In a changing Macao: Echoes of another time

Author: By H.D.S. Greenway, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, December 27, 1998

Page: M6

Section: Travel

Then as now one went to Macao either for a rest from the din of Macao's big brother, Hong Kong, or to gamble in the casinos that are not allowed in the British colony. Possessing the most beautiful waterfront on the China coast, Macao had a slower, more languid pace, and the beauty of its crumbling Portuguese architecture spoke of a different time and place. Macao's two subsidiary islands, Taipa and Coloane, then as now, were mostly rural where the ancient ways of China continued free from the disruptions of the Cultural Revolution that swept across China and occasionally lapped into the city of Macao itself.

In those days, China was forbidden to Americans, and dangerous for foreigners, and so Macao was an easy alternative where you could sit in comfort and safety and look across at China just across the inner harbor where so much turmoil was unfolding.

Macao has done much to destroy its tranquillity. Much of the sweeping waterfont has been filled in to make way for shoe-box office buildings, but there is still a trace left of the old and graceful Lusitanian city that is home to half a million Chinese.

Smaller and older than Chelsea, Macao was founded by the Portuguese as a trading post in 1557. Other foreigners followed, and the cemeteries are sprinkled with Yankee sailors and merchants who risked disease, civil insurrections, and typhoons in order to trade with the Middle Kingdom, as China was then called.

``Under this lieth the body of Mr. Samuel Procter of Boston. A young gentleman much esteemed . . . who departed this life at Macao in January the 12th, 1792, aged 21 years,'' reads one tombstone.

In 1844, Caleb Cushing, the American consul in Macao, signed America's first commercial treaty with China in the courtyard of a 13th-century temple.

In the second half of the 19th century, however, Macao declined in importance as Hong Kong, newly acquired by Britain, grew. Macao became the backwater it still is; raffish, more than a little seedy, with all sorts of smuggling and criminal gang wars waged under the noses of the Portuguese authorities.

Perched on a hillside looking back toward Hong Kong sits the Bella Vista, a great colonial mansion that has served as a hotel off and on for a hundred years. In the '60s, it was a lime-green near-ruin that was nonetheless beloved by those who were young or undemanding enough to put up with its inconveniences in exchange for ambience.

Today, the Bella Vista has been transformed by the Oriental Hotel group into one of the most beautiful hotels in the world. With only eight rooms, it has the look and feel of a great house to which one has been invited for the weekend. Its rooms are simple, beautifully furnished, with bathrooms bigger than most modern hotel rooms. There is a quiet bar, and there is dining on the terrace in the limpid air of the semi-tropics.

The rooms on the southeast corner are the best, looking down the tree-lined Pria Grande that winds by the water, over-looked by the pink palace that is the residence of the Portuguese governor. Sitting on a private balcony, sipping a glass of port with the night coming softly in from the sea, it is possible to feel for a moment the lost romance of the China coast, and hear the last faint echoes of the oldest and last colonial empire east of Suez.

But not for long. Less than a year from now, on Dec. 19, 1999, Macao, like Hong Kong before it, will revert to Chinese sovereignty. And before that, in the springtime, the Bella Vista will close its doors forever and become the residence of the first Portutuguese consul general. Lucky man.

For more information, write to the Macao Government Tourism Office, 5757 West Century Boulevard No.660, Los Angeles, CA 90045-6407; phone (310) 670 2234; or fax (310) 338 0708.