The Old Supreme Court Building (1912) – the very heart of Hong Kong.

One is definitely NOT spoiled for choice on a heritage tour of Hong Kong and Kowloon, not because the city is short of the colonial – on the contrary, the colonial is everywhere, in the many skyscrapers erected in the ‘70s – ‘90s by British taipans and their descendents: the HSBC Tower and the Jardines Tower being but two of them; and both of them architecturally stunning, might I add…

What is lacking is turn-of-the-19^th-century colonial architecture. These are buried in and amidst the spectacle of the contemporary city and its solipsistic, self-inspecting regard, clinging on desperately, scattered here and there like nuggets of gold strewn on a riverbed.

Hong Kong island itself is notoriously short of anything resembling the past, so eagerly did the latter-day British and Chinese rush to scramble what was once easily THE most splendidly monumental vista of colonial might and magnificence this side of Gibraltar. Kowloon Peninsula fares slightly better, since it was, always, on the periphery. Here, there are a few more built pieces from the past, some really quite splendid.

Because there just isn’t enough concentrated in the same area to warrant a proper joining of the dots, so to speak, this “walk” doesn’t really happen in any particular order; but rather, meanders in an opportunistic manner. We take in Hong Kong haphazardly and admire its trio of most famous and quintessentially colonial means of transportation – the Peak Tram, the Streetcar and the Star Ferry.

The Ferry takes us across the increasingly narrow (due to land reclamation) Victoria Harbour to Kowloon, where we potter down its main (colonial) thoroughfare, Nathan Road, to where the colonial city fuses with the Chinese city of Mong Kok. There, we pause and look beyond the threshold.

The Hong Kong Waterfront, with the fourth General Post Office Building (1976) to the right.

The three towers of downtown Hong Kong – the HSBC Building (1985) by Norman Foster, the Bank of China Tower (1990) by I.M. Pei, and the Cheung Kong Centre (1999) by Cesar Pelli.

The Cenotaph (1923), commemorating the dead in both World Wars. Behind it is Jardine House (1972) by Palmer & Turner, and 2 International Financial Centre (2003) by Cesar Pelli

The Old Bank of China Building (1952) by Palmer & Turner.

The Gothic St John’s Cathedral (1849).

The Former French Mission Building (1842), perched precariously on a knoll.

Commercial colonial architecture, put to good use…

Pottinger Street, known for its “Stone slab stairway” and once a major shopping street in the 1920s-30s.

The Former Central Magistracy (1914), located beside the Victoria Gaol and Prison Complex.

The Old Dairy Farm Depot (1892), housing the Hong Kong Fringe Club and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club today. It used to literally be a warehouse and dairy depot.

Government House (1855) – the official residence of the Governor till 1997, save for a brief interregnum during the Japanese Occupation, when the Japanese added architectural features that melded East and West (like the tower).

The Helena May Building (1914), en route to the Peak.

Retired Peak Tram on Victoria Peak.

Flagstaff House (1846), formerly the residence of the Commander of the British Armed Forces. Today it is a Tea Museum located in Hong Kong Park.

The Western Market (1906), in Sheung Wan.

Hong Kong Tramways, trundling along between Central and Sheung Wan.

The Star Ferry, founded in 1888, and still only costing $2 per adult today.

The Former Kowloon-Canton Railways Clocktower (1915). the station itself, which was demolished, used to be linked to the Transiberian and was ultimately the terminus of a trans-asian train route.

The spectacular Former Marine Police Headquarters (1884) in Tsim Sha Tsui. Today a luxury hotel and lifestyle shopping mall.

The Signal Tower was part of the Marine Police Headquarters and was used to signal time to ships in Victoria Harbour.

The Peninsula Hotel (1928) – Hong Kong’s Grande Dame of hospitality.

The Kowloon Masjid and Islamic Centre (1986), on Nathan Road. A mosque has stood here since 1846, indicating how Kowloon was Hong Kong’s multicultural melting pot.

The Former Kowloon British School (1902), Nathan Road. Today it holds the Antiquities and Monuments Office.

St Andrew’s Church (1904), on Nathan Road.

Kowloon Union Church (1931), juxtaposed against a gleaming residential complex.

The Kowloon Cricket Club (1904).

Turn of the century building wedged in amongst its contemporaries, Kowloon.

Entrance to a typical Chinese residential building in Kowloon.

And finally, a typically Kowloon landscape…

The facade of The Peninsula Hotel.

While in Hong Kong, reside at the legendary Peninsula Hotel. There is simply nowhere else quite as nostalgic and evocative. The minute the familiar and iconic bellboy – draped in all-white livery – opens the large glass doors and ushers one inside the hotel, one is enveloped in a kind of warm glow of history, akin to slipping back in time to the heyday of luxury travel – the 1920s.

The hotel was established in December 1928, at the very height of the long-distance luxury travel phenomenon. In those days, Kowloon was the centre of international tourism in Hong Kong.  Cruise liners on their round-the-world journeys stopped off at the Kowloon Harbour, and the nearby Kowloon terminus of the Canton-Kowloon Railway saw cross-continental travellers arriving from all over China – some of them would have taken the epic journey across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The Dining Room and the iconic Bellboy.

In a bid to firmly ensconce myself in those glory days of travel, I booked myself into a modest Deluxe Room in the original low-rise wing of the hotel, rather than into one of the more spectacular rooms-with-a-view in the 30-storey Peninsula Tower Wing, added in the 1990s. I couldn’t have made a better choice. My room was situated at the very corner of the hotel building and faced out onto bustling Nathan Road, affording me absolute privacy and a vicarious view upon the world outside. In the evenings, after a long and luxurious bath, I would curl up in my robe on the couch with a glass of red wine, observing the spectacle of Hong Kong (or Kowloon, rather) happen, right beneath my window.

In my room….

The highlight of any stay at The Peninsula is High Tea in its Grand Dining Room and lobby. Unlike many other of its contemporaries (such as the Raffles Hotel), the Peninsula has retained its main Dining Room in its lobby, resulting in that welcoming and warm buzz of activity that the guest experiences the minute he or she walks into the hotel.

High Tea at the Peninsula

From a far corner of the opulent expanse, decorated in Renaissance style, a string quartet plays a waltz by Strauss. I am seated at my table in amidst dozens of other guests and Hong Kong residents, speaking Cantonese and a host of other European languages. The tea itself is…well…passable. But the experience is magical – I am transported back in the day when the likes of Somerset Maugham, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and other luminaries would have passed through these shores. I open my manuscript book and take notes, looking, so I imagine, not unlike a wandering novelist on a Far Eastern segment of his Grand Tour around the world.

The Deck-with-a-view, at pool.

After tea, I spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the deck of The Peninsula’s spectacular pool-with-a-view, together with two other friends who coincidentally were visiting Hong Kong at the time. We stood, nursing glasses of wine as the sun set in the distance, and that impossible skyline turned from silvery-green to bright neon shades, and thought to ourselves, how like a romance our lives were, here, together again after so many years, reliving the past, and sharing our hopes for the future, with all of Hong Kong as our movie set. If only time would stop, and we could lie here savoring the moment a little longer…

But no, the next morning we would all go our separate ways – me onwards to my next stop on the Grand Tour… Macao.

Close-up of the Peninsula’s logo.

The Peninsula at night.

A parting view of the iconic bellboy

In the past year, I have been asked frequently how I manage to hold down a full-time job, work on a to-be-published coffee table book on Southeast Asia AND keep up a busy travel schedule for The Grand Tour Part II.

The question is generally this: “How do you FIND TIME to do all of this?”

It’s a seemingly innocuous question that reveals more about the ONE ASKING than the ONE BEING ASKED.

The focus of the question is ostensibly on TIME, or the supposed INSUFFICIENCY of it. The subtext could read: how are you able to achieve so much within a day, when I can’t seem to find enough hours in the same day to finish what I need to do at work, or at home, and so on? No, seriously.

OR it could also read: damn, I’m so important, I couldn’t possibly be doing the frivolous things you’re doing outside of work.

Whatever the subtext, the same persons who pose this question are also most often the ones who, when asked “How are you doing?” in the elevator or in the corridors, consistently reply, in a hassled, unhappy and abstract manner, “Very busy.” As though nobody else was similarly occupied.

It must be a very unsatisfying state of being – this perpetual busy-ness that doesn’t result in one achieving what one truly wants to achieve. Which is, in effect, an indication that one doesn’t KNOW what one truly wants to achieve. Because if one did, surely one would do all within one’s power to achieve THAT.

And therefore, inherent in the question, “How do you find time to do all of this?” is a second, implicitly self-directed question: “What am I doing with myself / my life?”

In other words, “FINDING TIME” is in reality not about TIME at all, but about CLARITY OF PURPOSE.

And so my answer to the initial question – “how do you find time to do all of this?” – is always: “I just do it, because it’s what I truly WANT TO DO. Find what you truly want to do, and you’ll find that there’s always enough time.”

“But I’m so busy!” some inevitably protest, missing the point entirely.

So am I, I smile and think to myself, but I don’t feel the need to tell everyone about it.  I’m having such a good time being busy, they might think I’m insane.  =)

The iconic ruins of St Paul’s Church

Macao is a dream-like city… a city of dreams… a dream of a city… None of these epithets is the same as the other, and yet they contain within them the essence of the “dream” – that which is surreal, impossible, defying logic, irreal, out of place.

It appears suddenly, as if in a dream… out of nowhere, in the middle of the South China Sea. It is enshrouded by fog; one strains to see it at all from the aircraft window. And then just as suddenly, it’s right there, all around us, as the aircraft lands on an impossible strip of land – reclaimed from the sea and tarmacked as runway.

A Dream-like City

Macao’s Coat of Arms, at the Mount Fortress.

The history of Macao is surreal and dream-like. It is one of the first European colonies in Asia (after Goa and Malacca), and it was the very last to be returned to China, in 1999.

500 years ago, Portuguese conquistadors, led by one Afonso d’Albuquerque, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, sailed around India, navigated the narrow straits of the Malayan Peninsula and headed north towards fabled China. They had started out months before from the Imperial city of Lisboa, and en route, had established colonies wherever they went – Mozambique, Goa, Malacca – in a bid to establish a monopoly on the spice trade.

The colony of Macao was formally established in 1557, in mediaeval times. Having expelled and massacred the pesky and insistent sea-faring barbarians from the settlements in Canton and Ningpo, the Ming Emperor relented in his crusade and agreed to the request for a permanent and official trading settlement on Chinese soil.

The place the Emperor saw fit to bestow upon the Portuguese was a tiny – nay, minuscule – rocky Peninsula off the Pearl River Delta. A place with dream-like geography – the tiniest rocky sliver of land extending out into the ocean; a mere 20 square metres of earth; and one of the most peripheral places the Chinese could have conjured up on Chinese soil.

The Macao Peninsula, as it was originally, before massive land reclamation.

The Chinese had a name for this place – 澳門, pronounced Ngau Moon in Cantonese, and meaning “Bay Gate,” or “Gateway to the Bay (of Canton).” That’s not what the Portuguese ended up naming their colony however. They dropped anchor to the south of the Peninsula, where for more than a century, a temple had stood to the Goddess of the Sea, Mazu 媽祖. The Portuguese called the temple and its vicinity “Ma Kok” – 媽閣 – which literally meant “Court of Mazu.”

The very bustling Ma Kok, or Mazu Temple, which predates the Portuguese era.

