ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the ambiguity that political authorities feel towards culture and history when they are pressed to enlarge and modernize urban infrastructures (Yusuf et al. 1997, Caldeira Cabral et al. 1999). I will discuss the strategy followed by the Harbour Works Department of Macau as the city sought to reposition itself as an international trade centre. I examine Macau’s spatial transformations between 1910, when a progressive regime came to power in Lisbon, and 1930 when the first extension phase of the Porto Exterior facilities was completed. I review the tactics used to promote a new image of the Portuguese colony and seek explanations for the contradictions found in the official discourse on the changing environment. I rely mostly on the comparison of the visual narratives provided by the tourist guidebooks published during the period (Ho 1994, Pittis et al. 1997). Paying attention to the omissions, repetitions and silences found in the descriptions of this unique historical landscape allows me to test the limits set by culture to the globalization processes that are transforming the southern coast of China (Cartier 2001).
