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"A weed from Catholic Europe, it took root
Between some yellow mountains and a sea,
Its gay stone houses an exotic fruit,
A Portugal-cum-China oddity
Rococco images of saint and saviour
Promises its gamblers fortunes when they die.
Churches among brothels testify
That faith can pardon natural behaviour.
A town of such indulgence need not fear
Those mortal sins by which the strong are killed,
And limbs and government are torn to pieces.
Religious clocks will strike; the childish vices
Will safeguard the low virtues of the child,
And nothing can happen here."
(‘Macao’, by W.H.Auden, 1938)


As the twentieth century draws to a close, connoisseurs of colonial nostalgia are, unsurprisingly, having a thin time of it. Except perhaps for a few corners of Africa and India, maybe parts of Rangoon and the hill station of Maymo in Burma, conceivably chunks of Polynesia, there is hardly anywhere at all left in the world where jaded Europeans - and this brand of nostalgia is an almost exclusively European indulgence - can fancy themselves back in the glory days of empire. But you used always to be able to count on Macau, a tiny Portuguese enclave, half-city, half-state, tacked onto the bottom of mainland China. And, in particular, you could rely on the Bela Vista hotel.

Father Manuel Teixeira, a Jesuit priest who has lived in Macau since 1924 and has written 115 books about the place, wrote in a history of the hotel published in 1978, "The style is colonial, the view wonderful, the situation ideal, the atmosphere homely, the air pure, the trees secular .... From the balcony overlooking the China Sea surrounded by green islands with majestic mountains, you may enjoy the morning calm, the colourful cascade of the rising sun, the evening breeze, the moonlight reflecting itself in the mirror of the sea just down below ... the moving scene of junks, tankas and sampans with ancient China in the background ... There is no Hotel like the Bela Vista: - its charm is unique, its position enviable and its quietness is its most precious possession ... Bela Vista is Macau."

In those days, the graceful, shabby, old Bela Vista, which overlooks Macau's most beautiful street, the wide curving Rua da Praia Grande which runs alongside the bay of the same name, was painted a delicate eau-de-nil, rather than its present - and supposedly original - pale ochre; it had neither hot water nor air-conditioning. Now lavishly refurbished at a cost of US$7 million, it has the most opulent bathrooms that I have ever seen and every other luxury that you can imagine. Only the food - the sort of stuff that you might have produced at home on an off day - hasn't changed but then you never came to the Bela Vista for the food. You came for the ambience and for the view.

Macau is no longer quiet. Now its once-tranquil air is filled with the sound of high-speed pneumatic drills and cement mixers, the inevitable result of the frantic building work which goes on seven days a week during every available daylight hour and regardless of the weather (part of this construction is the annual repairing of the Macau Grand Prix race-track, such is the damage inflicted on the road surface by the race). In addition, for nigh on two years, Macau has been shaken by what the ‘South China Morning Post’ described as "an uncontrollable wave of turf wars, killings, bombings, loan-sharking and money-laundering", which have only served to feed Macau's reputation as the Las Vegas/Sodom and Gomorrah of the Far East.

And, after nearly a century, the Bela Vista, arguably the most beautiful and romantic hotel in the East and certainly one of the most famous colonial buildings in all Asia, is set to close in order to become the residence of the Portuguese consul when Macau reverts to China at the end of 1999 (the Portuguese attempted to return Macau between 1974 and 1975 but the Chinese said that they were "not ready").

But don't despair. For a few months yet, you still have the chance to sit out on the Bela Vista's lovely, colonnaded terrace, drinking chilled vinho verde watching the sun set over the South China Sea. Then, as night falls and the lights of the outlying islands of Taipa and Coloane twinkle in the distance, fanned by the cool night breezes, lulled by the wash of the waves below, you can imagine that you are back in a gentler, quieter, more gracious age.

Macau has been changing ever since I first went there in 1986. Then, as Hong Kong's poor relation (comparisons between Hong Kong and Macau were inevitable and generally invidious, though last year's handover and the air of general gloom that seems to have settled over Hong Kong, partly as a result and partly because of Asia's current financial crisis, has been to Macau's benefit), it was funky, sexy and chaotic, famous for its gambling dens and dancing girls. I had always wanted to visit Macau ever since I heard that Errol Flynn had revived his flagging fortunes by introducing cock-fighting there. The mix of Portuguese architecture and Oriental lowlife also sounded appealing. Today it is still funky, sexy and chaotic - it's just a lot more crowded and you have to look harder to find quiet corners.

At first sight, Macau looks just like any other late twentieth-century city. It lies on the banks of a muddy estuary of the Pearl River which flows down through southern China from Guangzhou. At low tide the water level drops so that you can see the mud flats beneath. As you approach across the water (though there is now a spanking, new airport, many visitors still prefer to make the fifty-five minute jetfoil ride from Hong Kong), the angular outline of the Oriental and the hideous silhouette of the Lisboa hotels leap into view. Once ashore there is a vipers' nest of switchback roads, some of them so sudden and steep and doubling back over each other that driving along them is not unlike being on a roller-coaster.

