Nowadays, Macao is mostly known for being the gambling capital of the world in terms of money spent every year. What a lot of people, including myself, didn’t know, is that the city was (until 1999) owned by the Portuguese, and much like Hong Kong was controlled directly by a foreign power (non-Chinese) for hundreds of years. Macao was actually the first foothold a foreign power laid in China and I was interested on checking it out.
The historical center is preserved as a world heritage site and is adorned by some of the most beautiful hues of yellow (my favorite color) I have ever seen, only rivaled by Lima’s buildings. I decided to go up one of the old fortresses which happened to still have cannons surrounding the fortress walls. As I walked by one of the cannons (the one pictured), I realized that it laid in perfect sight of the Lisbon hotel and casino, an icon of Macao’s modernity.
“What a perfect shot,” I thought (no pun intended), as I felt it was almost a sign of the old Macao trying to shoot down ‘new Macao.’ Unfortunately, when I decided to take this shot, everyone decided to take pictures with the same cannon. There were almost a dozen cannons and it was killing me that other visitors just wouldn’t pick another one. They didn’t let me take a clear picture without someone in the way for quite a while. I became obsessed. I scoped out the area, pretending to look around and at the first sign of desolation, I ran back and took this picture. I really love the angle and hope that my patience was worth it :).
[Want to participate and be featured on this blog? Have you visited a UNESCO World Heritage Site? Find out how to submit your pictures here.]
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Macau must be a beautiful contrastful place where Portuguese culture meets Chinese.
It definitely does not feel like mainland. I think you can feel that clashing of Chinese and Portuguese in the food :).
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