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Space and Culture14(2) 140 –164

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DOI: 10.1177/1206331210392685http://sac.sagepub.com

Macao Monuments: In Art, in Poetry, and in Your Face

Carol Archer1 and Christopher Kelen2

Abstract

How are city and culture—the space of the city and the “mind space” of the cultural artifact—connected or disconnected? Contemporary Macao poetry and installation art demonstrate that not only has local culture continued to thrive despite outside pressures on the city’s regional position (a part of “one China” with a localized function) but that the need to produce a critique of these pressures has itself been productive of a politically interested (and interesting) literary and visual culture—a creative culture that demonstrates an opportunistic ambivalence toward identity options. Macao (a city in southern China and, until 1999, sleepy Portuguese possession) is today undergoing unprecedented development. Since the 2002 “liberalization” of casino licensing, the cityscape has taken a monumental turn, with the addition of a number of remarkable landmarks. Today, Macao is promoted as a tourist destination that offers ultramodern casinos and luxurious hotels as well as World Heritage–listed architecture. In recent years, the people of Macao have sometimes felt themselves the victims of contradictory forms of recolonization—by Beijing on one hand and by Vegas-style casino capitalism on the other. Between these gigantic pincers, what chances of survival have local culture and custom had? This article takes a close look at some contemporary Macao poetry and installation art, dealing with themes of monumentality and their meaning for the “new” Macao.

Keywords

monuments, space, Macao, poetry, visual art

How are city and culture—the space of the city and the “mind space” of the cultural artifact—connected or disconnected? Contemporary Macao poetry and visual art demonstrate that not only has local culture continued to thrive despite outside pressures on the city’s regional position (a part of “one China” with a localized function) but that the need to produce a critique of these pressures has itself been productive of a politically interested (and interesting) literary and visual culture—a creative culture that demonstrates an opportunistic ambivalence toward identity options.

Macao (also known as Macau, a city in southern China and, until 1999, sleepy Portuguese possession) is today undergoing unprecedented development. Today, Macao is promoted as a

1 Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, New Territories, Hong Kong SAR2 University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, People’s Republic of China

Corresponding Author:Christopher Kelen, English Department, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail: [email protected]

Archer and Kelen 141

tourist destination that offers ultramodern casinos and luxurious hotels as well as World Heritage–listed architecture. In recent years, the people of Macao have sometimes felt them-selves the victims of contradictory forms of recolonization—by Beijing on one hand and by Vegas-style casino capitalism on the other. Between these gigantic pincers, what chance of sur-vival has local culture had?

This article takes a close look at some contemporary Macao poetry and installation art that deals with themes of monumentality and their meaning for the “new” Macao.

A Brief Note on the MethodBefore proceeding further, it will be well to justify both the interdisciplinary cultural studies approach adopted in this article and the fact that the material we deal with may be regarded as “high culture” processes and artifacts. We shall deal with the latter fact first. Our decision to focus on installation art and poetry does not rest on an assumption that these forms automatically deserve the privileged attention of scholars. There are, however, good reasons why the kinds of works considered will be relevant to an understanding of city and culture in the case of Macao.

It is significant that the works considered in this article have no commercial motivation. Along with cultural productions such as the annual Macao Music Festival and Cantonese opera, Macao poetry and installation art participate in a public sector arts economy, which is operation-ally independent of (while heavily subsidized by) Macao’s casino-dominated economy and tax base. In an economy now so dependent on gambling revenue, it is noteworthy that the cultural artifacts dealt with here have not been influenced by the need to make money for anyone. Accord-ing to Pierre Bourdieu (1993), such distance from economic considerations enhances the avant-garde status of works of art. Bourdieu’s claim is that the art world resembles an inversion of the ordinary economic world—it is a game of “loser wins” in which the accumulation of profits, the achievement of honors, and the approval of cultural institutions are not necessarily considered virtues (p. 39). While poetry is for Bourdieu “the disinterested activity par excellence” (p. 51), a similar claim may be made for installation art. Both forms of art command relatively small audi-ences, consisting largely of poets, artists, and intellectuals, and this is especially the case in tiny Macao. In addition, there is little political interference in the arts in Macao. Poetry and (noncom-mercial) installation art are, thus, relatively free to engage with issues of aesthetic, social, and cultural importance, and to offer an unfettered critique of Macao society.

Because contemporary Macao poetry and installation art engage such a wide range of issues, an interdisciplinary approach to their examination is warranted. A longer study would encom-pass a comprehensive sociological and anthropological analysis of social change as witnessed by cultural production in Macao.1 The more general “cultural studies” approaches to Macao space and culture that are now also beginning to emerge are particularly useful as a backdrop to the cultural practices described in this article. For instance, Tim Simpson (2008a) has written about the pace of change in relation to Macao space:

The spaces of the city have been endlessly reclaimed, reproduced, engineered, and com-modified. For example, the same year that the labyrinthine city centre of Macao composed of old Portuguese government buildings, piazzas, and Catholic churches was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, investors broke ground nearby on a huge $154 million Fisherman’s Wharf featuring themed reproductions of a Roman Coliseum, Tang Dynasty Chinese architecture, buildings from Amsterdam, Lisbon, Cape Town, and Miami, and an exploding volcano (pp. 1055-1056).

In “The Commercialization of Macau’s Cafes,” Simpson (2008b) explores the pressures of such changes on everyday life and employment:

142 Space and Culture 14(2)

Everyday life in Macau increasingly centers around performance of lifestyle. The constel-lation of mobility, individuality, performance, visuality, and aesthetic reflexivity described here helps capture the role of lifestyle in contemporary Macau and other similar urban spaces. (p. 229)

In some of Macau’s cafés one may witness not only the rationalization and standardization of a business model and service routine, but also observe the complete transformation of service work into performative emotional labor. (p. 221)

Suggested here is the possibility that rapid social change may engender alterations in daily life, which, though massive, may well go unremarked. Scholars and artists share duties of witness in such circumstances.

Poetry in Casino Age MacaoOne may say that Macao, until the dawn of the new casino age,2 was a city that conspicuously lacked monumental architecture of the kind that other Chinese cities have, in recent decades, employed to build themselves a kind of branding for modernity. Hong Kong’s and Shanghai’s skylines would be familiar examples. Macao’s landmarks, in contrast, were until the 1999 Han-dover mainly of an historical nature—the Ruins of St. Paul’s church and A-Ma Temple probably being the best known. These, along with old forts and sundry other notable churches and temples, could hardly be considered spectacular in the postmodern sense.

