.
In the end, these helpless Chinese emigrants seemingly win a beautiful
battle, but they are still not out of the woods yet. They remain stranded
on Taipa, and struggle for survival with stoical compromise and unyielding
endurance. There are no other options for them because there are no
other job opportunities, and they cannot be guo ke who can 'drift' away
to find better living conditions. For them, Macau is a shelter where they
can drop anchor. They adjust and situate themselves on Taipa under
Portuguese colonial administration and, without any alternative, accept
the exploitation of primitive industrial capitalism.
Despite a bleak future, the author is not totally pessimistic as alluded

by the title of the cameo. 2 2 The Chinese characters Wan Mu Chun
( U A # ) , are extracts from a classical style poem by a famous poet in the
Tang dynasty (618-906), Liu Yuxi ( S ^ i l ) , who writes:
Many boats still pass by the broadside of a sunken ship,

Spring foliage flourishes in front of the sickly tree.
Metaphorically, the poet suggests that even under the worst conditions,
there should be hope of regeneration and general optimism. Hence, Wan
Mu Chun does not just espouse intransigent challenges and stoical
endurance to the plight in life, but also advocates hope in tomorrow (but
not in the next life). The title can then be understood as the author's,
incandescent encouragement to those downtrodden workers. In addition,
the novel intends to deconstruct the Confucian adages in fate and to
divest predeterminism. It also seems to react against the Buddhist belief
in reincarnation, and above all, to dislodge the influence of religion.
Shaojian is portrayed as an atheist in stoutly demystifying the
Confucian-Buddhist tenets. She questions the historical master narratives,
which have encoded public and private experiences, and shatters the
promised control by these ideological presuppositions. She appears to be
a modern revolutionary heroine trying to subvert the aura of the Chinese
metanarratives, and pushes these legitimating doctrines into crisis. Heir
dialectical, rationalistic and agonistic approach overtly challenges the long-
established Chinese belief systems. Unlike Martha, a submissive mistress
in City of Broken Promises, and Poon May Ling, a 'play-girl Hong Kong
wife' (Mo, 1990: 36) in The Monkey King, she is represented without the
least trace of an Oriental siren or a sensuous symbol. Apart from the
cliche images of Tanka girls and cheongsam prostitutes in colonial writings,
Chang Zheng depicts a self-esteemed w o m a n w h o is brave, strong,
rationalistic and witty in a realist structure. Shaojian is a feminist paragon
in Wan Mu Chun, w h o struggles against the patriarchal-capitalist
oppression of her class.
Set in a realistic context in the late 1950s, Wan Mu Chun was written
at the time when China was launching the Cultural Revolution. Against
the backdrop of this period in history, the novel deploys a proletarian
narrative to criticize feudal Chinese ideology in the service of exploitative
capitalism, Confucian-Buddhist beliefs and rampant superstition. Moreover,
Macau is poignantly represented as a 'hell on earth' that is caught in the
colonialist mode of capitalism beyond the bounds of socialist China. The

novel can be taken as a work of resistance to colonial oppression and
capitalistic exploitation; perhaps it is based upon the myth of proletarian
paradise under communist rule just outside the colonial border. Unlike
'emancipated' China, Macau is immensely 'contaminated' by exploitation
and subjugation. It is a capitalist microcosm that China might want to do
away with. However, what is ironical in history is that after the anti-
Portuguese '123 Incident' in Macau in 1966, China did not 'liberate' this
enclave and 'save' the proletariat.
A Return from Exile

Even though Macau is mostly considered a stepping-stone, some overseas
Chinese come back and settle there after drifting for some time. They
return to the 'Drifting Island' from exile and form an association as a
base for their rendezvous. We are afforded a glimpse of the returnees'
sentiments at a particular historical moment in a classical style poem by
Liang Piyun (^ffiff) (1907-), a renowned contemporary yet traditional
Chinese scholar in Macau:
<ftF3H«»#J5Sc3:> (1968)
(Liang, 1991: 146)
'On the establishment of the Overseas Chinese Association in

Macau' (1968)
The flowers of pomegranate and myrtle are in full blossom
With joyous spirit we return from thousands of miles
We yearn, like branches from the same tree
And toast the sun of Shun and the sky of Yao.
The poem was composed in commemoration of the establishment of

the Overseas Chinese Association in 1968, a moment which coincided
with the turbulent Cultural Revolution in China. Apparently, the poet
and the overseas Chinese did not return to China but settled in Macau
after roving and roaming for so long in their lives. The joyous return from
abroad may allude to the bitterness of life in exile and their nostalgia for
Chinese soil. The summer flowers of pomegranate and myrtle thus

symbolize the warmth and happiness they feel after settling in Macau.
Unlike Wan Mu Chun in which the author expresses hope for a better
tomorrow, here the poet yearns for the good days in the past, as suggested
by 'the sun of Shun' (f$ 0 ) and 'the sky of Yao' ( l i A) — Emperors Yao
and Shun are often regarded as symbols of the Utopian days of peace and
stability in Chinese history in the Xia dynasty (2205-1766 BC). A S China
is unavailable to them, Macau becomes a substitute for nostalgia and is
the second best place for retirement.
In a series of poems on Macau, Liang also provides a scenario of how
he adjusts and situates himself after 'anchoring' in the enclave:
mmnmmm
mmmmmmM
(Liang, 1991: 144)
'Rambling thoughts on Macau' (1986)

I stroll along the Praia Grande Bay
Where winding paths lead to grassy hills
Though a corner under clouds and boughs
Guia Hill is full of fresh air.
A flat of a hundred feet 1 choose for haven

Pure and placid paradise beyond my balcony
Vast the mist and waves, the springs swelling waters

That melancholy wind and rain a sudden premonition of winter.
Over the calm sea the seagulls are flying
On the idyllic waters the homebound sails are returning
With an abundance of fish displayed in the morning market
I forget the bitter experience in the forlorn sea.
On the balcony I learn gardening
Orchids and chrysanthemums are beginning to sprout
By the window, I enjoy each particular delight of the spring
wind
And savour the flowers fragance in the evening's glow.
Having 'drifted' in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta since the 1930s, Liang
enjoys the scenic views along the Praia Grande Bay and Guia Hill in
M a c a u . Although he lives in a small flat, he is refreshed and feels
comfortable when watching the tide; the sea washes away his bitterness
in life and purifies his desolation. He is in an unruffled mood while he
watches the seagulls, the idyllic and serene Pearl River, and the homebound
boats. In the fish market where there is an abundance of seafood, he
forgets all the dangers in the pernicious sea voyages. He lives in a pastoral
mood and learns gardening which has a direct reference to the pastoral
poet, Tao Qian {Wim) ( 3 7 2 - 4 2 7 AD) of the Eastern Jin dynasty, who
learned, on retirement, how to farm and plant as a heartfelt appreciation
of the cycle of nature. He treasures his 'sunset days' with spring-like
freshness in Macau, which is the berth where he 'anchors' with the title
of President of the 'Overseas Chinese Association of Macau' and the 'Pen
Club of Macau'.
Liang's poems are inseparably intertwined with the images of the bay,
the tide, clear water, boats and fish. What he emphasizes are the calmness
of his retired life and the poetry of the sea. He cannily uses the imagery
of the sea to suggest regeneration, liberty, and serenity, but totally eschews
the destructive forces of the titanic nature of the sea.
Rootlessness and Rootedness
Anthropological studies often espouse the multifaceted notions of cultural

complexity, in particular the dimension of externalization of meaningful
forms, which is indispensable in carrying culture. Lying along the Atlantic
Ocean, Portugal has a wealth of references in their culture to the vocabulary
of the sea. In Cascais (near Lisbon), Cabo da Roca (meaning the end of
the rock) is preserved to represent a notable cultural asset because it is the
point where the European continent ends and the Atlantic Ocean begins.
Its geographical significance is enhanced by a stele which has been inscribed
with Camoes' line: (Onde a terra se acaba e o mar comega3 or 'Where the
land ends and the sea begins'.
Towards the end of the second millennium, the 'Expo 98', held in
Lisbon celebrating the 5th centennial anniversary of Vasco da Gama's
voyage to India, has no doubt been spurred by the ardent Portuguese
attachment to the sea. The theme is: (Os Oceanos, uma heranga para o
futuro3 or 'The Oceans, an heritage for the future', which aims at
strengthening 'the people's [Portuguese] affection towards their home town
and backing their link with the river [the Tagus River]' {Goldenbook of
Lisbon, 1995: 34). Moreover, the World Exposition is intended 'to highlight
the physical and cultural assets offered by the Oceans' (Goldenbook of
Lisbon, 1998: 14). The river and the sea have been constructed as time-
honoured cultural constituents and become the perennial bond of the
past, present and future for the Portuguese. Camoes and da Gama are 4
once again immortalized for their connection with the sea; the former is '
honoured for his narrativization of the latter's epic atrevimento.
Peninsular Macau has reproduced a culture that embodies the physical
environment of seascape. The Pearl River, which succours and impedes
native and foreigner alike, shares the ambivalent and reversible properties
of the 'pharmakon' in producing the dialectic of opposites. The surging
river and the roaring sea ambiguously incubate a culture, which manifests
the contrasting themes of drifting and anchoring; rootlessness and
rootedness. The images of the river and the sea hence exercise a certain '
influence on Macau's cultural production. The externalized mode of cultural *
inventory encodes Macau as an arena where the Portuguese treat it as a
base or midway station for entrance to China and to Southeast Asian
countries; the Chinese regard it as a refugee haven for avoiding political
persecution or a stepping-off place for seeking a better living. In addition,
the seascape suggests the interplay of the port mentality that generates
both shallowness and stoicism.
The paradoxical attributes of the sea inadvertently influence literary
w o r k s , from which we can discern that M a c a u is 'textualized' in
conjunction with power struggles and political purges in the wake of the
'tidal wave' of changes that have swept China since 1911. As a result of
disparate portrayals by authors from different generic and cultural contexts,
Macau is richly, if not fully, described from many angles. These texts
taken together constitute a polyphonic representation of the specific roles
that Macau has come to play.
Located at the mouth of the Pearl River, Macau has developed a
collective cultural identity which reflects shared memories of the heritage
of its peninsular environment and expresses a sense of common destiny

fostered by the ebb and flow of historical currents. The culture of Macau
— having the river and the sea as its primary external mode of pharmakon
influence — embodies a Janus-like dimension in its cultural manifestations
in texts during the colonial history.
Notes
1 Here, the word 'texts' is used in a Bakhtinian sense, which broadly encompasses
everything from literature, visual and aural works of art to everyday action and
communication.
2 When writing is proposed as a pharmakon, Plato suggests that under the pretext of
supplementing memory, writing makes one even more forgetful. Far from increasing
knowledge, it diminishes it. On the ambivalence of the pharmakon, see Jacques Derrida,
'Plato's Pharmacy,' in Dissemination (London: The Athlone Press, 1981).
3 In Portugal and Brazil, Fernando Pessoa is today considered the greatest poet in the
national language since Camoes. Like Camoes, he achieved an international status as
a poet posthumously. Selections from his poetry have been translated into English,
French, German, Spanish, Italian and Chinese.
4 Cape Bojador is on the northeast coast of Africa. The Portuguese seafarers reached
there by 1434. It was believed that beyond the Cape, there was no race of men or place
of inhabitants. N o ship having once passed the Cape would ever be able to return. See
Ian Copland, The Burden of Empire: Perspectives on Imperialism and Colonialism
(Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 5.
5 Literally, fado means fate or destiny. Fado is a very popular mode of singing in
Portuguese culture and is dubbed the 'Song of the Soul'. There are basically two
varieties: the fado of Lisbon and the fado of Coimbra.
6 A-Chan, a Tancareira won the 'Premio Fialho de Almeida dos Jogos Florais da Queima
das Fitas de 1950 da Universidade de Coimbra' in Portugal.
7 This saying originated from Henry W. Longfellow's poem, 'Tales of a Wayside Inn'
(1873), and suggests an arbitrary meeting and departing. See Edward Wagenknecht,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Portrait of an American Humanist (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1966), p. 191.
8 In an interview with Dr Senna Fernandes in Macau in August 1994, he told me that
Amor e Dedinhos de Pe was the 'true' story of Macanese society in the early twentieth
century.
9 During the interview, I asked Dr Senna Fernandes what kind of disease that Francisco
had contracted. He said he would leave this open for the readers' conjecture whether
the playboy had venereal disease, or 'athlete's foot', or some illness as a result of heavy
drinking.
10 Chico is the short name for Francisco.
11 Creolization is a process where meanings and meaningful forms from different historical
sources, originally separated from one another in space, come to mingle together.
12 The French word Creole is commonly used to denote a person of mixed French and
negro, or Spanish and negro descent in the West Indies or in Spanish America, who
speaks a dialect of French or Spanish. However, in recent anthropology, the regionally
restricted creole concepts have become more general in their applications in cultural
studies. As such, Creole cultures, like Creole languages, suggest hybridizing webs of
mixed origin. It is the confluence of two or more widely separate historical currents
that interact in what is basically a centre/periphery relationship. See Ulf H a n n e r z ,
Cultural Complexity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 2 6 1 - 2 6 7 .
13 Most of the Paris arcades came into being around 1822. They first emerged because
of the boom in the textile trade. By the 1920s and 1930s the arcades existed as
exemplary symbols of the ever-changing experience of modernity. On the Arcades
Project (or the Passagenwerk), see Susan Buck Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter
Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge: M I T Press, 1989). See also Angela
McRobbie, 'The Passagenwerk and the Place of Walter Benjamin in Cultural Studies:
Benjamin, Cultural Studies, Marxist Theories of Art,' Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, N o . 2,
May 1992.
14 In Macau, there are many cobbled-stone streets, emulating the limestone mosaic in
Portugal.
15 The four Taipa mansions, built in 1 9 2 1 , are fine examples of Portuguese colonial
residential architecture in Macau.
16 While the term 'hybridity' is the fusion of diverse cultures or traditions, 'syncretism'
is the compromise to unite and harmonize conflicting philosophy or principles by a
process of selection and reconciliation. See Ella Shohat, 'Notes on the "Post-Colonial",'
Social Text, N o . 31/32, 1992, pp. 9 9 - 1 1 3 .
17 The full text of the poem is quoted in Robert Stam, Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin,
Cultural Criticism, and Film (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989),
pp. 1 9 3 - 1 9 5 .
18 O Senhor Ventura is written in Portuguese and is published with a Chinese translation.
19 In an interview with Zhang Zheng in Hong Kong in August 1994, he told me that he
had spent nearly four months on Taipa in order to conduct research into the plight of
the firecracker workers and to collect first-hand information on the firecracker industry
in the early 1970s. His research was originally meant for a film script, but he later
decided to write the 'true' story of this extremely downtrodden class, whose sufferings
were mostly unknown to the outside world. He reiterated that he cried many times,
while he was on Taipa. His cameo, which is set in a 'real' historical context, is the first :•
Chinese writing concerning the Taipa residents' struggle for survival.
20 During the interview with the author, he said it would be better if he alluded Taipa
as 'an outlying island' and the Portuguese magistrate as 'a big foreign magistrate' in
order to avoid possible retaliation. Also, it would be difficult to ask any publisher to
publish his book if he openly criticized the Portuguese.
21 On the representation of eroticized and commodified women in H o n g Kong literature
in the 1960s and 1970s, see Lo Kwai-cheung, Crossing Boundaries, unpublished M .
Phil Thesis, The University of Hong Kong, 1990, Chapter IV 'The Representation of
Mass Culture'.
22 In the novel, there is no mention of why the title Wan Mu Chun is used and w h a t the
implication is. Only in the interview did the author tell me that it had a direct reference
to a Tang poem.
Conclusion
7
The cultural matrices of Macau are manifested in the repertoire of shared

