The Macao peninsula hangs, dried-up and world-weary, from China’s massive underbelly. The streets running down either side of the peninsula are separated by only a few kilometers; the entire territory, now a Special Administrative Zone in China, runs to only 29 square kilometers. The old clogged residential streets between Macao’s harbor and the China border get little attention from casual visitors. Most visitors, after all, come to gamble, and gamble seriously. Make no bones about it, Macao’s mission in life is to entice gamblers to visit and leave their money on the tables.
But all is not glitz and casino chips. The other side of Macao is a cultural cul-de-sac preserving practices and lifestyles not seen anywhere else, including the big brother on the other side of the Pearl River estuary, Hong Kong, which through its size (1000 square kilometers), wealth, deep harbor, fame and overall bossiness usually overshadows tiny Macao. For most of the gambling-addled visitors from Hong Kong and China, Macao means one thing only. Such obsession mean the rest of the surprisingly well-preserved place is passed over like a ghost town. Our gain.
I have lived in Hong Kong for a quarter of a century, but showed little interest in our tiny neighbor. It was, I assumed, no more than a run-down, crowded web of smoky casinos and three-star hotels. Even after the big guns like Wynn and Sands and Venetian built new Vega-copies there, I showed no interest; it seemed so derivative. Only when I began to compile a Directory of Religious Institutions in Macao did I realize how wrong I was to dismiss the city. In visiting the temples and churches there I have inadvertently stumbled upon a soft, welcoming side of Chinese culture.
At the heart of the peninsula sits St. Paul’s Cathedral, or at least the hulking southern façade remaining after the cathedral burned to the ground in 1835. St. Paul’s is placed on a rise, above a grand stone staircase. St. Paul’s is the end-point of the central tourist circuit, a winding cobblestone pedestrian pathway extending from the Senado (legislature) Square. Travelers make the rounds from Senado to St. Paul’s, stopping in touristy stores and smallish restaurants. Today’s tourists are mainly from Mainland China, eager to snap photos with the 16th century European stone façade as backdrop.
Let us climb past the tourists, up the face of St. Paul’s, to perch at the pointed middle, clutching the cross there. From here we can survey all of old Macao, and even make our way like a sure-footed King Kong through the clogged streets below.
Snuggled right next to St. Paul’s, at our feet, is a tiny Na Tcha (Mandarin Na Zha) temple, a one-room sacred site managed by two women from the same family. Na Zha worship is strong in Macao, with a larger relative temple nestled in the side streets below St. Paul’s. The deity Na Zha is traced back to a historical figure of the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BC). Like most single-deity community temples, the temple hosts a citywide celebration and procession through the streets of the city once a year, ending in Senado Square.
Directly behind St. Paul’s the Largo de Companha cuts east west across the center of the peninsula, separating the mainly residential north from the mainly commercial south. Streets gradually slope down from this road. Just to the north and slightly toward the west lies the Church of St. Andrew and, across the street, two sites unique to Macao: The Jardim De Luis De Camoes (garden of Luis de Camoes) and the Protestant Cemetery.
The shady Garden would not be out of place in any southern European town. It commemorates Luis De Camoes (1524?-1580), Portugal’s poet of empire, who wrote much of his masterpiece Os Lusíadas ("The Lusiads") while serving as chief warrant officer in Macao. In the park’s open space are found cobblestone mosaics inlaid with colorful scenes of sailing ships from the era of European expansion. The mosaic stones are arranged to illustrate chapters from Lusiadas. Stand still and one can faint hear Camoes intone: “What kings, what heroes of my native land, Thunder’d on Asia’s and on Afric’s strand…?”
As with so much of interest in Macao the Protestant Cemetery is almost hidden from view. To get there you walk past the tiny Protestant church off one side of the Cameos Garden, down a slope until the sunken rectangular field of grass and gravestones reveals itself. The cemetery was established in 1841, just prior to the first Anglo-Chinese Opium War. Macao at that time was filled with European and American traders and sailors. Their stories are revealed in their epitaphs. One informs us that “Under this lieth the body of Mr. Samuel Proctor of Boston, a young gentleman much esteemed and regretted by all who knew him, who departed this life AT MACOA January the 12, 1792, aged 21 years.” Another American was Benjamon R. Leach of Salem, Massachusets, who died in Macao in 1838. “He was long the active and intelligent Agent in India of Messrs. Neal & Co. of Salem Mass., USA, who have caused this Monument to be erected over his Grave.”
