Firecrakers, Fishermen and Circus

^The intriguing combination of colours of the facade of this rundown firecracker workshop and the street furniture was what caught my eye for this shot.

The best about Macau is its oldness, the essence I look for around the city which I travel to. The three old thing about Macau which spring to mind are firecrackers, fishermen and circus (actually the Chinese wedding ceremony)

Unlike Hong Kong where firecrackers was banned since the colonial era, Macau citizens are still free to enjoy firecraker fun in the Chinese New Year. In the old days, the lighting of firecrackers was almost all year round. It is no wonder that Macau had a quite history in producing firecrakers.

^A model setting which shows the yard of a firecracker workshop in Macau.

The lighting of firecrackers was not restricted to Chinese New ear. Whenever a new shop or business opened, the front of the building was decorated with bamboo scaffolding covered in paper flowers and characters propitiating good fortune. Long strings of firecrackers suspended from roof to pavement would be lit, the street soon filling with choking smoke and the continuous cacophony of explosions. If the building was over five storeys high, they could last an hour. At only one event were firecrackers not let off – funerals.

^A model setting showing a sampan berthed at a quay in Macau with some lifting facility at the stern to haul catches and other heavy items

As Macau, like Hong Kong, was a fishing port. It has a long history as such too. In the old days, the fishing boats sailed to the open seas for weeks before returning with their catches, probably at night.

Imagine the night haul landed – green and blue-backed crabs and azure lobsters, sea bass with electric-blue scales and black lines, gold and black mottled grouper, thin, silver needlefish, octopi that slid their tentacles across the quayside, squid, sea cucumbers, long-spined sea urchins, eels, rays and sharks ranging in length from a few feet to such as it took four men to lift them, their eyes sunken and their mouths bloody. Everything was up for sale as edible and somen joslted to buy the entire catch. Even the seaweed snagged in the nets was for sale.

^Fishermen wearing a typical Chinese peaked shade at the quayside

Usually in a fishing in southern China, three types of vessels predominated in the bay. The smallest and most numerous were sampans, ranging from little more than skiffs to boats about fifteen feet long.

^Fishermen doing fishing along the harbourfront

Constructed of wood, the sampans were propelled by a single stern oar, although some had a short mast with a square-rigged sail. Most had arched canvas awnings that ran their length, beneath which lived a complete family. There was even a place for charcoal cooking stove. The majority of sampan dwellers were fishing folk who cast gill nets or fished with sleek, long-necked cormorants.

^A model showing the traditional wedding procession

Since Macau has not developed economically until recent years with the controversial blossoming of gambling houses, it has preserved a lot many old Chinese ways of doing things. One of these which no longer exists, howeverm is the wedding procession.

When a wedding procession came, it was like the circus had come to town. The initial indications of the approaching wedding procession were the muted sounds of Chinese music. Soon, two parallel lines of people appeared, in the near front of which would be a palanguin between four perspiring carriers. The four sides and the roof were decorated in blinding red as the bride was sitting in it and red denoted goodness in the Chinese culture.

^A Chinese band is in the procession

Just around the palanquin walked a small classical Chinese band of several musicians. They wore red uniforms and the music played was brassily loud with the brasswind instruments high-pitched and the small gong cracked. The bride would be carried to meet the parents-in-law, a ceremony called Gall Mun, literally Into the Door.

(Some illustrations are adopted from a novel "Gweilo")