REVI o "The Sheltering Sky" no outro dia. O fim, com o pequeno monólogo do grande Paul Bowles, é poético:

Inter Alios

Inter Alios, originally uploaded by a j saker.

CARLOS Marreiros is perhaps the most prominent Macanese architect. The former president of the Cultural Institute talked with the Macau Daily Times in his atelier, located in the Albergue SCM, institution directed by him. Marreiros stresses the importance of the Hengqin island to Macau’s future and argues for innovative solutions to preserve the heritage and improve the urban landscape

ENTREVISTA muito interessante com Howard Goldblatt, um dos principais tradutores de ficção escrita em chinês para inglês. E que explica o fenómeno de empobrecimento da língua e da escassez de bons escritores contemporâneos chineses.

FINALMENTE vi aquele programa da SIC transmitido em Abril e que, ao que parece, levou muita gente em Portugal a querer imigrar para cá. O programa está bem feito (ver aqui a parte 1 e a parte 2) e eu gosto daquele diálogo entre a Teresa e o Martim... É um programa que cumpre os seus propósitos de entretenimento e que foi pago pelo turismo de Macau. Mas não é uma reportagem jornalística (e julgo que nem tem a veleidade de o ser). A ideia com que se fica é que Macau é o "shangri la" dos afectados pela crise, onde tudo é fácil e chove dinheiro. Em bom rigor, não é verdade, Macau tem problemas sociais (muita gente a viver no limiar da pobreza, inflação galopante) e ambientais . Empregos há, mas são maioritariamente pouco qualificados e vedados a "não residentes" (especialmente se não falarem chinês)... E os preços enumerados no fim do programa não estão correctos. Andar meia hora de táxi não custa 5 euros (embora os táxis sejam baratos) e gostava de saber onde arranjam alojamento em Macau por 10 euros, ou viagens entre Lisboa e Macau por 400 euros...

THE one week visit to China, Macau and Hong Kong of the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs of Portugal ended yesterday with a visit to the Portuguese School of Macau, where the young students danced and sung for Mr Paulo Portas and his delegation. The minister visited the School’s library and gave a brief speech to the many members of the Portuguese community that attended the event.  He stressed the idea that the visit served to reiterate the “strategic partnership” between Portugal and China,” which he considered “very important” because of the historical links between the two countries and also due to the “modernity facts” that put China as an undisputed world power.
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The fruits of frantic development

I arrived in Macau some years ago, and it seems to me that the place is slightly different now. This is only natural since nothing stays static, let alone cities. But we can try to analyse how Macau is changing. The newspapers and the government agree on one point: Macau is becoming more international, some even say a metropolis. Being Portuguese, I think that Macau was always characterized by a certain degree of cosmopolitism, bridging China and the western powers of past centuries. But what is meant by “international” is this modern acceptance of the word as more business-oriented and bigger.
In fact, there is no doubt that Macau is larger and more dynamic than it ever was. Since the richness created by the development is not evenly distributed, this also means that life is more expensive for a part of the population, with the rents sky rocketing and the supermarket prices equivalent to those of European capitals. Many people have a difficult time meeting their financial demands. When I arrived here many Macanese told me nostalgic tales of the old ‘man man’ Macau, where everything went slowly, life was lazy and pleasing, and everybody met casually in ‘san malou’. Macau reassembled a Portuguese village, with the omnipresent churches and priests. It was parochial.
With Stanley Ho’s influence and the recent influx of money and casinos, Macau has definitely stopped being that village, despite that idea still clings to some people’s minds when talking about it. An American architect told me that when he informed his New York friends he was coming to Macau, they shrugged their shoulders and told him:
- You are going to Macau? But there’s nothing there.
Our neighbours in Hong Kong also used to think like this. They had a strong sense of superiority towards Macau, which they considered a backward place - full of uneducated people. Now many of them say that the life in Hong Kong has become almost unbearable and they are looking for jobs in Macau (I know some cases like this) where “everything is more cosy and relaxed.” I admit that this can be only a visitors impression, easily diluted with time, and I get the same feeling - that I would enjoy living there - when I visit cities like Hong Kong or Singapore. But it’s not only the average income residents that complain about Hong Kong. According to some reports, there are even CEO’s of top companies that refuse to work there because of the high pollution levels. They wisely think that nothing pays for the risk of cancer. This is only to see where the frantic “development” (only quantitatively measured by percentage of growth) can lead a city or a country…
With the idea of Macau’s emptiness left for those who don’t know it’s MSAR ‘upgrade’, there’s another deceitful idea that’s been making its way into the minds of those who never experienced Macau and are stranded in their stuck crisis European countries. This is the idea that outsiders can get rich here - easily and rapidly. It’s this idea that drives middle-aged Europeans with well-organized but disrupted lives to suddenly be interested in Macau. It’s a mistake, unless you are a damn good poker player.
(Published in MDT)

E mais, que isto é das coisas mais brihantes da lírica portuguesa dos últimos anos largos:

ISTO tem swing;


e isto também