meanings, ideas, symbols, beliefs, and observable series of events and
behaviour. They are constituted in large measure by cultural production
and practices of China and Portugal. A 'culture' is never stagnant and
immutable. Instead, it interacts with a temporally and spatially changing
and changeable set of relationships. Macau's connections with diverse
cultures reflect both a continuity and a flexibility with clearly identifiable
traits. The 'whole way of life' of Macau is encoded in texts that are in
essence agents in constructing and commenting on the culture's sense of
reality.
Mikhail Bakhtin, one of the first theorists to formulate the pantextual
idea in cultural exegesis, neatly defines text as 'any coherent complex of
signs' (Bakhtin, 1986: 103). In effect, everyday discourse and artistic
practices are all textual. Cultural production simultaneously reveals the
textual, the intertextual and the contextual since the context is already
textualized, and the text is at every point inflected by historical processes
and shaped by social events. The approach to literature, history and
culture must be interdisciplinary. Texts are representations and articulations
of specific historical contexts; they are also reflections and commentaries
of the whole social process. The study of a variety of texts (including
literature, films, visual arts), in a Bakhtinian sense, helps us understand
the past and the present of Macau from different perspectives, apart from
the 'official' histories written by the two national authorities.
Since Macau's founding in 1557, the cultural flux in its colonial history
has been complex and dialogic. Through texts, we can discern how Macau
is textualized as a unique colonial space where its cultural production
renders negotiated realities as ideological, relational, power-laden, and
above all, Janus-faced under the confluence of the two civilizations. Located
at the southern doorway of China, Macau was transformed from a sleepy
backwater to undertake a unique role on the world stage during its colonial
period. Despite being a small enclave, Macau was significant in the history
of China, and Portugal also sought to see it as an aspect of its national
glory. Macau has literally functioned as a guardian Janus protecting China
by means of the Barrier Gate, and benefiting Portugal by supplying
substantial capital revenues.
Given its geographical marginality, Macau was once the 'threshold'
for intercultural encounter and the only recognized 'gate' through which
the outside world could deal with 'isolated' Ming China. It was the
rendezvous for European encounters with the fabulous Kingdom of Cathay.
It was also the site where Western power and supremacy were launched.
Macau gradually became the outpost for all Europe in China, as well as
the centre and fulcrum of foreign relations with China. On the one hand,
the Portuguese were constructed as cultural bricoleurs furnishing a conduit
between the West and the East and making Macau a zone of contact
where the 'twain' meet. On the other hand, less lyrically, they were the
harbingers of fully-fledged colonialism engaging in all kinds of economic
exploitation, ideologically facilitated and justified by the project of Christian
proselytization.
The official Portuguese departure from Macau on 20 December 1999
not only marks a historic reintegration of territory with China, but also
brings an end to a particular historical mode of European colonial
domination and subjugation in Asia in pursuit of profit and empire. Yet
the historical shifts have been massive: cleft from a feudal imperial China
in the age of mercantile capitalism, Macau 'returns' to a modernizing
nation-state ruled under communism and socialism.
In the history of colonization, Macau was occupied well before the
so-called nineteenth-century high age of imperialism; its colonization was
markedly different from other Asian societies such as India, Ceylon (now
Sri Lanka), Burma (now Myanmar), Malacca (now Malaysia), Cambodia,
Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and the Philippines. After
the 'Partition of the World' in 1494, China fell into Portugal's sphere in
missionary activism in which the occupation of Macau served as a stepping-
stone for the project of evangelization in China and as an outpost for
economic venturing.
Although the Portuguese colonized Macau and attempted to 'civilize5
the Chinese through the propagation of Christianity, they could not exercise
the kind of violent despotism and brutal absolutism by which they
subjugated the natives in Goa and Brazil. 1 Since Macau was held on
sufferance and not occupied by conquest, the Chinese state authorities
still maintained some ability to 'influence and interfere'. Initially, they
were able to modify and negotiate Portuguese control, though Chinese
CONCLUSION 199
power in M a c a u reached a nadir soon after the assassination of Joao

Maria Ferreira do Amaral, the Governor of Macau, in 1849. As such,
Macau, being Asia's oldest surviving European 'colony', departs from the
totalizing tendency of Homi Bhabha's thesis that describes the discourse
of colonialism as 'at once a civilizing mission and a violent subjugating
force' (Bhabha, 1986: 148). Bhabha's paradigm fails to provide an all-
encompassing framework for the analysis of colonial discourse and its
ideological operations. Colonial discourse operates differently not only
across all space but also throughout time — a criticism that Robert Young
has also made of Bhabha's understanding of hybridity. 2 Bhabha's notion
of 'double duty bound' phenomenon would be an imperfect, peculiarly
displaced and decentred image of the Portuguese in M a c a u whose
heterogeneity points to the question of historical difference.
The anomaly of the colonization of Macau curiously foreshadows
another anomaly — that of decolonization. These two 'anomalies' totally
violate global theorists' canons that colonization is homologous to conquest
and decolonization to revolution. In addition, the much debated cultural
disciplines of postcolonial theory and its concomitant neocolonial critique
are not transcendent and cannot be neatly mapped onto the particular
situation of Macau, precisely because Portuguese decolonization in Macau
proves to be very different from the hasty and chaotic colonial withdrawal
from other colonies. In particular, after the 1987 Sino-Portuguese Joint
Declaration, Macau has achieved a sort of 'consensual decolonization', 3
a process of transferring the political authority without any direct military
conflict between China and Portugal. The outcome of that process is not
a territorial independence, but a deferred reunion with the mother country. 4
The handover of authority from one power to another, moreover, does
not imply any recuperation of autonomy by the locally 'subjugated'.
Despite the fact that colonial-discourse analysis is a topic in vogue in
Western academies, many of the foremost critics of colonialism have
remained silent on Portuguese M a c a u , or have ignored it altogether.
Apparently, Macau is too small to merit attention in the current (post)
colonial debates, even though it has undergone a long period of colonial
administration. Given that postcolonial theory is often based on a critique
of Orientalism or originates from experiences in ex-colonized countries,
why does it not work for Macau? The issues of postcolonial politics
mostly focus on the disputes of the ownership of a particular geographical
area, as well as the recuperation of native cultural traditions that were
distorted by the process of colonization. The issue of the economic
exploitation in neocolonialism is also emphasized. But these categories are
inadequate to be applied to Macau, since it was indisputably the territory
of an already constituted historical state before the colonial period. Its
cultural traditions basically remain intact and the peninsula is too small
to be Portugal's 'client state' after decolonization. Thus, the cultural
disciplines of colonial discourse, postcolonial theory and its synchronizing
neocolonial critique are not wholly applicable to a discussion of Macau.
The Portuguese imperial project for territorial and economic expansion
predated that of any other European countries. Portuguese colonial practices
were also obliquely different from that of the later capitalist colonizing
powers. W h a t then is the specificity of Portuguese imperialism and
colonialism? After the success of maritime exploration and overseas
domination in the early sixteenth century, Portugal was basically an
underdeveloped country maintaining a pre-industnal infrastructure that
was heavily dependent on agriculture. This metropolitan complex
subsequently determined the specific characteristics of Portuguese
imperialism and colonialism in Asia (Dm, Goa, Malacca, Timor, Colombo),
South America (Brazil), and Africa (Angola, Mozambique), which
constituted a pattern of 'ultra-colonialism'. As defined by Perry Anderson,
it was 'at once the most primitive and the most extreme modality of
colonialism' (Anderson, 1962: 97). For Anderson, what the Portuguese
Empire practised in these places was the basic mode of exploitation from
control of exchange to control of extraction, which differed markedly
from the practice of the capitalist colonizers during the peak era of
imperialism. In other w o r d s , while the former simply enforced an
advantageous exchange of primary products and, at best, seized control
of actual extraction, the latter exploited the colonial possessions both for
raw material supplies and as consumer markets for goods produced at
home. Unlike the major vector of the 'new imperialism' of other European
polities — the chartered company — Portugal was almost untouched by
the commercial and industrial expansion and failed to share in international
trade. As a result, the metropolitan economy declined. The stagnation and
debt in its economic structure also brought about social disintegration in
Portuguese traditional agrarian society. The Portuguese colonial system is
thus described as reflex-colonization.
After the industrial revolutions of the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth
centuries, the industrializing capitalist colonizing countries (such as Britain
and France) made huge profits in their colonies in the nineteenth and the
first half of the twentieth centuries. But Portugal was utterly unable to
effect the conversion from an extractive to a transformer imperialism. In
the words of Perry Anderson:
Portuguese imperialism is not the classic capitalist imperialism.

This is not because of moral advance, but because of economic
and social retardation. Portuguese colonialism is a failure to
CONCLUSION 201
achieve the normal imperial pattern, not an option which

surpasses it. In the distorting mirror of ideology, the singularity
dissolves and reforms in a shape that is transformed out of all
recognition. (Anderson, 1962: 113)
Portuguese Macau is perhaps 'out of all recognition' when considered

in the context of the usual instances of colonization addressed by the so-
called 'Third-World' intellectuals such as Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha,
Gayatri C. Spivak (the Holy Trinity of colonial-discourse analysis), Trinh
T. Minh-ha, Abdul R. JanMohamed and Ranajit Guha. They only pursue
the 'normal imperial pattern' of colonial subjugation and exploitation
which relates to their actual experience. Most of these critics emigrate and
work in 'First World' academies and mobilize their own colonized past in
the East as cultural studies in the West. The 'transposition' of their haunting
memories from the East to the West may explain why colonial discourse,
postcolonial theory and the question of neocolonialism circulate in Western
academies both for analysis and for resistance. Their debates become a
cultural task to reveal a dark chapter of European pillage in Asia.
The Portuguese Empire is distinctive in its colonial ideology. In the
wake of Portugal's maritime modernity, the obsessions with economic
adventure (the spice trade) and ideological mission (the promulgation of
Christianity) were the motive forces behind the Portuguese colonization
of the Indian Ocean and their subsequent occupation of Macau. W h a t is
remarkable in Portuguese enterprises of exploration and conquest is the
accompanying 'missionary colonialism', which is at once a transcendent
campaign of sharing spiritual values and of universal b r o t h e r h o o d s In
their eastward expansion, the seafaring Portuguese were basking in the
'Pax Lusitania' ideology of ecumenicalism to 'win souls for Christ'. Under
the veneer of the mission civilisatrice, however, there was an imperialist
project to construct a non-dialectical religious order and to inculcate a
Eurocentric worldview into the subject people.
The 'City of the Name of God' was once a Christian Janus where
Roman Catholics and Lutheran Protestants were rivals in spreading the
word of God. It was also the place where they vied for the lead in their
common objective of introducing Western universalism and positivism
behind the banner of saving souls. Under the patronage of Portugal and
Britain, Macau twice played an incomparable role as the bridgehead for
Christianity in China. On these two occasions, Macau was the West's
'Eastern stage' for the reconfiguration of Christianity because of religious
crises in the wake of the Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth century
and the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. It seemed obvious
that the underlying commonality of the two rival states was their concern
with economic exploitation rather than converting the heathens. Macau

eventually became a contested arena where the valorization of Western
civilization was in fact a mask for pillage and greed, let alone it was
transformed into a spiritual and secular site of power struggle.
While the two forces of spiritual invasion attempted to acculturate the
heathen Chinese into Christianity, the Chinese state authorities spared no
effort in countering the Western 'orthodoxy' through the manipulation of
the Chinese national myth-symbol complex. China intriguingly enculturated
its people by means of standardizing and ritualizing regional and popular
deities in order to assure religious allegiances, political alliances and cultural
identity. The harmonious coexistence of a myriad of churches and temples
readily points to the balance of power relations in different religions, and
announces an unusual religious compromise. The notable landmarks of
the Facade of the Church of the Mother of God, M a Zu Ge and Guan
Yin Tang are 'sacred' places which constitute a Janus complex of a two-
faced religious culture: Judeo-Christian and Buddhist-Taoist beliefs.
Moreover, the virgin trio — the Mother of God, the Empress of Heaven
and the Goddess of Mercy — coalesce into a unique 'trinitarian' relationship
to exemplify the common religious ideology of extreme compassion and
mercy. Macau is a peculiar, if not a miraculous, site of religious propagation
and toleration. Portuguese colonialism and the colonial ideology of
ecumenicalism failed to impose the imperial paradigm in M a c a u . In
particular, Portugal failed to convert the Chinese in Macau (and in China)
while Spain successfully made Catholicism a 'national' and nationalizing
credo in the Philippines.
Apart from the ideology of ecumenicalism, there is another highly
distinctive colonial practice that fostered an assimiliationist policy and
officially encouraged miscegenation. Other European colonizing powers
often introduced a type of human relations based on racial segregation in
which the superior dominating race was contrasted with the inferior
dominated race. 5 Portugal celebrated mixed unions of different races and
miscegenation was considered the benign consummation of Portuguese
panracialism. However, the Portuguese ideological toleration of racial
fusion through mixed marriage directly reflected a shortage of Portuguese
women abroad. In the words of a historian of Portuguese Africa, the
mystique of interracialism was merely an 'erotic expediency' rather than
the advocacy of racial egalitarianism. In fact, as Robert Young has
demonstrated in Colonial Desire, where racial amalgamation was tolerated
or promoted, it was with the aim of improving the 'racial stock' of the
colonized and creating a more enlightened race suitable for tropical labour
(Young, 1995: 142-146). In addition, the encouragement of mixed unions
may fetishistically reflect a covert form of fantasy centred on the Other
CONCLUSION 203
and a clandestine form of colonial desire for what is perceived as 'the

