Macau

On 7 October Macau, a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China, celebrates Chong Yeong, or Ancestors’ Day. Macau? It was the first Europeans colony in China—the Portuguese arrived in the 16th century, administering the region until 20 December 1999, when it was handed back to China. This means it also outlasted the other special administrative region of Hong Kong. Macau itself (which is very close to Hong Kong) consists of the Macau peninsula and the islands Taipa and Coloane.

While there were people living the region a long time before the Portuguese arrived, apparently Macau didn’t develop into a major settlement until the Europeans hit the shore. I imagine it must have been laidback when it was mostly fishermen—no casinos back then. (Tourism is big—can you say “Gambling Mecca?”)

After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, relations between the Portuguese and the Chinese got a bit complicated—the government in Beijing declared the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Amity and Commerce invalid, deeming it an “unequal treaty.” When the government first declared this in 1949, there wasn’t a lot of movement on the question. Things started to change after riots broke out in 1966, during the Cultural Revolution. The Portuguese government apologised, and this saw the beginning of de facto control by the Chinese. While there was a treaty signed in 1987 making Macau a special administrative region of China, it took another 12 years for China to resume sovereignty.

Rather than a poem, what I actually have something a little different: a segment of Jules Verne’s book The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century, which contains an account of La Perouse, the French explorer, arriving at Macau during his voyage around the world. The full text is available online here.

After taking the position of the Bashees, without stopping, La Perouse sighted the coast of China, and next day cast anchor in the roadstead of Macao.

Here La Perouse met with a small French cutter, commanded by M. de Richery, midshipman, whose business it was to cruise about the eastern coast, and protect French trade.

The town of Macao is so well known that it is needless for us to give La Perouse's description of it. The constant outrages and humiliations to which Europeans were daily subjected under the most despotic and cowardly government in the world, aroused the indignation of the French captain, and made him heartily wish that an international expedition might put a stop to so intolerable a state of things.

The furs which had been collected upon the American coasts were sold at Macao for ten thousand piastres. The sum produced should have been divided among the crews, and the head of the Swedish company undertook to ship it at Mauritius; but the unfortunate sailors themselves were never to receive the money.

Leaving Macao on the 5th of February, the vessels directed their course to Manilla, and, after sighting the shoals of Pratas, Bulinao, Manseloq, and Marivelle, wrongly placed upon D'Après' maps, they were forced to put into the port of Marivelle, to wait for better winds and more favourable currents.

—Jules Verne, The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century