Here and There – Macau
How is it possible to go somewhere several times and yet see so little? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question: of course, it’s easy when you are travelling for work, especially as your organisation is likely to cover just the time you ‘need’ to be in a place, and no more. Almost every time I have been in Macau, I have been working. Only the first and the last of some twenty visits or more allowed me to have some free days to see much of this unusual place. Even then, the very first time was a day trip from Hong Kong!
However, I shouldn’t exaggerate. Even if the time has been limited, Macau is sufficiently compact it takes little time to see some of the famous places. I have been to Sam Ba Sing Tzik, the ruins of St. Pauls. Why go there? Quite simply, it is an extraordinary sight, as all that remains are the 68 stone stairs leading up to the southern face of the former catholic church, and the southern facade itself. Nothing else. That south wall, a remnant of the biggest catholic church of East Asia, is five tiers high and constructed from granite. It overlooks the Company of Jesus Square, and to the sides of the square are Toy’s Kingdom, Starbucks Coffee and Uniqlo. Did I say extraordinary? Bizarre might be a better word. When I was last there the square was very busy, packed with shoppers, tourists and pilgrims.
One of the reasons to go to Macau is to be a tourist in this strange relic of the Portuguese empire. Now it is a city and a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, and it is densely populated. With around 680,000 residents in an area of 32.9 square kms (12.7 sq miles), it is the most densely populated region in the world. Before transferring to China, as I am sure you know, Macau was once a Portuguese colony. China first leased the island to Portugal as a trading post during the Ming Dynasty in 1557. Portugal paid an annual rent and administered the territory, which remained under Chinese sovereignty up until 1887. With the signing of the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking, the colony came under Portuguese rule that year, and remained so until 1999, when it was transferred back to the mainland.
Proof of Macau’s unusual place in Asia came during the Second World War. Surprisingly, Japan did not formally occupy the colony and generally respected Portugese neutrality. However, things began to deteriorate when Japanese troops captured a British cargo ship in Macau waters in 1943. Following this, Japan installed a group of government ‘advisors’ as an alternative to military occupation. The territory largely avoided military action during the war except in 1945, when the United States ordered air raids on Macau after learning that the colonial government was preparing to sell aviation fuel to Japan. Five years later, in 1950, Portugal was given over US$20 million in compensation for the damage the US had inflicted.
As a special administrative region Macau has separate governing and economic systems from those of mainland China, under the so-called ‘one country, two systems’ principle. Recent events in Hong Kong suggest that these arrangements are likely to be eroded. Whatever happens, Macau’s unique history led to its 2005 listing on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
If the ruins of St Pauls take a visitor back to the Portuguese past of this territory, the A-Ma Temple, just a mile to the south-south-west of St Pauls as the crow flies, represents a very different element of its history. Given the dense and erratic nature of Macau’s streets, it seems like at least 2 miles on foot, and is a long, hot walk, but it is worth the effort! The temple dates back to 1488, and is dedicated to Matsu, the Chinese goddess worshipped by fishermen and sailors. It is said that Matsu’s temple is the source for the name Macau. Less visited than the remains of St Pauls, it is equally impressive. For me Matsu and St Pauls offer contrasting illustrations of the two sides to the territory’s more recent past.
A similar distance from St Pauls to the north-north-east is the Kun Iam Temple, one of the three largest and richest Buddhist temples in Macau, locally known Pou Chai Sim Un. It’s one of the oldest temples in Macau, founded in the 13th century to venerate Kun, the Chinese version of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Mercy. The buildings date to 1627, identified by a marble tablet, with the Chinese text explaining, “Built in the seventh month of the seventh year of the reign of Emperor Tian Qi”. Like the A Ma Temple, this building is largely undamaged, with its large entrance and roofs decorated with porcelain figures.
However, the Kun Iam Temple is also famous for a different reason. There’s a stone table in the temple gardens where a Sino-American Treaty was signed on July 3, 1844. The Treaty of Wanghia, (also known as Treaty of Wangxia), a treaty of ‘peace, amity, and commerce’ (combined with a tariff of shipping duties!) was agreed between the Qing Dynasty and the United States, and remained in place until 1943, when it was replaced by the Sino-American Treaty for the Relinquishment of Extraterritorial Rights in China (what terminology!). Another of those pieces of history lost in the world of current tensions, the Treaty of Wanghia was based on the treaty of Nanking, between the UK and China. The Americans negotiated a very favourable deal, which included the principle of extraterritoriality, whereby Chinese subjects would be tried and punished under Chinese law and American citizens would be tried and punished under the authority of the American consul or other US authorised public officials. Fixed tariffs were agreed on trade in the treaty ports. The US was given the right to buy land in five treaty ports, as well as giving the US ‘most favoured nation’ status.