uncontrollable sexual drive of the non-white races and their limitless
fertility' (Young, 1995: 181).
Although the Portuguese showed an unrelenting attempt to assert
inalienable differences between races, the ideological panracial vision only
projected a phantasmagoria of diverse hybrid progeny as one aspect of
the colonial legacies. The confluence of different cultural flows and the
Portuguese ideological toleration of miscegenation have helped Macau
evolve into a Eurasian ecumene in procreating an 'emergent' minority
called the Macanese. The coming into being of this Creole class was
largely due to the fact that since the founding of Macau there had been
very few Portuguese women there, 6 and 'wives ranked as a significant
item in the list of imports' (Coates, 1987: 34). Early settlers then sought
wives primarily from Malaysia, Japan and India. Later, some abandoned
Chinese infant girls were brought up as Christians and became candidates
for mixed marriages.
However, not everyone born in Macau is identified as Macanese.
Only those w h o are born of cross-ethnic couples are principally of
Portuguese-Asian ancestry. Some Macanese refer to themselves as 'pure
Macanese' because they are born in M a c a u of original Portuguese
parentage. Very often, they call themselves 'Filhos da Terra\ which literally
means 'sons of the earth' (implicitly denoting a rootless class). The
Cantonese call them ' ± 4 . f P 5 literally meaning 'locally born children'.
They are, in Bhabha's phrase, 'white, but not quite', and constitute another
level of identity in colonial representation.
In the situation of cross-ethnic interaction, the Macanese constantly
meet with prejudice not only from the Chinese, but also from the 'pure'
Portuguese. Such racial discrimination eventually leads to a certain kind
of anxiety among them, who are ambivalent towards their personal identity.
As Joao de Pina-Cabral writes:
At one time when the capital of Portugueseness was the major

source of security and survival, the negotiation of Portugueseness
was central to Macanese everyday life. Discrimination operated
strongly, to the point where, for example, a member of a
traditional family [a family retaining the greatest capital of
Portugueseness] preferred his daughter to remain single rather
than marry a Macanese whose claims to Portugueseness were
slighter. (Pina-Cabral, 1994: 122)
Due to the overlapping of cultural references and mixed social situations,

a process of 'self-alienation' gradually develops as a new social stratification,
characterized by a small and relatively closed Macanese community.
Towards the imminent change of sovereignty, some Macanese have

become very apprehensive about their new habitat. They waver in whether
to identify themselves with the Portuguese or the Chinese. Subsequently,
an association called Macau Sempre, or Roots in Aomen (fllfttJtPI), was
formed on 26 October 1996 with an aim to emphasize their 'roots' in
Macau and to create a sense of belonging (Macao Daily News, 27 October
1996). Obviously, Macau Sempre was organized in order to unite the
Macanese who, at this critical stage, may feel somewhat estranged, rootless,
lost and stressed because of their 'in-betweenness'. This organization is an
outlet revealing their wish to attach to Macau after the transition and to
assert their hybrid identity in a Chinese dominated society. Although
there are roughly 7000 to 10 000 Macanese, they reflect a certain ethnic
force — some of them hold government posts while some are lawyers and
architects by profession.
As a result of centuries of hybridity, the Macanese have evolved their
own arts of daily life including a special cooking called Macanese cuisine.7
It mainly contains the spices and flavours of Goan and Malay cooking
and a little Chinese influence. Given the eclectic ingredients, Macanese
cuisine directly refers to its diverse ethnic and geographical origins and
represents a now 'indigenous' culinary culture. 'The invocation of a specific
food', says Anne Goldman, 'speaks on behalf of cultural nationalism . . .
The elaboration of cooking techniques may also provide a means of
articulating an ethnic subject.' (Goldman, 1992: 173) Through the
introduction of Macanese food, the 'hybrid Portuguese of Macau' try to
encode an affirmation of ethnic specificity. This cultural affirmation in
food preparation, in effect, parallels changes in 'civilization' to a creolization
of Portuguese, Goan, Malay, African and Chinese practices in the wake
of colonialism.
Macanese cuisine hence reveals a cultural appropriation through the
culinary. It can be hailed as a concrete instance to exemplify the rhetoric
of cultural assimilation. Food is not just invested with a cultural register
of a unique form; it may also reproduce cultural practices and values that
provide the Macanese community with a means of self-definition and
survival. Mediating between two dominant cultures, Macanese cuisine
stands as a metonym for a creole ethnic identity and self-assertion in the
cultural sphere. It also reveals the internal processes of a creolizing
continuum. Macanese food no doubt exemplifies a real 'transgression of
boundaries', and exhibits a palatable hybridization of originally different
culinary specialties. The popularity of Macanese food among Chinese
people in Macau and Hong Kong steadfastly speaks for the continued
fluidity of cultural boundaries. Today, Macanese cuisine is promoted as
one of Macau's irresistible tourist attractions and a commodity of
CONCLUSION 205
consumption. It also turns out to be a mediating practice, which elides

ethnic tensions and antagonism, even though ethnic boundaries otherwise
remain material and conspicuous.
Macanese cuisine has become a specialty that never loses its fascination
and allure to both Chinese and foreign gourmets. While particular Hong
Kong eating practices do show the traces of the British colonialist 'heritage'
(such as 'milky tea'), Macanese food, being a distinctive cultural invention
and having a status as 'cuisine', is what Hong Kong's hybrid food and
beverages failed to attain during its 150-year colonial history. The
important position of the culture of food helps us reconsider the fixed
model of oppressor/oppressed power relations under Portuguese imperialism
and colonialism.
Besides hybridized Macanese food, there is the Portuguese Creole dialect
used in Macau, i.e. the Patois (or Makista).B It is a mixture of Chinese
syntax with Portuguese and Malay vocabularies, and was once widely
spoken by women and servants during the eighteenth and nineteenth „
centuries. However, schools started to teach both Portuguese and Chinese
languages around 1850. As a result, the local Patois gradually disappeared
except in songs and jokes.
The Patois dialect and Macanese food are 'emergent' cultural practices
under Portuguese colonial rule. They form another layer of representation
behind the mask of a Cultural Janus looking towards Cathay and Lusitania.
The Portuguese ideology of panracialism does not merely produce
hybridization, it also effects a transformation of the 'repressed knowledge'
of the Other into cultural specificity. These hybrid practices are, in Bhabha's
words, 'a strategic reversal of the process of domination' (Bhabha, 1 9 8 5 : -
154).
While the ideology of racial amalgamation produces different aspects
of hybridity including new forms of cultural production, the ideology of
ecumenicalism was later displaced by secular economic exploitation —
the engagement in opium-trafficking, the coolie-slave trade and gambling.
Although the former two activities were eventually outlawed in Macau,
the gambling business has flourished and still furnishes tax revenues to
Portugal. Portugal thus continues to enjoy the early colonialist pattern of
'extraction' of capital from Asia's last outpost. In line with the Portuguese
strategy of 'extractive colonialism', no business is so well developed in
Macau as gambling which requires little technology or expertise.
The metamorphosis of Macau from a Catholic bishopric to Asia's
foremost modern 'city of gambling' is not without irony. The nine licensed
casinos which are run by a single licensee — the gambling magnate,
Stanley H o — generate a substantial amount of tax revenue. The casino
taipan gained the gambling monopoly in 1962 and formed the Sociedade
de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau, or the M a c a u T o u r i s m a n d

9
Entertainment Company. He is perhaps the very living emblem of the
paradoxical image in the City of the Name of God. Since 1962, he has
operated the legalized gambling and entertainment business under the
banner of a self-proclaimed philanthropic mission. In an interview he
said:
The view that our enterprise is merely one of a gambling character

is a misconception. Our purpose is to develop tourism and the
entertainment business and bring a new prosperity to Macao
and improve the welfare and living standard of its citizens . . .
[and] to promote the erection of more schools and hospitals.
(South China Morning Post: 2 January 1962)
As a gambling entrepreneur, H o is also one of the chief patrons and

benefactors in Macau and Hong Kong. He fervently alternates between
the gambling business and charity. His charitable contributions even won
papal approval. The Pope in the Vatican City conferred on him the Papal
Insignia of 'Knight Commander of the Equestrian Order of Saint Gregory
the Great' in 1989 in appreciation and recognition of the 'magnanimity
and humanitarian gestures of the Macau and Hong Kong Impresario
towards the Catholic Church' (Lusa: 7 July 1989). The Pope's ecclesiastical
endorsement, however, only blurs the boundary between churches and
casinos, and financial contributions may enhance one's chances of papal
recognition.
The j u x t a p o s i t i o n of churches and casinos a p p e a r s to be an
indispensable cliche in colonialist literary genres when describing Macau.
It is concomitant with the disjunctive nomenclature of the 'Eastern Vatican'
(the religious city) and the 'Eastern Monte Carlo' (the gambling city).
Macau has often been represented through Oriental exoticism and is
textualized as an atrium of 'wheat' and 'chaff, that is, it mingles the
Chosen and the condemned. It was once denounced as the 'Wickedest
City', despite being blessed as the 'Holy City'. As Macau was extolled as
the 'Gem of the Orient' by Sir John Bowring and praised like an Arcadia
on earth by some travellers, W. H. Auden, however, described it as the
'city of indulgence'. C. A. Montalto de Jesus even poignantly called it a
'den of vice'. This is the ambivalence of Macau — it simultaneously
oscillates between the profane and the sublime.
Peninsular Macau is inseparable from the sea and the port mentality.
This also patently generates an insular phenomenon of drifting and
anchoring — a metaphor of people leaving and staying. It is a site of the
liminal sojourn and a permanent shelter as different texts illustrate. Apart
from being a recreational locale for colonials, it is represented as a
CONCLUSION 207
receptacle for China's 'human refuse' and Portugal's banished criminals.

As the Portuguese desired to trade and evangelize, they willy-nilly created
a haven of refuge — a subtle geopolitical sanctuary for European
missionaries and Japanese Christians fleeing religious persecution. It was
also an outlet to the world for millions of desperate Chinese. Not the least
of its functions in this category was its once being a revolutionary base
where Dr Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) and his party found asylum while
trying to overthrow the Qing government at the turn of the twentieth
century.
Macau was fast changing in the last few decades of the twentieth
century. Like most modern cities, it has its own problems. Since the
1980s, illegal money started pouring in from China and there was also an
overdevelopment in real estate. When China's austerity measures were
announced in 1993, the property market sharply declined and the housing
market was severely hit. Due to the economic recession there had been
spiralling crime rates, notably the triad gang warfare linked to profits
from casino loan-sharking, as well as the flourishing prostitution business
and burgeoning violence. Amid such deteriorating social conditions, the
gambling haven also brings with it a lot of murders, kidnaps, bombings
and stabbings. It is now dubbed the 'Eastern Chicago' (the crime city). 10
Only when Macau implements new measures to sustain prosperity and
stability and embarks upon a tough policy to stamp out the surging crime
wave, will it be ruled by law and order. Macau should try to end the
problems and realistically vindicate the description of being the 'fragile
city' and the 'abandoned city' as pessimistically projected in Western eyes
after 1999 (Porter 1996: 3, 193).
As a celebration of a 'new' era between the Portuguese and the Chinese,
Macau has rushed forward with the project of monument building in
public places since 1993. Each year, new monuments are to be built in the
run-up to Macau's return to China in 1999. These monuments, on the
one hand, symbolize the renewed intimacy and friendship of the two
national authorities while on the other, exorcise a kind of (post)colonial
complex. In a subtle way of self-fashioning, the Portuguese attempt to
play the part of the benign 'settler'. The construction of such monuments
speaks for the fervent Portuguese attempt to stake their cultural legacies,
as well as significantly ushers in a period of 'monument-mania'.
The first multi-million-dollar monument, a Porta do Entendimento,
or the Gate of Understanding (MifPH) (Plate 32), stands 40 metres high
on an artificial island outside the Inner Harbour. This colossal monument
w a s i n a u g u r a t e d on Portugal's N a t i o n a l Day, 10 J u n e 1 9 9 3 . It
commemorates Macau's 1987 agreement with China on future sovereignty
and marks the 'harmonious relationship between Portugal and China' in
Plate 32 The Gate of i