Post Vegas–ization, Macao’s landscape is dominated by (one might say littered with) attempts at monumentality. Notable among these, on peninsula Macao are the Sands, the Wynn, Galaxy, and MGM (all casinos, all names familiar from Las Vegas; Figures 1 and 2). On the Cotai Strip3

Figure 1. MGM CasinoNote: Hilda Tam Hio Man (2009) MGM Casino. Digital photograph. Image courtesy of Hilda Tam Hio Man.


is the Venetian and now, just opened at the time of writing, the City of Dreams. Since 2001,4 Macao has also boasted a 338-meter tower—a waterfront folly known to some cynical locals as “Stanley Ho’s erection.” And since 2004, there has been a third picturesque bridge linking pen-insula Macao with the island of Taipa.

In 2010, despite the global recession and its bubble bursting effects, more monuments are expected daily. These imposing structures have, unsurprisingly, become a subject for local art-ists and writers. In Athena Kong’s poem, Armageddon in Cotai, we get a hint of the apocalyptic pretensions of the temple to Mammon built on an unprecedented scale:

night, starlesssky, inkyagainst the dark curtainthe winged lion landed on the arch

under his feetlies the Rome built in daysat the moon’s eclipsethe lion bowed to the audienceopening his eyes to his enemyacross the bitumen river

Figure 2. WynnNote: Kenry Lee (2007) Wynn. Digital photograph. Image courtesy of Kenry Lee.


dust, sandtwelve beasts stand on the planted forestdividing the battlefieldsthe wordless lion stands confidentguarding his palace in wildernesshis prosperity in the desert

(Kelen & Vong, 2008, p. 257)

The monument in question here is the Venetian (opened 2007; see Figure 3). And inside the world’s second largest building, Lili Han’s poem Gondola, an adult voice interpolates the child’s view of something new and strangely alien:

like the crowd beside the watera child looks at the gondolathrough the iron fenceit is the first timeto see boating indoors

gondola comes from a water cityused to toy with flowers and grasssinging everywherenow it learns to be a fishin this clear pool of two hundred meters

after all, people wait in linefor its voicesmany even throw amorous glancesfrom above

but why is there no fish in the water?the child walks away

‘Liar! Liar!’the child thinksbut doesn’t hearthe voice hoarsein the air-conditioned halldoesn’t seethe gondolafailing to be a fishso uttering no bubbles

(Kelen and Vong, 254)

What is a gondola doing in Macao? It is a prop, of course, for the Venetian Hotel/Casino complex, the second largest building in the world and an imitation of an American (Las Vegas) imitation of various architectural features of the Italian city of Venice (Figure 4). The chain of “borrowings” will of course be opaque to the child, whose sense of what belongs or does not belong in a place is based on limited experience. What is alien to the adult is not necessarily alien to the child, but we are reminded through this train of thought that there are bizarre things going unnoticed in Macao.


Macao is perhaps the world’s largest open-air museum of kitsch, a phenomenon for which the casinos are largely responsible. Bizarre Vegas-style grandiosity is frequently combined with tacky pseudo-Chinese add-on elements: The Emperor, The Pharaoh’s Palace, the Greek Mythol-ogy Casino. There is no shortage of orientalizing (and self-orientalizing) in the concoctions arrived at. Perhaps the most serviceable (and durable) example is in the “bird cage” of the old Lisboa Hotel. This building, the early seventies landmark of Stanley Ho’s gambling empire, is also thought to vaguely resemble an old-fashioned Chinese peasant’s hat. The smoke-filled5 desperation of the Lisboa’s large circular gaming rooms has been to Macao’s cultural heart what the Reading Room of the British Library’s is to England’s—apt setting for all kinds of intrigue, material for fiction and for poetry.

Uniqueness LostIn Macao, in the longue durée, a palpable entropy has been attributed to the difficulties of cul-tural difference and distance, to East–West mutual inscrutability, to the arduousness of crossing; in short, to what could be described as the abstract idea of a border. Macao has been a laboratory slide for hybridity. Some observers have been amazed at how the organisms on the slide have tended to stick with their own kind over time, but in fact there have been all kinds of passage across, all kinds of cultural, spiritual, and physical miscegenation. One recalls Auden’s famous Macao sonnet,6 and the crossings implied in the juxtapositions he mentions.

Figure 3. Venetian under constructionNote: Adam Lampton (2007). Venetian under construction. C-print. Image courtesy of Adam Lampton.


Rococo images of Saint and SaviourPromise her gamblers fortunes when they die;Churches beside the brothels testifyThat faith can pardon natural behaviour.

(Auden, 1945, pp. 18-19)

The door of the church, of the brothel, the casino—each presages a transformative passage. The character coming out is not the one who went in. One might say of Auden’s Macao, it is the metonymics make the place. The interesting thing about Macao is how things got to be next to each other, how unexpected contiguities and conflations have generated meaning over time, and how those meanings have differed according to point of view. Which things are of the past and which are of the future?

Because of its small size, the uniqueness of particular landmarks has been a feature of local self-consciousness of place in Macao. Just as before the second land crossing to the Mainland (opened in 2000), there was only one border, so various other Macao features have lost unique-ness through duplication arising from population pressures and development. Agnes Vong’s poem three provides a playful and colloquial take on one of the most visible of Macao’s dupli-cations, highlighting a practical side to the changes that have taken place in the most prominent part of Macao’s skyline—the “outer harbour” water between peninsula Macao and Taipa.

