The hotel where the 20th Century stayed when it passed through Macau
Translation Daisy Wong
The first building in Macau with a lift, the “tallest in the whole of Portugal’s overseas territories”, and according to the creator of James Bond, British author Ian Fleming “the world’s largest gambling and self-indulgence house”. After being closed for some years, Hotel Central has recently reopened its doors. Macau’s history has its own suite with a view of the 20th century.
The engineers who took the meticulous measurements to calculate the expropriation of land, the demolition of buildings, the alignment of the winding alleys, the flattening of hills and, finally, the construction of an avenue that would cross the centre of Macau, linking Praia Grande to the Inner Harbour – from the Christian section of the city to the Chinese bazaar – did not imagine that, as well as tearing up the urban fabric of the City of the Name of God, they would also be desecrating the sleep of some fantastic being, who might wake up disturbed from his deep peace.
But they would have done well to consider it, because “the foreign engineers who built the first roads and railways in China were more concerned with the beliefs of the Chinese than our priests,” Jaime do Inso explains in his book “Cenas da Vida de Macau” (Scenes from Macau Life), published in 1941, warning that in Chinese mythological traditions, the world is populated by “dragons that exert a manifest influence on mortals, beneficial or terrible, according to the favourable or angry disposition of the monsters that dwell under the earth or in the waters”.
Therefore, prudence would have dictated that “nothing should be done to irritate the sleeping beast, and excavations of hills and valleys, without any kind of concern, without consulting the feng-sui or spirits of the waters and winds, as practised by the engineering devils of the West who, disrespectfully invested with diabolical tools and apparatus in the bowels of the motherland, was the worst procedure one could have towards the infamous dragons who would not fail, afterwards, to make the harsh weight of their wrath felt on the poor Chinese in the neighbourhood of such drillings…”
We may never know if it was the disturbance of this mythological creature during the 10-year construction of Avenida Almeida Ribeiro completed in 1918, (cutting through Rua Central the previous centre of Macau’s life, and known in Chinese precisely as Rua Direita do Cume do Dragão), that caused the chain of vicissitudes and tragedies that reached their height during the Japanese invasion of China and the Pacific War (1937-1945). The main road ran along the artery that the Chinese preferred to call San Ma Lou (New Avenue) and Tai Ma Lou (grand avenue), indifferent to the Minister for the Colonies who, in 1913, authorised the expropriation (and subsequent demolition) of 130 houses.
But perhaps the spirits weren’t completely displeased; after all, Almeida Ribeiro also gave birth to Macau’s most important commercial district, which has remained so over time. Watching it all, with a privileged place and view, right in the middle of the avenue, was Hotel Central. And so it remains to this day.
A lift to the roof garden
In this story, just as there is a Macau before and after Avenida Almeida Ribeiro, there was also another hotel in the same building before Hotel Central, called the President (nothing to do with the other hotel of the same name that still exists in Macau).
You have to go back to the 1920s: “The world was witnessing phenomena such as the rise of cinema, the discovery of beaches, the emergence of the ‘pin ups’ and the increasingly reductive role of difference and distance assumed by newspapers,” says Luís Andrade de Sá in “A História na Bagagem” (A History in Luggage), a “chronicle of the old hotels of Macau”, published in 1989. “It’s a decade of vertigo, and the new and strange musical rhythms, as well as the dazzling appearance of aeroplanes, give it a flavour of the speed at which change takes place.”
Although it rested in the shadow of Hong Kong’s breathtaking progress, with incipient tourism and no planning or structure, the changes that were shaking the world did not pass Macau by. So it was in 1928, “which will go down in Macau’s history as the year of the hotel revolution, with the opening of the Riviera [on the corner opposite the BNU, where there is now a Bank of China] and the President”, each pulling rank and claiming to be “the best hotel in the Far East” or that “there is no better in the world”.