Understanding H
the transition period (Lee, South China Morning Post: 1 February 1993).
The 'Understanding' monument was designed by the Portuguese sculptor
Charters de Almeida. It is comprised of two rather monotonous blocks
made of reinforced concrete and coated with polished granite. The rigid
form and monumental size immediately dwarf the spectator and create an
unbridgeable gap to physical communion. Moreover, it is non-functional;
unlike similar monuments, the Statue of Liberty for instance, people cannot
go up to its roof to enjoy the scenic view. The monument may make one
recall Richard Serra's words when he argues, 'To deprive art of its
uselessness is to make other than art. I am interested in sculpture which
is non-utilitarian, non-functional. Any use is a misuse.' (Serra, 1985: 13)
Redolent of Serra's rhetoric is Almeida's illustration of the modernist
aesthetic sensibility in the two monumental blocks.
Cultural modernism's insistence on the distinct consciousness of art
for art's sake and on aestheticist notions of the self-sufficiency of high
culture has already been challenged by postmodernism — a cultural
phenomenon emerged in America and Europe in the 1970s. (Fredric
Jameson has argued that postmodernism is 'the cultural dominant of the
logic of late capitalism.') 11 But Almeida simply shows no interest in the
CONCLUSION 209
culture of everyday life and persists in the maintenance of a Eurocentric

cultural tendency. He appears to 're-inscribe' the modernist penchant for
art by means of maintaining an esoteric distance between the art object
and the spectator. The aesthetic distance is not merely a key marker that
separates culture from the social and economic conditions of the everyday
life, it is also a distance from the bodily sensations for it is our bodies that
bind us to the historical and social specificities. The Gate of Understanding
is simply a demonstration of abstract principles and an artistic expression
of esoteric self-assertions.
This extravagant work is inscribed with a political statement. It can
be interpreted as a 'pre-postcolonial' chic, which pre-celebrates the closure
of a colonial chapter through architectural gestures. The amicable
relationship between Beijing and Lisbon brings to mind the different
colonial histories of Macau and Hong Kong. Britain took Hong Kong by
conquest and imposed upon China unequal treaties. Macau, on the other
hand, was acquired by Portugal on sufferance. China was not involved in
a humiliating confrontation. In 1982 Britain was trying to persuade the
Chinese government at the beginning of the Sino-Bntish negotiations to
exchange sovereignty over Hong Kong for the right to continued British
administration. Portugal in fact twice wanted to retreat, first at the climax
of China's Cultural Revolution during 1 9 6 6 - 1 9 6 7 , and subsequently,
shortly after Portugal's 1974 ' C a r n a t i o n Revolution'. This cultural
landmark is not just a sign of friendship between the Chinese and the
Portuguese authorities, it also serves as a vicarious gesture to show the
British that Sino-Portuguese relations outshine Sino-Bntish confrontation.
Following the theme of amizade, the second new Macau-Taipa bridge,
Ponte de Amizade, or the Bridge of Friendship, was inaugurated on 17
April 1994. 12 The friendly Sino-Luso relationship was again reminiscent
of the political scenario at that specific moment. While Hong Kong was
caught in a frustrating tug-of-war between London and Beijing over
transition issues, Macau was marching much more smoothly towards its
reunification with China, and Portugal was more accommodating to China
than Britain.
The towering Gate of Understanding and the Bridge of Friendship are
politicized to reveal different histories and contrasting political situations
of the two colonies. They are ideological constructs suggesting a certain
degree of complicity between power politics and culture. They also evince
a symbiotic relationship through artistic creation and architectural
expression. They tellingly embrace political complexity in the crucial years
that have led up to the return of Hong Kong and Macau to China before
the end of the twentieth century.
Since the pulling down of the colonial icons of the statue of Mesquita
in 1966 and the Amaral equestrian monument in 1992, the projects of

'understanding' and 'friendship' are signs of the renewed intimacy of the
two national authorities. The good relations between the two states ushered
in a period of economic cooperation and helped boost a very big project
— the construction of an international airport (costing 9 billion patacas,
a p p r o x i m a t e l y US$1.1 billion) off Taipa Island. The new M a c a u
International Airport 13 was initiated in 1989 and by far the largest project
ever undertaken in Macau. It was meant to cope with the ever-increasing
demand for international flights. It was also permeated with a vicarious
intention as being the alternative of the highly controversial airport at
Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong. 14 Peter Fredenburg writes:
While Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport project has been the
focus of seemingly endless wrangling between the British territory
and China, Macau's projects have been a model of
accommodation. Foreign businessmen and Macanese government
officials alike point to more than four centuries of cooperation
between Portugal and China, in contrast to the British seizure
of Hong Kong as a spoil of the Opium War. They cite
characteristics often attributed to each — the 'easy amiability'
of the Portuguese, as opposed to the 'arrogance' of the British.
(Fredenburg, 1994: 14)
The building of the Macau airport was considered a 'fine example' of

cooperation between China and Portugal by Lu Ping (UPP), the Director
of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office. As he praised the spirit of
compromise on the Macau airport issue, he warned Britain at the same
time not to adopt a confrontational approach towards China, but Hong
Kong should learn from Macau in achieving a smooth transition to Chinese
rule (No, South China Morning Post: 25 May 1995). In the wake of a
number of political quarrels, China treated Christopher Patten, the last
Governor of Hong Kong, like a leper. He was blasted as 'a prostitute' and
'a m a n condemned in history', but General Vasco Rocha Vieira, the
Governor of Macau, was entrusted as a friend.
The new airport was inaugurated by Portuguese President, Mario
Soares, and Chinese Vice-President, Rong Yiren ( H I S C ) , on 8 December
1995, a date considered to be auspicious both by the Portuguese and the
Chinese (Plate 33). During the opening ceremony, while Soares described
the new airport as an 'enormous step' towards strengthening the enclave's
autonomy and identity, Rong said it would 'stimulate' the territory's
economic and social development (Bruning, Hongkong Standard: 9
December 1995). Macau's new airport is thus seen as a symbol of 'good
understanding', 'profound friendship' and 'fruitful cooperation' between
CONCLUSION 211
Plate 33 The Inauguration of the Macau International Airport
China and Portugal over Macau, and 'will set the seal on the territory's
ambitions to become a travel and business hub on the South China coast'
(Macau Travel Talk, December 1995).
N o t only does the new airport render political and economic
significance, it also reveals cultural specificity. The opening ceremony was
marked by the eye-dotting of a 138-metre long 'golden' dragon, supported
by 500 people for a dance. The dragon dance is considered an auspicious
ritual in Chinese culture and the dragon is looked upon as a beneficent
deity. However, in Christian culture it is a symbol of Satan and a malevolent
being. In this particular event, a total of 10 traditional Chinese dragons
and 50 lions performed ritualistic dances. It is clear that the dragon dance
becomes a Chinese cultural accoutrement whose symbolic disjuncture
Christians in Macau have come to accept.
Another big construction project was the Cultural Centre, venue for
M a c a u ' s handover ceremony. Located on reclaimed land in the Outer
Harbour, the Cultural Centre (costing 960 million patacas, approximately
US$120 million) was inaugurated by Portuguese President, Jorge Sampaio,
and Chinese Vice-Premier, Qian Qichen ( H K ^ ) , on 19 March 1999. As
part of the inaugural ceremonies, Macau's Catholic Bishop and Buddhist
Abbot were simultaneously invited to carry out religious rites on the tarmac,
giving the new building complex a 'double blessing' (Plate 34). The co-
presence of two different groups of religious dignitaries readily testifies to
unusual religious toleration and exemplifies the Janus-like dimension of
Macau. Their participation also indicates a negotiated accommodation of
East-West religious power relations. Macau is indeed a unique urban
Plate 34 The Co-Presence of Catholic and Buddhist Dignitaries at the Opening of the
Cultural Centre
receptacle being able to celebrate its religious differences and cultural

infusions. The harmonious coexistence of disparate religious beliefs can
perhaps serve as a vicarious model to some places where destructive
religious clashes and ethnic conflicts are a matter of daily reality.
Macau is in full swing with a number of projects which include an oil
terminal, two sewage-treatment plants and the reclamation of 130 hectares
of land and embankments to enclose the Praia Grande Bay, forming two
lakes called Nam Van Lakes. Besides, numerous embryonic plans, such as
a double-track railway and super-highways linking China, are in the offing.
These meticulous processes of modernization are expected to transform
Macau into a major economic force in the Pearl River Delta area.1:> Macau
is being constructed as strategically important and forms a contiguous
part with Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai. It is scheduled
to reassert its historic role as an entrepot for international trade and a
'Gateway to China', but under clear-cut Chinese sovereignty as the dawn
of the third millennium approaches.
Heritage preservation has become a vital issue and is passionately
pursued and widely supported since the government passed a new Heritage
Law in June 1984 with the aim of preserving Macau's heritage as a tourist
asset (Bastos, 1986: 98-104). The heritage projects certainly help retain
yet another Lusitanian trace even as colonial rule fades away. For the
sake of tourist promotion, the Macau Marine Park on Taipa (costing 1.2
billion patacas, approximately US$150 million) is under construction and
the 138-metre Macau Tower is equipped with a revolving platform looking
out to the South China Sea. Given a variety of cultural embellishments,
CONCLUSION 213
A Direcgdo dos Servigos de Turismo de Macau, or the Macau Government

Tourist Office, has bestowed Macau a new identity — City of Culture.
This rubric is perhaps meant to exorcise the negative colonial images of
M a c a u being at the boundary of civilization, and all the c u l t u r a l
developments readily reveal the Portuguese attempt to reiterate their role
as 'cultural benefactors'.
Apart from the Taipa House Museum on Taipa and the M u s e u m of
Nature and Agriculture on Coloane, peninsular Macau is also consciously
engaged in museum projects. The Maritime Museum, opened in 1987, was
removed in 1990 to the present spot near the Temple of Tian H o u , where
the Portuguese were believed to have first landed in the early sixteenth
century. The Grand Prix Museum was inaugurated in November 1993 in
o Centro de Actividades Turisticas, or the Tourist Activities C e n t r e
(completed in 1985), celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Macau Grand
Prix. In the same venue, the Museum of Wine was opened in December
1995, exhibiting and promoting some 800 different brands of Portuguese
wine. The Sacred Art Museum, installed in the excavated crypt of the
Church of the Mother of God, was opened in M a y 1 9 9 6 . The M a c a u
Museum, slotted into the hillside where the historic Monte Fort stands, was
inaugurated in April 1998. It is the largest and the most comprehensive
m u s e u m ever built in the enclave — costing 130 m i l l i o n patacas
(approximately US$16 million). Above all, the Museum of Art of M a c a u
was opened at the new Cultural Centre in March 1999, displaying more than
3000 works of art. These museum projects are cannily designed to make
Macau a City of Museums and a culturally dynamic part of modern China.
All the cultural endeavours, to some extent, effect a continuing"
Portuguese presence in Macau, lending to the 'last emporium' of Portuguese
colonialism a neocolonized cultural identity. Macau is groomed to be a
distinctive city resplendent with rich Lusitanian charm that can hardly be
found in other former colonial outposts in Asia. Unlike Britain which is
interested in economic ventures in postcolonial Hong Kong, Portugal is
more concerned with ensuring its cultural legacy in postcolonial Macau.
It is probably part of a strategy to maintain power and influence in their
former cidade and in China itself.
Despite some promising big projects that have been proposed after
the 1987 Joint Declaration, the foreseeable political and legal changes
have had a crucial impact upon some people in Macau and caused anxiety
and uncertainty about the future. Under these circumstances, Deng
Xiaoping (§M N ¥-), the Chinese patriarch, put forward the novel political
idea of 'one country, two systems', which enabled Macau to become an
'autonomous' Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic
of China. Obviously, the assurance still seemed inadequate and the Chinese
government spared no effort in guaranteeing greater political autonomy

by making yet another concession. In March 1993 a provisional draft of
the Macau Basic Law was promulgated, in which the promise of 'remaining
unchanged for 50 years' was ensured. In this spirit, Macau is de jure
decolonized in 1999 but is de facto 'self-neocolonized' for another 50
years. It is again an anomaly in a sense that after decolonization is achieved,
the communist sovereign country states its intention not to implement
Chinese 'socialist' policies in Macau but rather to preserve the existing
capitalist system, economic order and life-style. In particular, the Portuguese
language 1 6 remains as an official language. This stated intention to
politically tolerate the colonial culture and administrative institutions
immediately signals a recognition of the continuation of the Portuguese
cultural legacy. The decolonization in 1999 is thus represented as only
symbolically beckoning the undoing of the direct remnants of Portuguese
colonial ideology, while its legacy lives on. Given the People's Republic of
China's stated position, the situation in Macau after 1999 can be described
as a peculiarly authorized neocolonial period. Needless to say, the
concretization of this narrative is contingent upon political and legal
rhetoric being transformed into practice.
H o w could this future be imagined? Neocolonialism is concerned
with the legacy of colonialism and is a kind of continuity within
discontinuity. As Robert Young points out, 'Much of the attraction of the
study of colonialism lies in the safety of its politics of the past.
Neocolonialism, on the other hand, is concerned with the more awkward
effects of colonialism in the present.' (Young, 1991: 2) Neocolonialism
not only comprises the half-hidden narratives of colonialism's success in
its continuing operations, it is also the story of a West haunted by the
excess of its own history. But Young's thesis is only partially applicable
in the case of Macau, simply because it is not Portugal that forces its way
to maintain '50 years unchanged' but it is China that prefers to be 'haunted'
by the Portuguese legacy. The continuing effect of cultural colonialism is
not imposed by the colonial power, but China itself constitutionally invites
the continuity of 'the white man's burden'. In fact, on a symbolic level,
modern China itself is a neocolonialist product of a larger, meta-colonialist
project of Western epistemic hegemony, even though Mainland China
managed to remain nominally integral during nineteenth-century territorial
colonization by the West.
In light of the territorial decolonization in 1999, Macau situates itself
in an eccentric historical moment — from the epochal road of colonialism
to n e o c o l o n i a l i s m t h r o u g h a s o m e w h a t a n o m a l o u s p r o c e s s of
decolonization. The 'unchanged for 50 years' policy does not merely
complicate c o n t e m p o r a r y Western practices in delineating cultural
CONCLUSION 215
phenomena into a linear epochal succession, it also confounds those

paradigms in colonial discourse of discreet periodization.
Despite the unprecedented introduction of 'one country, two systems'
and the promise of 'remaining unchanged for 50 years' for both H o n g
Kong and Macau, some people are not overjoyed about going back to the
motherland. The political ambivalence is reminiscent of two poems on
Hong Kong and Macau (the latter having been discussed in Chapter 2)
by Wen Yiduo in 1925 in which he earnestly expresses a poetic desire for
decolonization and reunification with China. These two poems can be
seen as a yardstick to observe the change of nationalistic sentiments in
regard to territorial integrity and national solidarity between a May Fourth
poet of the 1920s and the populace of Hong Kong and Macau at the end
of the twentieth century:
'Hong Kong'
Like the yellow panther guarding the gates of the imperial palace
Oh, Mother! my post is a strategic one, yet my status so humble.
The ferocious Sea Lion17 presses upon my body,
Devouring my flesh and bones and warming itself on my blood.
Oh, Mother! I wail and cry, yet you hear me not.
Oh, Mother! quick! let me hide in your embrace!
Mother! I want to come back, Mother!
(Trans, by Zhu Zhiyu, quoted in Renditions, 1988: 65)
'Ou Mun' (Macau)

