On December 17, 24 year-3 students from the Chinese Culture and Global Communication (CCGC) major and two exchange students under the leadership of Dr. Wei Chin Wong and Miss Connie Li traveled to Macau- a well-conserved region with more than four centuries of East-West cultural exchanges and assimilation. The group visited several historic sites and a museum to gain a firsthand glimpse at Macau’s rich cultural background, together with four special guests, Prof. Paul A. Van Dyke, Prof. Huang Chao, Dr. Jackie Yeoh, and Miss Sue Wang, who are the good friends and great colleagues of Dr. Wei Chin Wong.

Photo 1: A group photo in front of the Ruins of Saint Paul’s.

The first stop was the Macau Maritime Museum. This museum detailed the extensive history of Macau as a coastal city and major trading hub and had displays on topics such as historical Macanese sailing vessels and its vital oyster farms. The Maritime Museum in particular offered an insight into Macau’s historical role as a port city and its importance in trade and cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world. This visit revealed that there were complex interactions of the different cultures and also economies. Macau was a melting pot and a vital intersection in global maritime history.

Photo 2: A group photo of UIC students at the Macau Maritime Museum entrance with Dr. Wei Chin Wong, Miss Sue Wang, Dr. Jackie Yeoh, Prof. Chao Huang, Prof. Paul Van Dyke (who stand on the right side in the front row) and Miss Connie Li (on the left side in the front row).

Photo 3: UIC students listening to Madam Joey Lin’s explanation, who is an experienced local-born tour guide before they take a tour of A-Ma Temple.

Next, the group visited A-Ma Temple, which located next to the Macau Maritime Museum. Built in 1488, the local-born tour guide, Madam Joey Lin, shared with us the interesting stories of how this old temple has been thought to be the settlement’s namesake since the colonial period in the sixteenth century. The fragrant incense smoke and regal Eastern architecture of the temple contrasted strikingly with the stately stone tombstones memorializing prominent foreigners. This explains how the A-Ma Temple became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2005.

After having our lunch at the Portuguese restaurant, the group took in the Protestant Cemetery and the Ruins of Saint Paul’s, a Jesuit church burned down hundreds of years ago. The Ruins of Saint Paul’s and the Protestant Cemetery were like windows into the past, each of these places telling a story of Eastern and Western influences. We could tell, seeing the grave, that when people came from America, Germany or France as sinologists, navy, musicians, medical staff etc., they provided us an illustration of how religions, cultures and traditions from different parts of the world have coexisted in this place, making Macau a rich and diverse city. However, we learned that this cemetery contained only a small part of the graves that have been moved. A lot of other graves were not conserved and disappeared over the years as they were forgotten.

Photo 4: Students and professors taking in the Protestant Cemetery.

Photo 5: UIC students examining the grave of the Rev. Samuel Dyer, who was a British Protestant Christian missionary to the Chinese with the London Missionary Society and devoted about 15 years in the Straits Settlements (include Singapore and Penang and Malacca in Malaysia) between 1827 and 1843.

Photo 6: The grave of prominent sinologist, Robert Morrison, in the Protestant Cemetery.

As one of the students of Dr. Wong’s course Understanding Communication in Chinese Culture, I was particularly interested in the unique combination of languages in the region. We had studied the fascinating impact of China’s thousands of years of culture on modern China. How would such an ancient culture mingle with the novel influx of Portuguese culture? We could feel in the streets a blend of Eastern and Western in architectural styles and languages, since many signs were written in both Portuguese and Chinese.

Photo 7: The street sign in Macau vividly depicts the hybrid of old Portuguese style signs and Chinese characters for the locals.

In some respects, it seems the cultures remained distinct. The Protestant and Jesuit churches looked distinctly Western, and A-Ma Temple could have fit in in most Chinese cities. And the people around us mostly were speaking Mandarin or Cantonese, not a Western language. Yet on the other hand, it was rather startling to see an inflated Santa Claus draped over the balcony of a traditional style home. Tourism and gambling are clearly large parts of the culture, so it was hard to see what was authentic and what was a façade put up by the locals to make visiting foreigners feel at home.

It was particularly interesting to see the reactions of my fellow students to the sites we visited. While many burned incense sticks or bowed reverently at the temple, the cemetery seemed off-putting to several. One peer mentioned how it felt unusual to have a cemetery in the middle of a residential area. Usually, she said, Chinese people bury their dead far from their homes to avoid bad luck. Although this custom was strange to my fellow students, other Western customs were quite the opposite. My fellow students certainly enjoyed the historic sites, but they were particularly excited to be photographed with the numerous Christmas decorations around the city.

Photo 8: The Macau skyline and crowds of people in front of the Ruins of Saint Paul’s with Christmas decorations.

Perhaps the impact of Western culture might be difficult to distinguish, but in this case and others it is still very present. While the earliest Portuguese had to cross oceans to bring a new way of living to Macau, with the internet culture can be transmitted much more quickly. Clearly, the lessons of Macau, a thriving city that integrated vastly different cultures, are still relevant for building a harmonious society today.

Photo 9: Guillaume Szonyi and I (Jonas Doerr) enjoying Macau. This photo was taken next to the Ruins of Saint Paul’s by Prof. Huang.

To me, this trip to Macau was an excellent capstone to my semester learning in China. Guillaume Szonyi, who is one of the students of Dr. Wong’s course History of Western Sinology, says that the field trip reinforced the importance of experiential learning: being physically present in these historical sites was a real immersion and provided an experience that textbooks alone could not provide. We could bridge together the academic knowledge and the real-world understanding, as we could analyze with our proper eyes what these places are now and what they were in older pictures such as for the Ruins of Saint Paul’s or representations of Macau’s port and boats in the museum.

Acknowledgments:

· Department of Communication, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

· Macau Maritime Museum

Reporters: Jonas Doerr and Guillaume Szonyi

Photos: Dr. Wei Chin Wong, Guillaume Szonyi and Prof. Chao Huang

Editor: Dr. Wei Chin Wong