Alex McKinley (2008-09)
Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was playing in the taxi that drove Anna Chu and myself from the airport to our new home in Macau. Grungy and disheveled from hours in airplanes and airports, my internal time zone twisted around itself, I watched the bustling activity of the city streets through the car window as the ballad hit a swelling crescendo. It ended as we stepped from the vehicle and looked across the street to witness our looming apartment complex, occupying an entire city block and, in outward appearance, looking a bit like a wayward Chicago Housing Authority project, but in the most charming way possible.
The Macanese Milieu
Life in Macau hasn't changed much since then. Although I've long since adjusted to the time change, learned a few choice Cantonese phrases, and garnered important local information (such as how the supremely circuitous bus routes actually work), I often find myself just as disoriented as the day I left the airport. I don't consider this a bad thing, however. In fact, I imagine it's to be expected in a city with such a multitude of identities-a cultural recipe that seems to be roughly two parts Chinese, one part Las Vegas, a handful of Portuguese colonialism, and a pinch of ex-patriotism.
This cultural hodgepodge is reflected primarily in the local architecture. Most of the city is devoted to vertical housing-high-rises with tiled faзades draped in fluttering laundry-yet the petite skyline is comprised entirely of shiny new casinos and hotels with regal names. Turn the right corner, however, and you'll find neighborhoods littered with old Portuguese buildings painted in trademark colonial pastels that have since gathered a thick layer of soot. Add to that the areas of town devoted to watering holes and nightclubs-establishments built mainly to entertain displaced Australians and Cirque du Soleil acrobats-and the map of the city is nearing completion.
Of course, nothing is ever that simple. For one thing, Macau is being transformed a positively head-spinning pace. What used to once be a city consisting of a peninsula and two islands has since become a peninsula and one island. The ocean that used to separate the two landmasses has since been filled in to facilitate the construction of new mega-casinos. Construction sites abound all over the city. Instead of birdcalls accompanying the morning sunlight, one is generally awoken by a cacophonous ubiquity of hammering, sawing, and riveting. Changes seem to happen literally overnight. A local diner whose rice noodles and beef dish I had grown quite fond of went from fully operational to demolished in a day. Thinking it to be gone forever, I was surprised a few weeks later when I walked by to see a brand new, fully operational version of the restaurant. The rapidity of the changes can be a bit unsettling-even the lifetime residents of the city seem to walk around in a confused daze-but the general philosophy for coping seems to be to go with the flow. Whatever may be will be. They even let you spell the name of the city with an "o" or "u" at the end, depending on your preference. Nothing seems too rigid.
Hidden Treasures
If one used a typical tourist map to explore Macau, the sights could probably all been seen in a couple days. But the city's outward simplicity is once again belied by what lies off the beaten path, and with a layout of streets that gives no credence to the concept of a grid, there are plenty of twists and turns to wander down. Most of the city's hidden treasures come in the form of local delicacies. If there's one thing that Macau has more of than casinos, it's restaurants, and it's often the places where the menu is painted on the wall in Chinese characters that offer the best delights.
Naturally, figuring out how to actually order food in these establishments can be tricky. There's always the point-over-to-the-other-patron's-dish method, which we employed after finally finding a tiny dumpling restaurant recommended to us. The place was tucked down an alleyway just a stone's throw from one of the most tourist-heavy areas of the city (things in Macau that you're looking for tend to pop up right behind you just as you've given up hope of ever finding them). If you're really lucky, however, a local resident will take you out to dine, as John, the head of our department at the university, did during our first month in the city.
I still don't exactly know what the restaurant was called, and I would likely have some difficulty trying to get back to it on my own, but I can safely say that our dinner was a candidate for "best meal of my life." Like all the best places, the establishment's outward appearance was a bit shabby, looking like just another diner-booths on the walls, circular tables in the middle, the finest in fluorescent lighting. It was popular, however, with a group of people clustered outside waiting for seats. When we made it in, John elected to do the ordering and informed us that he requested all his favorite dishes. One of the most excellent things about food in Macau is individual restaurant owners' willingness to play with genre. Traditional categorizations of cuisine tend to fall away as chefs devise new and interesting ingredient combinations in their campaign for deliciousness.
Our dishes came one after the other, in succession so rapid that we never made it halfway through one thing before the next course was added to the mix. Curried chicken in a giant bread bowl that came with useful scissors for cutting off bits to soak up the sauce. A stir-fried beef dish that was unexpectedly, though not unpleasantly, sweet. Some sort of steamed green vegetable so tasty that even a fussy child would eat it. Deep fried lotus roots that tasted like everything fast food wishes it was. Giant sliced prawns covered in melted cheeses so delicious that they made you forget you were eating something with the legs still attached. We ate until we were uncomfortably, perhaps even dangerously, full, and then ate some more because we missed the flavors.
Teaching and Learning
John is just one of many delightful coworkers at the Macau University of Science and Technology. Built at the start of the decade, M.U.S.T. is a series of green-tiled buildings sitting on the edge of the reclaimed land. The windows in all my classrooms look out onto yet another construction site where, sometime next year, the "City of Dreams" will stand. Although the school is far from perfect, with most of its problems being attributed to inefficient and, at times, seemingly pointless bureaucratic channels, the teachers are given a great deal of freedom with their classes. Macau's general theme of flexibility continues into the classrooms, as there is no one looking over shoulders.
Of course, with great freedom comes great responsibility. Classes last for an hour and forty-five minutes, and it's easy to find oneself wondering how to fill the time, while still holding students' interest. Because two semesters of English are mandatory for all M.U.S.T. students, classroom populations tend to have a wide range of ability and interest in the subject matter. While motivating the inherently apathetic is often an exercise in futility, there are thankfully more hardworking students than slackers.
For all the teaching I do, there's at least an equal amount of learning happening. Learning how to best define certain ambiguous words. Learning which classroom activities go over well with the students and which ones yield only silence and blank stares. The city itself has also taught me a great deal. Like how to give and receive directions using only descriptions of landmarks, or how following construction workers on their way home leads one to the best shortcuts. And seeing as it's only November, Macau and I still have plenty more to teach and heaps more to learn.
