Dispatch from Elsewhere: Nostalgia
Day 16: Macau
Hello friends! I’m writing today from the Apple Store inside the Galaxy, a giant conglomeration of luxury brands and hotels and one of many such Vegas recreations here in Taipa. My family just went to the buffet here, but before I show off some buffet pics, here are a few shots of late stage capitalism at its finest.
I’ve been to a lot of capitalist purgatories these last few weeks, but this area of Macau feels pretty next level.
The buffet was nice though! Buffets in concept is kind of wild when you zoom out, but I did try a lot of different things. This one had a single 2 hour lunch seating with a wide selection including non-alcoholic drinks. Two baristas hang out at a bar making HK cafe and regular cafe classics. You can order a pot of tea with several choices of Chinese teas (I ordered a Pu’erh, but they accidentally give me a jasmine from Twinings of all brands 😭).
After brunch, we walk to the Londoner, then to the Parisian, and finally the Venetian. Each of these are luxury malls/casinos/hotels/miscellaneous entertainment hubs crafted into some dreamy, romanticized, vaguely kitschy versions of their name sakes. The interconnect buildings are also maybe bigger than the entire UBC Vancouver campus, minus all semblance of plant life save for the giant bowl of fresh orchids in a random hallway.
It’s really kind if a bizarre experience if you think about it, like sleepwalking through purgatory. Between each of the main buildings are strange liminal spaces where people shuffle through. In some spaces, there would be influencers lining up against props and views, each with their own dumpling ass man to hold the camera for them. A few take turns—girls supporting girls—and even fewer rough it by themselves. At the Venetian, my mom spends some time at a souvenir shop buying almond cookies, and in lieu of being consistently pestered by different salespeople, I go outside to watch a white lady play the violin. She’s great, but I get distracted by one girl off to the side with a tripod doing a photoshoot by the water (a gondola runs through the Venetian, naturally, and the whole place vaguely smells like chlorine). This girl is hustling hard, moving between poses and performing casualness while yawning between takes. I wonder why she’d choose the most crowded spot (a kitschy recreation of St. Mark’s Square) while so many onlookers have stood around to watch the violinist.
I can’t help but wonder whether people eventually repost these on socials as trips to Europe. It’s all so surreal—yes, there is a purgatorial feeling because there are no windows inside the main buildings and plenty of bright lights and oxygen, but it’s also witnessing simulacra in real time all around you. You know that nothing is real, but with so many people around you pretending it is, it makes you question things.
It should be noted that most luxury stores stood empty. I didn’t see anyone inside any of them, and there were very few shopping bags bearing the insignia of these names. Yet, the corridors remain crowded, and I wonder where anyone is going.
A quick aside on “The Pale Boys”
When we first landed in Macau, there were two giant ads with these two pale Asian boys. I thought it was strange, but I didn’t take a photo. We assumed it was some sort of celebrity birthday, and hustled on to grab our bags.
Little did we know, they would soon be everywhere. Busses and taxis roam the street with their likeness. Sometimes with different photos…sometimes with different boys. It feels like their fans have paid for every ad space around Macau, yet I can’t tell why, for what reason, or even who they are.
On this particular trip to the Galaxy, the Pale Boys are even more present, this time on the bodies of fans in the form of elaborate itabags. We wonder whether there is a fan meet somewhere, but none of the many ads we’ve seen tell us anything about that. Maybe there is a pop-up shop or fan meet. So many young women in elaborate frilly outfits with itabags in all shapes and sizes.
(For the uninitiated, an itabag is a bag/purse/backpack with a clear, see-through pocket for one to display one’s fandom goods. Sometimes, it’s multifandom stuff—various anime husbandos and waifus, cute little guys, etc. In this case, Pale Boy itabags contained solely Pale Boy merch—plushies of the two holding hands, buttons, more plushies, etc.)
There is a lot to be said why fandom culture is so addictive yet normalized. Fandom brings community in an otherwise lonely world where competition underlies everything we do. Fandom also makes beaucoup money, and Macau is absolutely capitalizing on as many mini Eras Tour-esque events as possible. Thai actors come through as often as K-Pop phenomenons, alongside festivals of all kinds (there was a vegan/vegetarian festival and an international queer film festival last year that I saw). That’s not even accounting for everything happening in Zhuhai, China across the border.
Coming back to girl with tripod, it’s not surprising how many people are trying to “make it” as centres of fandom on their own.
That said, later that night, I have a conversation with my mom over some watermelon after escaping consumerist purgatory. We talk about the lack of empathy and vast, vast wealth gap. Macanese shoppers spend tons of money in Zhuhai because everything is so cheap. People from Zhuhai come to Macau to either visit these luxury casinos in drove or work as migrant laborers. Back in 2018, when I lived in China, the monthly salary advertised in various windows was about 3000 RMB (~$600) a month, working six days a week. The dinner my mom had in Zhuhai two days ago was 300 RMB (~$60) for six courses, soup, and six bowls of rice. It blew her mind how cheap it was, and she said, “But people who make 3000RMB a month wouldn’t be able to afford this. Still, raw ingredients alone, especially the seafood, is probably more than 300 RMB.” I asked whether farmers get paid fairly, knowing full well they didn’t. “There’s always a cost,” I tell her.
Migrant workers are everywhere here. Speaking English on the street is no longer surprising given the rich cultural diversity built up from a culture that relies so much on migrant workers from around Southeast Asia. It feels like a culture in flux right now, as if Macau doesn’t really know what it wants to be right now. Macau doesn’t have as strong of a cultural identity as Hong Kong, seemingly always in the shadow of some giant or another. I think many folks miss the quieter times, back before the sea became paved over, back when Taipa and Coloane were two separate islands and Cotai didn’t exist. The older generation gets the sense that the younger generation is having a hard time, but they seem to simply shake their heads, sure that simply passing on their generational wealth will solve their problems.
It’s hard to know what the future will look like for Macau.
But that’s enough of that. Here is a gallery of luxury purgatory for y’all:
We return home at around 8pm, as my grandma is getting pretty tired. It’s non-stop walking and not much to look at beyond props. (In one liminal space, they have a cross section of a London metro, a ticket booth, and phone booths filled with influencers doing photoshoots.) As I am putting this post together, it actually does feel a lot like Backrooms in a way.
My mom and my sister and I head out for a walk around the neighbourhood as it’s still early and we are leaving tomorrow. My mom wants to look at shoes, and I want to pick up a Tomica Kirby car. We make our way over to Costa, one of the main streets in Macau, and meander our way to a shoe shop called shoe mart in all lowercase letters in Comic Sans font. The lady is pretty nice, and my mom comes out with these sparkly black shoes that feels like a new era for her.
Returning to the apartment, I snap photos around the place as it’s my last night here. In a few months, this place is going to be completely gutted and transformed for a new family. My family is sorta grieving in their own way, but mostly they’ve been in a cleaning frenzy. As I’m writing this, I learn that they’ve torn up thousands of photographs because it’s too many to bring. My grandpa was an avid photographer, and my grandma was his favourite subject. I don’t know if many folks in the 90s had as many photos as we did, and I’m a bit discomforted by the loss of some of these photos forever.
Either way, I hope to come back again in a couple of years. I don’t know what I’ll do here as the place will only become more unfamiliar, but it would be lovely to spend a few weeks here I think. Maybe I’ll see Zhuhai for myself as Canada’s relationship with China improves.
Tomorrow, we are heading home. See y’all back in our time zone :)