There must be no more than forty or fifty souls buried in this pristine corner of this overlooked city, undoubtedly enjoying more elbowroom than do most living Macanese. (Macao’s population density of 48,248/square kilometer is the highest in the world.) Among those at rest here the most famous by far is Robert Morrison (1782-1834), the first Protestant missionary to China. Sent to China by the London Missionary Society in 1807, Morrison spent the remainder of his life working on translations and cultivating the first few Protestant Chinese converts to what is today a thriving Chinese faith.
Back on our perch on St. Paul’s, we notice more Catholic churches dominating the visible religious topography. To the northeast is the 1960s-era Saint Joseph the Worker’s Church. Sited on Avenida de Longevidade in the center of Macao’s industrial district—chunky blocks of ugly industrial high-rises, many now empty or used only as warehouses--this church feels like a ship adrift.
It serves a community, though, that is clear, with a busy reception area and offices downstairs. Upstairs the church proper is immaculate. And on the walls, once again, mosaics, here fourteen vast pastel-colored works originally designed by the Italian artist Guiseppe Francavilla, depicting Biblical scenes from the birth of Adam to the Resurrection. But who does this church serve? With the decline of industry in Macao in the 1990s the church’s focus switched to caring for newly arrived immigrants from China. Often poor and dependent on welfare, they respond well to the message of St. Joseph, father of Jesus and patron saint of China.
Moving west, toward Macao’s northwest quadrant, we find the Lin Feng Temple, a community temple in the folk tradition. Such community temples typically house images of many deities, each covering a separate area of specialization.
This temple was first built around 1600 to commemorate the goddess Tian Hou. Over the years additional halls housing other deities were added, including Guan Yin, Guan Di (Guan Gong), the Earth God, and the City God. Its well-maintained halls reflect the continued potency of its gods; worshippers will continue to go as long as their prayers are answered and they get results. Chinese religiosity has a clear practical bent.
Sitting on the temple grounds is a museum dedicated to Lin Ze, the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) commissioner who stood up to the British by confiscating and destroying opium shipments, precipitating the Opium Wars. Lin is today depicted as a hero in China. Think of the museum as an official expression of Chinese nationalism. Inside are copies of unequal treaties signed by European powers and China, plus some explanation of the inequities of the opium trade. Most revealingly, contemporary photos of Chinese and Macanese government officials take up half the wall space. This little museum is a reminder: Macao belongs to China!
To the south of Lin Feng lie three additional traditional temples. The largest of these is the Kun Iam (Guan Yin) Temple, a well-maintained Buddhist community temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Guan Yin, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. This temple was built in 1627 on a site occupied by other temples since the 1200s. In 1844 the first peace treaty between the United States and China, the Treaty of Peace, Amity, and Commerce, with tariff of duties, was signed by U.S. envoy Caleb Cushing and the Chinese government envoy inside Kun Iam; the stone table used for the signing is still in the temple. Not two blocks down Avenido do Coronel Mesquita lies another equally old gem of a temple, the Kun Iam Tchai (Guanyinzai, “Little Guan Yin”) Temple. This temple is not strictly Buddhist at all, although one chamber houses a Guan Yin image. Instead it is a hybrid popular religion temple similar to the Lin Feng, housing a range of community deities, all of which are paraded in a ceremonial circuit on major festival days.
The third temple, further inside the network of square streets opposite the two Kun Iam temples, is a real treasure of popular Chinese religion: Lin Kai (Lotus Stream) Temple. Its date of construction is unknown, but we do know it was rebuilt in 1830, so once again here is a cultural site from the Portuguese period. Inside, the rooms are tiny, like so many buildings in Macao, yet this temple complex contains a depth of cultural meaning. Granite sculptured panels depicting landscape and religious figures are inlaid into the front wall.
Production of such cared stone panels centered in Guangzhou flourished through the nineteenth century. Inside, fifteen major deity figures fill the temple, from Guan Yin to Guan Gong, the red-faced god of wealth and learning. One room in particular houses finely carved figures of the eighteen lohans, traditional objects of devotion in Chinese Buddhism. The eighteen lohans are monks deep in various stages of meditation practice; they remind petitioners to rededicate themselves to devotion and discipline. Walk through the lohan hall into the next and you find an unexpected counterpoint to the overly-serious monks: a room housing twelve or so female figurines roughly sculpted in softer clay and painted brightly. Presiding over all as central deity is Jinhua Niangniang (roughly, “Granny Golden Flower”), a female deity worshipped throughout southern China as a childbearing facilitator.