Do you know 'Ma Gang' is not my real name?. . .
I have left your tutelage for too long already, Mother!
But what they kidnapped is only my body,
My soul is still under your safe-keeping.
Oh! the Mother I have not forgotten in a dream that has survived
300 years!
Please call my pet name, call me 'Ou Mun'!
Mother, I want to come back, Mother!
In the 1980s, China exerted strenuous efforts to regain the sovereignty

of Hong Kong and Macau. These two places were wrested away in defeats
that have ever since stood as shameful reminders of China's semi-
colonization by the major nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern nation-
states. The 1984 Sino-British and the 1 9 8 7 Sino-Portuguese Joint
Declarations are, therefore, of paramount symbolic effect in the history of
twentieth-century China because they mark the official demise of foreign
imperialism and colonial domination of Chinese soil.
China's efforts to reclaim the two places have directly reflected a steady
diet of nationalistic themes and rhetoric since the May Fourth Movement
and also speak for an aversion to foreign imperialism. As such, the two Joint
Declarations are w r a p p e d in good intentions to 'liberate' the colonial
subjects from the grip of European usurpers/aggressors. The advent of
decolonization has led instead to stress and misgivings about the future and
has also triggered an emigration-mania, specifically the exodus that reached
its climax soon after the Tiananmen Square suppression of pro-democracy
demonstrations in 1989. T h e ambivalence reminds us of Rey Chow's
argument that decolonization in Hong Kong and Macau constitutes a forced
return to, and a recolonization by, the mother country, which is itself as
imperialistic and authoritarian as the previous colonizers (Chow, 1992:
151-170). It is indeed a uniquely ironic historic inversion of a colonial
relationship in a sense that the colonized do not welcome decolonization
and liberation, but rather prefer foreign rule and the 'surrogate mother'.
The surfacing of anxiety precisely reflects the relative indifference not
only to communism, but also to nationalism, even though nationalism
still persists by reinscribing itself in traditional forms. As the force of
Chinese communist ideology gradually weakens in the eyes of the populace
of Hong Kong and Macau, Chinese nationalism becomes an elusive, if not
an u n p r e d i c t a b l e , p h e n o m e n o n . 1 8 It is ironic t h a t the nationalist
reunification for which the Chinese intelligentsia of the May Fourth era
campaigned so idealistically should at its final realization be met by a
'phobia' of reunification. What was once considered a national desire for
territorial integrity and sovereignty has now become an ambivalent issue.
The grandiloquent mission of historical recuperation from Western
colonialism and imperialism is strangely displaced as a possible threat to
economic prosperity and social stability. Wen's two poems read seventy
years later are not without irony given the current lack of anti-colonial
nationalistic sentiment of the 'kidnapped children' in these two colonies.
During its 442-year history under Portuguese rule, Macau has thrived,
grown, prospered, faltered, revived, survived, and above all, evolved into
a Janus-like cultural space under imperialism, colonialism, ecumenicalism,
communism and capitalism. Being one of the oldest colonial zones of
contact in Asia, Macau has, to some extent, been influenced by the cultural
processes of creolization. However, it also maintains two distinct cultural
heritages without being conquered by either cultural force. This is the
uniqueness of Macau — while it reveals its superimposed 'way of life', it
retains its indigenous 'meanings and values'. Moreover, there is basically
no centre/periphery relationship between China and Portugal or vice versa
in ordering cultural forms; rather Chinese and Portuguese cultures involve
fusion as well as differentiation in the colonial context.
CONCLUSION 217
Portugal was the first European polity to set up colonies and trading
posts in the Far East. The Portuguese occupation of Goa in 1510 marked
their initial colonial domination in Asia, and they are due to leave the last
Asian outpost — Macau — in 1999. Portugal was the first to arrive but
is the last to depart. Portuguese colonialism thus comes to a real and
symbolic demise after a time span of 489 years in Asia. The colonial
impact on M a c a u was not just confined to making it an outpost of
Portugal in the East, it also reoriented Macau from a barren-fishing enclave
to a unique Sino-Luso stage in the world theatre. It is an interface of
ruptures and thresholds, as well as contestation and compromise. What
is most special about the place, and what it has always been, is the sense
that its culture alternates between a Janus scenario of having both Chinese
and Portuguese cultural identities. The two cultures engage in a kind of
dialogue which transcends the closedness and one-sidedness of its shared
meanings. They reveal to us some new aspects and new semantic depths
in its hybridized cultural production. At one level, the dialogic encounter
of Chinese and Portuguese cultures has not resulted in the loss of specificity
of each culture, with each retaining its own identity within the space of
Macau. Nevertheless at another level, the Sino-Luso Janus face masks a
history of materially real and culturally substantial Macanese hybridization.
Notes
1 Portuguese overseas domination was often enforced by means of violence, brutality
and technologically superior artillery. On the colonial conquest of Goa and Brazil, see *
M . N . Pearson, The Portuguese in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987) and John Hemming, Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (London:
Papermac, 1978) respectively.
2 See R o b e r t Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London:
Routledge, 1990), Chapter 8 T h e Ambivalence of Bhabha.'
3 On the characteristics of consensual decolonization, see G. Wasserman, Politics of
Decolonization: Kenya Europeans and the Land Issue 1960-1965 (London: Cambridge
University, 1976), pp. 5-6.
4 The return of Macau to China is a 'deferred reunion' simply because China wished
Macau to remain as it was when Portugal was ready to retreat during the climax of
the Cultural Revolution (1966-1967) in China and after the Carnation Revolution
(1974) in Portugal.
5 The threatening idea of racial and cultural degeneration as a result of mixed unions in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century European cultures has been well documented.
Particularly, in late nineteenth-century Britain, the Colonial Office's Crewe Circular
attempted to curb 'racial deterioration' and 'racial anarchy' by forbidding liaisons
between colonists and native women. See Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in
Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), 'Sex and Inequality: The Cultural
Construction of Race.'
6 Peter Mundy wrote in 1637 that there was only one woman in Macau who was born
in Portugal. See Peter Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia, 1608-
1667 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1919), Vol. Ill, Part 1, p. 2 6 3 .
7 The uniquely Macanese cuisine are tasho — a potpourri of different meats, and capella
which contains pork and almonds. See R.A. Zepp, 'Interface of Chinese and Portuguese
Cultures,' in R.D. Cremer, Macau: City of Commerce and Culture (Hong Kong: API
Press Ltd., 1991), p. 157. See also Annabel Doling, Macau on a Plate: A Culinary
Journey (Hong Kong: Roundhouse Publications (Asia) Ltd., 1994).
8 On the Creole dialect in Macau, see Isabel Tomas, 'Makista Creole', Review of Culture,
N o . 5, 1988, pp. 3 3 - 4 6 .
9 The company is the enclave's leading private employer, providing jobs to more than
10 000 people. It also runs the Macau Jockey Club and Yat Yuen Greyhound Canidrome.
See H a r a l d Bruning, ' M o n a c o of the Orient Bets on a Sound Future,' Hongkong
Standard, 23 April 1995.
10 In view of the seemingly never-ending crime wave, Vice-Premier Qian Qichen (WtM%k)
announced on 18 September 1998 that Beijing would station a garrison after the
handover, though the stationing of PLA troops was not stated in the Macau Basic Law.
See Niall Fraser, 'Beijing U-turn Puts Troops in Macau after Handover,' South China
Morning Post, 19 September 1998. On 19 March 1999, however, Qian said advance
troops of the PLA would be sent to Macau before the handover. See Harald Bruning,
'Advance PLA Guard for Macau,' South China Morning Post, 20 March 1999.
11 See Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London:
Verso, 1991), Chapter 1 'The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.'
12 The first Macau-Taipa bridge, called Ponte Governador Nobre de Carvalho, was
inaugurated in July 1974.
13 The new airport was fully operational on 9 November 1995. It has a 3.4-kilometre
runway, capable of handling the largest aircraft on long distance flights and is designed
for all weather and 24-hour operations in order to meet full-scale international standards.
Established in March 1995, Air Macau is the territory's official airline.
14 The H o n g Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok, costing HK$155 billion, was
eventually inaugurated on 6 July 1998.
15 On Macau's economic development in the 1990s, see Peter Fredenburg, 'Delta Pearl:
Macau dresses for China's sovereignty,' AmCham, Vol. 26, N o . 2, March 1994 and
Alejandro Reyes, 'Macau', Asiaweek, 5 October 1994.
16 The official boost of the Portuguese language was belatedly carried out in secondary
schools and in the University of Macau after the government took over the former
University of East Asia in 1988. It is estimated that only between 3 % to 5 % of the
people in Macau can speak Portuguese.
17 A reference to the British.
18 In Hong Kong, an indication of the general antipathy towards the ideology of Chinese
communism could be suggested by the sweeping victory of the Democratic Party in the
eleventh-hour Legislative Council (Legco) elections on 17 September 1995. The Party
is led by party chairman, Martin Lee Chu-ming, Hong Kong's most outspoken democrat.
Lee's pro-democracy politicians won 19 out of 60 seats and emerged as the dominant
force in the Legco. But the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong
Kong (DAB) only won 6 seats. Tsang Yok-sing, high profile leader of the DAB, failed
by a large margin to take a place in the Legco seats.
Bibliography
Alexeiev, Basil M. T h e Chinese Gods of Wealth.' A Lecture delivered at

the School of Oriental Studies, the University of London. Published
by the School of Oriental Studies in conjunction with the China Society,
1928.
Allan, C. W. Jesuits at the Court of Peking. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh,
Ltd., c. 1920.
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. N e w York:
Monthly Review Press, 1971.
Amaro, Ana Maria. Filhos da Terra (XMZ^). (Trans, by Jin Guoping
^ E f f . ) Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1993 (in Chinese).
Anderson, Perry. 'Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism.' New Left
Review, N o . 15, May/June, 1962.
. 'Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism.' New Left Review,~
N o . 16, July/August, 1962.
Aubertin, J. J. (Trans.) The Lusiads of Camoens. London: Kegan Paul,
1884.
Auden, W. H. The Penguin Poets. Victoria: Penguin Books Pty. Ltd., 1958.
Baker, Hugh D.R. Chinese Family and Kinship. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1979.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Rabelais and His World. Cambridge: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 1968.
. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1984.
— . Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1986.
Ball, J. Dyer. Macao: The Holy City; The Gem of the Orient Earth.
Canton: The China Baptist Publication Society, 1905.
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd.,
1981.
220 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Basto da Silva, Beatriz. Cronologia da Historia de Macau (iflPISS^jfe)

(Trans, by Xiao Yu /MU.) M a c a u : M a c a u Foundation, 1995 (in
Chinese).
Bastos, J.L. M a n n h o de. 'Heritage Preservation Work in Macau Today.'
Arts of Asia, Vol. 16, Pt. 1, Jan-Feb, 1986.
Batalha, Graciete. T h i s name of Macau.' Review of Culture, 1st edition,
1987.
Bell, Aubrey F.G. Portuguese Literature. Oxford: The Clarendon Press,
1922.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.
. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism.
Norfolk: The Thetford Press Ltd., 1983.
Benson, Stella. The Little World. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1928.
Berling, Judith A. The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao-en. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1980.
Bhabha, Homi K. 'Of Mimicry and M a n : The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse.' October, Vol. 28, 1984.
. 'Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority
under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817.' Critical Inquiry, 12 (Autumn
1985), No. 1.
. T h e Other Question: Difference, Discrimination and the Discourse
of Colonialism.' In Barker, Francis (ed.) Literature, Politics and Theory.
London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1986.
Bible (The)
Black, Gavin. The Golden Cockatrice. London: William Collins Sons &
Co. Ltd., 1974.
Borges da Silva, Teresa and Radasewsky, Werner. Macau. Berlin: Nicolai
Verlag Beuermann GmbH, 1992.
Boxer, Charles R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825. London:
Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1969.
Boyajian, James C. Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs, 1580-
1640. London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Braga, J. M. China Landfall 1513. Hong Kong: K. Weiss, 1956.
Brim, John A. 'Village Alliance Temples in Hong Kong.' In Wolf, Arthur
P. (ed.) Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society. California: Stanford
Brito Peixoto, Rui. 'Boat People, Land People: Approach to the Social
Organization of Cultural Differences in South China.' Review of
Culture, N o . 2, 1987.
. 'Art, Legend and Ritual: Pointers to the Cultural Identity of
Chinese Fishermen in the South of China.' Review of Culture, N o . 5,
1988.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 221
Bruning, Harald. ' M o n a c o of the Orient Bets on a Sound Future.'

Hongkong Standard, 23 April 1995.
. 'Soares Opens Airport with Fanfare and Firecrackers.' Hongkong
Standard, 9 December 1995.
. 'Advance PLA Guard for Macau.' South China Morning Post, 20
March 1999.
Buck Morss, Susan. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the
Arcades Project. Cambridge: M I T Press, 1989.
Carrier, James G. 'Occidentalism: The World Turned Upside-Down.'
American Ethnologist, Vol. 19, N o . 2, 1992.
Chang Zheng ( # ¥ " ) . Wan Mu Chun ( H ^ K # ) . H o n g Kong: Chaoyang
Chubanshe (g§»tliJK*t), 1976 (in Chinese).
Chao, J.K.T. 'Contemporary Population Statistics of Macau.' In Ramos,
Rufino et al. (ed.) Population and Development in Macau. Macau:
The University of Macau and Macau Foundation, 1994.
Chaudhuri, K.N. Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Cheng, Miu Bing Christina. 'Postmodernism: Art and Architecture in Hong
Kong.' Unpublished M A Thesis. The University of Hong Kong, 1991.
Chow, Rey. 'Between Colonizers: Hong Kong's Postcolonial Self-Writing
in the 1990.' Diaspora, Vol. 2, N o . 2, 1992.
Chow, Tse-tsung. The May Fourth Movement. Cambridge: Harvard
Cirlot, J.E. A Dictionary of Symbols. London: Routledge, 1990.
Clifford, James. 'Introduction: Partial Truths.' In Clifford, James and
Marcus, George E. (ed.) Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1986.
Coates, Austin. City of Broken Promises. London: Frederick Muller Ltd.,
1967.
. A Macao Narrative. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Conner, Patrick. George Chinnery: Artist of India and the China Coast.
Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1993.
Cooke, George W. China: Being cThe Times' Special Correspondence
from China in the year 1857-58. London: Routledge &c Co., 1972.
Copland, Ian. The Burden of Empire: Perspectives on Imperialism and
Colonialism. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Cortesao, Armando. Primeira Embaixada Europeia a China. Macau:
Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1990. Bilingual edition.
Davies, Shann. T h e Old Protestant Cemetery.' Arts of Asia, Vol. 16, Pt.
1, Jan-Feb 1986.
Dean, Kenneth. Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
222 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. London: The Athlone Press, 1981.

Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. London: Penguin Books, 1988.
Doling, Annabel. Macau on a Plate: A Culinary Journey. Hong Kong:
Roundhouse Publications (Asia) Ltd., 1994.
Duara, Prasenjit. 'Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi, Chinese
God of War.' The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 47, No. 4, 1988.
During, Simon. 'Postmodernism or Postcolonialism?' Landfall, Vol. 39,
September, 1985.
. 'Postmodernism or Post-colonialism today.' Textual Practice, Vol.
1, Spring 1987.
. 'Postcolonialism and Globalization.' Meanjin, Winter, 1992.
Dykes, George F.W. (Trans.) Jeronimos. Lisboa: Instituto Portugues do
Patrimonio Cultural, 1991. Bilingual edition.
Eberhard, Wolfram. Local Cultures of South and East China. Leiden:
Brill, 1968.
Edmonds, Richard Louis. 'Population and Development in Macau: An
I n t r o d u c t i o n . ' In R a m o s , Rufino et al. (ed.) Population and
Development in Macau. Macau: The University of Macau and Macau
Foundation, 1994.
Eitel, E. J. Europe in China. First published 1895. Hong Kong: Oxford
Elwes, Robert. A Sketcher's Tour Round the World. London: Hurst and
Blackett, 1854.
Emmons, Charles F. 'Hong Kong's Feng Shui: Popular Magic in a Modern
Urban Setting.' Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 26:1, Summer 1992.
Enciclopedia de la Cultura Espanola. Tomo IV; Leon-Pujol. Madrid:
Editora Nacional.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1971.
Farley, M. F. T h e Chinese Coolie Trade.' Journal of Asian and African
Studies, N o . 3, 1968.
Fei, Chengkang ( $ $ J f t ) . Aomen Sibainian (St("JES"§"¥). Shanghai: Renmin
Chubanshe ( A K i t i J K t t ) , 1988 (in Chinese).
Ferreira, Eduardo de Sousa, Portuguese Colonialism in Africa: The End
of an Era. Paris: The UNESCO Press, 1974.
Finlay, Robert. 'Portuguese and Chinese Maritime Imperialism: Camoes's
Lusiads a n d L u o M a o d e n g ' s Voyage of the San Bao Eunuch."
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 34, No. 2, April 1992.
Fok, Kai Cheong. 'Early Ming Images of the Portuguese.' In Ptak, R. (ed.)
Portuguese Asia: Aspects in History and Economic History (16th and
17th centuries). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH,
1987.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 223
. T h e Ming Debate on H o w to Accommodate the Portuguese and

the Emergence of the Macao Formula.' Review of Culture, Nos. 13/
14, 1991.
Francis, J.D. T h e Consideration of the Fagade of St. Paul's of Macao.'
The Macao Review, Vol. 1, N o . 5, April 1930.
Fraser, Niall, 'Beijing U-Turn Puts Troops in Macau after Handover.'
South China Morning Post, 19 September 1998.
Fredenburg, Peter. 'Delta Pearl: Macau Dresses for China's Sovereignty.'
AmCham, Vol. 26, N o . 2, March 1994.
Freedman, Maurice. 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong
Kong' and 'Geomancy.' In Skinner, G. William The Study of Chinese
Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1979.
Friedman, Jonathan. Cultural Identity and Global Process. London: Sage
Publications Ltd., 1994.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books,
Inc., 1973.
George Chinnery: His Pupils and Influence. Hong Kong: The Urban
Council, 1985.
Gernet, Jacques. China and the Christian Impact. (Trans, by Janet Lloyd.)
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Goldenbook of Lisbon, 1995.
Goldenbook of Lisbon, 1998.
Goldman, Ann. '"I Yam What I Yam": Cooking, Culture, and Colonialism.'
In Smith, S. and Watson, J. (ed.) Decolonizing the Subject: The Politics
of Gender in Women's Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of ^
Minnesota Press, 1992.
Grossberg, Lawrence et al. (ed.) Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge,
1992.
Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri C. (ed.) Selected Subaltern Studies.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1988.
Hall, James. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. New York: Harper
& Row, Publishers, 1974.
Hanna, Willard Anderson. 'A Trial of Two Colonies: Portuguese Macao
and British Hong Kong.' East Asia Series, Vol. XVI. N o . 1 (Macao),
1969.
Hannerz, Ulf. Cultural Complexity. New York: Columbia University Press,
1992.
Harvey, Edwin D. The Mind of China. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1933.
Hemming, John. Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians. London:
Papermac, 1978.
224 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hillard, Katharine (ed.) My Mother's Journal. Boston: George H. Ellis, 1900.

Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (ed.) The Invention of Tradition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
H o b s b a w m , Eric. Nations and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge
H o d o u s , Lewis. Folkways in China. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1929.
Holiday Magazine. February 1955.
Hong Kong Guide (The) 1893. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press,
1982.
Huang, Hanjiang & Wu, Zhiliang (HUtS! ^ ^ ; £ § L ) . Panorama de Macau
(IftP'Uilt). Macau: Macau Foundation, 1994 (in Chinese).
H u a n g , Qichen and Zheng, Weiming ("ftScEi ^ SWf BJ). An Economic
History of Macau ( M P ^ f i H I ^ ) . Macau: Macau Foundation, 1994
(in Chinese).
Huang, Zhaohan and Zheng, Weiming (ik%Wk - H|$#f 0^). Taoist Religion
in Hong Kong and Macau ( # S H S I P ^ WS#J£). Hong Kong: Calvarden
Ltd., 1993 (in Chinese).
H u g g a n , G r a h a m . 'Decolonizing the M a p : Post-Colonialism, Post-
Structuralism and the Cartographic Connection.' Ariel, Vol. 20, N o .
4, 1989.
Hugo-Brunt, Michael. 'An Architectural Survey of the Jesuit Seminary
Church of St. Paul's, Macao.' Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. 1, July
1954.
H u l m e , Peter. Colonial Encounters. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.,
1986.
Hunter, William C. Bits of China. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh Ltd., 1911.
Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New York: Penguin Books, 1989.
J a m e s o n , Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism. London: Verso, 1991.
J a n M o h a m e d , Abdul R. T h e Economy of Manichean Allegory: The
Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature.' Critical Inquiry,
12:1, Autumn 1985.
Jochim, Christian. Chinese Religion: A Cultural Perspective. New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall Inc., 1986.
Johnson, David (ed.) Popular Culture in Later Imperial China. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985.
Jones, P.H.M. Golden Guide to Hong Kong and Macau. Hong Kong:
The Far Eastern Economic Review Ltd., 1969.
Keil, Luis. Jorge Alvares, The First Portuguese to Go to China. Macau:
Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1990.
Kermode, Frank (ed.) The Arden Shakespeare: The Tempest. London:
Methuen, 1986.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 225
Kilgour, Maggie. From Communion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of

Metaphors of Incorporation. New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1990.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. Tripmaster Monkey. New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Inc. 1989.
Kopytoff, Igor. T h e Internal African Frontier: The Making of African
Political Culture.' In Kopytoff, Igor (ed.) The African Frontier.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Lam, Chee Shing. 'A Study of Macao as a Portuguese Settlement in Chinese
Territory from the 16th to 18th Centuries.' ( + 7 N M + A t t t £ E f f i ^ l l +
S W i f l i ? ) Unpublished PhD Thesis. The University of Hong Kong,
1970 (in Chinese).
Latourette, Kenneth S. A History of Christian Missions in China. London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1929.
Lee, Adam. 'Statue Taken Down in Macau.' South China Morning Post,
29 October 1992.
. 'Macau's Monuments to Harmony Strike Sour Note.' South China
Morning Post, 1 February 1993.
Legge, James. The Nestorian Monument of Hsi-an Fu. New York: Paragon
Book Reprint Corp., 1966.
Lei, Pang Chu ( $ » * ) Aomen Gujin ( M P ^ 4 V ) . M a c a u : Starlight
Publishing House, 1988 (in Chinese).
Lesser, Alexander. 'Social Fields and the Evaluation of Society.' South-
western Journal of Anthropology. 17: 4 0 - 4 8 , 1961.
Leung, Beatrice. Sino-Vatican Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992.
. 'Catholic Social Service in Macau: Socio-Political Implications.'
In Ramos, Rufino, et al. (ed.) Population and Development in Macau.
Macau: The University of Macau and Macau Foundation, 1994.
Ljungstedt, Anders. An Historical Sketch of the Portuguese Settlements in
China. First published 1 8 3 2 . H o n g Kong: Viking H o n g Kong
Publications, 1992.
Li, Xianzhang (^BM). O Culto da Deusa A-Ma (SHfifg W W ^ L ) . Macau:
Museu Maritimo de Macau, 1995 (in Chinese).
Liang, Piyun ( ^ S S ) . Manuscrito Poetico de Sut Leu ( S i t l f f | ) . Macau:
Cultural Institute of Macau, 1991 (in Chinese).
Lo, Kwai Cheung. 'Crossing Boundaries.' Unpublished MPhil Thesis, The
University of Hong Kong, 1990.
Luis, Salvador. The Spanish Dominicans in the Delta of the Pearl River.
Hong Kong: Rosaryhill School, 1987.
Lusa, Portuguese News Agency (Macau Bureau), 7 July 1989.
Macao Daily News (8IM 0*R). 27 October 1996 (in Chinese).
226 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Macao Daily News (8IP^ HIS). 24 May 1998 (in Chinese).

Macau Cultural Heritage. Macau: Cultural Institute of Macau, 1988.
Macau Patrimonio e Filatelia. Trilingual edition. M a c a u : Correios e
Telecommuniôes de Macau, 1995.
Macau Travel Talk. 'Airport Inauguration Special Issue.' Series 2, No. 233,
December 1995.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. Magic, Science and Religion, and Other Essays.
New York: Doubleday, 1954.
Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. David Riazanov
(ed.) Vienna, 1917.
Marx, K. and Engels, E. On Religion. Moscow: Progress, 1957.
Mazo, Ramon Lay. T'u-Ti Shen — Gods of the Earth.' Review of Culture,
N o . 5, 1988.
McRobbie, Angela. T h e Passagenwerk and the Place of Walter Benjamin
in Cultural Studies: Benjamin, Cultural Studies, Marxist Theories of
Art.' Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, N o . 2, May 1992.
Medhurst, Walter Henry. China: Its State and Prospects. London: John
Snow, 1838.
Michael, Franz H. and Taylor, George E. The Far East in the Modern
World. Illinois: The Dryden Press, 1975.
Michie, Alexander. The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era.
Vol. 1. London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1900.
Minamiki, George S. J. The Chinese Rites Controversy from Its Beginning
to Modern Times. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985.
Ming Pao Daily News (HJ!$R). 29 October 1992 (in Chinese).
M o , Timothy. An Insular Possession. London: Picador, 1986.
. The Monkey King. London: Abacus, 1990.
Montalto de Jesus, C. A. Historic Macao. First published 1902. Hong
Kong: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Morss, Susan Buck. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the
Arcades Project. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1989.
Mundy, Peter. The Travels of Peter Mundy, in Europe and Asia, 1608-
1667. London: The Hakluyt Society, 1919.
N o , Kwai-yan. 'Lu praises Macau's smooth transition.' South China
Morning Post, 25 May 1995.
Norman, Henry, The Peoples and Politics of the Far East. London: T.
Fisher Unwin, 1907.
Olderr, Steven. Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary. Jefferson:
McFarland & Co. Inc., 1986.
Oliphant, Laurence. Elgin's Mission to China and Japan (in the years
1857-59). London: Oxford University Press, 1970. Vol. 1.
Pan, Lynn. Tracing it Home. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 227
Panikkar, K. M. Asia and Western Dominance. London: George Allen

and Unwin Ltd., 1954. (Second impression.)
. Asia and Western Dominance. London: George Allen and Unwin
Ltd., 1959. (New edition.)
Parry, Benita. 'Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse.' The
Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 9, N o . 1-2, 1987.
Parry, John Horace. The Age of Reconnaissance. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1963.
Pearson, M.N. The Portuguese in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
Pessoa, Fernando. Selected Poems. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1971.
Pina Cabral, Joao de and Lourengo, Nelson. 'Macanese Ethnicity and
Family: A Methodological Prologue.' Review of Culture, N o . 11/12,
1991.
. 'Personal Identity and Ethnic Ambiguity: Naming Practices among
the Eurasians of Macao.' Social Anthropology, Vol. 2, Part 2, June
1994.
Pires, Benjamin Videira. 'Origins and Early History of Macau.' In Cremer,
R.D. (ed.) Macau: City of Commerce and Culture. Hong Kong: API
Press Ltd., 1991.
. Os Extremos Conciliam-se (WlkfilM — M^XitltM). (Trans.
by Su Qin MWl.) Macau: Instituto Cultural de M a c a u , 1992 (in
Chinese).
Polland, Madeleine. Mission to Cathay. Surrey: The World's Work (1913)
Ltd., 1966.
Porter, Jonathan. 'Chinese Popular Religion and the Settlement of Macau.'
Review of Culture, No. 10, 1990.
. Macau: The Imaginary City, Culture and Society, 1557 to the
Present. Colorado: Vestview Press, 1996.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.
London: Routledge, 1992.
Prescott, Jon A. Macaensis Momentum. Macau: Hewell Publications, 1993.
Pursuing the Dream: Jesuits in Macau. Macau: Tipografia Martinho, 1990.
Quennell, Peter (ed.) Memoirs of William Hickey. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1975.
Quint, David. 'Voices of Resistance: The Epic Curse and Camoes's
Adamastor.' Representations, N o . 27, Summer 1989.
Redfield, Robert. Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological
Approach to Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956.
Renditions, Nos. 29 and 30. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong
Kong, 1988.
228 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Review of Culture, 1st edition, 1987.

