We took the bus to the ferry port. We had to go through customs to get from Hong Kong to Macau! All the special administration areas in China are a little--well, special, in how they are administered I guess. We got our tickets handed out, seats assigned by a man behind a desk with a page full of stickers. You put your ticket in front of him and he slapped a sticker on it. Luck of the draw.
My luck turned out to be sitting next to the director of the FB HK program, and an African American girl from our group, MC, who is interested in banks and finance. Funny conversation, rather disjointed. The Director is a master of guanxi (networking) and it was especially interesting to listen to him mention names and suggest ways in which he could connect MC with people whom it might behoove her to know. Networkers never rest. As for me, in no time flat he managed to identify a person who had been his classmate and my professor--I was pleased to be able to say honestly that I had just been reading the guy's dissertation. The whole thing made me feel satisfyingly like a grown-up, even if it was a little stressful. The Director was so, well, professional. Serious.
I'm sorry I didn't take any pictures on the ferry. I was too busy being grown-up.
After the ferry we got onto a bus, which took us into the old part of town for a quick half hour of sight-seeing before checking into our hotel. As usual, I struck off on my own, so none of the following pictures have me in them...
Looking down the steps...
...From the still-standing facade of a ruined cathedral (major tourist attraction).
A detail:
Some statues at the bottom, one chaste and innocent but with a funny ethnic undertone--Portuguese man, Chinese woman, I think?
Meanwhile, the Portuguese woman...
okay, that's maybe a little unfair, but hey, I didn't put the statues there. There they were, inhabiting the same little square.
A narrow pedestrian street selling all kinds of things. The specialty of the place seemed to be jerky!
A man putting up lights.
Black and white tiled streets, with school-girl feet. Would be kinky if I were a dirty old Japanese guy, but fortunately I'm not, and they just happened to be walking there.
As dusk was falling: an old tree against an old wall, part of the historical museum. It looked pretty and enchanted somehow.
The story of Macau is, roughly, this: it never belonged to the Portuguese, but it was under Portuguese control as a trading port. The culture that arose there was an interesting fusion one. It remained under Portuguese control even after the Portuguese had lost their status as a colonial power, even after the rise of Hong Kong basically put Macau in the shade. Finally, Portugal formally ceded their rights over Macau around the same time Hong Kong was returned to the PRC. According to my Chinese teacher, there was some debate in the PRC as to whether Macau was worth having back.
In order to survive--I'm not sure when it started--Macau had turned into a nightmare world of casinos. Macau originally comprised a peninsula and two islands. However, the space between the two islands has been filled in! in order to make space for more casinos! There is more casino floor-space there than in Las Vegas! More on this later.
Meanwhile, we crowded back onto the buses, an awkward sized group of 30 or so. We made quite a crowd in the lobby of the hotel, "The Grandview." I don't think I remembered even to look at the view! Shared hotel rooms--I was sharing mine with, ironically, a hippie-girl from Oregon. Nothing like a real hippie-girl from Oregon to make me look like a strait-laced conservative. But there wasn't much time to hang out, for we had to go straight out again and to dinner.
It was a fine dinner, in a little restaurant with three long tables laid out of the horde of us. I ended up sitting next to philosophy professor FP and across from a girl who was doing her grant in Taiwan, MT, as well as one who was doing hers in Xinjiang, AL. Miss Manners would have been horrified, as we managed to spend much of the time talking about religion. Well, FP was fairly quiet on the topic--letting the kiddies tumble and play I suppose. I ought to have been well-equipped for the debate, but had forgotten too much, and felt rather disappointed in myself. MT in particular was arguing strongly in favor of religion (meaning Christianity!) and that "science was just another type of faith". Argh. Well, next time I'll know what to say, if there is a next time.
The food was more European than Chinese, but still noticeably fusion. Really rich and fattening, but also really satisfying. There was wine. I absent-mindedly asked for white, but was in the minority. For some reason, that meant I got two refills, whereas no one else got any. I was totally tipsy by the time we all stood up!