Figure 4. Venetian Casino Hotel #2Note: Kenry Lee (2009). Venetian Casino Hotel #2. Digital photograph. Image courtesy of Kenry Lee.


there used to be only one bridgeit had a namebut people simply called it ‘the bridge’

a second bridge was builtit also had a nameand in order to distinguish thempeople called them the new bridge and the old bridge

now another bridge has been builtit also needs a nameand people are puzzled by what to call it

taxi drivers are more puzzled stillwhen the customer asks‘ging sankiu, via the new bridge, please.’

it was the same with casinosonce ‘dou cheung, casino’ meant the Lisboa, Pou Gengbut now you could point in any direction

with bridges even three is too manynow—whether it’s bridges or casinoswe have to remember the names

with only one or two of anythingpeople can keep their minds clear

but three is a big number to count to

and so finally, people rememberthe second bridgeis called ‘yao yi, the friendship bridge’

but friendship with whom?that’s even harder to remember

. . . but we can try

once there was a little countryin Europeand there was a celestial kingdomand a little ship set sail

(Kelen & Vong, 2008, pp. 267-268)

The Taipa–Macao Bridge (Governor Nobre de Carvalho Bridge) was once a singular entity.7 The second bridge (the “Friendship Bridge” referred to in Vong’s poem) was built in 1994 and associated with the opening of Macao’s International Airport (located on reclaimed land attached to Taipa). The third bridge (the Sai Van Bridge, opened in 2004; Figure 5), constructed to ease traffic congestion, seemed to also serve the aesthetic function of providing some visual balance to the recently constructed Macao Tower, which until that time, felt by many to have an uncomfortably tottering aspect.


Bridges, like borders, provide a convenient metaphor for crossing and for distances and of differences to be spanned. In the case of Vong’s poem, the proliferation of the metaphoric bridges offers a tongue-in-cheek glimpse at the gap between the symbolic intentions of governments and the practical concerns of people getting on with their everyday lives. Friendship with whom? Is there any bridge to connect the popular consciousness with the symbolic means chosen to repre-sent the people and their place? The last lines of the poem cast all the recent confusion into the light of Macao’s 500-year history. Perhaps it is surprising how simple a picture is revealed by the concerted effort to remember where we are from and what is connected in our history.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, there was for practical purposes only one casino in Macao, the one in the Hotel Lisboa; since the boom of the early noughties casinos have sprung up like mush-rooms all over the city. Whatever metaphoric or symbolic reading could be placed on the casino motif must now have greater weight. Or one might picture things this way—once Macao might have been considered Hong Kong’s casino; Hong Kong and Macao both being tiny dots (useful or annoying aberrations on the littoral skin of communist China). Now Macao is capitalist Chi-na’s casino, and while the central government may take steps to control the flow of its citizens into Macao, clearly the casino town is seen to have some useful function as a release value. Here is a clear case of the meaning of Macao having shifted in a fundamental way, and beyond any specific intention of, for instance, tourism authorities.

Macao’s Gondola and Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice: Monuments to the New MacaoThe two works of contemporary art selected to represent Macao in the 2007 Venice Biennale were Macao’s Gondola, by Lui Chak Keong (André) and Lui Chak Hong and Si Monumentum

Figure 5. Macao Tower with Sai Van BridgeNote: Adam Lampton (2007). Macao Tower with Sai Van Bridge. C-print. Image courtesy of Adam Lampton.


Requiris, Circumspice by Konstantin Bessmertny. While Hong Kong has been included in the prestigious international exhibition since 2001, this was Macao’s inaugural appearance. The works of art included in international survey exhibitions are always taken, to some degree, as representative of their place of origin. The first Biennale exhibit from a relatively obscure loca-tion such as Macao is especially important in this sense. As the press release accompanying the exhibit stated, the Biennale provided an opportunity to introduce Macao art to the world.8 The Venice Biennale is organized in a manner that underscores the relationship between works of art and national (and increasingly subnational categories) by presenting works in locality-themed pavilions and sites.9 In addition, Macao’s exhibition in the 2007 Venice Biennale was place-related in a more concrete sense—the call for proposals issued by the Macao Museum of Art specified that “place” was to be the theme of the submitted works.10 That document defined “place” in broad terms. It explained that the meaning of place “differs according to individual circumstances” and that the concept spans the “concrete place where we locate ourselves” and a “special region for our imaginations and memories.”11 For our current purposes, two questions are pertinent. To what extent are the two works that were exhibited in Venice, Macao’s Gondola and Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice, Macao specific? And should they be considered monuments to today’s Macao?

Bessmertny’s Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice (Figure 6) is a sculpture that was installed next to the water outside Macao’s exhibition venue, the Infopoint Arte Communica-tions.12 The work is clearly a vehicle, but a quirky and hybrid one. It has the wheels of a bicycle,

Figure 6. Si Monumentum Requiris, CircumspiceNote: Konstantin Bessmertny, 2007, Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice. Mixed media and recycled materials. Image courtesy of the artist and Amelia Johnson Contemporary.


Figure 7. Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice (detail)Note: Konstantin Bessmertny (2007). Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice (detail). Mixed media and recycled materials. Image courtesy of the artist and Amelia Johnson Contemporary.

porthole-style windows, the boxy shape of a van, and the homely interior of a caravan. And, with its plank-like wings, it also resembles an aeroplane. The words “fly less” underline this interpre-tation, and it is reinforced by Bessmertny himself, who describes the piece as “a construction that loosely resembles a plane, made of recycled and found materials.”13 Bessmertny’s statement in the catalog that accompanied the “Place” exhibition begins, “Flying in the sky was a dream that humankind long pursued and has now been fulfilled by the invention of the aeroplane, a symbol of dreams that has created a new chapter in the history of communication and invention.”14

Vehicular connotations aside, Si Monumentum has the characteristics of a number of architec-tural forms. From the outside, this roughly constructed plywood, metal, and glass structure is reminiscent of a temporary dwelling. It has doors, windows, and electricity. Details such as the plastic strip covering the join between the walls and roof suggest that it would probably, despite the hasty-looking construction style, provide adequate shelter (Figure 7). With its graffiti- covered plywood walls, the piece mimics the “worksite aesthetic” so ubiquitous in construction-boom Macao.