When the Portuguese landed and asked the locals where they were, the latter replied straightforwardly that they were in “Ma Kok”. The Portuguese promptly called the peninsula “Macao,” and the name – a misunderstanding – stuck.

City of Dreams

Commercial edificios (edifices) in the vicinity of the ruins of St Paul’s.

The Portuguese came to trade, which is the same as saying that they came to chase a dream; a new destiny for themselves and their nation. For centuries, Macao, like its sister city, Hong Kong – and indeed, every other colonial port city in the world, was just that: a city where dreams could be made, for those who founded the city, and for the Chinese and other locals who could play by the foreign rules.

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, Portugal became immensely wealthy through its monopoly on the spice trade, shipping spices from the Moluccas through Macao and to other cities like Manila, Malacca, Goa and to Europe and the Americas. The Portuguese in Macao were merchants and go-betweens in this lucrative trade; they became wealthy, and they built beautiful edificios and villas that we still see today.

This wealth was curtailed somewhat when the Portuguese lost a good part of their empire to the Dutch in the 17^th century, and later on, when British Hong Kong muscled in on international trade in the 19^th century. For a time, Macao was eclipsed; it crumbled, and slipped into decay, becoming a bit of a quaint anomaly – an odd relic from time past.

All that changes in the 1960s, when the government decided to allow gambling in the capital. A monopoly was awarded to a consortium of local business magnates, including the notorious and powerful Stanley Ho, who would become Macao’s “King of Gambling” and whose iconic (and iconically hideous) Grand Lisboa Casino and Hotel still towers over the city today.

The Cotai skyline – the brand new casino district is built entirely on reclaimed land. The Venetian is to the right. to the left is the “City of Dreams” casino.

This monopoly was overturned in 2002, opening up the gambling sector to international investment. In came major Las Vegas casino operators like the Sands, Wynns and the Venetian. The latter built an immense branch of itself in Macao – bigger than the “original” in Vegas – on a vast plot of land reclaimed from the sea between Macao’s Taipa and Coloane islands.

Within ten years, Macao had out-vegased Vegas, becoming the world’s largest and most profitable casino destination. Almost overnight, it became again, a city of dreams… except this time, ANYONE was free to partake of the dream, as long as he was not averse to rolling the dice.  As if to emphasise the point, there is even a “City of Dreams” casino-hotel, taunting the visitor with dreams of striking it lucky…

The Chinese cit of Zhuhai, now within swimming distance of Macao’s waterfront esplanade.

Speaking of land reclamation, much of Macao itself grew and became unrecognizable due to successive land reclamation from the 1800s. Including the vast “Cotai” development on which the Venetian sits, Macao’s land area increased by 50% to 30 square metres. It is no longer a peninsula, more of an abutment into the sea.

In particular, the adjacent Chinese village-now-city of Zhujiang had also been busily reclaiming its land, such that, once separated by a sizeable body of water, only a mere sliver of a river now separates Macao from the Mainland – two almost entirely different universes existing in parallel with one another.

Dream of A City

Igreja de São Lourenço (St Lawrence’s church) is one of the oldest churches in Macao. Built by the Jesuits, versions of the have stood here since 1558. This stone version was erected in 1803.

Despite untrammeled development, Macao’s built heritage lingers on strong, particularly in the Peninsula itself, though also surviving in small villages on the ex-islands of Taipa and Coloane.

The entire old town of Macao, with its dozens of imposing and ornate colonial-era civic buildings, cathedrals, squares and other edifices, is designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, and justly so. Walking the old town is an engaging and surreal storybook experience – alternately sci-fi and period epic. Towering, claustrophobic apartment blocks, where the Macanese are packed in like sardines, suddenly give way to an 18^th or 19^th century church or theatre, floating impossibly before one’s eyes like a mirage.

And then there’s Senado Square, with its iconic wave-like paving and surrounding colonial-era monuments, appearing like a beautiful dream when you least expect it. One can stand there for hours, appreciating the ingenuity and elegance of the painstakingly assembled mosaic paving.

The iconic Senado Square, with its wave-pattern paving.

The miracle of Macao, ultimately, is that there is so much of the Portuguese (and other) built heritage remaining in one contiguous expanse in the city. One can walk the entire Macao Peninsula, and never feel at any point that one has left the Old Town. This is unlike Hong Kong, where most of what the British built in the 19th and early 20th centuries has already been lost, and what remains is scattered and isolated in small pockets.

It’s almost too much to take in, in such a tiny little floating city on the sea… And one is reminded vividly of another ancient, densely built-up, dream-like, floating city on the sea… Venice.

Avenida de Praia

The Portuguese legacy lives on also in the people and the culture. There are the ubiquitous, delicious Portuguese egg tarts, the oddly out of place African curry that appears in menus of Macanese cuisine, and the Portuguese wine easily available everywhere, even in 7-Eleven.

The Macanese themselves are elusive and hard to spot, and their patois – called Patuá – is dying out. But all around there are signs that one is not in Hong Kong (which is a familiar sort of place due to how often the city features in the popular consciousness) but in a kind of weird, out of this world dream….

These signs are quite literally that: “signs,” “signboards” “streetsigns,” “signposts” that name everything in Traditional Chinese and in Portuguese. The signs are everywhere. Everything here is still faithfully described in the two official languages of the ex-colony, even though one of them is no longer spoken, really.

Edificio Han Kian

All of this: Chinese and Portuguese; the age-old Portuguese edificios and the brand new Casino Disneyland; the village and the city; towering claustrophobia and the open expanses of the various bays that surround Macao… All this makes for a surreal and dream-like urban landscape, epitomised most eloquently by the towering golden tulip of the Grand Lisboa, inescapable anywhere one stands and looks in the old Peninsula.

Part of latter-day Macao, the golden tulip has been such a fixture in the city now that it has, ironically, become part of the heritage of this floating city in the middle of the ocean.

A cannon on the Mount Fortress, aimed at the Grand Lisboa.

Macao is a dream-like city… a city of dreams… a dream of a city… The one city that comes closest to embodying the essence of this very blog.

Senado Square is the heart of historic Macau.

Despite rampant development, and one of the smallest land areas of any sovereign state in the world, Macau has managed to preserve a significant amount of its built heritage.  The city – particularly the Macau Peninsula – oozes history and character.  A walk down the Peninsula’s narrow and maze-like streets and alleys will take you back to 16th century Portugal; even the towering modern apartment blocks that stand on either side of the narrow street and rise so high and claustrophically as to almost block out the sunlight add to the mediaeval feel of the city.

The entire Historic Centre of Macau, or Centro Histórico de Macau, was inscribed onto UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2005.  The listing consists of two CORE HERITAGE ZONES on the Peninsula, each surrounded by a buffer zone.  25 landmarks in the core zones are also designated as specific monuments of historic or cultural significance within the historic centre.

This walk through historic Macau takes the reader-viewer through both the core zones, and along the historic Avenida da Republica – Macau’s old harbour – which sits along the edge of a buffer zone.

Core Zone I – From Barra Hill to the Camões Garden

Core Zone 1 runs along the spine of the Macau Peninsula.  This was the heart of the old city itself – where for centuries, the Portuguese laid down their laws and transacted their business, alongside the thousands of Chinese that called Macau home.  This zone contains 24 of the 25 sites of historic/cultural significance; and these are indicated as we go along. At Senado Square, we take a small detour down the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro – then and now Macau’s foremost shopping street.

The walk itself covers 2.5 km, and would take 2 hours to half a day, depending on how long one lingers at each site.

The A-Ma Temple Complex (“Ma Kok”) is the first listed site on the walking tour. It predates the arrival of the Portuguese. the oldest structure dates back to 1488.  (UNESCO No. 1)

This traditional Portuguese style shophouse residence with balconies stands along the Calçada da Barra near the A-Ma Temple.

The Moorish Barracks (1874) were for Indian regiments from Goa, sent here to be part of the colonial police force. Today, it serves as the Headquarters of the Macau Maritime Administration. (UNESCO No. 2)

Lilau Square and its environs is where the Portuguese first set up their residences, after arriving in Macau. (UNESCO No. 3)

This is an amazing and impossibly preserved traditional Chinese courtyard house which was once the residence of Zheng Guanying, a local literary figure. (UNESCO No. 4)

St Lawrence’s Church (established 16th century but this version built in 1846) appears out of nowhere. It used to sit right on the sea. (UNESCO No. 5)

St Augustine’s Church was established in 1591 by Augustinian monks. This building is from the 1800s. (UNESCO No. 7)

The Dom Pedro V Theatre (1860) was built to commemorate the reigning King Peter V. (UNESCO No. 8)

St Joseph’s Church (1758) is built in a Baroque style. (UNESCO No 10)

Senado Square (the Senate Square) was the civic and political centre of Macau for much of its history. (UNESCO No. 11)

The Senate Building “Leal Senado” (1784) is the seat of the Macanese Government. (UNESCO No. 12)

The Santa Casa de Misericordia (Holy House of Mercy), established in 1569, is the headquarters of a charitable organisation. (UNESCO No. 13)

St Dominic’s Church was originally founded in 1587 by Spanish Dominican priests from Acapulco. (UNESCO No. 16)

Residential facades along Senado Square.

The General Post Office Building (1929).

Elaborate commercial and residential facades along the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro – the Champs-Elysees, Oxford Street or Orchard Road of Macau.

Elaborate facades along the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro.

The Banco Nationale Ultramarino head office (built in the early 1900s) on Avenida da Almeida Ribeiro.

The Ruins of St Paul are actually the facade of the ancien Church of Mater Dei, built in 1640 and destroyed by fire in 1835. (UNESCO No. 18)

The Nezha Temple (1888) stands alongside the only remaining segment of Macau’s original fortifying walls (from 1569). (UNESCO No. 19 and 20)

The Mount Fortress was built in 1626 and was the city’s principal defence structure. Today it houses the Macau Museum. (UNESCO No. 21)

St Anthony’s Church has stood here since 1560. This building was erected in 1930. (UNESCO No. 22)

The Casa Garden (1770) was once the residence of a Portuguese taipan, Manuel Pereira, before being the headquarters of the British East India Company. Today it houses the Fundação Oriente. (UNESCO No. 23)

Bust of Luís de Camões (1524 – 1580), the famous Portuguese Poet who wrote the epic Os Lusiadas. He is purported to have lived in this grotto with his local wife in 1557. The bust stands in Camoes Garden.

Core Zone II – The Guia Fortress and Environs

Core Zone II sits to the right of the the Macau Peninsula and consists of the historic Guia Hill and surrounding squares and parishes.  Besides the hill itself, significant historic areas include St Francis Garden, the oldest garden in Macau; Tap Seac Square and the Avenida Conselheiro Ferreiro da Almeida, with its magnificent Portuguese civic buildings and residences; and the St Lazarus Parish, formerly a leper colony that became a parish for Chinese converts to Christianity.  Secreted amidst this all is the famous Lou Lim Leoc Gardens, which was built by a local Chinese magnate in a Suzhou style.

The walk itself covers around 2.5 km again, up and down a hill. It would take a minimum of 2 hours to a half-day to complete.

The Clube Militar (1870), today a charming restaurant serving Macanese and Portuguese food.

The St Francisco Garden (1580) is the oldest garden in Macau. Most of it has been demolished, except for this delightful fountain.

A Moorish Building stands near the Vasco da Gama Park.

The Former Residence of Silva Mendes today houses the United Nations University International Institute of Software Technology.

The Guia Lighthouse (1864) and the Chapel of Our Lady of Guia (1626). The chapel contains murals painted in the 1600s.

