A Day in Macau

There are parts to Macau that don't seem real, and I'm not just talking about the Venetian. There's a Truman Show quality that seems to lay a mask over the entire city, to the point where everything is valued only for its capacity to be outrageously flamboyant.

Macau depends heavily upon tourism to support its economy--the addition of foreign investment into its casino scene single-handedly raised its GDP from $7B in 2002 to $55B in 2018, according to the World Bank--and everything seem to be geared toward the tourist. Macau itself has little arable land and few natural resources, a situation that puts it at the mercy of imports from Hong Kong and China for fresh food and necessary living goods. Standing in the city center and gazing around at the haze of flashing lights, it's easy to become discouraged by how little the spirit of the city comes through.

But there are ways to see the beauty and heart of Macau, and they're not entirely separate from the tourism industry. Macau's long history of attracting visitors has forged the culture that it's continuing to grow into, and our group enjoyed falling in love with this place. As soon as we stepped off the bus at the Cathedral of St. Paul, we ran into several of the snack stalls I had read about. We stopped to appreciate stalls hawking classic Macau delicacies like Portuguese egg tarts, pork chop buns, almond cookies, and bakkwa, a thick-cut jerky.

A man stands at a counter cutting dough for almond cookies

Thanks to over 400 years of Portuguese rule, Macau lies at a unique linguistic junction between Portuguese, English, and Chinese. We were able to see the incredible benefits to studying and working in Macau through visiting the specialized computer science research labs at the University of Macau. My favorite was the natural language processing lab, which has been working on machine translations between these three languages and their linguistic families for years. The system is competitive even with highly funded and well-supported systems like Google Translate, to the point where the law school at UM uses the lab's specialized translation services for translating legal documents. It was easy to see how the school was well-positioned for such a project and gave a glimpse into the possibilities that are continuing to develop in Macau as the region increasingly becomes a global stop.

Our school group in front of the UM entrance

 We also got the chance to speak with students currently studying at UM. We toured the living and studying sections of the university with them and then joined them for lunch, which was a great spread of steamed egg, bok choy, rice, pork, and noodles. Over the meal, we got to know more about their individuals paths to UM, their daily lives, and where they hoped to go post-graduation. Each of them had their own feelings about Macau, China as a whole, and where these two places fit in the world, and it was great to get their perspectives.

Our fearless leader(s) with the great people at UM

We were so thankful to the University of Macau for organizing a great schedule for us and for the ability to be in the city and experience a totally different area than we've seen so far in Hong Kong. We hope to continue this partnership going into the future. Until then--so long, Macau.