A look through the windows of Si Monumentum reveals a very different kind of place. The red textile-covered walls are


covered with fake paintings from Zhuhai in Baroque-style frames. There are copies of Canaletto’s Venice with inscriptions added by me saying: “View of the Inner Harbour. Macau. China.”15

The crystal chandelier that lights up the interior is too large for the tiny space, and the overall effect calls to mind the decoration typical of casinos and the homes of the self-consciously wealthy. Phrases such as “Casino Republic” and “gamble,” stenciled onto the outside of the structure, support a reading of the interior as a casino. It is unsurprising that casino kitsch has found its way into contemporary Macao art.16 What is remarkable about Si Monumentum, however, is the ambiguity of its subject matter. It is at once an indeterminate vehicle and an architectural structure. Its exterior is reminiscent of a low-cost dwelling or site shed while the interior calls to mind an ostentatious domestic space or a casino. But the resemblance to Macao is perhaps most apparent in the stylistic features of Si Monumentum. The contrast between the gaudy richness of the interior space and its modest exterior is echoed across the contemporary Macao cityscape. Showy buildings emerge from behind rough plywood walls. Walking around Macao, one readily finds examples of similarly makeshift workmanship. This pragmatic style of construction contrasts sharply with the over-worked interiors of the casinos with their heavy-handed evocations of riches and power.

A parallel may also be drawn between the scale of Si Monumentum’s oversized chandelier, and a curious aspect of the contemporary Macao skyline. With the completion of the Macao Tower in 2004, a chapel at the top of Penha Hill which has been a landmark for sailors since 1622, suddenly appeared Lilliputian. A similar fate threatened the Guia Lighthouse when three “monster buildings” were proposed for an adjacent site, provoking the formation of the League of Guia Lighthouse Protectors.17 The scale of the new Venetian Macao casino and hotel resort is an overwhelming presence. Bessmertny’s piece echoes the disjunction between the scale of Macao’s older buildings and its new landmarks and casinos.

Macao’s Gondola by Lui Chak Keong (André) and Lui Chak Hong was positioned inside the Infopoint Arte Communications Gallery (see Figure 8).18 At first glance, Macao’s Gondola appears to be a place-specific work in a more straightforward sense than Si Monumentum. The installation consisted of a 4-m long gondola-like form that was accompanied by three columns, the tallest of which was around 2 m in height. The four pieces, all rendered in solid concrete, were installed on an incomplete screen of mirrors arranged to partially cover the tiled floor of the gallery.

The subject matter of Macao’s Gondola is intriguingly indeterminate. The work incorporates elements from Macao’s two most prominent historical buildings. The gondola-like form repli-cates a roofing element of Macao’s oldest and best-known Chinese place of worship, the A-Ma temple. The three columns are copied from the façade of Macao’s trademark Portuguese icon, the Ruins of St. Paul’s church. While the Chinese and Western architectural traditions have existed in Macao, for the most part, in parallel, Macao’s Gondola incorporates an example of east-meets-west architectural hybridity—the column that incorporates a Chinese lion is a genuine architec-tural feature of St. Paul’s church. In Macao’s Gondola, however, this exception becomes the rule.

In terms of its stylistic qualities, Macao’s Gondola references the local context. Rather than marble or polished wood, Macao’s Gondola is constructed from undisguised concrete, a material that has more in common with the local construction boom environment than the world of “high art.” The uniform color of the work, closer to the neutral tones of the Ruins of St. Paul’s rather than the bright hues of A-Ma temple, contributes to the seamless integration of visually and cul-turally distinct architectures (see Figure 9).

However, Macao’s Gondola does not simply reproduce key signifiers of Macao’s dual cul-tural heritage, it reconfigures them as a gondola, complete with mooring posts. The gondola


imagery is an overt reference to both the site of the Biennale and Macao’s Venetian casino. In its evocation not only of Macao’s Chinese and Western architectural heritage but of the recent developments in contemporary “casino Macao,” the work mimics the official discourses of Macao tourism. Conflating Chinese, Western, and contemporary subject matter, Macao’s Gon-dola unsettles viewers’ illusions about the status of the work as a genuine cultural and historical artifact. The technique of pastiche was consciously adopted with a critical intention in mind. The closing lines of the Lui brothers catalog statement read,

Through their work of art, “Macao’s Gondola,” featuring the A-Ma Temple, the oldest temple in Macao, and the Ruins of St Paul’s, one of the territory’s oldest churches, together with a concrete gondola that cannot be used in water—the Lui brothers are conveying the message that our heritage is in fact “sinking.”19

What contribution do the titles of Macao’s Gondola and Si Monumentum make to our reading of the two works? If Macao’s Gondola is a title that underlines the place specificity of the work, it also implies that what we are viewing is a version of a gondola that might be found elsewhere—at the Las Vegas Venetian, for instance, or in Venice. Bessmertny’s title, on the other hand, takes the form of a quotation in the dead language of Latin. The meaning of the word

Figure 8. Lui Chak Keong (André) and Lui Chak Hong (2007). Macao’s Gondola. Concrete and mirror panels. Image courtesy of Lui Chak Keong (André) and Lui Chak Hong.


monumentum is self-evident, and Bessmertny’s rough translation of the phrase is inscribed on the outside of the work: “Looking for monument? Look around.” More precisely translated as “if you seek his monument, look around,” the phrase is the epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren, who is buried inside the building he most famously designed, London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral (1710). This title encourages us to read the piece as a monument as well as an ambiguous vehicle and an architectural structure. It begs the question of who this Monumentum commemorates—Wren, Bessmertny, God, or “man”? Either way, the title adds an additional place-specific reference to the work, reminding us that London, like Macao, also has its own St. Paul’s.

Representations of Macao?Both Macao’s Gondola and Si Monumentum refer to places other than Macao, and particularly to Venice. The languages used on the sides of Si Monumentum include Latin, as well as the Portu-guese, Chinese, and English commonly used in Macao. The copy-paintings within the piece are depictions of Venice, but some of them are named after Macao’s Nam Van Lake and the Inner Harbour. In a comparable fashion, Macao’s Gondola refers to Venice—the home of the gon-dola—as well as Macao’s Venetian Casino. Although Macao and Venice have no particular his-torical connection, both works draw a parallel between the two centers that have served as emporia for maritime trade between the East and the West.

Figure 9. RuinsNote: Amy Wong (2009). Ruins. Digital photograph. Image courtesy of Amy Wong.


