If there is one simple thing that can be said about Macao, both past and present, it is that it is full of surprises. Everything else about it, or so it seems, is not so simple. For all its diminutive size geographically – it is one of the smallest separately administered civic regions in the world – there is always something about it that is diffi cult to fi gure out, still unknown or only partially known, more historical detail or nuance yet to be discussed, with likely new sources of information yet to be uncovered as new research methods develop and people go out into the street to fi nd out what is going on. By some measures, Macao is the richest place in Asia per capita, the most densely populated urban area per square kilometre in the world, and the place with perhaps the largest amount of land claimed from the sea relative to its original size and extent anywhere, with plans for more underway. 1 It is now the venue for the largest amount of casino gambling anywhere in the world, visited, on average, by more than 1,000,000 tourists per month, primarily from mainland China but increasingly from other parts of Asia as well. Yet the people who make up Macao’s current population of just over 550,000 do not necessarily see themselves as part of all these new developments, certainly not the glitzy symbolism of its recent, and massive, urban and economic transformation. Macao people are still known to be quite socially conservative, more easy-going, even ‘laid back’, perhaps even reluctant to entertain progressive new ideas in their approaches to life, when compared to their Cantonese-speaking counterparts in Hong Kong (who share with Macao the use of traditional Chinese characters) or in Guangzhou (Canton), the major city in the adjoining Guangdong province of China. Although booming now, it was not too long ago that Macao was a somewhat sleepy backwater, with a sluggish economy, appreciated for more for certain old-world, folksy and European ways of doing things rather than anything very modern or current or new. But that was prior to the administrative handover of Macao to the People’s Republic of China in 1999. Many things have changed since that date, but many also

seem to have stayed at least somewhat the same. People in Macao walk slower on the street than people in Hong Kong, apparently work fewer hours, and seem to experience less stress, so perhaps that which has remained or been resistant to change is for the good.