If one place perhaps symbolizing the history of Macao it is Ponte Cais #16 at the junction of Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro and Inner Harbour inSanto António parish. At the moment the area is something of a construction site and the architectural abomination that is the Macao Sofitel is next door and overshadowing sadly.
This is originally where both indentured labourers and opium were sent from. In 1948 it was upgraded from a wooden wharf into a cement wharf and was for some time the main terminal for passengers from Hong Kong and Macau until 1962 when it became a cargo-only terminal after the relocation of the Hong Kong – Macao Ferry Terminal.
My latest column for Macau Closer magazine (the March-April issue) on Roger Hobbs’s 2015 thriller Vanishing Games….. the book is mostly set in Macau and moves along apace… here the book’s blurb…
A lifetime ago I had a mentor, Angela. She taught me how to be a criminal, how to run a heist.
And now, six years after she vanished and left me high and dry on a job in Kuala Lumpur, she’s sent me an SOS.
Or at least I think it’s her. If it is, then I’ve got to go. I owe her that much.
So soon I’ll be on a plane to Macau, either to see a friend or walk into a trap. Or both.
But that’s the way I like it. Sometimes the only thing that makes me happy is risking my life.
In November 1924 Wallis arrived, courtesy of the Royal Navy (and therein lies a tale!), in Canton (Guangzhou), steaming up the mighty Pearl River to the foreign enclave of Shamian Island. Due to fighting in the city she stayed in the enclave and only saw the great city from the deck of the ship…
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…
Horatio Hawkins’ Geography of China, 1913, published by the Commercial Press (Shanghai). Hawkins was a teacher at a provincial Chinese college, Soochow (Suzhou) and had worked for the Imperial Maritime Customs (in Santuao for a while – now Sandu Ao in Fuzhou) and the Chinese Maritime Customs Service in Manchuria, including a spell as a teacher at the Customs Service College in Shenyang. During World War Two he worked for the US Foreign Economic Administration in India and China and later the United Nations famine relief team back in China. I believe he was originally from San Francisco, experienced the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, indulged in trading in Shanghai
With the launch last month of Destination Macao (#3 in the series) you can now buy the trilogy…. Destination Shanghai, Destination Pekingand Destination Macao…. which, by the way, is a grand total of over 1,000 pages of old China stories!
You can of course purchase them from Bookazine stores in Hong Kong, Livraria Portuguesa in Macao and (soon) many indie bookstores globally, but if you want to get all 3 in one discounted bundle Blacksmith Books can oblige – click here for the bundle
Emily Feng’s Let Only Red Flowers Bloom – Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China (Penguin)…
An intimate, deeply reported investigation into the battle over identity in China, chronicling the state oppression of those who fail to conform to Xi Jinping’s definition of who is “Chinese,” from an award-winning NPR correspondent.
The rise of China and its great power competition with the U.S. will be one of the defining issues of our generation. But to understand modern China, one has to understand the people who live there – and the way the Chinese state is trying to control them along lines of identity and free expression.
In vivid, cinematic detail, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom tells the stories of nearly two dozen people who are pushing back. They include a Uyghur family, separated as China detains hundreds of thousands of their fellow Uyghurs in camps; human rights lawyers fighting to defend civil liberties in the face of mammoth odds; a teacher from Inner Mongolia, forced to make hard choices because of his support of his mother tongue; and a Hong Kong fugitive trying to find a new home and live in freedom.
Reporting despite the personal risks, journalist Emily Feng reveals dramatic human stories of resistance and survival in a country that is increasingly closing itself off to the world. Feng illustrates what it is like to run against the grain in China, and the myriad ways people are trying to survive, with dignity.
