文化發展

Macau:A Unique Blend of Chinese and Portuguese Culture and Language

R.D.Kirk(Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities University of Macau)

　　Although de facto a peninsula, Macau is viewed for sociolinguistic purposes, in this paper, as an "effective" island, due to the effect of the Portas do Cerco Customs Barrier in obstructing access to the landmass of Macau. The insular environment, it is argued, exhibits unusual quantum-like effects both in lan-guage and behaviour patterns. The most notable of these is the "pressure-cooker" effect of heightened stress within the island environment. Among con-tributing sources of stress is mentioned the extremely rigid, vertical align-ment of political authority. Also considered are forms of stress induced through daily interfacing of the extremely different culture-language integra repre-sented by Portuguese, Chinese, and -- more recently -- English institutions and behaviour.
　　The differential between Portuguese governmental mandates and their (Chinese) implementation is discussed. Bilingual environments are considered to be, by their very nature, stressful: Macau today is an emergent trilingual community presenting with the proportionally greater potential stress factors of its trilingual de jure insular environment.
　　The concept behind the word 'island' has always held a fascination for man-kind. The feelings which the word evokes are curiously mixed. For, an island is seen as a sort of refuge, and as such symbolises freedom; it is also perceived as a haven of idyllic purity free from provincial urban defilement. And yet, at the same time, an island is also perceived traditionally as a place of evil: of claustrophobic constraints, in which bizarre or sinister events occur. The "safe refuge" theme is frequently met with in literature, as witness the immense and perennial popular-ity of Daniel Defoe's Robin Crusoe, in which an eighteenth-century man of quite ordinary circumstances is gradually transformed into a famous character of he-roic proportions through his struggle for survival as a victim of shipwreck on an apparently deserted island.
　　This "pure haven" motif of islands is developed, for example, in the film The Blue Lagoon, wherein a young boy and girl both come of age amidst the atmos-phere of utter moral freedom which prevails upon their uninhabited island. The evil, imprisoning and sinister aspect of the very complex image of the island is at least equally well developed in literature and on the screen. This aspect of islands is foremost in fiction such as Aldous Huxley's Island, where the island, togetherwith its kingdom, represents primitive evil.
　　The Most Dangerous Game is a screen story about a madman who hunted down those cast up upon his island, systematically and with cool, sadistic precision. This film is believed in fact, with good reason, to have provided the basic inspira-tion for the most famous of the legendary serial killers, the "Zodiac Killer"-- who is still at large in America.
　　The result, then, of being shipwrecked or marooned upon a deserted island has, as it is represented in fiction and upon the filmscreen, two basic outcomes: in the first, the castaways find themselves on an island of agreeable climate, where ripe fruits and provender are everywhere at hand, and where strife, war and all forms of pollution, as well as the other problems of modern society are conspicu-ously lacking.
　　The second outcome is, in agreement with the basic theme of Sartre's Huis Cios (No Exit), that the people in one's immediate environment constitute "hell"-which is to say that this island environment is a quagmire of perpetual, inescap-able evil and suffering. And the haunting question in all of our minds today, dur-ing these very exceptional, very special times, is: which profile matches and will continue most fitly to describe the effective island of Macau?
　　Macau, we do know, is an area which was settled, or one could say "colo-nised", by the Portuguese in 1557. This is to say that a contingent arrived consist-ing of, among others, missionaries, merchants and traders, together with those persons bearing a regai portfolio who came to exercise the power of government in the new settlement. It is important to note that there were no penal offenders or other undesirable types banished to this new colony, as there certainly were, for example, amongst the original settlers of both America and Australia. The Portu-guese did not then, however, and do not now encounter an environment which is wholly familiar or wholly congenial to them, in terms of the home environment of Portugal itself.
　　Among those problems which the original colonial Portuguese encountered in Macau were a great difference of climate and enormous difficulties in commu-nication, both with the local populace, who spoke Cantonese, and with their own countrymen who had remained at home in Portugal, because of the enormous time-lag involved in the use of maritime communications of that period, which typi-cally took 18 months to 2 years-or even longer.
　　In addition, cultural artifacts were very different from those to which the Portuguese were accustomed, and under this heading we must include food and drink, housing, furniture, clothing and tools. In fact, so very distinctive was each of the two civilisations, the Chinese and the Romance European, that the accommoda-tions, the adjustments, required from either side were simply enormous.
　　Thus, it would have been an exceedingly difficult proposition for both to ex-ist in harmony, even with the best of intentions on both sides. However, in those early days, the spirit of cooperation was notably lacking, and this made things very much more stressful indeed for everyone in Macau.
　　The Portuguese in particular had to be on guard -- hence the Old Fortress in the centre of Macau, and other fortified areas which were then providentially erected for self-defence. The constant threat of attack by the Dutch upon theirsupply ships, and even upon Macau itself (as in 1622), was an additional factor which served to enhance the generally stressful atmosphere for all within the settle-ment of Macau in the early period.
　　As the bureaucratic tradition is a strong and ancient one in Portugal -- the bequeathment of ancient Rome -- so, as one might expect, that elaborate tradi-tion, with its highly structured, well-defined legal and administrative apparatus, was imposed upon Macau.
　　The framework and basic structure of government in Macau subsequent to 1557 has therefore been modelled, in large measure, upon western European, and more specifically, upon Portuguese notions and traditions of administration, of law, and of social, educational and religious institutions. The Portuguese had come to Macau for purposes of trade and commerce, and this had shaped Macau as a strong and viable trading community, at least in the early period up to 1640, when the Japan trade prerogatives were lost to the Dutch.