Monument to Vasco da Gama, in the garden that bears his name.

Tap Seac Square houses a spectacular row of neoclassical buildings built in the early 20th century.

The Avenida Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida contains a row of most representative colonial-style residential villas, built in the early 20th century.

The Jardim de Lou Lim Leoc is a Suzhou style garden built in 1870 by a Chinese magnate, Lou Lim Leoc.

Chapel and Cemetery of St Michael the Archangel (1875) has beautiful baroque tombstones.

St Lazarus Church was established in 1569. this building was erected in 1886. This was where the leper (i.e. “lazarus”) colony was situated in Macau in mediaeval times. Subsequently, it became the church for Chinese converts.

A spectacular edifice standing in the St Lazarus parish area.

Beautiful old residences in the St Lazarus Parish area.

Rus do Volong, in the St Lazarus Parish area.

St Raphael’s Hospital was established in 1569. The present building was erected in 1939 and now houses the Portuguese Consulate.

Buffer Zone: Avenida da Republica  

This final walk takes in Macau’s esplanade – the beautiful tree-lined Avenida da Republica, which used to front Macau’s old harbour but today, due to land reclamation, fronts the Sai Van Lake (West Harbour Lake).  This is the equivalent of “The Peak” in Hong Kong – a wealthy residential area where the Portuguese erected some of there most ornate residential villas.

The walk starts just off the Avenida at the former Governor’s Palace, and takes one south towards the Fortaleza de São Tiago, at the very tip of the Macau Peninsula.  It covers 1.6 km and is a pleasant 1.5 hr walk.  Along the way, there are also splendid views of the Macau Tower, and the Casino skyline, including Stanley Ho’s Grand Lisboa.

The former Governor’s Palace, built in 1849 in a Portuguese style and occupied till 1937, is presently the Headquarters of the Government of Macau SAR.

The former Bela Vista Hotel – Macau’s Grande Dame – is presently the residence of the Portuguese Consulate General.

The Santa Sancha Palace (1846), was originally a private villa perched in the hills along the Avenida da Republica. It eventually became the Governor’s official residence from 1937. Today it is a Government Guest House.

The Chapel of Our Lady of Penha is perched high on Penha Hill. It originated in 1622, but the present building dates back to 1837.

Avenida da Republica is home to a string of residential villas once occupied by the Portuguese, but today by wealthy Chinese and Macanese. This one stands at the foot of Penha Hill.

A bend in the road affords a spectacular view of Penha Hill and Penha Church (to the left) and the Bela Vista Hotel (to the right).

Casino-land shimmers in the distance, with the Grand Lisboa to the left.

Example of an ornate residential villa with mixed Portuguese and Chinese architectural styles.

Just next door is another example of an East-West style villa.

The Avenida da Republica esplanade affords splendid views of Macau Tower.

Finally, at the southern tip of the Avenida da Republica, and of the Macau Peninsula itself, is the former Fortaleza de São Tiago da Barra, built in the 1600s to defend Macau. It has been transformed into the exquisite Pousada de São Tiago, where I resided during my stay in Macau.

For more information on Macau’s Cultural Heritage and sample Heritage Walks, please visit the excellent www.macauheritage.net.

View of the Bela Vista, perched on its small hill at the northern end of the Avenida da Republica.

One of the greatest legends in Macau’s history and hospitality scene is that of the former Bela Vista Hotel – the inimitable Grande Dame of the colony, handed back to the Portuguese in 1999 and presently the Residence of the Portuguese Consul General.

Perched on the edge of Penha Hill, and with gorgeous and expansive views over the former Praia Grande, or Esplanade, from way back in the days when the Sai Van, or “West Bay” Lake 西灣湖was actually a Bay opening out into the South China Sea, the Bela Vista has seen and partaken in much of its host colony’s recent history.

The building, with its ornate neoclassical design, was erected in 1870 as the private residence of a British expatriate couple. No doubt recognizing the potential of the gorgeous location and views, the couple turned it into the Boa Vista Hotel in 1890. Over the next century, it would shift hands multiple times, becoming a hospital, a school and reverting to a hotel more than twice. It acquired the name “Bela Vista” in 1936 – and that name would last till its decommissioning in 1999.

View of the Bela Vista from the foot of Penha Hill.

The weekend I arrived in Macau, the Bela Vista appeared to have just undergone some routine conservation and restoration work. From my vantage point along the Avenida da Republica, I saw that a small section of the façade was clad in scaffolding and that the building itself seemed to have acquired a fresh new coat of yellow paint. On a whim, I decided to see if I could not perhaps enter the grounds.

I discovered, to my utter delight, that I could!

In the grounds of the Bela Vista.

The main gate had been thrown wide open by the contractors and workers that were still laboring to take down the scaffolding on site. Because it was lunchtime by the time I got to the building, no one appeared to be around. And so I slipped past those gates, picked myself daintily across the hundreds of piles of scaffolding, and went round to the front of the building.

Close-up of the famous balconies, and those arched balustrades.

There, I stood for some time, admiring those famous balconies with their arched balustrades, and imagining what the view must have been like twenty years ago from way up there. “Bela Vista” means “Beautiful view” after all, and I wished so hard I could have seen what that view had been all about.

View from the grounds.

Unfortunately, there was no way into the building, since the entire main entrance – which was at the back of the building facing away from the sea – was clad in canvas and clearly still in the midst of major restoration. I had to satisfy myself with the view from the Bela Vista’s front courtyard, which, I had to admit, was far less captivating than what it must have been in the old days when you looked out into the open sea, instead of Casino-land.

Nonetheless, I counted myself extremely lucky to have been able to step into the grounds of the Bela Vista. If it hadn’t been for the restoration works, I wouldn’t have had the chance. I knew then, also, that I would probably never see the building this close again.

The Cafe Bela Vista, at the Grand Lapa Hotel.

All was not lost, however, with regards to my wish to experience the high life on the Bela Vista’s famous balconies. It turned out that one of Macau’s more contemporary five-star hotels – the Grand Lapa – had quite cleverly incorporated these famous balconies into the design of its signature café-restaurant.

As a matter of fact, the café-restaurant itself went by the name of Café Bela Vista!

I zipped across town to take a look, and found myself completely won over. The restaurant space was laid out such that part of the seating area recreated the balconies of the Bela Vista, complete with arched balustrades, swirling fans, rattan chairs and waiters in formal livery.

Interior of the Cafe Bela Vista.

True, the windows looked out upon a sea of greenery, rather than upon the sea itself. But the atmosphere felt thrillingly authentic. Requesting a table by those windows and sipping at a glass of crisp white wine, I felt like I was really at the Bela Vista Hotel, back in 1999 – that fateful final year when the Hotel took its very last cohort of guests, and then shut its doors forever.

The “balcony” area of the Cafe Bela Vista.

I spent the rest of the afternoon lingering in the shade of the palm trees, and enjoying the cool wafting breeze from the ceiling fans. I reflected on all that I had seen of historic, colonial Macau thus far; the Macau that preened right outside these balustrade windows… And I thought:

A glass of wine on the balcony.

Que uma bela vista! What a beautiful view!

The main facade of the Pousada de São Tiago, with its Chapel.

Not having been able to reside at the (former) Bela Vista Hotel, I went for the next best option, which was the Pousada de São Tiago – a luxury boutique hotel occupying a 17^th century Fort at the very tip of the Macau Peninsula. Besides the Bela Vista, this was the closest thing to being a grand historic hotel, and it certainly lived up to expectations.

The entrance to the Pousada, in exquisite Iberian blue tiles.

The Fortaleza de Barra was erected in 1629, 80 years after the Portuguese arrived here with their trading ships. Its role was to defend the Peninsula from marauding pirates, and the often mercenary merchant ships of the Dutch and later, the British East India Companies. The Fortress complex consisted of the fortifications itself, as well as an 18^th century Chapel dedicated to São Tiago (St James).

When the fort was finally decommissioned, instead of being demolished it, it was refurbished and transformed into a “pousada,” which is the Portuguese word for “inn” – evoking a cosy and warm ambience with loads of rich Portuguese douro.

Passage through the hotel is by the tunnel up the ancient fort.

Sitting a mere ten minutes walk away from the A-ma Temple, the Pousada is far enough from the madding crowd, allowing for a quiet contemplative stay; while still near enough to the walking circuit of the Historic Centre of Macau for the Grand Tourist to not feel too isolated. In fact, the Pousada itself is the starting point of two major heritage walks I featured in the previous post – the Core World Heritage Zone of Macau, and the beautiful, tree-and-villa-lined Avenida da Republica.

The main building of the Pousada, with a view of its suites.

The Pousada’s small but beautifully landscaped pool.

The hotel is an all-suite establishment with only 12 suites. I opted for the top of the line, which was the Barra Harborview Suite; and I was not disappointed. My room sat on the second floor of the property and was somewhat isolated from the main row of suites. It had a large private balcony accessible from my living room.

The best thing about the suite however, had to be the spectacular views of Macau Harbour, taken in from above the canopy of the sprawling trees in the hotel grounds. From up there, one could see nothing but sea, sky and trees – and I thought this must be as close as one could’ve gotten to how Macau used to look and feel like, before rampant development.

My very own private balcony, leading out onto a spectacular view.

View of the Macau Harbour.

That very evening, I checked out the hotel’s bar and restaurant, ingeniously built into the unique dimensions of the existing fort. Unfortunately, the outdoor seating area was plagued by mosquitoes (it was late Spring) and so I opted to sit indoors, observing the dozens of locals that had come for the very popular High Tea, and were just about to depart.

The courtyard.

The bar.

I ordered a bottle of delicious Portuguese red wine – a douro – and as I partook of it, I thought to myself how odd it felt, to be drinking something so Portuguese thousands of miles away from Lisbon.

The Hotel’s restaurant served “pure” Spanish and Portuguese food. And though it was rather pricey, it was THE BEST Iberian food I had had outside of Iberia. The bread had chorizo baked in it; the bacalau was cooked perfectly so it retained both flavour and texture, and my main – a roasted pigeon, was so tender, juicy and fragrant, I could’ve had it a few times over.

The restaurant’s specialty – a grilled pigeon on a ridiculously flavorful bed of risotto.

The rest of that weekend at the hotel I took to exploring its grounds – full of nooks and crannies that one would expect from a mediaeval fort. I paid my respects to a technicolour icon of São Tiago – the Portuguese name for St James – in the Hotel’s chapel; splashed about in the hotel’s tiny but perfectly framed pool, and clambered over age-old steps and parapets to peek down the hotel’s ancient and presently disused well.

The Chapel of São Tiago, circa 1740.

The icon of St James, in the Chapel.

From the swimming pool, looking down upon the ancient, disused well, and further down upon a courting couple along the Avenida da Republica and West Bay Lake.

At the end of each day, however, I was drawn back to my own private balcony with its own private, and spectacular view; where, with a glass of blood-red douro in hand, I would sit and contemplate the shimmering waters of the South China Sea and those ships bringing cargo in the distance, until way into the night when it became too dark to see anything at all.

NEXT MONTH: Canton（廣州）- the original treaty port

Peek-a-boo…

I’ve been in London this past week, shacked up in the historic Savoy Hotel, visiting family and friends in the suburbs and countryside, and generally reminiscing LIFE as I knew it some two years ago now, when I shuttled between London, New York and Singapore (and other places further in between) and generally WANDERED, so to speak, from one month to another; one home to another; one “family” to another.