Review of Culture (^CfkffilS), No. 20, 1994. Special Issue on the Macanese
( & H ± £ A # * i ) (in Chinese).
Review of Culture (XitMi), N o . 2 1 , 1994. Special Issue on the IV
Centenary (1594-1994) of St Paul's ( 8 ! n H t S * S ¥ l ^ l H W f f l ¥ 1 5 9 4 -
1994 mX^m) (in Chinese).
Reyes, Alejandro. 'Macau.' Asiaweek, 5 October 1994.
Roberts, Elfed Vaughan et al. Historical Dictionary of Hong Kong and
Macau. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press Inc., 1992.
R o w b o t h a m , Arnold H . Missionary and Mandarin: The Jesuit at the
Court of China. N e w York: Russell and Russell, 1966.
Russell-Wood, A.J.R. A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa,
Asia, and America, 1415-1808. Manchester: Carcanet Press Ltd., 1992.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus, 1993.
Saraiva, Jose Hermano. Historia Concisa de Portugal (101§ Jffljjfe). (Trans.
by Wang Quanli and Li Junbao 3Ejfeft ^ $ ^ I I L ) Macau: Instituto
Cultural de Macau e Editora Montanha das Flores, 1994 (in Chinese).
Seidlitz, Peter. 'Links with Vatican Strengthen.' South China Morning
Post, 30 September 1995.
Senna Fernandes, Henrique de. 'A-Chan, A Tancareira.' In Nam Van:
Contos de Macau. Macau: 1978 (in Portuguese).
. Amor e Dedinhos de Pe. Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau,
1992 (in Portuguese).
Serra, Richard. Recent Sculpture in Europe 1977-1985. Bochum: Galerie
M , 1985.
Shohat, Ella. 'Notes on the "Post-Colonial".' Social Text, N o . 31/32,
1992.
Simpson, Colin. Asia's Bright Balconies. Sydney: Angus and Robertson
Ltd., 1962.
Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1986.
. T o w a r d s a Global Culture?' Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 7,
Nos. 2 - 3 , 1990.
Smith, George. A Narrative of an Exploratory Visit to each of the Consular
Cities of China, and to the Islands of Hong Kong and Chusan (in the
years 1844-46). Taipei: Ch'eng Wen Publishing Co., 1972.
Spae, Joseph J. T h e Catholic Church in China.' In Pas, F. Julian (ed.) The
Turning of the Tide: Religion in China Today. Hong Kong: Oxford
Stam, Robert. Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 229
Strohm, David. T h e Bank of China: A Review of Its Role and Function

in the People's Republic of China and the Hong Kong/Macau Region.'
Macau: The University of East Asia, China Economic Research Centre
(Discussion Paper), 1989.
Ta, Chen. Emigrant Communities in South China. Shanghai: Kelly and
Walsh, 1939.
Tam, Camoes C.K. (M&3£) Disputes concerning Macau's Sovereignty
between China and Portugal (1553-1993) (?IP1±ftP*11lfe* 1 5 5 3 -
1993). A revised PhD Thesis. Taipei: Yongye Chubanshe (TJcHftfig
?±), 1994 (in Chinese).
T a n g , Si (JfJg)- Aomen Fengwuzhi (liP^SltJ^). Macau: Macau
Foundation, 1994 (in Chinese).
Teixeira, Manuel. The Chinese Temple of Barra: Ma-Kok-Miu. Macau:
The Information and Tourist Department, 1979.
. T h e Church of St. Paul in Macau.' STVDIA, (Lisboa) N o . 4 1 -
4 2 , 1979.
. IV Centendrio Dos Dominicanos em Macau 1587-1987. Macau:
Fundaâo Macau, 1987 (in Portuguese).
. T h e Church in Macau.' In Cremer, R.D. (ed.) Macau: City of
Commerce and Culture. Hong Kong: API Press Ltd., 1991.
. Camoes in Macau. Macau: Martinho Printing Press, 1980.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.
London: Harper and Row Publishers, 1982.
Tomas, Isabel. 'Makista Creole.' Review of Culture, N o . 5, 1988.
Torga, Miguel. O Senhor Ventura. Bilingual edition. Macau: Instituto
Cultural de Macau, 1989.
Townsend, James. 'Chinese Nationalism.' Australian Journal of Chinese
Affairs. N o . 27, 1992.
Tsui, Bartholomew P.M. Taoist Tradition and Change. H o n g Kong:
Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1991.
Turner, John Arthur. Kwang Tung or Five Years in South China. Hong
Kong: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Usellis, W. Robert. The Origin of Macao. Macau: Museu Maritimo de
Macau, 1995.
Villarroel, Fidel. T h e Chinese Rites Controversy: Dominican Viewpoint.'
Philippiniana Sacra, Vol. XXVIII, N o . 82, 1993.
Vries, Ad de. Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. Amsterdam: North-
Holland Publishing Co., 1976.
Wagenknecht, Edward. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Portrait of an
American Humanist. N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Wakeman, Frederic E. The Fall of Imperial China. New York: Free Press,
1975.
230 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Watson, James L. 'Standardizing the Gods: The Promotion of Tian H o u

("Empress of Heaven") along the South China Coast, 9 6 0 - 1 9 6 0 . ' In
Johnson, David (ed.) Popular Culture in Late Imperial China. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985.
Wasserman, G. Politics of Decolonization: Kenya Europeans and the Land
Issue 1960-1965. London: Cambridge University, 1976.
Welch, Holmes. Taoism: The Parting of the Way. Boston: Beacon Press,
1957.
Welcome to Macau. 1993.
Wen, Yiduo ( H - £ ) . Wen Yiduo Shiji ( H - ^ H ) . Chengdu: Sichuan
Renmin Chubanshe (HJl|AKtiiJK*t), 1984 (in Chinese).
Werner, E.T.C. A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology. Shanghai: Kelly and
Walsh, 1932.
William, S.W. The Middle Kingdom. New York: Paragon Book Reprint
Corp., 1966.
Williams, C.A.S. Chinese Symbolism and Art Motifs. Rutland: Charles E.
Turtle Company, 1988.
White, Hayden. 'New Historicism: A Comment.' In Veeser, H. Aram (ed.)
The New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Wolf, Eric R. Europe and the People without History. London: University
of California Press, 1982.
Worsley, Peter. The Trumpet Shall Sound. London: Macgibbon and Kee,
1957.
Xu, Xin ( # f f ) . Macau in Cultural Perspective (MPIIlif). Macau: Macau
Foundation, 1994 (in Chinese).
Yang, C.K. Religion in Chinese Society. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1970. (Third printing.)
Yee, Albert H. A People Misruled. Singapore: Heinemann Asia, 1992.
Yi Ling ( I I S ) . Liu Dong Dao ( ^ f t S ) . Hong Kong: Shi Fang (t##f),
1990 (in Chinese).
Yin, Guangren and Zhang, Rulin (Ep5tffi * 3S&3*). Aomen Jilue (SPIffi
ffl&). Annotated and revised by Zhao, Chunchen ( S ! # H ) . Anotagdo e
Revisao sobre Ou-Mun Kei-Leok (SPIfBffl&Rft). Macau: Instituto
Cultural de Macau, 1992 (in Chinese).
Young, John D. Confucianism and Christianity. Hong Kong: Hong Kong
Young, Robert. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London:
Routledge, 1990.
. 'Neocolonial Times.' The Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 13, N o .
1-2, 1991.
. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London:
Routledge, 1995.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 231
Yuan, Bangjian and Yuan, Guixiu (JLPRM x M&W). Aomen Shilue (SIP*]
£B&). Hong Kong: Zhongliu Chubanshe (4*«LtUJKtt), 1988 (in
Chinese).
Zepp, R.A. 'Interface of Chinese and Portuguese Cultures.' In Cremer, R.
D. (ed.) Macau: City of Commerce and Culture. Hong Kong: API
Press Ltd., 1991.
Zhang, Wenying (M3C&X). Aomen yu Zhonghua Lishi Wenhua (fHPIJ^^
^M^Xit). Macau: Macau Foundation, 1995 (in Chinese).
Zheng, Tianxiang (SP^cff) et al. Populagdo de Macau (MPIAn). Macau:
Macau Foundation, 1994 (in Chinese).
Film
Rocha, Luis Felipe. Amor e Dedinhos de Pe (ftlfH/hlifilt). Distributed
in Macau, 1992.
Opera
Puccini, Giacomo. Madame Butterfly, c. 1920.
Index
123 Incident 29, 35, 44, 190 Bank of China Building 5, 29, 36, 38,
1910 (5 October) Revolution 28, 35, 42,45
178 Barrier Gate 1, 22, 26, 5 1 , 198
1974 (25 April) military revolution 36; Bible 67, 68, 70, 85, 140
see also Carnation Revolution bohemian 6, 180, 181, 182
1987 Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration Boxer Rebellion 71
28, 34, 36, 39, 4 1 , 199, 207, 2 1 5 , Bridge of Friendship 209
216 bridgehead 5, 5 1 , 55, 66, 75, 76, 179,
1 9 8 7 a g r e e m e n t see 1987 Sino- 201
Portuguese Joint Declaration Buddha 111, 116, 138, 156
Buddhism 77, 83, 109, 1 1 3 , 1 1 5 , 116,
Alvares, Jorge 5 , 1 7 , 1 8 , 1 9 , 2 0 , 2 1 , 4 4 119, 120, 122, 126
Amaral, Joao Maria Ferreira do 26, Buddhist 184, 186, 189
27, 28, 36, 40, 199
Amaral equestrian monument 5, 36, Camoes, Luis Vaz de 7 , 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 5 ,
38,42,210 16,43,133,136,180,181,193,194
Amaral statue 30, 37; see also Amaral cannibalism 2 1 , 146, 147, 148, 158,
equestrian monument 159, 160
Amitabha 117 cannibalistic subsumption 157
anachronistic decolonization 35, 37 capitalism 3 1 , 7 3 , 1 8 1 , 1 8 4 , 1 8 8 , 1 8 9 ,
ancestor worship 2 7 , 5 7 , 6 2 , 6 3 , 6 4 , 6 5 , 198,208,216,218
66, 78, 155; see also cult of ancestor Carnation Revolution 35, 209, 217
worship and cult of the ancestors carnivalesque 1 1 1 , 147
Arcadia 6, 138, 167, 206 carnivalism 6, 146, 148
Arcadian 132, 134 carrack 15, 16, 20, 4 3 , 94, 106
Augustinians 52,62 casino 136, 138, 158, 205, 206, 207
Cathay 1, 7, 55, 205
Bakhtin, Mikhail 2, 3 , 1 2 5 , 1 4 4 , 1 5 7 , Catholicism 5, 10, 5 1 , 55, 56, 6 1 , 62,
197 66, 6 9 , 7 3 - 7 6 , 7 8 , 7 9 , 82, 1 2 2 ,
Bakhtinian carnivalism 6, 147, 158 202
234 INDEX
child imagery 142, 143 Creole 4 , 1 9 4 , 2 0 3 , 2 0 4 , 2 1 8

Chinnery, George 135, 159 creolization 175, 194, 216
Christian City 49, 75, 158, 166 cult of ancestor worship 63, 78
Christian culture 2 1 , 6 1 , 66, 84, 94, cult of Angels 93
211 cult of Guan Yu 113
Christianity 5, 9, 19, 20, 2 5 , 42, 5 0 - cult of Mary 89, 92, 98, 104; see also
5 3 , 55, 59, 60-62, 64, 65, 66, 61, Marian cult
70-73, 75, 76, 79, 82, 94, 118, 121, cult of the ancestors 26
122, 132, 1 4 1 , 177, 179, 198, 2 0 1 , cultural anthropophagy 6, 127, 146,
202 148, 156
Christianization 179 Cultural Centre 211-213
Church of the Mother of God 60, 89, cultural identity 40, 162, 163, 193,
100,138,213 202, 213
City of Culture 213 Cultural Janus 4, 205
city of indulgence 140, 141, 206 Cultural Revolution 29, 35, 82, 189,
City of Museums 213 190,209,217
City of the Holy N a m e of God 138 Cultural Studies 2, 7, 201
City of the Name of God 4 7 , 4 8 , 76, culture 2, 4, 1 6 3 , 1 7 8 , 1 8 5 , 1 9 2 , 1 9 3 ,
82, 1 4 1 , 2 0 1 , 2 0 6 194, 197, 205, 209, 2 1 1 , 214, 217
civilizing mission 42, 64, 9 2 , 1 4 1 , 153,
199; see also mission civilisatrice da Gama, Vasco 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
'closed-door' policy 17, 19, 3 1 , 141 16,42,51,180,181,193
colonial discourse 6, 2 5 , 129, 146, decolonization 4, 5, 6, 33-38, 4 1 , 42,
157, 200, 2 0 1 , 215 199,200,214,216,217
colonial ideology 6, 64, 144, 150, 156 deferred reunion 199, 217
colonialism 4, 6, 2 9 - 3 1 , 3 3 , 3 5 - 3 8 , Deng Xiaoping 213
45, 64, 67, 6S, 129, 140, 142, 146, dialogism 144, 145
147, 151, 165, 198-200, 202, 204, Diocese of Macau 47, 74, 82
205,213,214,216 Dominicans 2 7 , 52, 56, 57, 77, 78,
colonization 4, 9, 2 3 , 26, 34, 35, 40, 89
42, 59, 62, 74, 198, 199, 200, 2 0 1 , dragon 6 3 , 9 3 , 94, 95, 107, 211
214,215 Drifting Island 6, 165, 166, 190
Columbus, Christopher 2 0 , 2 1 , 5 1 , duckweed 6, 168, 172, 173, 176,182
55,131 affectivity 171
communism 73, 198, 216
Confucian 184, 186, 189 East 4 , 1 9 , 4 1 , 4 2 , 5 0 , 5 4 , 6 0 , 6 8 , 7 4 ,
Confucianism 6 1 , 62, 83, 113, 122 75, 9 4 , 1 0 0 , 1 2 7 , 1 2 8 , 1 2 9 , 1 3 1 , 1 3 5 ,
Confucius 57, 58, 6 3 , 64, 66, 185 138, 142-146, 152, 156, 157, 158,
consensual decolonization 6, 199 181,198,201,217
coolie-slave trade 3 1 , 32, 136, 1 4 1 , Eastern Monte Carlo 206
159, 205; see also slave trade Eastern Vatican 206
coolies 137, 139, 179 eclecticism 72, 109, 115, 120
Counter-Reformation 10, 50, 66, 75, ecumenicalism 4, 6,16,19, 50, 64, 75,
201 201,202,205,216
INDEX 235
Edict of Toleration 55, 78 era 10

