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)