St. Anthony's Church

Next on our list to visit during our day-trip in Macau was St. Anthony’s Church which was a very short walk (and you could see it) from the Old Protestant Cemetery.

First built of bamboo and wood between 1558-1560, this is one of the oldest churches in Macau, also marking the site where the Jesuits set up their earliest headquarters in the city.  The church was reconstructed in stone several times, while the present appearance and scale of the church dates back to 1930.  It’s a reconstruction of the original, which was burnt down in 1874.

The church is a two-story building with a simple neo-classical façade, topped by a boldly ornamented classical pediment.  The church has a three-story high belfry.

The local district or area is traditionally Macanese. Sunday services in Portuguese are still held in this church.

Camoes Square and Old Protestant Cemetery

After visiting Fisherman’s Wharf, we took a minibus to its last stop to walk around the Historic Center of Macau.  The Historic Center of Macau is an urban area within the old city of Macau spanning eight squares and 22 historic buildings.  They include archaeological remains, buildings that are still functioning according to their original purpose, and examples of late Qing merchants’ homes.

The Historic Center of Macau is the product of cultural exchange between East and West spanning over 400 years, and is currently the oldest, the most complete and consolidated array of European architectural legacy standing intact on Chinese territory today.

The first place we went to was Camoes Square which is a little garden that has some greenery and benches where locals relax.  See pic below.

Right next to the square is the Old Protestant Cemetery.  Originally named the East India Company Cemetery, it was Macau’s first protestant cemetery.  The chapel, built in 1821, is now referred to as ‘the Morrison Chapel’ in honor of missionary Robert Morrison (1782-1834) who is the author of the first Chinese-English Dictionary and the first translation of the Bible into Chinese and the chapel was built in response to a lack of burial sites for Protestants in the Roman Catholic Portuguese colony.  There are over 150 tombs and hundreds are buried here, including Protestants from Britain, USA, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands as well as officials from the East India Company.  Several graves were moved from other locations outside the city walls into the cemetery, explaining why some graves are dated before its founding in 1821. Nationals of Britain, the United States of America, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany are buried there.  The cemetery was closed in 1858, after which the cemetery began to be referred to as the "Old" Protestant Cemetery.

The Protestant Cemetery occupies an area of approximately 2,800 square meters.  The cemetery is divided into two levels: the upper level and the lower level.  The tombstones are made of granite in general, differing in size, in style and design.  See pics below.

Macau: Fisherman's Wharf

After going to Hong Kong on Monday for a day trip during Qingming Festival (Tomb Sweeping Day) and relaxing Tuesday in Shenzhen, two of my fellow teaching friends (Laila and Lindsay) and I went to Macau for a day trip on Wednesday. We all had to teach the following day on Thursday at our respective schools. None of us had been to Macau before.

The best way to get to Macau from Shenzhen is the hour-long ferry – approximately 200 kuai ($30 ) each way. I had been to the ferry terminal before, when I went to Hong Kong Island last year with Laila. You can also catch the ferry to go to Zhuhai as well as the Hong Kong International Airport. We caught the early morning ferry to Macau at around 9am.

Macau is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China (Hong Kong is the other). Macau lies on the western side of the Pearl River Delta across from Hong Kong which is to the east, bordering Guangdong province to the north and facing the South China Sea to the east and south. Macau is located at the mouth of the Pearl River downstream from Guangzhou (Canton). Macau Peninsula was originally an island, but a connecting sandbar gradually turned into a narrow isthmus, thus changing Macau into a peninsula.

The territory's economy is heavily dependent on gambling and tourism, but also includes manufacturing. In fact, gambling revenue has made Macau the world's top casino market, surpassing Las Vegas.

Macau is a former Portuguese colony, and is both the first and last European colony in China. Portuguese traders first settled in Macau in the 16th century and subsequently administered the region until the handover in 1999. The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration and the Basic Law of Macau stipulate that Macau operates with a high degree of autonomy until at least 2049, fifty years after the transfer.

Under the policy of "one country, two systems", the PRC's Central People's Government is responsible for the territory's defense and foreign affairs, while Macau maintains its own legal system, police force, monetary system, customs policy, and immigration policy; so like Hong Kong, you have to clear immigration.

The official languages are Chinese and Portuguese and the spoken languages are Cantonese, Portuguese, & Macanese. 95% of Macau's population is Chinese; another 2% is of Portuguese and/or mixed Chinese/Portuguese descent, an ethnic group often referred to as Macanese. In Macau, the unit of currency is the pataca.

After clearing immigration, we walked to Fisherman's Wharf which was located next to the Ferry Terminal. The Wharf is the first theme park in Macau and opened in 2006. The complex includes over 150 stores and restaurants in buildings built in the style of different world seaports such as Cape Town, Amsterdam and Venice, six rides, a slots hall, hotels, and a casino. Located next to Fisherman's Wharf is the Sands Macau, which was named after the hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and is the largest and the first U.S. owned casino in Macau.