I loved that nomadic lifestyle.  There was an exhilaration to it; an unbridled liberty – and I was voracious, experiencing all that I could, even as I wondered what the hell I was doing.

In the past year and a half, I’ve been creating the illusion of constant wandering, even as I’ve been irrevocably anchored in one place (Singapore).  I’ve attributed this to WANDERLUST – which is defined by Wikipedia as “a strong impulse or desire to wander or travel or explore the world.”

That’s all well and good, but this definition doesn’t explain the psychology BEHIND this “strong impulse or desire to wander or travel or explore the world.”

Because there is, of course, a psychology to it.  There is a psychology to everything.

And so I’ve been asking myself this question: is my wanderlust due truly to a pure and simple curiosity about the world and its histories?  Or, is this really just sheer ESCAPISM?  In other words, am I just desperately trying to recreate a life of wandering, in order to feel less bad about being stuck in one place?  Are my sojourns each month in a grand and luxurious (colonial) hotel – my whole GRAND TOUR – really just a means of making myself forget about my less than ideal (read: sedentary) situation in Singapore?

Sobering thoughts for a Tuesday evening. But thoughts that have nonetheless, crossed my mind even as I return from an idyll in the English countryside (and Grand Hotel) to “real life” in Singapore.

Perhaps my constant Grand Tour-ing is a bid to turn “real life” inside out; to convince myself that “real life” IS actually this constant wandering in and sweeping through great cities and Grand Hotels; and the staying-in-one-place (read: Singapore) is the dream.  A numbing, stultifying, Valium-laced dream.

Bah!  Whatever.  Let’s just go with a pure and simple curiosity about the world and its histories.

I’m having so much fun anyway.  Why jinx it by over-analyzing?  =)

The garden at Charleston – the countryside retreat of choice of the Bloomsbury Group (Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Clive Bell, Virginia Woolf, etc)

The Canton Custom House (1914) is the oldest surviving Customs House in China. Not an ideal view – but then there isn’t really an ideal angle to capture it today.

Of all the port cities on the Grand Tour, Canton is by far the greatest and the most ancient, having been mentioned as a major port since the Tang Dynasty (7^th century AD). It was a true global city – a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, polyglot melting pot of a metropolis with traders from all over East Asia, India, Persia, and the Arab and Malay worlds.

For a good eight centuries before the advent of the Europeans, Canton, and its sister city Quanzhou, in Fujian province, would reign supreme as the foremost trading capitals in China. In the famous Arab traveller, Ibn Battuta’s 14^th century travelogue, both cities were mentioned as fabulous, wealthy cities with magnificent boats and spices from all the known world.

Europeans and Chinese (Thirteen Factories Street).

The Portuguese arrived in the early 1500s, drawn, as in the case of Malacca, by Canton’s fabled wealth. Mistaking the port city itself for the province in which it sat, they called the city Cantão (after the “Guangdong” province), and the name stuck, even as the Portuguese themselves were chased out of Canton and resettled in Macao by 1557.

Canton’s history as a major port of trade with European powers began in 1685 when the Kangxi Emperor opened the seas to trade. Canton became one of half a dozen ports of call for European ships. In 1757, threatened by a wave of missionary activity in China, the Qianlong Emperor decreed that henceforth, all foreign trade with China would be limited to Canton only, setting the stage for the city’s renaissance.

Panorama of the “Thirteen Factories”, or “Thirteen hong” (十三商行).

By the 1700s, Canton had once again become a major global city and port, by virtue of the famous Thirteen Factories (also known as the Thirteen hong 十三商行).  These were thirteen European merchant houses and residential quarters situated beyond the walls of the city of Guangzhou itself, within which the Europeans were allowed to pursue their commercial activities.

These “factories” were forerunners of the subsequent treaty ports and foreign concession system of colonization that would appear in the 1800s; and they were truly international – the British, the Dutch, the French, the Spanish and the Portuguese were here; so were the Americans, the Danish, the Belgians, the Germans and the Swedes.

The First Opium War ended all that. Canton was the epicentre of the War. Here it was that the Qing Dynasty bureaucrat, Lin Zexu (林則徐), made a proclamation banning illegal trade in opium. Here it was – or at least close enough, at Humen Town (虎門鎮) – that he called for the destruction of 20,000 chests of opium in 1839. And here it was that War was inevitably declared and waged.

By 1842, the British had defeated the Chinese and captured the city. China was forced to sign its first unequal treaty – the Treaty of Nanking – which saw five treaty ports, including Canton, re-opened to foreign trade.  That wasn’t all.

The Second Opium War saw the destruction of the Thirteen Factories and European trade activities were relocated to Shameen Island (沙面島) – a tiny sandbar in the vicinity.  Commercial activities resumed as before, but Canton, having lost its monopoly on Chinese trade, would never again regain its status as the premier port and global city in China.

Where the Thirteen Factories used to stand is called Thirteen Factories Street today. It is a bustling commercial area of traditional Chinese-style shophouses. It borders a public park.

The narrow canal separating Shameen Island to the right, from the “mainland” of Guangzhou.

That said, it became a global city of a different kind – from its humble shores (and the shores of its sister city Hong Kong), hundreds of thousands of Cantonese would leave to find a new life in Southeast Asia, Europe and in far-flung America, settling in other open port cities under British rule.

They would form a large majority of the Overseas Chinese diaspora, ensuring that Cantonese continues to be one of the most widely spoken languages in the world today; and that Cantonese culture, food and civilization is most readily recognised as quintessentially Chinese outside of China.

Yumcha 飲茶 (also known as dimsum 點心), A familiar sight all over the world, from Singapore to San Francisco to São Paolo.

AFTERNOTE

While the title of China’s premier port and global city belongs to Shanghai, today’s Guangzhou comes a close second.  It has in recent years become “the factory of the world” – just another way of saying “global city.” Almost everything that says “made in China” was made somewhere here, in the larger Guangzhou metropolitan area.

It is once again, also, becoming a cosmopolitan, polyglot metropolis, though not without some controversy. In particular, Guangzhou is home to China’s largest population of Africans, some 200,000 and growing, who flock here legally and illegally to trade and find a new life.  While there is a long way to go before Canton reverts to the melting pot it was a thousand years before, it is, of all of China’s port cities, the one most likely to do so. Global-ness and cosmopolitan-ness are, after all, part of its heritage.

Africans in the new global city of Guangzhou.

La Poste Française, French Concession, Shameen Island

After the Thirteen Factories were razed to the ground in 1856, and Canton occupied by British forces in the aftermath of the Second Opium War, another site had to be identified for the reconstruction of the new foreign settlement.

This was Shameen Island, a small sandbank to the west of the Thirteen Factories’ site; then home to thousands of boat people. Two years of land reclamation and major foundation works later, a man-made island rose from the swampy ground, separated by a narrow canal from the mainland of Canton.

The island was then split – four-fifths of it fell under British administration, while one-fifth came under the French, in accordance with the proportions by which the two imperial powers had financed the development of the island.   In legal terms, Shameen became a foreign concession (租界 in Chinese) “a territory within a country that is administered by an entity other than the state which holds sovereignty over it” (Source: Wikipedia).

Shameen miraculously survived World War II and the cultural revolution, and is today gazette in its totality as a historic site by city authorities. And so it remains, as a somewhat incongruous and out-of-place world-within-a-world in the behemoth that is modern-day Guangzhou.

Strolling its verdant tree-lined streets, largely car-free, and flanked by dozens of beautifully restored European residences, bank headquarters, merchant houses and places of worship, one is flung back into the past; to a time when Canton was part of a larger global network of port cities that strung from London to Aden to Singapore and Yokohama.

This walking tour has two parts: the first takes in the smaller and more intimate French Concession in the East; and the second takes in the larger British Concession to the west of the island, where are also situated the foreign consulates of other imperial powers, the Russians, the Germans, the Americans and even the Siamese.

Documentation is patchy and in most instances I depend on the labelling the Canton authorities have stuck onto the buildings to identify what these were.  Not all the buildings were so-labelled, and so there are quite a few buildings here which are “anonymous.”

The best thing about walking Shameen Island is that it is somewhat undiscovered, even by the Chinese themselves, and so one is almost guaranteed of a quiet stroll on one’s own in the early mornings and late afternoons. A rare treat in over-crowded China.

The French Concession

The Gendarmerie

Residence of Indian Nationals (probably a barracks for the Annamite guards in the French Concession)

A wedding shoot taking place at the Imperial Maritime Customs Building.

The Banque de L’Indochine

The French Consulate.

The former Czech Consulate.

Offices along the same street as the Czech Consulate.

Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral

The British Concession

The verdant tree-lined Central Avenue is the central spine of Shameen Island.

Another wedding shoot taking place.

Unidentified blue building.

The HSBC building is today’s West Wing of the Guangdong Victory Hotel, and one of the best preserved and most iconic structures on the island.

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (the forerunner of Standard Chartered Bank).

The Yokohama Specie Bank.

The Bank of Taiwan

Unidentified yellow building.

The British Consultate

The headquarters of Butterfield & Swire.

Arnhold, Karberg & Co

REsidential quarters of HSBC staff

Dodwell & Co (probably)

Hong Kong Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage

The Siamese Club

The Russian Consulate

The German Consulate

The Japanese Consulate

Gallery

Princess Wedding

Beautiful brick and granite building

Almost Dickensian

Romanesque

Christchurch Canton

View across the canal to Shameen Island, shrouded by towering, 100-year old Camphor trees.

Ornate roof of the Chen Clan Academy.

Most visitors to Guangzhou today don’t come for the history, heritage or architecture.  They come for Business, Trade, Industry, Commerce.  History, heritage and architecture are the last things on their mind.  Which is perfectly in keeping, ironically, with Guangzhou’s heritage as THE premiere centre of trade in China, both then and now.  But is such a pity – for today’s Guangzhou is rich in heritage – vernacular, commercial heritage of course, but heritage all the same.

Outside of Shameen Island, the Old Town of Canton is a sight to explore, whatwith its hundreds of winding streets flanked by traditional Chinese shophouses found all over Southeast Asia where there is a strong Chinese diaspora. The vernacular form itself originated here, in Canton and in the city of Amoy (Xiamen), where many Chinese came from.

Like in Shanghai, there is a Bund here, though it is somewhat lesser known.  Extending East from Shameen Island, the Canton Bund still preserves some astounding specimens of European commercial architecture from the days when Canton was a Treaty Port.  Much further East stands another trace of its European past – the glorious, Baroque Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, erected by the French in 1863.

Finally, at the edge of the old town sits one of Canton’s most important pieces of Chinese built heritage – the Chan Clan Academy and Temple. This is a mind-boggling and mind-bogglingly surreal agglomeration of traditional Chinese legends and iconography.  The design of the structure forms the basis for the that of thousands of Chinese temples in Southeast Asia; except much more opulent, ornate and ostentatious.

The temple was built in 1894 by returning Chinese-American emigres, who raised money from 72 different Chan families in the city, to build a communal temple for the worship of their common ancestors of the same surname; which incorporated within it, a place for their younger clansmen to gather and study for the Imperial Examinations.

This heritage walk has three parts.  The first starts off along the Canton Bund, with its many nameless relics to Canton’s commercial, European past.  The second takes in the streets of Canton’s Old Town – beginning at the Sacré-Cœur Cathedral, passing through the Thirteen Factories site to the famous Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street (上下九步行街), which is today restored and transformed into a latter-day shopping street.  Along the way, one also finds instances of Xiguan Architecture (西關) – an entirely indigeneous architectural form that emerged here in Canton and combined the best of European and Chinese styles.