Might Marc Augé’s (1995) distinction between “anthropological place” and “nonplace” pro-vide an insight into the ambiguous geographic and sociohistorical references of Si Monumen-tum and Macao’s Gondola? Augé associates “nonplaces” with airports, supermarkets, highways and tourist routes—places defined in part “by the words and texts they offer us: their [prescrip-tive, prohibitive, or informative] “instructions for use”’ (p. 96). Anthropological place is distin-guished from nonplace as follows:

Anthropological place is formed by individual identities, through complicities of language, local references, the unformulated rules of living know-how; nonplace creates the shared identity of passengers, customers or Sunday drivers. No doubt, the relative anonymity that goes with this temporary identity can even be felt as a liberation, by people who, for a time, have only to keep in line, go where they are told, check their appearance. (p. 101)

Augé (1995) describes “nonplaces” as “spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure),” claiming that they “create solitary contractuality” as opposed to the “organically social” quality associated with anthropological places (p. 94). According to Augé, the categories of “place” and “nonplace” are not mutually exclusive. Rather, in contemporary societies, they are usually intertwined:

The possibility of non-place is never absent from any place. Place becomes a refuge to the habitué of non-places (who may dream, for example, of owning a second home rooted in the depths of the countryside). (p. 107)

Macao’s Gondola and Si Monumentum represent “anthropological place” to the extent that they refer, through their complex subject matter and their stylistic features, to present-day Macao and its history. But the places implied by Si Monumentum and Macao’s Gondola exceed Macao’s borders: There are references to Venice, for instance, and to what we might call “casino aesthetics.” Arguably, the places implied by the two works have been “formed in relation to certain ends”—tourism, gambling, and class-conscious display come readily to mind. But these works are too densely referential to meet Augé’s definition of the “nonplace.”

Augé (1995) links vehicles to the increasing speed of “supermodernity,” but here again his description is a bad fit for the two Macao works. The vehicles indicated by Si Monumentum and Macao’s Gondola are patently dysfunctional. The wheels on Si Monumentum are too flimsy even to bear its weight. Read as a dwelling, it is also inadequate, the apparently luxurious inte-rior is too cramped to allow occupancy. Si Monumentum suggests that Macao’s supposed prog-ress, and pretensions of habitability, are seriously flawed. A reading of the work as visualization of a double failure is reinforced by the artist’s catalog statement:

Anchored in the sea adjacent to Giardini in Venice is an “aeroplane” that is ready to reveal what life in a maze looks like . . . It is not a plane for flying, nor is it a place for living in.20

Can the interior decoration of the structure be read as a criticism of Macao’s development? The furnishings and paintings amount to a certain kind of “cultural capital,” to borrow Bourdieu’s term. The gilt-framed copy-paintings, the red walls, and the chandelier exemplify the tastes of the aspiring rich and cultured, rather than those of the avant-garde or the intelligentsia. The marked contrast between this interior and the exterior walls, with their recycling symbols and the injunction to “fly less,” serves to underline the decadence of the former space. The implication is that this low-brow version of culture is, to use Bessmertny’s phrase, the culture of the “casino republic.” The artist’s statement suggests that the work was intended to be read in this way:


Through this piece of art, the artist wants to satirise the vanity of the new-rich in Macao and other parts of the world. Yet, isn’t it the “noble life” that people aspire to?21

Macao’s Gondola is also a construction that does not live up to its promise as a vehicle. The narrow gondola form is solid rather than hollow, and no provision has been made for the imagined passengers or a gondolier. Given its solid concrete construction, if this gondola were ever tested, there is no doubt that it would sink like a stone. Does Macao’s Gondola imply that Macao is losing its liveability along with its cultural heritage?

Quirky and atavistic, Si Monumentum and Macao’s Gondola are invented vehicles that bear little relationship to Augé’s (1995) notions of “anthropological place” and “nonplace.” They evoke the specificity of Macao but resist essentialist representations of the local, which could be achieved, for instance, through a juxtaposition of “authentic” signifiers of Macao with those of globally recognizable “nonplaces.” Instead, the two works demonstrate the complexity of Macao space by showing the manner in which local culture and aesthetics are interpenetrated by, and continuous with, those of specific “extra-Macao” places.

Macao Monuments, Border ConsciousnessConventional monuments may take the form of sculptures, buildings, or other structures designed to commemorate notable persons or events. Historically, monuments have often entailed messages related to civic virtues, functioning to bolster a political status quo. The word monumental draws attention to the physical presence and symbolic “weight” associated with the conventional monument. In recent years, the term countermonument has been coined to refer to monuments that “register protest or disagreement with an untenable prime object”22 or that, as is increasingly the case, carry critical messages that are “more diffuse and open to personal interpretation.”23

A good example of a countermonument of the former type is Jimmie Durham’s Arche de Triumphe for Personal Use (1996), described by Nikos Papastergiardis (2005) as follows:

Durham has constructed a mini-archway. It is made of cheap wood and found objects. The imperial function of the archway is ridiculed by its domestication and diminution in value . . . By reducing the monumental and public display of power into a personal item Durham is also referencing the countless strategies of inverting and displacing political authority through indigenous acts of cultural incorporation and mimicry. (p. 42)

Interestingly, Macao—country-in-little as we may consider it—comes with its own miniature portal, the now preserved “border gate,” 關閘, portas do cerco—a key site in the poetic imagina-tion of the city (see Figure 10). Over the gate of this 1870 structure, the legend: “A Pátria Honrai Que A—Patria Vos Contempla.” In Leung Ping-Kwan’s poem the border, we glimpse the 1970s incarnation of this site of passage:

the borderbus stops for a restand goes againtourists lazily pass throughthe narrow gatestop for a while and gaze atyoung girls sat laughing by the stone wallsoft drink bottle


by antique storea foreigner comes bypicks up a Buddha statue‘would you like to buy jade?’the old lady peddles enthusiastically‘although this is fake jade,there are others . . .’can nobody seea purer jadebehind these things?the tricycle driver’s fingerpoints at the row of green treeseyes gazeon the empty vehiclecoming from the borderruns over the mudlines in brownthen turns into another roadon this cloudy day, wind blowstears the map in the tourist’s hands

August, 1973 revised in January, 1975 Song Zijiang, Debby Sou Vai Keng, & Kit Kelen (Leung, 2009, pp. 22-25)

The crossing with which the poem deals has been rebuilt several times since this poem was written (most recently in 2004), and it is difficult to imagine a stronger contrast than between the sleepy picture painted above and the present state of frenetic activity around Macao’s old border.24 Those passing the border today seem driven, impatient in queues, anxious to get past this line, which represents paradoxically both an impediment and an opportunity for business. In Leung’s work, we can regard the border as representing a radical indeterminacy. What does it mean to be on one side or the other? How does that meaning shift with point of view, with the passage of time? From the point of view of nature (cloudy day, wind blowing), we see the irrelevance of this arbitrary political line. From the point of view of small business, the border in Leung’s poem is an opportunity for sales. It is the Buddha statue that interests the tourist, but the stall keeper wants the tourist to buy jade. Between the tourist and vendor a disarming honesty, highlighting—in an implied motion from concrete to abstract—the question of what is real and what is fake. Which, for instance, is the real China? The land where antiques are still valued or the place where the “four olds” have been outlawed? The engine of the piece—the bus with which we began—needs to take a rest. This anthropomorphism sets the tone; it is not that passage is impossible, one merely wonders whether the effort is justified. The overall impression is of the mundane place invested with a symbolic importance it cannot live up to. The weather and humanity, in its less self-important guise, get on with and get around the great geopolitical facts as imposed.