The female figures arrayed on either side of the room reflect a range of women’s roles in traditional Chinese society, often involving caring for children in childbirth and sickness. The message here: you can petition gods to cover the practical concerns of daily life as well as the divine.
Turning back toward the heart of the peninsula, still lingering over the maze of scooter-clogged side streets north of St. Paul’s, one more large site awaits: the cemetery and church of St. Michael. In contrast to the gloomy and isolated Protestant Cemetery, this bright and vast Catholic cemetery sits on a gentle hill surrounded by thousands of ornate gravesites. The Cultural Institute and Central Library lie across the street on Rio de Volong.
Back to our perch atop St. Paul’s, there are two remaining sectors of the peninsula to cover. To the southeast stretches the ferry terminal, the jai alai tournament hall, Macau’s Fisherman’s Wharf (a Disney-like town filled with luxury good retail shops, as well as a faux volcano), and the beginning of the real glitz—first the Sands, then the MGM Grand, followed by the Lisboa, a monstrous, vaguely fleur de lis-shaped skyscraper—taking it all in one glance, the awed visitor is confronted by a massive cliff of glass and cement.
There is one religious site here, the Kun Iam image rising 20 meters high on a small pedestal off the coast. Unlike embedded community temples, this statue has little to do with a community of worship, and was built simply to promote tourism.
The city’s southeast section tells a different story. Macao’s beautiful coast road, here christened Avenido Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, leaves the overwhelming shadow of the Lisboa casino, curves past the old governor’s mansion, and rounds Barra Hill before sliding up the western side of the peninsula. The Barra Hill area houses two of Macao’s oldest religious sites. At the base of the hill is A-Ma temple, probably Macau’s oldest and certainly its namesake. A-Ma is a colloquial term for Tian Hou, aka Mazu, sometimes called the Goddess of the Sea, a female deity worshipped fervently along the southern coast of China. The temple was built in 1448, and so predates the arrival of the Portuguese, who first showed up in 1535.
A-Ma is a major devotional site to this day, although as we have seen she is worshipped in such other temples as Tian Feng. But the real treasure on Barra Hill is the Our Lady of Pena Church, built in 1622. This site easily wins the fengshui award.
On a clear day it offers full views of the harbor, today so shallow it resembles a sandbar. And the church itself, connected to a Trappistine nunnery, is a vertical breath of stillness--just what the soul needs after a rough day of blackjack.
The blackjackers, alas, are rarely seen in our travels. Instead in our religious site visits we most likely share the sacred precincts with the occasional tourists, the devout, and the grounds keepers. Groundkeepers fall into two groups, community volunteers and private operators. Most temples and churches operating today are centers of living communities. But another organizational form survives, the temple owned by a family and passed down through generations. And in cramped Macau you never know when you will run across a family temple.
With a final hour in left to tour the city I walk east from St. Paul’s on Largo de Companha. I come to the ochre walls of Pao Kung Temple just in time to watch its gates close at 5:30. I linger, angry at being cut off from the temple. I turn and walk aimlessly down a side street, where by chance I see another sign, a temple name, Huangcao Erxian (“the two immortals Huang and Cao”). I enter the open door, expecting to find it too ready to close. Instead I meet a Pilipino maid and an elderly Chinese woman.
They invite me upstairs to the main worship hall. There I see a masterpiece of carved ebony and rosewood in the tradition of intricate carvings unique to southern China. At least ten deities are housed in the massive wood altar. The woman, with a well-permed head of gray hair, lives simply with her maid in a small room to the side of the main altar room, her sole occupation caring for the temple and its deity images, as her family has done for centuries. Her passion for the temple, I feel, is quiet yet intense.
Religion’s roots, I realize, run deep in Macao, and in all directions, touching social life, the family, and the economy equally, in a relaxed, welcoming style I now see as uniquely Macanese. Closing my eyes I can easily imagine returning to Barra Hill to gaze silently at the harbor, watched over by St. Mary or, perhaps, Tian Hou, or both, awaiting the arrival of De Camoes’ next flotilla.