Finally, we stop off at the Chan Clan Academy and Temple to admire a proliferation of gods, goddesses, demons and magical creatures; all of which remind us of a time when Canton was one of the greatest seaport in the East.

(Incidentally, I too, am of the Chan clan).

Part I – The Canton Bund (廣州外灘)

The Canton Custom House (1914) – the foremost landmark on the Bund.

An unidentified building next door.

Another unidentified former commercial building.

More buildings along the bund.

The Art Deco Old Canton Cinema.

View of the Esplanade, along the Pearl River.

Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hospital

The Oi Kwan Hotel (愛羣大酒店) was built in 1934 by a Chinese mogul.

Close-up of the art deco detailing on the Oi Kwan Hotel.

Side view of the Oi Kwan hotel, looking almost like a view unto New York City.

Colonnaded walkways, reminiscent of five-foot ways in Southeast Asia.

Unidentified building across the street.

More commercial buildings just off the bund.

Part II – The Commercial Quarter (廣州老鎮)

View of Sacred Heart Cathedral from the street.

Sacred Heart Cathedral (1863).

Commercial shophouses in the 13 Factories area. Note the ornate decorations on the facade.

More shophouses in the 13 Factories area.

The 13 Factories area is today a bustling commercial precinct.

Historic commercial architecture in the 13 Factories area.

Traditional shophouses along Shangxiajiu Street.

More instances of shophouses on Shangxiajiu Street.

Ornate facade along Shangxiajiu Street.

Close-up of detailing, depicting the gods of Fortune and Long Life.

Old residences in the Old Town

Old residences in the Old Town.

Cross between a shophouse residence and Xiguan residence in the Old Town.

Xiguan residence in the Old Town.

A more spectacular instance of Xiguan residence in the Old Town.

Part III – The Chan Clan Academy and Temple (陳家祠)

Approaching the front of the huge temple complex.

The plaque reads “The Chan Clan Academy.”

Ornate wooden panelling, reminiscent of similar panelling in Southeast Asian temples.

The roofs of the temples are usually highly ornamented with mythical creatures.

One of the half a dozen courtyards within the complex.

The Central Hall, today a museum.

The Ancestral Altar – this would have been populated with thousands of ancestral tablets commemorating the dead. But all but two of these were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

Parting view of the Chan Clan Academy and Temple.

The main building of the Guangdong Victory Hotel (the former Victoria Hotel).

In Canton, I stayed at the Guangdong Victory Hotel, which, at first glance, doesn’t look in the least like it has any history at all – so thoroughly have the Chinese plastered over what used to stand here with the veneer of so-called modernity.

But this is, or rather, was, undeniably, the Grand Hotel of Canton – the only hotel in the British and French concessions of Shameen Island.  If you peer close enough, you can still see this history in the grand arches of the Hotel’s Main Building (also known as the East Building), which echo those of the original building and could have possibly been retained from that venerable establishment.

The Victoria Hotel, Canton, was established in 1895, and was in operation all the way till 1946, the end of World War II and era of Foreign Concessions in China.  The hotel building itself was erected in 1888 and formerly known as the Canton Hotel.

Historical information about the hotel is, unfortunately, sparse.  And the few archival pictures that may be found depict the hotel as a two storey building in a Palladian architectural style, fronting the canal dividing Shameen Island from the mainland.  A row of arches lined the front of the hotel building, on both the ground and the first floors. And visitors typically arrived by sampan across the narrow canal, to dock at the small jetty near the hotel’s front door.

When the Chinese took over the hotel in the ’50s, they conveniently renamed it the (Guangdong) Victory Hotel – the hotel’s Chinese name 威多厘酒店 worked fine as a transliteration both for “Victoria” and “Victory.”  The Victory Hotel languished for a good half a century until the 2000s, when, in the course of the decade, the hotel management overhauled much that remained.

The front of the hotel in the daytime. It looked as though a modern building had been “plonked” onto the original building.

The front of the Guangdong Victory Hotel West Wing, at night… missing a few letters.

The ghastly entrance and lobby to the Main Building.

The rooftop swimming pool, with a beautiful view of Shameen Island and Old Canton, but a rather more questionable style.

View of Shameen Island from the Swimming Pool.

In a stroke of brilliance, the management also acquired the nearby former HSBC Headquarters in Shameen Island (built in 1905) and refurbishing the offices into guestrooms, transformed it into the “West Building” of the Victory Hotel.  Clearly, someone in the management had understood the potential of history and heritage for tourism and hospitality development.

Ironically it is the West Building today that is considered the “historic” wing of the hotel, as it maintains many features of the original colonial-era HSBC building, including lovely balconies fronting each of the guestrooms.  And so it was in the West Building that I was accommodated, to make the most of the historic ambience, where the same has been irretrievably lost in the original “East Building”.

There on my balcony that weekend, I would linger for hours on end, cracking open cans of ice-cold local beer – there was no palatable red wine to speak of on the island – to counter the sweltering summer heat.  Down below, I would hear the voices of the dozens of Chinese residents going about their business amongst buildings that have not changed a bit in the last 100 years.

It was a delicious feeling of having been cast back in time… and the precise genre of feeling that my entire Grand Tour was all about.

The West Wing – the former HSBC Headquarters on Shameen Island.

The far more tasteful and understated lobby of the West Building.

The balcony to my room.

A familiar sight on Shameen Island – wedding photoshoots. This one was happening along the side of the West Building, underneath my balcony.

NEXT MONTH ON THE GRAND TOUR: Amoy (Xiamen) and the Lujiang Hotel  

The Old Supreme Court in Singapore – one of the first things new arrivals would have seen as they neared the Singapore Bund.

The irony about the concept of (one’s) ROOTS is that while it refers to something static and unchanging – i.e. just as tree roots anchor the tree to the ground, one’s (familial and cultural) roots are thought to be rigid and immovable; the fact is, an EPIC JOURNEY is always implied.

Particularly in a city like Singapore (and in fact, most major cities today) where a majority of denizens hail from somewhere else.

When somebody makes reference to his or her ROOTS, what is referred to is that often distant place (or places) of origin OVER THERE from which him or her (OR his or her ancestors) had left, in a dramatic fashion, sometime in the past, in order to journey HERE and make a new future.

And the mere mention or thought of the word “ROOTS” itself involves a journeying back in time, space, memory and/or imagination to the source of these roots; to the PLACE(S) OF ORIGIN, whether or not one has actually once been there in person.

Besides indulging in escapist fantasy (as I had established a few posts ago), another reason for my Grand Tour-ing of Southeast Asia and Beyond is this urge of mine to understand my ROOTS.  I suppose it has something to do with crossing that fine threshold called the mid-thirties, which has inexplicably precipitated an urgent NEED within me to figure out just who I am and how I got here.

It is a NEED, I might add, that I found my entire country, my Singapore, deep in the throes of negotiating, when I returned from New York in the Summer of 2012.  Again rather inexplicably, an entire generation of MYSELVES had decided that it was time to go on a personal journey of discovery.

My own journey of discovery, of course, took a very different path than the rest. I decided that what I really need to do was get to the heart of the matter.

My question was: where did Singapore come from? What was the larger historical and geo-political context within which Singapore was formed? And how does that still impact Singapore and being Singaporean today?

WHY, in other words, AM I ME?

I decided that in order to answer that question, I needed not only a journey in the metaphysical sense, but an actual physical EPIC JOURNEY.

I decided that to understand being Singaporean, I needed to understand the history of colonialism in Southeast Asia, and even beyond Southeast Asia to China and India.

I needed to explore, in detail, the specific history related to that specific phenomenon of the COLONIAL PORT CITY – a string of which existed throughout the maritime and riverine coastlines of Asia: Bombay, Goa, Colombo, Madras, Calcutta, Rangoon, Penang, Malacca, Singapore, Batavia, Soerabaja, Bangkok, Saigon, Hanoi, Phnom Penh, Manila, Macau, Hong Kong, Canton, Amoy, Shanghai, Tsingtao, Tientsin, Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohama…

And what better way to do so than to travel to each and every one of them in person, on a multi-year, multi-city Grand Tour of the Far East? What better way to learn about a HISTORY that ultimately led to ME, than to actually re-live it; experience it in person?

Each of these COLONIAL PORT CITIES presaged and mirrored Singapore, in terms of how they were planned, developed and administered by the colonial authorities; and also in terms of their multi-cultural and –religious population mix, shaped and fueled by immigration and free trade.

Concurrently, Singapore existed within a larger continental maritime trading network that took in ALL of these Asian port cities and linked them to an even larger, global, imperial trade system.

Yes, to be politically correct today, one has to acknowledge that IMPERIALISM was not a good thing. Yet one legacy of imperialism is the very concept and practice of GLOBALISATION, and the associated value of COSMOPOLITANISM, which are acknowledged as good things today in and of themselves (more or less).

I have since travelled through the port cities of Southeast Asia – this segment of my epic journey is to be imminently published as a coffee table book in Spring 2015 - and almost all of the port cities in China and Japan.

And my conclusion in the course of my travel thus far is this: that WE (as in Singapore) were always part of a much larger and far more cosmopolitan (historical) big picture than we remember and give credit for today.  We were more integrated with the region and the world, and the region and the world outside of Singapore meant more to us, even at a personal and familial level, than is currently the case.  In our journey towards nationhood, we have become somewhat myopic in our outlook.

I now understand clearly that I, being Singaporean, am the product of colonialism and imperialism, yes. This is an inescapable fact. But a fact that means I am the culmination and continuation of a history of globalisation and cosmopolitanism.  Globalisation and cosmopolitanism are my HERITAGE.

To be Singaporean was and is, ultimately, to be a citizen of the world.

Another way of conceiving of my global ROOTS: my maternal grandfather originated from Amoy (Xiamen), in Fujian Province, China (and the next stop of my Grand Tour). He would’ve left his homeland on board a small sailing junk leaving from such a jetty.

View of Gulangyu Island and the Xiamen Skyline from the Sunlight Rock (日光岩) – the highest point on Gulangyu Island.

Xiamen was a very familiar city.

I felt a 親切感– a strong sense of warmth and belonging – upon arriving into the city centre. This despite the fact that I had never been to the city before.

Perhaps I should explain…

My maternal grandfather – my mom’s dad – originated from Xiamen 廈門, which, in his Fujian/Hokkien dialect, is pronounced EH-MNG, and accounts for the island’s traditional English name of Amoy. Well…technically he hails from the island of Kinmen 金門 (or Quemoy), which are today administered by Taiwan, even though it is situated in the very heart of Xiamen harbour.

I grew up listening to and understanding this specific strand of the Hokkien dialect, spoken between my grandfather and my mother (this is quite literally my “mother tongue”!). And so it came as a very pleasant surprise to hear the lilting Xiamen Hokkien dialect spoken everywhere I went on the island.

(Almost-)white sandy beaches ring the island – this one is part of the campus of Xiamen University.

Xiamen is an island city, like Singapore; and it is one of the most idyllic and livable cities in China. Now this is all relative, of course. The city-island is still very much a polluted metropolis, like its sister-city Guangzhou down south. But there are still tracts of the island that are quiet and laid back.

For example, the island is surrounded by a string of (almost-)white sand beaches, fronted by (almost-)turquoise water and framed with swaying palm trees. The beaches are thronged with locals, naturally, but the throngs here seem somewhat more well-behaved than elsewhere, and the atmosphere is never too overwhelming. (Or perhaps it is I who have grown accustomed to China’s crowds).

