What will Cotai be 50 years from now?
IAN Fleming was already famous when he was invited by the Sunday Times
to visit “the most exciting cities in the world” and write about his
travel impressions. The creator of James Bond took two trips between
1959 and 1960 and visited 13 cities. Macau was one of the chosen and the
articles originally written for the London paper made it into a book
titled “Thrilling Cities”, first published in 1963.
Fleming’s work has recently been republished in an edition that, besides Hong Kong and Macau, includes his remarks on Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Hamburg, Vienna, Geneva, Naples (including nearby Capri island) and Monte Carlo. The new edition by Thomas & Mercer (specializing in “mystery books” and owned by Amazon) is not a mere reprint and, according to information included in the book’s introduction, “restores the original observations, maps, and language used at that time”.
The new edition is a good excuse to learn more about mid-20 century Macau. Reading Fleming one can envisage how the city changed up to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable. During the pre- Stanley Ho times, Macau’s premier nightspot was the still standing Central Hotel, which Fleming dubs “the largest house of gambling and self indulgence in the world”. Built in 1928 to take the role previously occupied by Rua da Felicidade [Happiness Street] - “one great and continuous street of pleasure” - the hotel is marvelously described:
“The Central Hotel is not precisely a hotel. It is a nine- story skyscraper, by far the largest building in Macau, and it is devoted solely to the human vices. It has one more original feature. The higher up the building you go, the more beautiful and expensive are the girls, the higher the stakes at the gambling-tables, and the better the music. Thus on the ground floor the honest coolie can choose a girl of his own class and gamble for pennies by lowering his bet on a fishing rod contraption through a hole in the floor on to the gaming-tables below. Those with longer pocket can progress upwards through various heavens until they reach the earthly paradise on the sixth floor. Above this are the bedrooms.”
The green hotel still functions in Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro (known as San Ma Lou) but has lost all its charm and has become a seedy two-star lodging. As it had previously replaced the picturesque Happiness Street, it too was replaced by Stanley Ho’s Casino Lisboa. This was a sign of a new era in Macau (the gaming monopoly that lasted until 2003) and a landmark building that caused awe amongst Chinese visitors. But Lisboa has now been overshadowed by modern casinos and the Cotai (by then just a man-made isthmus connecting Taipa to Coloane) development built upon reclaimed land, a project far from imagined at the time. As the poets sing, all things change, nothing stays the same… And a question arises in my mind: What will replace Cotai fifty years from now?
Also curious in Fleming’s remarks about Macau are his attempts to find “a genuine Bond villain” here. He picked the “mysterious” Dr Pedro Lobo, an influential Macanese businessman and Leal Senado president at the time. “Not only did Macau have no income tax or exchange controls, it was not subject to the Bretton Woods agreement which artificially fixed the gold price at an unsustainable $35 an ounce. The Doctor was said to have ingeniously exploited that loophole, buying gold at the official price and legally re-selling it at a higher unofficial market price to anyone who cared to visit Macau. Where they took it afterwards was their business.”
But Lobo didn’t turn out to be the villain Fleming expected to meet, although he wasn’t reassured by the Catholic religious art in his mansion. The “powerfully built butler, who looked more like a judo black-belt than a butler” was another cause for concern, despite offering Johnny Walker. But Lobo, an amateur composer, was “charming, and, on request, played some of his compositions on a gramophone”. They ended up talking of gold, triads, and opium: “It is a terrible thing, Mr Fleming. These people give all their money for opium. Soon they lose their interest in food… They become sexless, neuter, and waste away. It would be much better if they drank beer, even too much beer, as I believe is sometimes the case in your own country. But what do you think of my coffee? This is my own coffee from my estate in Timor, ” Lobo wanted to know.
(in MDT)
Fleming’s work has recently been republished in an edition that, besides Hong Kong and Macau, includes his remarks on Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Hamburg, Vienna, Geneva, Naples (including nearby Capri island) and Monte Carlo. The new edition by Thomas & Mercer (specializing in “mystery books” and owned by Amazon) is not a mere reprint and, according to information included in the book’s introduction, “restores the original observations, maps, and language used at that time”.
The new edition is a good excuse to learn more about mid-20 century Macau. Reading Fleming one can envisage how the city changed up to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable. During the pre- Stanley Ho times, Macau’s premier nightspot was the still standing Central Hotel, which Fleming dubs “the largest house of gambling and self indulgence in the world”. Built in 1928 to take the role previously occupied by Rua da Felicidade [Happiness Street] - “one great and continuous street of pleasure” - the hotel is marvelously described:
“The Central Hotel is not precisely a hotel. It is a nine- story skyscraper, by far the largest building in Macau, and it is devoted solely to the human vices. It has one more original feature. The higher up the building you go, the more beautiful and expensive are the girls, the higher the stakes at the gambling-tables, and the better the music. Thus on the ground floor the honest coolie can choose a girl of his own class and gamble for pennies by lowering his bet on a fishing rod contraption through a hole in the floor on to the gaming-tables below. Those with longer pocket can progress upwards through various heavens until they reach the earthly paradise on the sixth floor. Above this are the bedrooms.”
The green hotel still functions in Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro (known as San Ma Lou) but has lost all its charm and has become a seedy two-star lodging. As it had previously replaced the picturesque Happiness Street, it too was replaced by Stanley Ho’s Casino Lisboa. This was a sign of a new era in Macau (the gaming monopoly that lasted until 2003) and a landmark building that caused awe amongst Chinese visitors. But Lisboa has now been overshadowed by modern casinos and the Cotai (by then just a man-made isthmus connecting Taipa to Coloane) development built upon reclaimed land, a project far from imagined at the time. As the poets sing, all things change, nothing stays the same… And a question arises in my mind: What will replace Cotai fifty years from now?
Also curious in Fleming’s remarks about Macau are his attempts to find “a genuine Bond villain” here. He picked the “mysterious” Dr Pedro Lobo, an influential Macanese businessman and Leal Senado president at the time. “Not only did Macau have no income tax or exchange controls, it was not subject to the Bretton Woods agreement which artificially fixed the gold price at an unsustainable $35 an ounce. The Doctor was said to have ingeniously exploited that loophole, buying gold at the official price and legally re-selling it at a higher unofficial market price to anyone who cared to visit Macau. Where they took it afterwards was their business.”
But Lobo didn’t turn out to be the villain Fleming expected to meet, although he wasn’t reassured by the Catholic religious art in his mansion. The “powerfully built butler, who looked more like a judo black-belt than a butler” was another cause for concern, despite offering Johnny Walker. But Lobo, an amateur composer, was “charming, and, on request, played some of his compositions on a gramophone”. They ended up talking of gold, triads, and opium: “It is a terrible thing, Mr Fleming. These people give all their money for opium. Soon they lose their interest in food… They become sexless, neuter, and waste away. It would be much better if they drank beer, even too much beer, as I believe is sometimes the case in your own country. But what do you think of my coffee? This is my own coffee from my estate in Timor, ” Lobo wanted to know.
(in MDT)
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