　　Then began a period of gradual decline, and the colony no longer thrived as previously -- until the present era, when the economic posture has been so strongly reinforced through the vastly increased volume of construction projects and through the extraordinary profitability of the legalised gambling interests in Macau, inter alia.
　　Now, at the same time, the landmass of China was very considerable indeed, and the government there was very distantly placed to the far north. This meant that communications between the capital city and Macau were particularly slow and inefficient. By the time instructions about a given situation from Beijing had been received in Macau, the situation had often changed completely.
　　Peninsular Macau (6.45 sq. kilometres) is the most crowded locale in all of Asia. Although the cost of living has been kept low, through the influx of cheap labour from the PRC, the heavy growth in population has created enor-mous pressures on public utilities, schools, food supplies, housing, medical care and other public services. In fact, as has been demonstrated (Yuan 1992), almost 53% of the population of Macau was composed of immigrants from the PRC, legal and illegal.¹
　　The basic "touch-base" concept of general amnesty for all PRC immigrants, granted to all illegals who were not apprehended physically crossing the border, which operated both in Hong Kong and in Macau (up until 1980 in the latter case), functioned greatly to promote the present circumstance in which every second Chinese resident in Macau has come from Mainland China. In addition, urban studies show that the great majority of these immigrants have come from south-em China, particularly from Guangdong. This vast exodus from the PRC has served in large measure, together with a general awareness of the reversion of Macau to China in 1999, to define the pace and quality of life in this densely packed land-mass.
　　"China and Japan are neighbouring countries, geographically. So far as Japan was concerned, from the Nara period, or perhaps even prior to that, she had been conscious of China as her neighbour and had been paying respect to Chinese cul-ture. In contrast, China, for her part, was seldom conscious of Japan as her neigh-bour. Even Japan's existence as a nation was not always evident in Chinese docu-ments, to say nothing of a Chinese interest in Japanese culture...", Yoshikawa informs us.²
　　China has always viewed her country and her people as the centre in a cultural and political sense. Evidence of these feelings towards her immediate neighbours is abundant and thoroughgoing. The Chinese applied opprobrious, pejorative designata to their neighbours, referring to the Vietnamese as "Southern Barbarians;" whilst the Japanese and Koreans were often collectively designated as the "Eastern Barbarians." The near neighbours of China therefore functioned as vassal-states, receiving many elements of culture and language from China and in return offering their homage and tribute to China. More distant countries were simply ignored by the 'Middle Kingdom'.
　　So had the Romans conquered the known world: colonising, exacting tribute and donating elements of their culture and language as they went, to those people who came under their dominion; all the while assessing these as more or less "civilised" according to the degree of their absorption of Roman culture, language and social behaviour.
　　One scholar 4has stated that "... when two cultures meet, one may tend to dominate in certain areas. In this sense, both Chinese and Western cultures are very strong indeed... In Macau... these two cultures have met and have played to a draw. Both groups are very conservative... and will not permit themselves to be affected by the other group. As each recognizes the strength of the other...members of each are doubly wary of allowing themselves to be influenced by the other".³
　　In neither system, Roman or Chinese, has there ever been a systematic, proper,or adequate form either of feedback or of democratic process inherent to the systems of government and administration. That is to say that government in both Portuguese and Chinese society was traditionally (and still is) severely vertically aligned, so that mandates came from above, without any form of consultation with,and without any wish to hear from, the governed.
　　This most regrettable lack of communication on both sides, the Portuguese and the Chinese alike, has resulted ali too frequently in one thing being mandated,and something entirely different being implemented as the end result. The University of Macau provides an excellent laboratory for the close observation of this conflict of socio-political ideologies.
　　The tremendous upsurge in interest in studying English in Macau, due in part to increased American business interests in China, is currently introducing still more stress into the 'pressure-cooker' system that makes up contemporary Macau.Christophersen has pointed out that "... any bilingual situation tends to be unstable and to give rise to tensions...."⁴ But today we have an emerging trilingual situation in Macau.
　　The Chinese way of dealing with potential aggressive or hostile confronta-tion by indirect means or by avoidance, has never been fully appreciated nor fully comprehended in the West, and this is today doubly unfortunate, as it means that native speakers of Portuguese and English alike are, while present circumstances continue, bound to suffer continued misunderstandings in dealing with the Chi-nese or with Chinese-administered institutions.
　　In another paper I shall deal separately with the culture of the local Filhos de Macao and their interesting local Macanese language, the 'Patois'; perhaps it is they who have, after all, achieved a more philosophical, less exacting pace of life in the midst of the high-stress regimen which now dominates Macau's lifestyle. But then, they have perhaps accomplished this by being neither too strenuously Portuguese nor too completely Chinese in their interactions with life.

　　Notes
　　1 D. Y. Yuan, "Illegal Immigration and Urban Living Indicators in Macau," in Bruce Taylor, D. Y. Yuan, Rufino Ramos and Wong Hon Keong (eds.), Socioeconomic De-velopment and Quality of Life in Macau, proceedings of a conference held at the Uni-versity of Macau, 28 February 1992, p. 99.
　　2 Kojiro Yoshikawa, Chugoku no Rinjin Toshite no Nihon in Zuishitsu Shu: Kanjo no Fu (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1957), p. 62.
　　3 R. A. Zepp, "Interface of Chinese and Portuguese Cultures," in R. D. Cremer (ed.) Macau: A City of Commerce and Culture (Hong Kong: UEA Press, 1987), p. 68.
　　4 Paul Christophersen, Second Language Learning Myth and Reality (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books Inc, 1973), p. 66.