Our hotel was on one of the islands, but everyone wanted to go out and play. Ordinarily, I would have just opted to go back and rest, but I had been enjoying the dinner conversation a lot (at least, after we dropped the topic of religion) and surprised myself by wanting to hang out more. We all piled into a fleet of taxis, which took us back across the long bridges and back to the peninsula.
Most everyone opted for a desert restaurant, groupying with the New York FB guy, JA. But I'm not into him, and he's not into me either. Also I was full. Professor FP was also not in the mood to look at deserts. True to philosopher form, he was a smoker. We strolled through the narrow streets, him smoking and me looking for a bathroom. (The one I found was the nastiest ever, but I won't describe it just in case you're eating...!)
FP does comparative philosophy, early modern European and ancient Chinese. Between my own work and what I have learned from Pocket of Bolts, I managed pretty successfully to talk shop with him and felt proud of it. But maybe it was a little soon in our acquaintance to be strolling around alone together at night. Not that I didn't feel safe--he was very much a gentleman and a grown-up, not to mention spoken for!--but there was just a tiny bit of awkwardness about it. I was later to discover that he is inwardly as shy and introverted as me, and make the same sort of efforts to be brave in social situations... so there were the two of us anxiously making brave efforts, ha ha.
We were both glad to run into our dinner companion MT, who had had enough of the dessert place and was striking out in search of casinos. Totally different personality! impulsive, extroverted, fun-loving, opinionated. A good third person to have about, also giving our rambling some sort of focus.
Of course, I found the casinos pretty abhorrent. Atlantic City had prepared me--a hilarious trip a little over a year or go: Pocket of Bolts and I dropped in at Atlantic City on our way back from the Jersey Shore, just to see what it was like. It was awful. We didn't even have it in us to play slots. We stomped around failing to find anything a vegetarian could eat, and left several hours later in a foul mood.
The casinos in Macau were a little different, and the main difference was although they were well-populated, they were extremely silent. This was because the people were VERY SERIOUS about their gambling. Almost all Chinese people, and one got the sense that it was more an "investment" than a recreation.
We walked around looking at all the games, but getting in on one seemed to take more suaveness than even the three of us combined would be able to muster, and of course there was the language issue... FP and MT played slots, while I excused myself on the grounds that Quakers don't gamble. I'm not exactly a Quaker, except hereditarily, but I felt like one in the casino. I watched with interest. FP lost quickly and MT won $100 in Macau/HK money, roughly equivalent to 100 RMB. There was a great poetic justice in this, since she was the one who'd wanted to see the casino in the first place, and I was very pleased. We got the cash and left!On the way out, we met up with some other kids from Taiwan, a skinny ironic guy and a heavy tough-looking girl. Not sure I caught their names at all, but they were clearly a couple. In fact, the other kids from Taiwan were a couple too, what's with that? Only MT was left out, but then she had a bf somewhere or other in the US.
The five of us wandered about looking for drinks, but at 10 PM the bars were already closing. Go figure. We ended up taking two cabs back to our hotel, and I am pleased to say that I ended up having one with FP and it was now comfortable. We talked about the white guys dating Asian girls thing. Of course he had done it too, but at least that wasn't how he'd gotten into the field. I have more respect for guys who study Chinese first and then hook up with one--rather than the reverse.
Back at the hotel, we sat in the tiny lobby bar and had a few. I went through linguistic contortions to get a G&T. Not a popular drink here, though they always have them. It's really the only mixed drink I reliably like. I'd found that in that group I was the one with the best Chinese. So, it fell to me to ask about getting online using the tantalizingly near computer terminal. It was 40 kuai an hour, highway robbery as far as I was concerned, but everyone was willing to chip in for it and wanted to. I had to do a fair amount of inquiring, but I felt totally proud and unafraid--as the designated linguist it was my responsibility! Also, alcohol may have had something to do with it. :)
I got the computer up and running, made sure everyone got their turn to use it, sent a brief tipsy e-mail to Pocket of Bolts, and then had to call it a night. The others were still drinking and chatting in a winding down kind of way, but I'm not used to the night-life! And it was already past 1 by this time, with the bus leaving for the next day's activities at 9!
Yet another to be continued, but I should be able to wrap it up in the next one!
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