There is a thing about people who went to my college, which is that we all generally assume that we’ll get along, or should at least try. Thus, when I learned recently that Annie, a fellow alum, was moving to Guangzhou, I went ahead and emailed her. We’d never met and she didn’t know me at all, though I’ve read her blog off-and-on for some time. We emailed back and forth, and she arrived in Guangzhou at the end of October. Ta-da, I have a new roommate. She’s been living with me for the past week and a half, and, as it turns out, decided to work at the same school I work at. When she moves, it will just be a matter of dragging stuff up a few flights of stairs.
Similarly, there are two alums living in Macau. Lindsey and I have hung out with Nissa a few times, and I vaguely know Becky. Despite these tenuous connections, of course we stayed with them Saturday night. And of course we had an awesome time.
Macau as a whole was very pleasant, even more so than I anticipated. Macau is a tiny peninsula and two islands (Taipa and Coloane) jutting off China into the South China Sea. It’s a former Portuguese colony and is most well-known today for outgrossing Las Vegas in gambling revenue. I worried that the casinos would be sort of relentless, and the neon glitz would overrun the Portuguese buildings and the European-Chinese gardens.
Not so. We spent an entire day (hours and hours) walking from the north end of the peninsula to the south end. We ate street food and took in a great Buddhist temple and rambled over a very curvy bridge through very lovely gardens. We saw a small exhibit of artistic teaware and Chinese-style watercolors of Lisbon. We went to the old cemetery and the ruins of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, including a vertigo-inducing climb up the back of the faÁade, and a collection of Japanese Catholic sacred art. The Asian-Portuguese syncretism was endlessly fascinating to me. Lots of Macau is very ugly (they have particularly offensive apartment buildings crammed in everywhere), but so much of it is interesting. Also, approximately 50% of businesses in Macau seem to be bakeries, groceries, food stalls, or small diner-type places, which is no drawback for me. I think I ate four or five buns and tarts on Saturday.
We got to the southern tip of the peninsula too late to see A-Ma Temple (Goddess of the Sea; “Macau” derives from “A-Ma Gao”, or “Bay of A-Ma”), but it was perfectly decent to loiter in a square, watching kids play soccer (and playing with one particularly adventurous six year old). We walked east and the casinos and hotels lit up before us, reflecting in the water. A joy of tacky aestheticism.
We crossed to Taipa and met up with Nissa and Becky for food and drink. Real beer! In a tavern! Conversation! Grinnellians! Some really fantastic and hilarious conversation with them. In the morning, we ate at a little Portuguese restaurant, and I think the next time I come to Macau I must make time for a proper Sunday morning: coffee and a newspaper on the sidewalk outside one of the cafÈs near the square. We also bought a few things that are cheaper or easier to find in Macau to take back with us to China (spices, good chocolate, better-than-Chinese wine).
Crossing back over the border was also fine. We ate at the Chinese equivalent of a truck stop, and I loved it. We bought exceptionally cheap DVDs out of a closet. Excitingly, we discovered that we now know enough Chinese to negotiate a bus schedule and buy tickets. Things like that are good reminders that as much as I don’t know, I’m getting a lot a better.