But then, as you leave the area round the port, where the gleaming, new high-rises are concentrated, and drive into town, the graceful sweep of the tree-lined Rua da Praia Grande and the broad stretch of the Avenida Almeida Ribeiro seduce you into the real Macau. Few of its pretty, charming or quaint buildings - an distinctive blend of Chinese and European architecture - are immediately visible. Much of Macau's charm lies hidden away in the back-streets, where old men and women go for hair-cuts and to play mahjongg, or up its narrow, winding, cobbled lanes. The city was, like Rome, originally built on hills and, from every high point, a shabby but beautiful building looks out. These hills were once active volcanoes (as late as the 1830s earthquakes were reported) which gradually filled in the surrounding waters until the solid ground merged to form a tiny peninsula some two miles square. This area has been growing rapidly, thanks to the land reclamation that has been going on since 1780.

Macau is older than Hong Kong by almost three centuries. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese first sailed across the milk-chocolate-colored expanse of the South China Sea, desirous of securing a trading post in China. While searching, they found their way into the maze of South China islands and entered a district known as Sap-Chi-Mun, facing the Macau peninsula and, in 1557, they succeeded in establishing a base in Macau.

For more than half a century, Macau dominated sea-trade in the region, a sort of Venice of the East. By the second half of the seventeenth century, however, it had lost its power and prestige. The Dutch took Malacca (in what was then Malaya) from the Portuguese in 1641, thereby cutting Macau off from the Manila trade and, around the same time, as a result of Christian persecution in Japan, the Portuguese were expelled from Japan and lost one of their most important clients.

At the height of its power, Macau was known at the Rome of the Far East and the Mother of Missions in Asia. It is still full of churches (though only 6% of the population of Macau are Christians). Of these, the seventeenth-century Jesuit Church of Madre de Deus, better known as Sao Paolo, is probably the finest Christian monument in the Far East, and often used as a symbol of Macau. In 1835, a fire destroyed everything but the ornate and beautifully-carved facade which still stands, over twenty metres in height, and reached by a grand flight of seventy granite steps. Now, underneath where the old church once stood, is a 'Sacred Museum', an ossuary, where the bones of various martyrs are kept, including the relic of St. Francis Xavier, the humerus from the saint's right arm, which used to be displayed in the pretty little Church of St. Francis Xavier on Coloane Island.

Early one Sunday morning I went to attend the English-language service at the Protestant church next to the Camoes Garden, which is dedicated to the memory of the great Portuguese poet, Luis de Camoes, who is supposed to have been in Macau in the year of its foundation and to have written his masterpiece, ‘Os Lusiadas’ there. The tiny church is known as the Morrison Chapel after Dr. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in China. Even though I have visited Macau many times, I have never before managed to attend a service there and I had always wanted to. Now, finally, here was my chance.

The congregation was small, but then so is the Chapel. It consisted of a few ‘gweilos’ ('round-eyes'), some Chinese and about ten Filipina women, for whose benefit, I imagine, ‘A Song of Christ's Goodness’ was sung to the accompaniment of a guitar during Communion. They didn't take communion but then Filipinos tend to be Roman Catholic. The rest of the service was reasonably straightforward - Rite A, some familiar hymns and a long sermon in which the Chinese priest stressed the importance of remembering and keeping our faith in the difficult times ahead, that is, after the Chinese take-over. At the end, we all trooped out into the steamy air and stood, making polite conversation, in the courtyard. One of the ‘gweilos’ turned out to be the Jetfoil captain who had lived in Macau for eight years; his wife, a Thai woman with a beautiful figure and no eyebrows, was a Buddhist. She called her husband 'Daddy.'

Next to the Morrison Chapel is the Old Protestant Cemetery, one of the loveliest places in Macau. It is the oldest Protestant cemetery in the Far East and many employees of the East India Company are buried there, as is the Irish artist George Chinnery. Chinnery came to Macau in 1825 and died there in 1852. He painted hundreds of portraits and pictures of local scenes; his delicate watercolors and ink and pencil sketches give a vivid picture of life in nineteenth-century Macau. Chinnery's memorial is far the handsomest but it is the inscriptions on the other tombstones that provide an insight into the perilousness of life then: so many children dying pitifully young, so many men lost at sea. One inscription read:

"In Memory of John P. Griffin
Seaman Born in New York
And died on board the U.S.
Ship Plymouth Macao Roads
By a fall from aloft ..."

I left the cemetery and walked out into Camoes Square. A Filipina woman, sitting on a bench, rushed up to me. "Madame," she said, " I was in church. Can you give me a job, please?" Later someone told me that a Filipina maid earns five patacas (less than 50p) a day in Macau.