The Wharf was pretty empty when we were there maybe due to the Qingming holiday. We saw a lot of neat places in Macau during our day-trip (future posts coming) and this area was my least favorite. I was not impressed. If I wanted to see places like this, I would just go to them in the States. But we walked the area just to check it out but a lot of the restaurants and shops were closed when we were there. None of us are gamblers so the gambling piece of Macau was not something we were attracted to. Thankfully, Laila and Lindsay have the same interests as I in that we were much more interested in seeing Macau's historical, heritage sights. Some pics below of the Wharf and area.

Sai Kung

Once I visited the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery, I then headed to a part of the New Territories that I had not yet been to; that of Sai Kung.

Sai Kung is the opposite of urban Hong Kong Island (where the skyscrapers are) and has a slower pace of life – though is still bit of a tourist area with bars and restaurants.  Sai Kung also acts as a gateway into some of the best countryside you are likely to find in Hong Kong.  Sai Kung Town or simply Sai Kung is a town on Sai Kung Peninsula (often called the ‘leisure garden of Hong Kong’), facing the Sai Kung Hoi (Inner Port Shelter), part of Sai Kung District in the New Territories, Hong Kong.  Sai Kung is the center of the surrounding villages and hamlets, and hence the name may refer to the areas in its immediate surroundings.  Having evolved from a fishing village, it is a paradise for seafood lovers, locals and foreign tourists alike.  Sai Kung is rightly famous for its seafood restaurants along the quayside, where you can pick your dinner from an aquarium and have it served any way you like.  It is nice to stroll alongside the waterfront as well as sit at a harbor-side seafood restaurant staring, stunningly at the glass tanks filled with a variety of crustaceans you want to eat – if that’s your thing.  I’m not a seafood guy but I still wanted to see the area.

It took me about 45 minutes to get there from the monastery as I had to take the subway, connect to another line, and then take a minibus.  But it was a nice ride as you kind of start the bus trip on a mountain or a hill and then once you get near Sai Kung, you start descending with good views of the town and harbor.  But in addition to the waterfront, I wanted to see Tin Hau Temple in the center of town.

There are over 70 temples (at least partially) dedicated to Tin Hau in Hong Kong.  Tin Hau is the Hong Kong equivalent to the Goddess of the Sea.  As you might remember, we had already seen the Tian Hou Temple on Cijin Island in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which was the Taiwanese version of the Goddess of the Sea.  Both are said to protect sailors and fisherman and is invoked as the patron deity of all Southern Chinese and East Asian persons.  This Hong Kong temple was built in the early twentieth century.  Pics of the temple below.

I walked around Sai Kung for a couple hours and then took a break and had a couple beers while sitting outside at a bar.  I was a little fatigued mainly due to the 400 plus stairs earlier in the day at the monastery.  After exploring, I took the minibus back to the subway and headed to Hong Kong Island to eat (the restaurants in Sai Kung didn’t do anything for me) and drink during the early evening before finally heading back to Shenzhen the same day.  It was a long day.  Some pics of Sai Kung below.  Note the seafood restaurants and glass tanks – some weird fish!  The fish in the fourth pic were huge; I was wondering how much $ they would cost?  In the last pic, all those canopies are seafood restaurants.

10,000 Buddhas Monastery

After visiting the H.K. Railway Museum, I walked back to the subway and went three stops and exited at Sha Tin station to go to the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery.  By the way, Sha Tin is where one of the racecourses is as well.

10,000 Buddhas Monastery is a Buddhist temple in Sha Tin, New Territories, Hong Kong.  It is not an actual monastery as there are no resident monks and is managed by laypersons.  It was built by Yuet Kai, a devout Buddhist layman who dedicated the last years of his life to constructing an elaborate temple containing nearly 13,000 statues of Buddha.

In 1951, Yuet Kai founded the Monastery, coming to Hong Kong in 1933 to preach Buddhism in a local monastery and soon found many followers.  The 10,000 Buddhas Monastery was constructed at the beginning of 1949 in the greenery of the New Territories.  He originally planned to establish a Buddhist college on an estate donated by a wealthy merchant who was also a devout Buddhist but eventually decided instead to found a monastery and construction of the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery began.  Despite his old age, Yuet Kai carried the buildings materials personally from the foot of the mountain together with his disciples to build the monastery.  It took eight years to complete all the buildings and another ten years to finish the 12,800 Buddha statues in various poses.  Construction was finished in 1957.   The main Temple and the Pagoda of the Monastery are graded as Grade III Historic Buildings due to their historic significance.

The monastery is built over two levels on a bamboo forest hillside overlooking Sha Tin.  There are as many as 400 steps lined on either side with 500 life-size gilded Buddhas.

There are two halls, temples or monasteries next to each other here at this location and I’m not sure if they’re either separate from each other or all part of the 10,000 Buddhas Monastery.  There is a fairly steep climb to reach either, but efforts are rewarded with nearly 13,000 Buddhas both outside and inside the temple.  There is no admission fee.  There is a small vegetarian restaurant at the top that offers refreshments; I bought a bottle of water as well as a spring roll and something else, not sure what it really was.

It was a little crowded due to it obviously being Tomb Sweeping Day/Holiday.

A lot of pics are below as this was a very impressive sight and was the main stop of my day-trip.