The City of the Name of God

Abstract

At the stroke of midnight on 19 December 1999, Portugal’s red and green flag was lowered inside a huge pavilion near Macau’s outer harbour—and China’s red banner was hoisted to the tune of the national anthem of the People’s Republic. The last Portuguese governor, Vasco Rocha Vieira, handed over his duties to Edmund Ho, a 44-year-old local banker whom a Beijing-appointed body had selected to become the first chief executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region. Clouds and strong winds had forced the organisers of the historic ceremony to cancel the planned fireworks, but thousands of guests burst into boisterous cheers as the territory changed hands.

There is no question that it harbours in its hidden places all the riffraff of the world, the drunken shipmasters; the flotsam of the sea, the derelicts, and more shameless, beautiful women than any port in the world. It is hell. But to those who whirl in its unending play, it is one haven where there is never a hand raised or a word said against the play of the beastliest emotions that ever blacken the human heart.

—Hendrik de Leeuw who visited Macau in the 1930s and wrote Cities of Sin.¹