One of the temples in the South Putuo Temple complex, perched on the slopes of Mount Putuo.

Not far from the sea lies the mountains. And here too, Xiamen offers respite from the madness of modern China, if only for a couple of hours in the early morning before the hordes of tourists arrive.

At the foot of the legendary Mount Putuo 普陀山 sits the equally legendary South Putuo Temple 南普陀寺, which has existed here since the Tang Dynasty (700 A.D.). The temple sprawls along the south face of the mountain, and offers a quiet and contemplative walk through an ancient, verdant path to the top of the mountain.

At the halfway point (I admit I was in no shape to scale the whole mountain!), there were stunning views of the city of Xiamen, Xiamen Harbour, the island of Gulangyu and the iconic Xiamen University, founded by an émigré businessman, Mr Tan Kah Kee, who was one of the most illustrious representatives of the Chinese Diaspora in the Southern Seas region (what the Chinese called Southeast Asia), and who also founded my own High School in Singapore – yet another aspect of the city that was familiar and strangely moving!

I wasn’t the only one moved by the view. A pious monk from the South Putuo Temple had also hiked his way up the mountain, and there, three feet from me, he genuflected and gave thanks to Buddha for all that he had.

A pious monk genuflecting and giving thanks on Mount Putuo.

Amoy was one of the original five treaty ports forced open by the British through the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, signed in the aftermath of the First Opium War. For about a hundred years till the outbreak of World War II, the British would rule this territory, opening it up to trade by other European nations.

Traces of the city’s colonial past still exist today, in the former Amoy Bund and the maze of streets that form the city’s old commercial quarter; but more importantly, on the island of Gulangyu 鼓浪嶼 (called Kulangsu in the old days), which was where the European consulates and residences were concentrated.

Gulangyu Island and the island ferry.

Miraculously, almost all of the colonial architecture on Gulangyu Island has survived, and the island itself is one of the most popular tourist attractions not only in the city, but in all of China. Everyday, tens of thousands of Chinese tourists throng its old cobblestoned streets, filling to the absolute brim the tiny ferries that ply the narrow straits every ten minutes.  (And causing me immense concern each time I took the ferry because I was convinced the vessel would sink!)

To beat the crowds and get the most out of the historic ambience, one must either start very early in the morning, or better yet, stay overnight on the island, in one of the quaint hotels and hostels occupying refurbished colonial villas.

A ubiquitous sight – wedding photoshoots in the shadow of what the Europeans left behind, Gulangyu Island.

Amoy is also significant in the history of Asia because it, like Canton, is where many Southeast Asians of Chinese descent originated from. In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, thousands of Hokkiens from Xiamen and the Fujian province emigrated south to Taiwan and Southeast Asia, resulting in Hokkien being one of the most commonly spoken Chinese dialects in the two regions.

Many of these overseas Chinese made it rich in their adopted hometowns in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Manila, and returned to Amoy to build majestic villas in the island of Gulangyu and elsewhere.

海天堂構 Sea and Heaven Villa, built by a Philippine Overseas Chinese businessman 黄秀烺 in 1921, Gulangyu.

The most significant of these returning emigres was Mr Tan Kah Kee 陳嘉庚 – already introduced – whose passion was for education, and who founded the Xiamen University 廈門大學 and Jimei University 集美大學 in Amoy, and the Overseas Chinese High School 華僑中學 in Singapore (my alma mater!)

Tan precipitated the evolution of a new kind of Chinese architecture, integrating traditional Chinese architectural elements such as elaborate, sloping roofs, with a European layout and foundational style that used brick walls, balconies and balustrades. Many specimens of this form of architecture still remain in Xiamen, but sadly, the War and the subsequent Communist Revolution stunted any further evolution in this form of Modern Chinese Architecture.

The legendary Mr Tan Kah Kee, Overseas Chinese businessman and philanthropist, native of Amoy and Singapore, founder of the Xiamen University and my own alma mater, The Overseas Chinese High School, Singapore.

Only one more familiar aspect of Xiamen/Amoy remains to be pointed out, and that is Xiamen cuisine, which has many traditional dishes that made their way south to Singapore and have become typical (招牌) dishes here too. Poh piah (vegetarian crepes), mee sua soup, prawn mee soup, cai por (pickled radish) omelette, fishball soup, blood cockles… the list goes on.

Seafood, in particular, was a highlight. Being an island city (like Singapore), seafood was exceptionally fresh and (unlike Singapore) exceedingly varied and cheap.

I feasted myself silly, thinking… What a home away from home Xiamen is! Why haven’t I visited before? Why haven’t more Singaporeans come visit?

Well… at least I’m here now, was my answer.  And I’m definitely returning.

Xiamen Seafood – Blood cockles, mantis shrimp and 土筍凍 (jellied sea squirt).

The Lin Family Mansion (林氏俯 － 1915), today a boutique hotel. It is also known as the Octagonal Building (八角樓)。

When it comes to poster-boys for colonial architecture in Mainland China, two places come to mind. The first is, naturally, Shanghai and the iconic Shanghai Bund (which features next month).  The second, which may come as a bit of a surprise to those unfamiliar with China, is Gulangyu Island, in Xiamen.

The island is a perfectly preserved enclave of European history and architecture, located less than a mile off the coast of the city of Xiamen.  Here it was, that the British and other Europeans established their foreign consulates and residences in the aftermath of the Opium War in the 1840s.  And much to the delight of any history buff, most of it still remains!

The journey to the island is a bit of a harrowing experience, however.  Gulangyu is one of the most popular destinations for domestic tourists in all of China.  Tens of thousands of Chinese descent upon the tiny 2 sq kilometers (less than one sq mile) each day.  Every single one of the ferries that make the ten minute journey across the narrow straits every ten minutes is packed dangerously full to the brim – a disaster waiting to happen.

When you do get to the island, however, hopefully on one of the earliest ferries of the day, it is surprising how large tracts of it are almost devoid of people.

True, the core tourist and commercial zones of the island are heaving with people; but there are pathways and side streets further off the centre that are quiet, tranquil and suffused with history – largely because, the island being car-free, the main way of getting to these remote spots is by walking.  And, walking the entire island in one day is NOT for the faint-hearted – it is larger than it looks.

This gallery presents a snapshot of Gulangyu Island, in no particular walking order. There is so much to see on the island that it is quite literally impossible to re-present everything that one sees as one walks.

What I’ve done is instead present these snapshots in broad themes. Former Consulates is the first: Gulangyu was the home of 13 Consulates in its heyday and here I present 4 of them.

Churches is the next, followed by Villas and Residences – these magnificent specimens of historical architecture are the highlight of any tour to Gulangyu; some of them I have been able to identify and some I haven’t – and I end with a quick series on Doorways, which are unique aspects of the architecture on the island.

I hope you enjoy the view.

Downtown Gulangyu is bustling are full of small cafes, restaurants and gift shops housed in refurbished historic buildings. The Chinese love it.

The first sight that assails the visitor is the former British Consulate (1844), which today houses government offices.

Across from the British Consulate is the former German Consulate (1870), today a mix of apartments and cafes.

Nearby sits the former Japanese Consultate, today housing a dormitory for Xiamen University teachers.

The former Dutch Consulate (1890) is now a Museum of Gulangyu history.

The most impressive church on the island is the Gothic Spanish-Catholic Church (1917).

Just across is Union Church (1863), serving a Protestant Congregation.

Trinity Church 三一堂 (1928)

Renaissance Church 復興堂 (1997)

Gospel Hall 福音堂 Church (1903)

Traditional Min-nan 閩南style houses 四落大厝 (1900s) to the left. In the distance is the Sunlight Rock 日光岩 – the highest point in Gulangyu.

Panoramic view of Gulangyu from the Sunlight Rock. In the near distance is the Bagua Building 八卦樓 (1907), which is an Organ Museum today.

The Huang Family Villa 黃家園 (1920s) is the most famous mansion on the island, built by sugar magnate Huang Yizhu.

The Huang Rongyuan Mansion (1920) – one of the most historic and popular sites on the island today.

The Melon Building 金瓜樓 (1922) is so-called for its unique melon-shaped domes.

Yizu Mansion 亦足山莊 （1920s) was built by a Singaporean-born Chinese.

Koh Family Mansion 許家園 (1930s).

Yang Family Villa 楊家園 (1913)

Fanpo Mansion 番婆樓(1920).

Chuncao Mansion 春草堂 (1933).

The former residence of Hsu Feiping, a famous Chinese-American pianist with links to Singapore. 許斐平故居

Owl windows.

18 Anhai Road (1920s)

10 Fuxing Road.

Red Brick Mansion.

Like an English Public School…

Many layers of history and architecture in Gulangyu.

Random villa around the corner.

Laidback seaview with the Seaview Villa 觀海別墅 (1918).

Almost neo-classical

Staunchly Art Deco

Somewhat ornately Baroque Chinese.

Mix of East and West

Gulangyu Beach.

View of the other end of Gulangyu from the Shuzhuang Gardens 菽莊花園。

The Gulangyu Piano Museum is another attraction popular with foreign tourists, established by an Australian Chinese in his ancestral home.

Historic Shophouse Architecture in the streets of Old Amoy/Xiamen – cousins of those in Singapore.

Across the narrow straits from Gulangyu Island sits Old Amoy – the Chinese settlement, and the commercial heart of the former colony.  Here’s where the city’s major banks, trading and merchant houses were situated.  Here it was that tea, rice, lacquer, silks, spices from China were shipped to all over the world.

Here therefore, are found the dozens of winding streets flanked on both sides by Chinese shophouses, of the kind found all over the port cities of Southeast Asia, wherever there are significant Chinese populations.  Walking down these streets is like walking down the streets of Old Penang, Malacca, Singapore, Surabaya…

There are two parts to this meandering afternoon spent in the Old Town.  The first takes in the former Amoy Bund, and the second, the streets of the Old Town proper.

Part I – The Amoy Bund

Like its sister city Shanghai, Amoy too had a Bund – a grand waterfront precinct erected by the British and other imperial powers, and housing some of the most important banks and trading houses in the world in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Much of the Bund in Amoy was erected between 1870, just after Amoy became a treaty port; and in the early 1900s, just before World War I.  Later on in the 1920s and ’30s, returning Overseas Chinese from Taiwan and the Nanyang region (Southeast Asia) would enter the scene, building their own commercial buildings, in their own unique style blending East and West, wherever there was a spot in the existing European bund.

Today, a continuous section of the Bund remains only to the far left of the stretch.  From the Gulangyu Ferry terminal, across the major thoroughfare that fronts the Bund, one can just about get a glimpse of how imposing and elegant the sweep of colonial edifices would have looked like in the old days.  Today, the buildings stand somewhat lost in amidst the towering new city that is emerging just around the corner.

Bund #1 – unknown.

Bund #2 – The former Qing Dynasty’s General Post Office 大清廈門一等郵局 (1911)

Close-up of His Majesty’s “candarin” stamp, on the General Post Office Facade.

View of part of the Bund from across the street. Bund # 3 is the Xiamen Customs House 廈門海關署 (1909)

Bund #4 – The former Bank of Taiwan (1860). Note that the Bank of Taiwan was a Japanese bank, because Taiwan at the time was a Japanese colony.

Bund #5 – The former Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation Building (1873).

Bund # 6 – unknown.

Bund #7 and Bund #8, which is the Xiamen Water Company Building 廈門自來水場 (1926).