There is an interesting contrast between the carefully wrought flatness of Leung’s long lost border and the symbolic dimensions of the portal played out in Joey Ho’s Gate of Memory:


Gate of MemoryWhat is hidden?

Rays of the afternoon sun on roofs . . .What lies hidden among them?

Golden dust flying . . .What’s hidden in air?

A baby plunged in sleep, in dreams . . .And what is hidden there?

The heat of her mother, her fan . . .Hides what?

Kisses . . .What’s hidden in them?

Gate of MemoryWhat is hidden?

(Kelen & Vong, 2008, p. 238)

The emphasis on the gate reminds us of a time when the Macao/mainland portal was a much humbler and narrower affair, though in its own (Portuguese) way grand. The maternal

Figure 10. Border GateNote: Song Zijiang (2009). Border Gate. Digital photograph. Image courtesy of the artist.


relationship and its mysteries suggest both the necessity of dependence and the contrast between vast China and tiny Macao. Although the poem need not be taken as having any specific connection with any political border, still it reminds us that there are things to be remembered. One thinks of how borders entail other borders—for example, between generations, between the future and the past. The repeated question, “What is hidden,” suggests both the necessity of interpretation and the possibility of a sinister intention. Again, one asks which would be the innocent and which the experienced party in this relationship. Is the obvious answer the right one? Things may be hidden in the dreams of infants. Though tiny Macao can itself be thought of as a border—an airlock—between east and west, yet it takes an effort of memory to assert what the meaning of a place might have been, might yet be. Interestingly, for the thematics of this article, one notes the paradox of the border having grown monumental with need, of the authentic monument (the border gate of 1870) appearing now in the guise of a miniature passed en route. The past is a small and sparse place; an everyday site/sight fallen, for the most part, below the threshold of interest.

Following Augé’s distinction between anthropological and nonplace, we may claim a dichot-omy in the local culture of Macao between “Macao space” and “nonplace.” Macao space is uniquely of an historical moment and place, something culturally positioned. In nonplaces, such as the inside of a casino or an airport, subjects are hailed by consumption-oriented reifications of putative universal value. In the terms Umberto Eco elaborates in The Role of the Reader, we recognize in nonplace a “closed text,” that is, a text in which the addressee is not invited to par-ticipate actively but is rather offered a predetermined role, open neither to interpretation nor negotiation. Macao space, being particular, is contingent. Having a history, it can have a future. The contemporary Macao poetry typically values Macao space and sees it as under threat from the “non-negotiable” space of culture that could be anywhere. The three-dimensional artworks described in this article are vehicles paradoxically frozen in space that is ambiguous, makeshift, allusive of elsewhere.

In Loi Chi Pang’s poem, to Coloane, we get a picture of nonplaces being added to Macao:

little city too crampedso cramped that there is only space left for mutteringthe many roads not taken knit into a helpless netskims from my eyesunder the net there is such a stunning hopea naming for all kinds of new thingssimplya word‘cold’

the autumn of September here is a book of sorrow more than sadnessso sad that the egret can’t stand any longer under the mangrovesholding up an oilpaper umbrella to ColoaneI can’t see rainbut onlyashes and stones of the cement trucksflying pastandthe Cotai Stripstill under construction

Hilda Tam & Kit Kelen (p. 290)


Here, witnessing the process of “reclamation” shows us that liminal space cannot become a part of the known place. The egret will be deprived of its mangrove; instead the “new things” are worthy only of the word “cold.” This is nonplace in the making; and it is made of ashes and cement, of anything.

Monumentality and the Meaning of PlaceShould Macao’s Gondola and Si Monumentum be understood as monuments, or perhaps, coun-termonuments? Large-scale and patently solid, Macao’s Gondola differs from Jimmie Durham’s Arche de Triumphe for Personal Use, in that it actually appears monumental. Indeed, it borrows the canonic ambiance of its World Heritage–listed source material. But in blending signifiers of A-Ma temple, the Ruin’s of St. Paul’s and a Venetian gondola, the work undermines the authen-ticity the viewer would likely associate with each considered in isolation from the others. Despite its apparent monumentality, Macao’s Gondola is a simulated cultural artifact—a concoction that mimics the reified image of Macao used to sell the small territory to potential visitors and inves-tors. Given this critical dimension, the work is more aptly termed a counter-monument.

The rather grandly titled Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice claims the status of a monu-ment from the outset. Yet the small-scale, quirky, and unassuming structure is decidedly unmon-umental. Although the conventional monument tends to promote a sense of unified national identity, the linguistically diverse graffiti and the Chinese-produced western paintings of Si Monumentum do just the opposite, pointing up the culturally hybridity of Macao. The diverse worlds evoked by the exterior of Bessmertny’s cobbled-together structure are at odds with the standardized version of culture it contains. Yet, like Macao’s Gondola, the work is open to per-sonal interpretation, and this was the artist’s intention:

The idea was to juxtapose “inside” and “outside”, the “place you are in” and the “place of your dreams”, “what you have” and “what you wish to have”, the “fake” and the “real” and so on . . . It’s more the work of an art critic, really. These are some reflections on what is going on in Macau, of course, and could be interpreted in many ways.25

Nikos Papastergiadis (2005) claims that the “recent acceleration of cross-cultural flows and processes of cultural mixture have produced new forms of identity” (p. 54). Antimonuments to the new Macao, Macao’s Gondola and Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice both express ambivalence toward the complex dynamics of development in Macao. Not without humor, the two works appear to celebrate cultural diversity and hybridity. Closer examination, however, reveals a less sanguine picture of contemporary Macao culture. The interior of Si Monumentum surely presents a critique of reified populist notions of “culture” while the Lui Brothers all-purpose monument registers the loss of Macao heritage. Macao’s Gondola and Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice reflect the concern of a cultural community galvanized by the threats posed by recent development.