Nearly finished with the tourist sites? Finally, I have to mention the Kim Iam statue. This is a 20m tall bronze statue of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, emerging from a lotus. It’s located in the outer harbor causeway, and you can see it from the hydrofoil bringing you into Macau from Hong Kong. The lotus structure houses an ecumenical centre and offers a great selection of pamphlets on Buddhism. Oh, and I nearly forgot Taipa, a traditional waterside village with historic buildings, museums, galleries and shops and, at least for all the times I have been there, an excellent Portuguese bistro style restaurant.
So, people go to Macau to visit these tourist sites? Of course not. Compared to other Asian destinations, there are few to see, and most are not distinctive. The reason most people know about Macau is because of its casinos. For some time, Macau has been called the ‘Las Vegas of the East’, ever since it became a top destination for gambling. It is the only location in China where gambling is legal, and as such, gambling tourism is the city’s overwhelming source of revenue. Indeed, Macau has more revenue from gambling than any other country. With its gambling industry seven times larger than that of Las Vegas, I can see a time coming when Las Vegas will become downgraded, only to be known as the ‘Macau of the West’.
I first went to Macau back in 1983. It was one of the few times I’ve entered a casino. Back then Stanley Ho’s Casino Lisboa was the only major place for gambling, and he controlled the industry. I had been in a casino once before when I was in Switzerland. Above Geneva, and just inside France was the Casino de Divonne. When I arrived there, I had £10, and was severely under-dressed, not wearing a suit, let alone a dinner jacket. It was elegant, the kind of place you’d expect to see James Bond. I gambled and lost my money quickly! Entering the Lisboa, I was attired English tourist style, and clearly over-dressed! It was hot, stank of cigarettes, booze and fried food; it was packed and horrible. I came, I saw, and I scarpered.
Many years later, I went into the Sands Casino in Macau, next door to the hotel where I was staying. This was a modern, multi-storey casino and hotel, looking just like the Crown Casino in Melbourne, and many others of the same kind. However, it was packed with visitors from the mainland, and yet again it was hot, stank of cigarettes, booze and fried food. Oh, for the elegance of the Casino de Divonne!
The impact of gambling, given its extraordinary growth, has been enormous. Visitor data reveals most visitors come to Macau to go to the casinos and are in the territory for an average stay of 1.5 nights. Friends who have worked in the hotel industry there tell me many visitors never book into a hotel, but simply stay at the casino for the 1-2 days of their visit. Gaming tax and the gaming industry accounts for about half of Macau’s annual economy. It has more than thirty major casinos, ranging from the Lisboa and other Ho family enterprises to other major gambling resorts set up by western companies. The legal gambling age in Macau is 21, and a passport or Hong Kong identity card is required as a proof of age. Equally revealing is the local tender in Macau is the Hong Kong Dollar, not the Macanese Pataca. For years, Macau has tried hard to diversify its tourism, but local business owners are fairly blunt about the situation, complaining about: “visitors lack of interest in anything apart from gambling” (a comment quoted on CNN in 2020, on learning Cirque de Soleil was abandoning Macau). Few arrive for any other reason.
The figures for visitors to Macau are striking. In 2019, there were nearly 28 million arrivals from China, and a further 7.5 million from Hong Kong. Then the numbers drop significantly, from other places: around 1 m from Taiwan, three-quarters of a million from South Korea, and a little over 400,000 from the Philippines. The US had 200,000 visitors, in the eighth spot, and Australia came in 13th with 84,000, Canada with 75,000 and the UK with 60,000. Commentators claim that Asians and especially the Chinse are the world’s gamblers. Maybe. Perhaps they need to spend more time in Australia, where pubs are packed with gamblers, betting on casino games of chance through to sports (gambling on horse and greyhound racing is also popular in Macau), and even which fly will get to the top of the window first!
What is less discussed in the western press is the other side of gambling in Macau. Away from the large casinos are dozens, probably hundreds of small backstreet gambling dens (in this case, den is a good way to describe them: they are often small, dark, and tucked away). I have no idea how large a part of Macau’s economy they represent, but from those I have observed from time to time (and always from the outside!), it seemed to me their clientele was almost exclusively Asian, and, I would guess, mostly mainland Chinese.