Empress of Heaven 1 0 2 , 1 0 3 , 2 0 2 ; see Head of Christendom 49, 122, 136
also Tian Hou hegemony 6, 30, 59, 6 1 , 68, 72, 102,
essentialism 1 2 8 , 1 4 8 ; see a l s o 214
Orientalist essentialism Hindu 5 1 , 5 5 , 1 1 8
ethnicity 8 1 , 162 Holy City 40, 49, 69, 141, 206
Eurocentric 52, 59, 72,147, 201, 209 Holy Mother of God 9 3 - 9 5 ; see also
Eurocentrism 21 Virgin Mary and Virgin Mother of
Expo 98 15, 100, 193 God
extractive colonialism 205 Holy See 58, 59, 62, 66, 74, 75, 78,
79
Facade of St Paul's 2 0 , 106; see also Hugo-Brunt, Michael 85, 89, 123
Facade of the Church of the Mother hybrid 4, 152, 155, 179, 203
of God identity 174, 177
Facade of the Church of the Mother of hybridity 177, 195, 199, 204, 2 0 5 ,
God 5, 20, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, 93, 217
95, 9 8 - 1 0 0 , 1 0 6 , 1 0 7 , 1 1 5 , 1 1 6 , 1 2 1 , hybridization 204, 205, 217
124, 202
feng shui 26, 36, 44 Iberian 5 , 4 8 , 5 3 , 5 4 , 135
firecracker 182, 183, 184, 187, 195 Iberian Peninsula 9, 28, 53, 161
flaneur 6, 174, 176 identity 4, 72, 8 1 , 1 2 8 , 1 4 3 , 1 4 5 , 1 4 6 ,
Franciscans 27, 5 1 , 52, 56, 57, 6 1 , 78, 150, 151, 162, 163, 172, 178, 184,
89 193,203,204,213,217
crisis 151, 155, 175, 177, 178
gambling 136, 138, 139, 158, 159, ideology 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 19, 22, 24, 25,
174, 1 7 5 , 1 8 4 , 1 8 7 , 2 0 5 , 2 0 7 39, 50, 52, 6 1 , 62, 77, 8 2 , 1 2 1 , 1 4 3 ,
business 137 145, 1 4 6 , 1 4 8 , 156, 187, 189, 2 0 1 , -.
syndicates 141 202,205,214,216,218
Gate of Understanding 207, 209 imagery of the sea 188, 192
Gem of the Orient 134, 137, 206 imperialism 4, 6, 9, 30, 33, 6 1 , 62, 68,
Goddess of Mercy 5, 8 3 , 1 1 6 , 2 0 2 ; see 69, 7 1 , 72, 7 3 , 130, 140, 142, 146,
also Guan Yin 165,198,200,205,215,216
Goddess of the Sea 5, 8 3 , 100, 102; of exchange 16, 43
see also Tian Hou Industrial Revolution 3 1 , 66, 201
Guan Gong 112, 115; see also Guan Islam 9
Yu Islamic 50
Guan Yin 5, 83, 102, 104, 106, 109, States 10
111, 112, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120,
121, 126, 176 Janus 4, 75, 198, 2 0 1 , 205, 211
Guan Yin Tang 5 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 6 , 1 2 0 , 1 2 1 , Janus complex 6, 26
123, 202 Janus dimension 123
GuanYu 112,113,125 Janus faces 137
Janus scenario 30, 82, 217
Habsburg 76 Janus-faced arena 158, 197
236 INDEX
Janus-like 161, 165, 194 May Fourth Movement 3 3 , 4 5 , 82,

Jeronimos Monastery 12, 17 215,216
Jesuit Society 58; see also Society of Mencius 186
Jesus Mesquita, Vicente Nicolau de 27, 28,
Jesuits 24, 5 1 , 52, 5 5 - 6 1 , 70, 77, 83, 30,40
84, 89, 95, 96, 99, 100, 106 monument 29, 209
Judeo-Christianity 42, 65, 120 miscegenation 142, 150, 156, 1 7 3 ,
junk 1 0 3 , 1 0 5 , 176 176,202,203
mission civilisatrice 5, 2 1 , 52, 70, 75,
Leal Senado 28, 48, 5 3 , 76 201; see also civilizing mission
linguistic nationalism 178 missionary colonialism 201
lions 8 9 , 9 6 , 106, 110, 114 modernity 180, 181, 182, 201
literary colonialism 59, 60 Montalto de Jesus, Carlos Augusto 5,
Ljungstedt, Anders 5, 2 3 , 24, 2 5 , 26, 24,25,36,47,137,206
36, 40, 47, 124 Monument of Discoveries 1 0 , 1 2 , 1 7
Lu Ping 29, 36, 210 Morrison, Robert 5 1 , 67, 68, 69, 79,
Lusitania 1, 7, 43, 205 132
Lusitanian 4, 5,14, 7 4 , 1 2 1 , 1 2 3 , 1 3 5 , Mother of God 6, 89, 92, 9 3 , 115,
136, 1 4 1 , 2 1 2 , 2 1 3 202; see also Virgin Mother of God
Lusitanian Other 21 Muslims 9, 50, 51
Lusitano Club 20
Nam Van Lakes 7, 212
Ma Ge Miao 5 1 , 100, 105, 115, 121, national identity 54, 168, 178, 179
123; see also Ma Zu Ge and Temple nationalism 33, 44, 56, 178, 204, 216
of Tian Hou nationality 155, 168, 178
Ma Zu Ge 5 , 1 0 0 , 1 0 5 , 1 0 6 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 6 , neocolonial 6, 147
118,120,124,202 critique 200
Macanese 149, 155, 156, 157, 160, neocolonialism 37, 199, 2 0 1 , 214
161, 163, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177, Nestorianism 50, 77
178, 179, 194,203,204,205 nostalgia 28, 39, 4 1 , 190, 191
cuisine 2 0 4 , 2 0 5 , 2 1 8
Macau Formula 22 opium 27, 30, 3 1 , 33, 44, 68, 70, 7 1 ,
Macau International Airport 210 137, 138, 141, 143
Maitreya 110, 1 1 1 , 115, 117, 118, trade 31, 144
120 trafficking 205
Manichean 158 Opium War 2 6 , 2 7 , 3 1 , 4 4 , 6 9 , 7 0 , 7 1 ,
allegory 144 72
opposition 6, 160 Orient 9, 42, 75, 127, 128, 130, 134,
Marian City 4 9 , 8 3 144, 145
Marian cult 8 9 , 1 1 5 Orientalism 128, 142, 158, 199
Marx, Karl 6 8 , 1 8 0 Orientalist 146, 148
Marxism-Leninism 73, 82 discourse 139, 143
Marxist 184, 185, 195 essentialism 6
mastication 146, 148, 156 fantasy 134
INDEX 237
relationship 156 Rites War 54, 55

Orientalness 173 river 6, 164, 165, 167, 193, 194
Os Lusiadas 7, 12, 13, 15, 16, 4 3 , Ruins of St Paul's 8 3 , 123, 1 3 3 ; see
1 3 3 , 1 8 0 , 181 also Facade of St Paul's
Ou M u n 5, 7, 3 3 , 34, 4 7 , 49, 142,
215 Sakyamuni Buddha 117, 120, 126
sea 6, 102, 104, 105, 112, 145, 1 6 1 ,
palm tree 96, 98 164, 167, 169, 172, 173, 175, 176,
panracialism 6, 150, 156, 202, 205 177, 181, 182, 188, 192, 193, 194,
Partition of the World 5, 53, 54, 198 206
Patois 205 seascape 163, 193
Patten, Christopher 210 Shangchuan Island 22, 52, 77
Pax Lusitania 19, 44, 201 Sinicization 74, 120, 148, 156, 157
Pearl River 1, 4, 134, 161, 163, 164, Sinocentric 17, 22, 44
165,179,192,193,212 colonial discourse 157
personal identity 160, 162, 179, 203 Sinocentrism 21
p h a r m a k o n 6, 164, 170, 177, 193, slave trade 30, 31; see also coolie-slave
194 trade
Policy of Accommodation 55, 57, 77 socialism 198
port mentality 170, 1 7 1 , 172, 193, Society of Jesus 5 0 , 5 5 , 57, 59, 74, 77,
206 98; see also Jesuit Society
postcolonial 6, 147, 199, 213 - Song of Songs 85, 96, 124
theory 2 0 0 , 2 0 1 Special Administrative Region 1, 213
postcolonialism 37, 38 stereotypes 6, 1 2 7 - 1 3 0 , 1 3 8 - 1 4 0 ,
postcoloniality 3 7 , 4 2 142, 146, 1 4 8 , 1 5 8 , 184
postmodern 169 Sun Yat-sen 73, 207
postmodernism 2 0 8 , 2 1 8 syncretism 115, 122, 147, 148, 177,
postmodernity 38 195
Praia Grande Bay 76, 125, 192, 212
pre-postcolonial 5 , 2 0 9 Tagus River 1 0 , 1 5 , 1 6 1 , 1 9 3
era 35, 38 Taipa 7 , 1 8 3 , 1 8 4 , 1 8 6 , 1 8 7 , 1 8 8 , 1 9 5 ,
Protestantism 5, 68, 69, 7 1 , 75, 133 210,213
punctum 4 1 , 4 2 Taiping Rebellion 70, 72
Tanka 105, 125, 132, 135, 170, 1 7 1 ,
recolonization 216 172,189
reflex-colonization 181,200 Taoism 50, 77, 8 3 , 109, 1 1 3 , 1 1 5 ,
reincarnation 184, 186, 189 116,122
religious culture 59, 67, 8 1 , 82, 83, Teixeira, Manuel 24, 42, 77, 89, 124
104,106,116,121,123,202 Temple of Tian Hou 213
Ricci, M a t t e o 19, 5 1 , 5 5 , 56, 177, text (in a Bakhtian sense) 2, 3 , 1 6 3 ,
179 194, 197
right of patronage 54, 56, 58 Three Precious Buddhas 117
Rites Controversy 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, Three Teachings 83, 122, 126
61, 62, 70, 74, 78; see also Rites War Tian H o u 5, 76, 8 3 , 100, 1 0 3 - 1 1 0 ,
238 INDEX
112-113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 1 2 1 , Virgin Mary 5 , 1 8 , 85, 89, 92, 93, 94,
124, 176 96,98,104,106,118,119,121
Tower of Belem 1 1 , 1 7 Virgin Mother of God 102, 104; see
Treaty of Beijing 27 also Virgin Mary
Treaty of Nanjing 26 virgin trio 5, 81, 123, 202
Treaty of Tordesillas 5 3 , 1 5 9
trinity 9 8 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 7 , 1 1 8 , 2 0 1 Wen Yiduo 33, 34, 142, 215, 216
West 4 , 1 9 , 5 0 , 7 2 , 7 5 , 1 2 7 - 1 3 1 , 1 4 3 -
ultra-colonialism 4 3 , 200 146, 152, 156-158, 1 9 8 , 2 0 1
'Understanding' monument 208; see Western ethnocentrism 128, 146
also Gate of Understanding Wickedest City 138, 158, 159, 206
Vatican 59, 61, 62, 64-66, 73, 74, 75, Xavier, Francis 19, 22, 5 1 , 77, 98
78, 79, 158, 206 xenophobia 71
Vieira, Vasco Rocha 210 t xenophobic reaction 65

Christina Miu Bing Cheng-Macau - A Cultural Janus-Hong Kong University Press (1999)

Încărcat de

Informații document

Titlu original

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Christina Miu Bing Cheng-Macau - A Cultural Janus-Hong Kong University Press (1999)

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Christina Miu B in g Cheng

Father Manuel Teixeira (1912-) in front of the Amaral Equestrian Monument

© Hong Kong University Press 1999

First Published 1999

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or

Secure On-line Ordering

Cover designed by Lea 5c Ink Design

2 An Anomaly in Colonization and Decolonization 9

3 'City of the Name of God of Macau in China, There is

Autonomization of the Chinese Church 73

4 The Rendezvous of a Virgin Trio 81

5 Colonial Stereotypes, Transgressive Punishment and Cultural

6 Midway Sojourners, Macanese Moments and Stoical Settlers 161

Plate 1 The Monument of Discoveries at Belem, Lisbon 11

Plate 20 The Foundation Stone 99

Christina Miu Bing Cheng

1 See M . Hugo-Brunt, 'An Architectural Survey of the Jesuit Seminary Church of St

M a c a u (IflP1!)1 — the 'gate' of South China — stands on the Western

confluence of two great cultural currents — the Sino-Luso cultural flow,

production rooted in language. Language in turn breaks d o w n the

Literature is an inseparable part of culture and it cannot be

Bakhtin points out that there is a close link between literature a n d

and culture can be interdisciplinary. Literary texts do not passively reveal

rather, it articulates its uniqueness and engenders specific cultural forms.

The Age of Discovery

T seek Christians and spices.'

One of the most celebrated Portuguese navigators, Vasco da Gama, left

Plate 1 The Monument of

puzzled in distinguishing whether the eye-catching sign is a cross or a

Plate 2 The Tower

O p p o s i t e to the M o n u m e n t of Discoveries lies o Mosteiro dos

Plate 3 The Jeronimos

nation (Finlay, 1992: 233). The ten-canto Lusiadas interweaves with

pride — the adventurous spirit and the literary achievement. While da

Plate 5 The Camoes Grotto, Macau

In Macau, the monument of da Gama was put up in 1911 at o Jar dim

Plate 6 The Bust of Vasco

The Monument of Discoveries, the Tower of Belem and the Jeronimos

The Encounter of Two Civilizations

called T u n m u n Island (^F^JJ) by the Chinese and T a m a o by the

We are indebted to Luis Keil for an excellent little study in

Keil's exhaustive account simultaneously celebrates and consolidates

topping the padrao is an icon of religious proselytizing, and the latter an

Plate 7 The Jorge Alvares

Alvares' arrival constituted one of the earliest rendezvous in which

Plate 8 The Lusitano Club,

Alvares' arrival in southern China was twenty-one years later than

him. It was an experience of Sinocentrism as contrasted to Eurocentrism.

Problematic Sovereignty and Colonial Ideology

of Ming China, nor was Macau ever ceded to Portugal as a colony. It is

From the purely historical point of view, however, it must be

More than a decade later, Lam Chee Shing, a Chinese, conducted

As no covenant or treaty of peace ever appeared in public, it

After the publication, he was violently attacked by Portuguese historians

R a p t in t o t a l disillusionment, M o n t a l t o relentlessly flogged the

It is difficult to determine to whom the settlement [Macau]

Macau is indeed a peculiar place in the history of China and in the

The Assertion of 'Perpetual Occupation'

supernatural influence of blessing' (Yang, 1970: 34). Unfortunately, either

sovereignty was resolved by the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration. China

Though the statues were inaugurated as signs of Portuguese national

J jj Plate 9 The Amaral Monument

Amaral is portrayed gallantly riding on horseback with a whip in his