Are the meanings of Macao—and the identifications of its citizenry—tied up with the monu-mental or with some popular or aesthetic commitment to monumentality? Not at all; this is merely convenient and indeed pressing subject matter for those artists committed to bearing wit-ness to their place (or incapable of ignoring what is going on around them). Everything monu-mental in Macao is redolent of power—state or casino capitalist—imposed on a local population with a tourist economy in mind and with a view to awe, if not shock. Note that the plonking down of grandiloquent structures has in Macao typically required the creation of nonplaces, in the form of land reclaimed from the Pearl River. And so the city physically grows, but perhaps “Macao” does not?


Much of Macao’s literary and visual culture continues to refer to the historicized city and its now dwarfed landmarks. Apart from borders and bridges and casinos, there are many places in this tiny city iconic to its residents and regular visitors. Arguably, the main street, San Ma Lou is a case in point. It is a physical focus (and convenient place mnemonic) in Part III of Ng Kuok Cheong’s a young married woman’s worries.

San Ma Lou—Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro

at crossroads tower two giants east and westone is called the remote vastgreat Atlantic Oceanhe faces the other who’s even highercomes from the Yangtze and the Yellow Riversthe two obviously stand independentthe divine rule of change is the interplay of yin and yangsome people say they see in the morningsome shadow stretching from the big oceanhappens to knock on this side of the doorthen the shadow on the same side recoilsswallows the whole oceanshadow is the sun’sdistant unreachable playbut every day taking the purseand carrying the basket what I stepon is always the roadnot the shadow

(Kelen & Vong, 2008, p. 118)

China and the West—yin and yang—sun and shadow: The contrasts here provide a daunting field of play for the persona, a character ultimately concerned with something as mundane and as fundamental as shopping. Faced with a grand metaphorics demanding interpretation (and obeisance), the persona decides in favur of the tangible real. What the young married woman steps on is the road: She goes the way she has to go. Both the symbolism and the politics are highly personal: We see in the next section of the poem that issues as to what Macao is or could be directly affect the persona’s life choices. In Part IV,

to have a baby or not?to have one more little spoon or not?to share this big bowl of sweetglistening yellow papaya soup?to have ten-month pregnancy or not?five-months of big bellythree-months throwing upand one week in the delivery roomwaiting to sweat contractionsand the baby struggles to come outthat terrible tearingif I’d like to create a babyyou must create for mea considerate husband


a father who loves his familyhealthy lively kindergartensschools that develop balanced livesand meet the needs of our next generationan all functioning societya fair worldI am not willingto take bloody painsin exchange for a babytrodden ortreading

Song Zijiang & Kit Kelen (Kelen & Vong, 2008, p. 119)

Ng’s implied demand in the poem is that the social contract be renegotiated at a fundamental level. Why should the young married woman bring a baby into a predatory society (trodden and/or treading)? Again, the method in bringing such a question to the reader’s attention is to cut through the symbolic machinery with which the good citizen is meant to conform. Instead, we are offered concrete imagery—bloody pains, throwing up, terrible tearing and yes, also the tenderness of the “big bowl of sweet glistening yellow papaya soup.” The idyllic and the desperate images are connected in the idea of exchange; what’s under interrogation here is value. At what price a baby? For whose benefit? The ultimate taken-for-granted good of motherhood is thrown into question; and with it the future of a place and the possibility of identification with that place. Because Macao is the putative subnational entity for which sacrifices would be made and by which benefits would be bestowed, the questions asked are relevant everywhere in Macao. It is the mention of many familiar places reminds Macao residents of the problematic connection between place and identity.

To conclude, we hope it will not be construed as a defense of the various juggernauts riding over local culture when we say that the current healthy state of Macao poetry and visual culture is both product of a perceived need to defend Macao culture from attack and proof that Macao culture is today alive and kicking. Macao has become a place with landmarks of postmoder-nity—a tower and casinos with notable names and shapes—the Sands, the Wynn, the Crown, the Venetian. What magical names and what fairytale hype surround them! Macao was once a sleepy little town on the edge of the map. It is interesting that the process of making ‘nowhere’ some-where has entailed the colonization of that particular place’s space with things that could be anywhere, with phallic monumentalism.

The best thing to do with all of this? The scholar and the artist have this capacity in com-mon—to bear witness to what is happening in and to their place. That process of bearing witness might entail the ironizing of the monumental or the pointing up of cracks to threaten a great edifice. Witnessing environmental degradation and the sense of heritage lost is the flipside of development aesthetics in casino-age Macao. Things gone are witnessed along with the new things that have come. Macao as ‘dot-on-the-map’ is conceived as a site for all kinds of portal semiotics, as paradigm for cultural crossings and cultural shifts. Symbolic of the moral inertia that the hype cannot quite cover over, the Lui Brothers’ and Bessmertny’s vehicles going nowhere point to the essential contradiction: between the long shadows of the Chinese state and those of casino capitalism, Macao culture is really going somewhere.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.


FundingThe author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes 1. Important to such an account would be the literature on the social and cultural impacts of the Macao’s

rapid development, including scholarly articles such as Liu Shih-Ding’s “Casino Colony” (2008), Tim Simpson’s “Macao, Capital of the 21st Century?” (2008a) and “The Commercialisation of Macao’s Cafes” (2008b). There are many articles on these topics in the popular press. See, for instance, “Casino layoffs give teachers chance to push education” (Fox, 2008); “Macau’s casinos promise perpetual profit” (Gough, 2008) and “Fashion Group Expands to Tap Big Spenders in Macau” (Spiro, 2007). Also available are studies addressing the changing political landscape in the post-Handover period, such as Bill K. P. Chou’s “Interest Group Politics in Macau after Handover” (2005).

2. The “liberalization” of the casino industry in 2002 entailed the breaking of the former monopoly of local tycoon Stanley Ho, and allowing a number of Las Vegas operators into the city.