Bund #9 – The Lujiang Hotel, formerly the Lujiang Building, established by Tan Kah Kee in the 1958.

Bund #10, across the street from the Lujiang Hotel

Further down the Bund sits the Foo Sing Hotel 福星旅社, established by a Taiwanese emigre in the 1920s in a distinctly East-West style. To its left stands the Standard Chartered Bank, probably occupying the very spot it used to occupy in the colonial era.

Part II – The Old Town

Just behind the imposing facade of the Bund sits the Old Town, the commercial heart of the former treaty port and today’s city; a labyrinthine maze of winding streets flanked by crumbling shophouses and colonial-era mansions.

The central spine of the Old Town is the very recently refurbished Zhongshan Pedestrian Road, which runs just off the Lujiang Hotel, and extends deep into the town.  This section of the old town is off limits to cars, and is exceedingly touristy, notwithstanding the many pretty instances of commercial and shophouse architecture that still exists on the street.

The crumbling, REAL bits of the Old Town, where REAL people live and conduct their REAL day-to-day business – Chinese medicine parlours, hardware stores, Chinese dried foodstuff, street food stalls, etc - occurs just to the left of Zhongshan Road, and is roughly bounded by Zhongshan Road 中山路 to the South, Siming North Road 思明北路 to the East, Xiahe Road 廈禾路 to the North and Lujiang Road 鷺江道 (the main thoroughfare along the waterfront) to the West.

This part of the walking tour first takes the Grand Tourist down Zhongshan Pedestrian Road, where one braves the hordes of domestic tourists taking in the sights.  We then slip off to the side, into the Old City and explore its many winding streets.

The predominant architectural form here is the Traditional Chinese Shophouse, though other kinds of buildings – art deco cinemas, ornate shopping malls and baroque mansions, including one amazing specimen with Moghul cupolas – appear, as if by magic, at random street corners.

In Singapore, there is a street called Amoy Street in the old commercial heart of the city. Unsurprisingly, that street looks very much like the many streets here, in its namesake city.

View down Zhongshan Road towards the Bund.

The pastel pink refurbished shophouses on Zhongshan Road

Bright flashing neon lights adorn the restored facades on Zhongshan Road.

View down Zhongshan Road , looking somewhat more traditional.

Traditional shophouse architecture at the end of Zhongshan Road. This is something that could have been found in Singapore or Penang.

Off Zhongshand Road, we enter the Old Town proper, with its winding streets and crumbling shophouses. The entire Old Town was probably erected in the early 1900s.

Shot of everyday people living their lives in the Old Town.

Another typical view of the Xiamen Old Town.

Around the Siming Road junction, many fabulous instances of commercial and residential architecture suddenly appear. This mall building stands at an intersection, and recalls Ginza, Tokyo.

The Art Deco Siming Cinema, probably built in the 1930s.

Another instance of commercial architecture – probably a new structure, built to look “colonial.”

This is the most amazing building in all of the Old Town. It was probably the mansion of a wealthy Chinese (or maybe Indian) resident. It has unique, Victorian-Moghul features in its architecture, and may have been built in the late 1800s.

Across the intersection is an Art Deco building.

Another amazing old mansion in an East-West architectural style, this one looking eerily Gaudi-esque.

A centuries-old shop selling traditional light dishes 小吃.

Examples of shophouse architecture in the Old Town. This one again channels Old Singapore, or Penang today.

Varying forms of shophouse architecture.

More shophouses.

A row of crumbling shophouses set against a highrise condominium – showing just how the Old Town itself is changing rapidly.

A moment of silence and reflection.

Xiamen University Main Administrative Block, with statue of Tan Kah Kee in front.

Amoy’s links to Singapore (and the Nanyang 南洋 Region) extend beyond cultural ties of the Hokkien peoples that populate both islands today to specific members of the Overseas Chinese community.  And one of the most important members of this community was Mr Tan Kah Kee 陳嘉庚.

Born in 1874 on Xiamen island, Tan Kah Kee is one of the most significant Chinese businessman, philanthropist and educator in recent history, with ties everywhere where there are significant communities of Overseas Chinese.  His legacy was truly global, as evidenced by the many places and buildings named after him in Singapore, China and even in California.

His passion and interest was always for education, and he gave significantly towards the establishment of educational institutions, two of the most famous being Xiamen University 廈門大學 in Xiamen/Amoy, and The Chinese High School 華僑中學  in Singapore.

(Incidentally, my own relationship with Tan Kah Kee runs deep.  The Chinese High School was my alma mater; and at the University of California, Berkeley, my other alma mater, there was also a Tan Kah Kee Hall named in Mr Tan’s honor, and likely funded by his foundation.)

While less prevalently known, Tan Kah Kee also left a lasting legacy on Chinese architecture, pioneering a modern, Nationalist style of architecture that married Chinese traditional elements onto a Western structural form.  This style is conventionally known as the “Kah Kee” style 嘉庚风格.

This “Kah Kee” style can be seen in the original campus buildings of Xiamen University; as well as in the Lujiang Hotel 鷺江賓館 on the Amoy Bund, which owes its existence to Tan Kah Kee. (Another well-known example of this form of architecture is the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce Building in Singapore.)

There are two parts to this photo-gallery.  The first explores the unique architecture of Xiamen University and takes a detour through the adjacent Nanputuo Temple 南普陀寺, up into the hills for a panoramic view of the entire university campus.

The second part takes in the venerable Lujiang Harbourview Hotel, established by Tan Kah Kee in 1958, just three years before he passed away.

I stayed at this hotel during my short sojourn in Xiamen, and while it isn’t quite to the four-star standards of other Grand Hotels on this tour – granted, it really wasn’t of the same league or era – I felt a strong sense of place and history here, particularly as I sat out on my balcony – the unique stone balconies being an iconic fixture of the Kah Kee style – overlooking the old Amoy waterfront, and Gulangyu Island in the near distance.

Part I – Xiamen University and Nanputuo Temple

The university crest reads “Universitas Amoiensis,” referencing the older name of Xiamen.

The Kianlam Assembly Hall 建南大會堂 is a fine specimen on the “Kah Kee” style, with soaring Chinese rooves on a palatial foundation.

The Assembly Hall presides over the University’s Olympic-size school-field and running track; which itself echoes the design of The Chinese High School’s main building and schoolfield in Singapore.

View of dormitories that flank the school-field.

The High-rise Kah Kee Tower 3, surrounded by Kah Kee Towers 1, 2, 4 and 5, presides over Furong Lake 芙蓉湖.

The almost brand new Science and Art Centre.

Student dormitories along the Furong Lake are reminiscent of both Hampton Court in London, and pavilions in the Forbidden City, Beijing.

Students leisurely cycling along another campus building from the 1930s.

The entrance to Nanputuo Temple, which sits right beside the Gates to Xiamen University.

One of the many pavilion and courtyard ensembles in the temple complex.

The Pavilion of Great Sorrow 大悲殿, Nanputuo Temple.

Sign of the Buddha.

Panoramic view of Xiamen University to the left and Nanputuo Temple at centre, from atop the hill.

And finally, Xiamen University’s very own beach, which sits at the southern end of the campus.

Part II – The Lujiang Hotel 

View of the Lujiang Hotel 鷺江賓館 from the waterfront.

Close-up of the entrance to the hotel.

The opulent lobby and reception area.

Close-up of the side view of the Lujiang Hotel, showing the iconic balconies – typical of the “Kah Kee” style.

Having a glass of wine on my balcony overlooking the Amoy Waterfront and Gulangyu Island.

The hotel’s ground-floor restaurant.

A moment of silence – the tea set in my room.

The restaurant’s highly popular roof-top restaurant, serving typical Xiamen and Hokkien dishes (many of which exist also in Singapore); and with a view of Gulangyu Island.

Cai Por Neng 菜圃卵 – also known as preserved radish omelette; also a very popular dish in Singapore.

Hir Wan Teng 魚丸湯, or Fishball soup. While the fishball’s look a little more rough-and-ready, the dish itself is also a typical Singaporean dish.

View of the Lujiang Hotel at night.

Finally….The Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry Building was built in 1963, in the Kah Kee Style. Note the distinctive balconies.

A sweet “Welcome home from your travels!” haiku. =)

A couple of months ago, in my post “The Grass is Green enough Here, wherever Here is,” I introduced the idea that a whole generation of my friends, including myself, belonged to “the Ariel Generation”, “Ariel referring to the name of The Little Mermaid in Disney’s film of the same name, and the word “generation” acknowledging the fact that all of us were born in the 70s, and would have grown up having seen The Little Mermaid in our early to late teens – our formative years, so to speak.

My, or OUR theme tune, rather, was and continues to be Ariel’s number – “Part of Your World,” in which she sings of her collection of “gadgets and gizmos a-plenty”; of how she wants to be “walking around on those…what do you call ‘em? Oh – feet!”

A generation of us, including myself, felt our hearts stir listening to that song; and our hearts – my heart, anyway – still do today. Particularly when she sings that line, “I want more!!!!!”

Because we do.  Because I do.  I want more.

I want more than this. This day-to-day-ness of life. The mundane. The routine.  The boring-ness of it all.  I want adventure. I want romance. I want to experience things that blow my mind.  I want so much more than everything I have now.  I always have. It’s part of how my generation thinks. It’s in my DNA.

BUT…

As I’ve grown older, what used to seem to me a zero-sum game, has become far more complicated.

I used to think that “WANTING MORE” meant giving everything that I had up, moving far, far away from where I was at the moment, and trying to do something completely new; completely different.  In my mind, it was an either-or scenario.  I couldn’t possibly have the “more” I wanted while still being where I was.  Which, as it so happens, typically meant Singapore.

I now understand and know that that is false; that you CAN have MORE being exactly where you are. The trick is in first identifying what exactly it is you want “more” of. In my case, it was travel, writing, cooking, culture.

And then you have to figure out what you need to do in order to get more of the “more” that you want. In my case, it was getting a job that I am basically OK with – I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it because I know how and where I’m contributing – and which, more importantly, pays me enough for me to achieve that “more” which I want.

Which has manifested itself in this multi-year Grand Tour travel, writing and culture project that I’ve always wanted to do.  (And which is due to culminate in a BOOK – something I’m still so thrilled and excited about!!!)

It’s like I realised that I’m not just ONE THING, or ONE PERSON.  I’m many.  I CAN have a goal for FAMILY; a different goal for my CAREER; and another different goal for the CREATIVE side of me.  I’m a complex entity; I’m human.

ALL OF THESE are still very much me – who I am.  And NONE of these require a Prince Eric to achieve.  I can do it all myself – as long as I’m clear that that’s how it’s got to be done.

Therein lies the myth that I’m debunking: firstly, that “I want more” means changing one’s circumstance drastically and entirely.  You will fail if you think that the solution is in moving countries – i.e. in seeking answers in EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCE, rather than within ONE’S SELF.  Unless, of course, “more” is, intrinsically and truthfully, to be in another country.

And secondly, that “I want more” means just one thing.  It could mean a whole bunch of things.  “More” means MORE, after all, not LESS.  Nor is “more” about exchanging one thing for something else.  MORE is about ADDING ON – adding richness, complexity (good or bad) and fullness to life.

What “I want more” means is to add to one’s experiences, while appreciating how what one has and what one is going through is really part of the process by which one adds to one’s experiences.  It means to be innovative about how to achieve one’s goals – cos there’s not only one – within the constraints of circumstance (because there are always constraints, wherever one is).