One figure dominates the history of gambling in Macau, Stanley Ho Hung-sun. Born Stanley Bosman, he was of Chinese, Dutch-Jewish and English ancestry. He was the founder and chairman of SJM Holdings, which owns nineteen casinos in Macau, including the Grand Lisboa. SJM held the monopoly licence for casino operations in Macau for forty years, from 1962-2001. It quickly became a magic piggybank, as gambling income grew and grew. However, he was an astute businessman. Ho was the founder and chairman of Shun Tak Holdings, through which he owned a diversity of businesses including entertainment, tourism, shipping, real estate, banking, and air transport. It is estimated that his companies employ almost one-fourth of Macau’s workforce. Fortunately for Stanley Ho, one of Shun Tak’s subsidiaries, TurboJET, owns one of the world’s largest fleets of high-speed jetfoils; yes, the ones which ferry passengers between Hong Kong and Macau. Most convenient!
With four partners, Stanley Ho had seventeen children, and one, Pansy Ho, continues the family tradition in playing a leading role in the casino industry. His personal arrangements were complex: he married his first wife, and his second (polygamy was still legal in Hong Kong at the time), while his other two ‘wives’ were not legally recognised. Colourful in every way, dancing was one of his favourite hobbies, and it is said he excelled in the tango, cha-cha-cha and the waltz! In 1984, Ho was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), awarded the Great Cross of the Order of Prince Henrique in 1995, the highest civilian honour given by the Portuguese Government, as well as top honours in Hong Kong and Macau. You won’t be surprised to learn there are rumours he had links to the Chinese mafia, the Triads, as well as being linked to ‘several illegal activities. He probably was.
Australia has fourteen casinos, and in the gaming industry it, too, has had one dominant and colourful figure, Kerry Packer. He was born in 1937, his father an Australian media proprietor. Through his family company Consolidated Press Holdings, he owned the Nine Television Network, Australian Consolidated Press, and the Crown Casio. This has been in the Australian news recently as Crown was fined for various dubious practices, and Kerry’s son, James, looks likely to exit many of the businesses his father created. How does Kerry compare with Stanley Ho? Married only once, with just two children, clearly not in every respect. However, Packer did have a number of extra-marital affairs, some with very high-profile women. You have to wonder if Stanley and Kerry used to meet up for a drink occasionally, and chat about what they were up to, in business and in life more generally.
Certainly, Stanley Ho would have been interested in Packer’s gambling. Packer was a long-time heavy smoker and an avid gambler, famous for big wins and equally big losses. In 1999, a three-day losing streak at London casinos cost him almost A$28 million, the biggest reported gambling loss in British history. Once he won A$33 million at the Las Vegas MGM Casino. In the late 1990s he walked into a major London casino and placed £15 million on four roulette tables by himself, and promptly lost it all! He should have taken up dancing.
It is interesting to compare Macau with Canberra. In many ways, they couldn’t be more unlike. Macau has a population about 50% greater than Canberra. It is crammed into an area of just under 30 kms (about 13 sq miles) and, as I mentioned, is the most densely populated region in the world. Canberra’s population mis spread out over 815 sq kms (315 sq miles), some 270 times greater than Macau. But they are similar in other ways. If Macau’s economy depends on gambling, Canberra is a government town (and for some people government might be regarded as another form of gambling). Macau is a Chinese speaking region, with a tiny proportion of the Macanese still using Portuguese; Canberra is an English-language country, with a tiny proportion speaking an Aboriginal (indigenous) language.
There is a further comparison between Macau and Australia. Both depend on just a few sectors of the economy: Macau has a service economy, casino-based gambling and tourism; Australia has a resources and service economy, based on exporting raw materials, food, and tourism. Australia is a farm, a quarry and a hotel; Macau a gambling den! Both depend on the same country for survival. If China stopped tourism to Macau, or turned off gambling, Macau would collapse. Australia depends on China, (and some other countries), to keep buying its ores, coal, meat and grain. If China stopped shopping, Australia would plunge into a major recession. These two outcomes are increasingly likely. Revenue from Chinese gamblers has been falling as many are turning to other Asian venues, with no Stanley Ho to help promote Macau. China’s been building links with African and Asian countries to meet its raw material needs, with no Kerry Packer to save Australia. Keep watching this space!