3. Land reclaimed, between the islands of Taipa and Coloane, and with the specific intention of building a casino strip.

4. Up until the opening of the Macao Tower, the tallest structure in Macao had been the (1991 built) Bank of China building (38 floors, 163 meters), a symbol at the time of the enclave’s impending return to the motherland.

5. Smoking has recently been banned on the lower floor. 6. Although the poem underwent revision, the stanza cited remained unchanged. 7. The original (Governor Nobre de Carvalho Bridge) was built in 1974. Access to the previously sparsely

populated islands of Taipa and outlying Coloane had formerly been by ferry. 8. Macao’s debut appearance in this prestigious exhibition had a key role, as the Macao Museum of Art

Press Release states, in introducing the contemporary art of Macao to the world. It was also seen as a stimulus to the local creation of art. “Macao Museum of Art: Place” http://www.artecommunications.com/upload/MACAO_PRESS%20RELEASE_si.pdf

9. A Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, Macao is a subnational entity.10. The jury comprised Yin Shuangxi (Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing), Gao Shim-

ing (art critic and curator at the China Academy of Art) and Ung Vai Meng (Director of Macao Museum of Art).

11. The call for proposals for inclusion in the “52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia: Macao, China” was posted on the Macao Museum of Art’s website. http://www.artmuseum.gov.mo/showacts_detail.asp?id=123&language=3&type=0

12. The venue for the Macao exhibition was Infopoint Arte Communications—Riva S. Biagio, Castello 2145, 30122, Venice. The duration of the exhibition was from 10 June until 21 November, 2007.

13. Konstantin Bessmertny in interview with Carol Archer, Edictus Ridiculum: Konstantin Bessmertny [interview]. Macau Closer, July/August, 2007, p. 111.

14. “Konstantin Bessmertny: Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice.” In Places: A Collection of Works from Macao for the Venice Biennale [exh. cat.]. Macao: Museu de Arte de Macau; Assuntos Civicos e Municipais, 2007. p. 26.

15. Konstantin Bessmertny in interview with Carol Archer, Edictus Ridiculum: Konstantin Bessmertny [interview]. Macau Closer, July/August, 2007, p. 112.

16. For instance, one of the nine works short-listed for the Macao’s 2009 Venice Biennale exhibition (the title of which is “Divergence”) was Wu Chong Wai’s sculpture “Sky City.” The work features a roulette wheel adorned with gaudily dressed Barbie dolls, a juxtaposition that reminds viewers of the links between Macao’s gambling and sex industries. In an interesting parallel to Bessmertny’s piece, “Sky City” takes the form of a hot air balloon—one that, given the size and apparent weight of the wooden “basket” relative to the small balloon, could clearly never function. See Divergence: Macao’s Proposed Artworks for the 53rd Venice Biennale: 25/03-21/06/2009. [exh. cat.]. Macao: Macao Museum of Art, 2009.


17. Xavier Leroy notes in his brief article “Guia Light” that

this was the first western-style lighthouse built on the China coast . . . In July 2007, an organization called the League of Guia Lighthouse Protectors filed a complaint to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre about the Macau government’s “wavering” stance on the protection of the lighthouse and the construction of high-rise buildings in front of Guia Hill.

Lighthouse Depot (website) http://www.lighthousedepot.com/lite_explorer.asp?action=display_details&LighthouseID=8262&bhcd2=1243934594 [Accessed 2 June, 2009]. See also Suki Leong (2007).

18. In an unpublished interview with Carol Archer on February 15, 2009, Lui Chak Keong (André) explained that the artists’ original intention had been to exhibit the work outside. However, municipal council restrictions on the size of works exhibited outside led to the change of site.

19. “Lui Chak Keong; Lui Chak Hong: Macao’s Gondola.” In Places: A Collection of Works from Macao for the Venice Biennale [exh. cat.]. Macao: Museu de Arte de Macau; Assuntos Civicos e Municipais, 2007, p. 23. Lui Chak Keong (André) is an architect with academic qualifications in the area of heritage preservation. During my interview with him, André discussed his participation on a committee set up to advise the Macao government on heritage matters. He questions the continual use of the Ruins of St. Paul’s and A-Ma temple to promote Macao when so many other buildings and districts could serve this purpose. While a limited number of sites and buildings have been preserved, he says, less promi-nent but nevertheless important ones, have been destroyed. In some cases, the apparent preservation of buildings and districts amounts to the kind of facadism and “constructed heritage” that the artist notes is in evidence in some supposedly old districts of Beijing. Lui is also critical of the recent practice whereby Chinese cities each have a theme park style attraction, such as Shenzhen’s “Windows on the World,” a practice that he notes has recently been adopted by Macao.

20. “Konstantin Bessmertny: Si Monumentum, Requiris” In Places: A Collection of Works from Macao for the Venice Biennale [exh. cat.]. Macao: Museu de Arte de Macau; Assuntos Civicos e Municipais, 2007, p. 26.

21. Macao Museum of Art: Place. http://www.artecommunications.com/upload/MACAO_PRESS%20RE-LEASE_si.pdf

22. Michalski (1998, p. 201).23. Michalski (1998, p. 202).24. The border is with the Gongbei district of Zhuhai.25. Konstantin Bessmertny (interview with Carol Archer), Macau Closer, p. 112.

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Gough, N. (2008, August, 11). Macau’s casinos promise perpetual profit. South China Morning Post, p. B2.Kelen, K., & Vong, A. (Eds.). (2008). I roll the dice: Contemporary Macao poetry. Macao, China: ASM.Leong, S. (2007, January 29). League of Guia Lighthouse Protectors’ vows to petition UNESCO. Macau

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Bios

Carol Archer (區勵志) is an assistant professor in the Visual Studies Department at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. She publishes essays on contemporary art. Her current research, on modes of collaborative painting and drawing, is informed by her ongoing engagement in collaborative art projects.

Christopher (Kit) Kelen (客遠文) is an associate professor in the Department of English, University of Macau. His most recent volumes of poetry are God Preserve Me From Those Who Want What’s Best for Me (2009) and In Conversation With the River (2010). Last year, he published a critical study of Macao poetry, titled City of Poets. For the past 10 years, he has taught Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Macau in south China.

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