The most important man in Macau, the man responsible for the deal for the 'restoration' of the Bela Vista - and pretty much everything else that happens in Macau - is Stanley Ho, a powerful Chinese businessman, now in his seventies, who was described to me by one Macanese, as the 'unofficial governor of Macau' and another as the 'Chancellor of the Exchequer'. An enigmatic figure, whose interests range far and wide (he is currently building his own version of the Eiffel Tower, destined to be the tallest building in Asia and the eighth tallest in the world), he is the managing director of the ‘Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau’ (S.T.D.M.), a private company operating under a government franchise, which controls all the gambling in Macau. It's in the casinos that most of the violence has been happening, the result of clashes between various Triad gangs.

Gambling is not only the single biggest source of revenue in the territory but also what most tourists, particularly the Chinese, come there to do. The insistent sale of lottery tickets which starts on the jet-foil halfway through your journey from Hong Kong should give you a clue but a visit to the Lisboa hotel will leave you in no doubt as to the true nature of much that happens in Macau.

The Lisboa, which Ho owns, is a strikingly ugly (but surprisingly comfortable) building on the waterfront. It is a favorite game among writers to try to come up with an apt description for the Lisboa. "An upturned marmalade pot" was one suggestion, but it is really a piece of Sixties kitsch which looks rather like an old-fashioned notion of an alien space ship. Night after night, its neon-lit gaming rooms are packed with hundreds of Hong Kong Chinese who have come over on the jetfoil determined to risk all. Elderly women in Chinese pyjamas stand in front of slot machines with names like 'Megabucks' and 'Grand Prix' and the blackjack tables are full. A notice counsels: "No one can win all the time. We advise you to play merely for pleasure and to risk only what you can spare." Guests at the Lisboa are required to leave a cash deposit for laundry and telephone calls and rooms are pre-paid. The casino hours are from 1pm - 7am and all morning the "Do Not Disturb" signs glow red outside the bedrooms.

I have stayed the Lisboa and it was quite an experience, though not perhaps one I would care to repeat. I have also stayed at the Oriental (and found it predictable) and I have stayed at the Bela Vista, both in its former and in its present incarnation. But this time, I had opted to spend most of my stay on quiet, verdant Coloane at the shabby but charming Pousada de Coloane, which overlooks the sea and also has a swimming pool, the one or the other being essential in the sweltering humidity of typhoon season.

At first I thought I was the only guest in the place. But then I saw a beautiful, black-haired European woman sunning herself by the pool and realized I wasn't alone. The manageress told me that there were other guests but they would leave the hotel at dawn, gone before I had had my breakfast, on all-day sight-seeing expeditions across the border into China. The Pousada smelt of damp and the air-conditioning made almost as much noise as a washing-machine but the staff couldn't have been nicer. The place was run with an admirable informality; I never had to sign for anything. It wouldn't suit everyone; the place needs, not exactly renovation, but certainly redecoration. But it was not expensive and it was quiet; you were left in peace; there were three delightful puppies; the pool was lovely and the view superb. At night, I would sit out on the broad terrace, decorated with fairy lights, and gaze across at Macau, knowing that I had made the right choice. During the day I would go into Macau and shop and sightsee (there are ten McDonalds outlets in Macau, but no Wendy's or Kentucky Friend Chicken) or sometimes take the bus down to Hac-Sá where, according to a display in Macau's splendid new museum, there was once a neolithic settlement. I was heading, however, to Fernando's restaurant. The food in Macau is generally good but I don't think you can beat Fernando's - fish, grilled, spiced chicken, a huge bowlful of chile clams, eaten with your fingers and all washed down with vinho verde. Somehow you enjoy it even more when you're sweating like a pig.

The European woman whom I had seen by the pool was Portuguese, as I'd guessed, but she spoke French and she was a fado singer, performing at the Lusitano restaurant in town. Fado is Portugal's blues, heart-breaking and evocative. On my last night I had dinner at Fernando's with an American professor of English from the University of Macau who told me about the friction between the Chinese and Portuguese communities - Macau is self-evidently Chinese, only 3% of Macanese are Portuguese, but the Governor, who apparently earns more than the President of Portugal, and many of the high-ranking officials are still Portuguese. Around eleven I caught a cab into Macau to go and hear Maria Mendes sing.

The restaurant was enormous, a little gloomy and almost empty. Only one of the sixty or so tables draped in white damask was occupied - by a party of noisy Chinese men, downing brandies. As I came in, a Filipino band was performing old favourites. It's one of the strangest things about Filipino bands - whatever song you ask for, from ‘Yesterday’ to ‘Quanta La Mera’ to ‘Candle in the Wind’, they know them all.

When they had finished, Maria came on. The Chinese men had gone. I was her only audience. She had warned me that afternoon that her backing group had already returned to Lisbon and that therefore she would be accompanied by a tape. She fiddled with the machine and then, as the music started, she began to sing. It's hard to describe the strangeness and the melancholy of being in this huge, empty restaurant late at night and having this beautiful woman singing, singing just to me, singing songs that I knew, without understanding a word, were intended to break my heart.

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