A.K.A…  It’s about choosing to stay in the sea, but also finding creative ways to experience the land, while still being ultimately anchored in the sea.

Tricky… but satisfying.

And so “Part Of Your World” will continue being my theme tune, and I will continue to experience a frisson of excitement and longing in equal parts whenever I sing the line “I want more!!!”

I know now that I don’t need some Prince Eric to give me “more.”

I can go get it myself.

I just have to clear what it is, and that its not just one thing.

Life, like this mural in Queen Street, Singapore, is a rich, complex, colourful sort of thing…

The mighty Huangpu River (黃浦江), the heart of Shanghai.

Shanghai is one of those epic cities that once you get to know, you will find impossible to forget.  It lingers on in the mind like an ex-lover, suggesting drama and romance.

It is also one of the six cities in the world I consider HOME, because (some of) my immediate family, whom I love very much, live and work there.

Shanghai is furthermore, THE quintessential Treaty Port, being one of the original five treaty ports forced open in 1842 in the aftermath of the First Opium War.  It would become the most important port and financial centre not only in the British Empire, but in all of Asia.

For evidence of how mighty it once was – and how it has already reclaimed that eminent position today, look no further than the Shanghai Bund: one of the most iconic views in the world.

View of the Shanghai Bund (上海外灘) from Pudong, across the river.

Erected as a tangible and imposing manifestation of (the BRITISH) EMPIRE, it has miraculously survived two World Wars and a Cultural Revolution, and today still stands as a reminder of the city’s heady past.

Across the river, however, a new Shanghai, replete with towering contemporary monuments in glass, steel and neon looms – a symbol of the city’s 21st century aspirations; building on and never once repudiating that which the old colonial city across the river represented.

Shanghai is the new China!  So this new skyline proclaims.  Though of course, this is simply a recent incarnation of the same narrative that has been in place since the early 1900s.

Shanghai has and always will be the new China – dynamic, heady and exciting.  It was so in 1842.  It was so in 1932.  And so it is today.

The Pudong (浦東) skyline at night.

Which is not to say that there is nothing deeper and older about the city.

The city proper consisted/consists of three separate cities – the International Settlement, managed by the British and Americans, and featuring the Bund and other famous landmarks such as Bubbling Well Road (today’s Nanjing Road); the French Concession, an almost-suburban landscape of colonial villas and leafy boulevards of plane trees; and the Chinese City, once-walled, and retaining a kind of messy mediaevalism that still holds true today.

One of the oldest landmarks in the Chinese City is the venerable Jingan Temple, which has been in existence since 247 A.D.  Naturally, like many other ancient temples in China, Jingan Temple has been moved from its location and rebuilt multiple times in its almost two millenia of existence, and today’s temple (existing on site as of the 1200s A.D.) was majorly refurbished very recently to re-open only in 2010.  Previous to that, and during much of the ’50s- ’80s, the temple had (tragically) been converted into a plastics factory.

The ultra-modern and super-ancient Jingan Temple (靜安寺).

This – my 5th stop on the Grand Tour of East Asia – will see me exploring the history and architecture of Shanghai – the city “On The Sea” (which is what the name “Shanghai” 上海 literally means) – in a series of posts.

The first will be on the Shanghai Bund – the heart of Old and New Shanghai; the second on the International Settlement that exists behind the imposing edifices of the Bund. This will be followed by a wander through the French Concession, touching upon two other important communities in Shanghai: the White Russians and the Jews.

Finally, we will stop in at the famous Cathay Hotel, today known as the Fairmont Peace Hotel – Shanghai’s grande dame and my home away from home whenever I stop in the city.

This series of posts is above all, a tribute to a city I love; one which I call Home.  An epic city the kind the world only has a few of, and which said world has missed in the half a century in which it retreated into grey (Communist) seclusion.

Today, it preens in full technicolour splendour.

One of the pair of lions at the entrance to the former Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Building on the Bund.

The art deco Broadway Mansions, built in 1934 along the Suzhou Creek, and one of Shanghai’s most famous landmarks. It channels Manhattan, New York.  

The Oriental Pearl Tower (東方明珠塔)

View of the Shanghai Bund from the top of the Fairmont Peace Hotel.

The Shanghai Bund is the centerpiece of its namesake city, Shanghai – that most quintessential of all Treaty Ports in China, and one of the greatest city’s in recent history. It takes pride of place in the International Settlement, jointly administered by the British and the Americans.

Extending roughly a mile across the waterfront of the Huangpu River 黃浦江, the bund houses more than 50 different buildings from across the history of Shanghai’s colonial past.  On the waterfront – the Bund proper – the buildings date from the 1860s to 1948.  Most recently in 2010, The Peninsula Hotel erected its Shanghai branch at Bund #29 – the first building to be erected on the Bund in 50 years.

While that which we traditionally regard as The Shanghai Bund consists of the 23 buildings situated on the waterfront, there is another cluster of historic buildings to the north of the bund which huddles along the banks of the Suzhou Creek 蘇州河.  This is what’s known as the Waitanyuan 外灘園 district, which is undergoing extensive renovations to become Rockbund – a cultural, museum and lifestyle precinct.

(There is also the French Bund, or Quai de France, which sits to the south of the British Bund, and has its own small string of historic buildings… but that’s not covered in this post.)

This visual and architectural tour of the Bund has two parts – it first takes in the Bund proper, and meanders over to the Suzhou Creek and Waitanyuan area for a quick peek.

The Bund Proper

We start off at the very edge of the French Bund and take a slow stroll along the waterfront, admiring the 23 (now 24) majestic buildings with their eclectic styles of architecture.

Between the French and the British Bund sits the Gutzlaff Signal Tower. this version was built by the British and the Dutch in 1907, to replace a French-built tower, named after a German missionary, Karl Gutzlaff.

Behind Bund #1 sits the former Telegraph Building of the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Company, erected in 1927.

Bund #1 is the McBain Building, also known as the Royal Dutch Shell Asiatic Petroleum Building as the latter were the main tenants for the bulk of the building’s history. Designed by Moorhead & Halse in a neo-classical design, and erected in 1916.

Bund # 2 is the former Shanghai Club, designed by Moorhead & Halse in an Edwardian Beaux-Arts style and erected in 1910. It is famous for its Long Bar.

Bund #3 is the former Union Insurance Company Building, designed by Palmer & Turner in Italian Renaissance style and erected in 1916. In 2004, it was restored and re-opened as 3 on the Bund, a restaurant, bar and lifestyle destination.

Bund #5 is the Nisshin Kisen Kaisha (Japanese Steamship Company) Building, designed by Lester Johnson & Morris in a Beaux-Arts style and erected in 1921. It was restored and reopened in 1999 as M on the Bund.

Bund #6 is the former Russell & Co Building, one of the oldest buildings on the Bund, designed by Morrison & Gratton in a Neo-Gothic style and erected in 1881.

Bund #7 is the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Company Building, designed by Atkinson & Dallas in an Italianate style and erected in 1906. It houses the Bangkok Bank and the Thai Consulate today.

Bund # 9 is the oldest building on the Bund, formerly the offices of Russell & Co. Probably designed by Atkinson & Dallas and erected in the 1860s. In 1901, it housed the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company.

Bund # 12 is the former Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Headquarters, designed by Palmer & Turner in a Neoclassical style and erected in 1923. Today, it houses the Pudong Development Bank.

Bund #13 is the Custom House, designed by Palmer & Turner in a Beaux-Arts style and erected in 1927. It is an iconic landmark on the Bund.

Bund #14 is the Bank of Communications, the last building to be built on the Bund until the Peninsula Hotel. Designed by CH Gonda in an Art Deco style and opened in 1948, just before Mao’s Communists took over Shanghai.

Right beside the Bank of Communications is an obviously recently-erected building that might be a wing of the Bank. It has no unique address.

Bund #15 is the Russo-Asiatic Bank, designed by Heinrich Becker in a Classical style and opened in 1902.

Bund #16 is the former Bank of Taiwan, designed by Lester Johnson & Morris in an eclectic style and opened in 1926. The Bank of Taiwan was a Japanese bank because Taiwan was a Japanese colony at the time.

Bund #17 is the North China News Building, designed by Lester Johnson & Morris in a Beaux-Arts style and opened in 1924.

Bund #18 is the former Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China Building (the fore-runner of today’s Standard Chartered Bank). Designed by Palmer & Turner in a Neo-classical style and opened in 1923.

Bund #19 is the famous Palace Hotel, designed by W Scott of Scott & Carter in an Edwardian style and opened in 1909. Today it houses the Swatch Art Peace Hotel.

Bund #20 is the former Cathay Hotel, established by the British-Jewish mogul, Sir Victor Sassoon in 1929, just before the Great Depression struck in New York. It is designed by Palmer & Turner in an Art Deco style.

Bund #23 is the Bank of China Building, designed by Lu Qianshou of Palmer & Turner in a Chinese Nationalist style and opened in 1941.

Bund #25 is the Yokohama Specie Bank Building, designed by Palmer & Turner in a Beaux-Arts style and opened in 1924.

Bund #26 is the Yangtze Insurance Company building, started by Russell & Co in 1862 to provide shipping insurance. Designed by Palmer & Turner and opened in 1920.

Bund #27 is the former headquarters of Jardine Matheson & Company. Designed by AW Graham-Brown of Stewardson & Spence in a Beaux-Arts style and opened in 1922.

Bund #28 is the Glen Line Steamship Company building, designed by Palmer & Turner in a Beaux-Arts style and opened in 1921.

Bund #29 is the former Banque de L’Indochine building, designed by Atkinson & Dallas in an Italian Renaissance style and opened in 1914.

Bund #31 is the new Shanghai branch of the Peninsula Hotel, opened in 2010. It is the first building to be built on the Bund in 60 years, and possibly the last.

View of the Bund from Ground level.

Bund #33 is the former British Consulate, designed by Grossman & Boyce and opened in 1873.

The Suzhou Creek and Waitanyuan Area

North of the Bund proper, across the Suzhou Creek, sits some of Shanghai’s most iconic pieces of architecture – the Astor Hotel and Broadway Mansions.  On this side of the Creek behind the Bund and in the vicinity of the former British Consulate is the Waitanyuan district.

The Garden Bridge, one of the oldest bridges in Shanghai, built over the Suzhou Creek. This version was built in 1908.

The Russian Consulate was designed by Hans Emil Lieb and erected in 1917.

The famous Astor House Hotel is run by the Kadoorie family. It was first built in 1911 to a design by Atkinson & Dallas.

The famous Broadway Mansions, designed by Bright Fraser with Palmer & Turner in an Art Deco style and erected in 1934.

The Shanghai Post and Telecommunications Building, designed by Stephenson & Spence in a Beaux-Arts style and erected in 1924.

The British Consul General’s Residence, in the compounds of the former British Consulate.

The former Shanghai Rowing Club was designed by Scott & Carter in an Edwardian style and erected in 1905.

The Shanghai Union Church was erected in 1886 in a Gothic style.

View down Yuanmingyuan Road in the Rockbund development.

The China Baptist Publication Society, designed by Ladislav Hudec in a New York Gothic style and erected in 1930.

Somekh Mansions, designed by Moorhead, Halse & Robinson in an eclectic style and erected in 1927.

Ampire & Co. Building, designed by Atkinson & Dallas in the Arts andCrafts style, and erected in 1908.

Abraham Building, designed by Stephenson & Spence in a Renaissance style and erected in 1911. Established by D.E.J. Abraham, a Sephardi Jew.