The President was inaugurated on Sunday July 28 of that year. The governor, Artur Tamagnini Barbosa, officiated at the ceremony which opened 80 rooms and ten lounges and “ushered in a new era in the hotel industry”, in which, Andrade de Sá notes, “for the first time a building of similar dimensions was built to function exclusively as a hotel”. Macau now had its first skyscraper.
“On that day and in that place, Macau also saw its first system of electric lifts which, in a minute, went from the entrance to the roof garden, where you could enjoy a magnificent and airy view.” Rumour has it that there was a rush to try out the modern facility. “But the biggest surprise the hotel had in store for the public was undoubtedly its cinema, the President Cinematograph, which seated four hundred people.”
From President to Grand Central Hotel
Despite its impressive new features, the President was to be short-lived. In late 1930, the hotel changed ownership and became the Grand Central Hotel.
The new big attraction, the Hou Hing Club, was on the sixth floor, which promised nights of exciting entertainment. “The Hou Hing cabaret,” writes Andrade de Sá, “was the largest dance hall in the city, with private jazz, entertainment and billiards. Next to it, the Riviera’s tea dances didn’t exist and the difference was precisely the large number of women who were concentrated in the Central”. As well as the “private dancers”, there were “the harlots from Rua da Felicidade, a communion that didn’t work out, often ending in fisticuffs between the two groups who fought over the customers”. With the scenes of violence, police inspections also became recurrent.
“Guests were robbed [sometimes by their own employees] and several times bombs were set off by pirates in an attempt to blackmail the Iun Iun company, the concessionaire of fantan, that there were gambling rooms in that hotel,” recalls “A History in Luggage”.
In those days, piracy was part of everyday life and was not limited to the busy waters between Macau and Hong Kong. Gangs prowled Macau’s opium and gambling parlours, always on the lookout for the next scam. Developments such as the Grand Central Hotel became centres of attraction for criminals and the threats never stopped. First, the intimidating letters demanding money in exchange for protection; then, the bombs that exploded when requests were not met.
The image of “noir” Macau, a den of vice and thugs, spread around the world. In September 1932, local newspaper A Voz de Macau published a series of articles on “the leprosy of vices”, including “cursed gambling”, the “vicious sources of gambling”, accused of destroying homes and causing countless victims, often covered by the “protective cloak of silence”. In 1925, the newspaper A Pátria, on the front page of its April 25 edition, asked: “Is Macau, as they call it, a city of vices?” It wasn’t a difficult question to answer, but for some folks, reality tends to be hard to accept.
War knocks on the door
It didn’t take long for decay to take hold of Macau’s new hotels. Not even the pioneering lift escaped. A few years after its debut, which allowed the “vertiginous ascent” of the President’s six floors in just one minute, Luís Andrade de Sá says that breakdowns were frequent. The feeling of insecurity was not only fuelled by threats and bombs. A Voz de Macau warned about the operating conditions of the lift shaft, describing the “happiness” that a group of people felt when they didn’t fall to the ground due to a “sudden breakdown”.
But the biggest upheaval, and not at all sudden, began in Macau in mid-1937, with the gradual approach of the Japanese invasion of China. Before that, however, there was still time for another significant change in what was becoming a major industry in Macau.
In May of that fateful year, the long reign of the Tai Heng company began. For a quarter of a century, until 1961, it held the exclusive rights to operate Fantan, the favourite game of Chinese gamblers. During this period, Central Hotel (as the new owners, Fu Tak Iam and Kou Ho Neng, renamed it) would continue to take centre stage, and even grew from six to nine floors.
Other concerns loomed on the horizon, however. “The second Sino-Japanese war”, records Jorge Godinho, in “Os Casinos de Macau” (Macau Casinos), “began on July 7, 1937 – two months after the Tai Heng contract was signed”.
On October 18, 1937, the then Portuguese Minister for the Colonies, Francisco Machado, wrote to the President of the Council of Ministers, who was also Minister for Foreign Affairs, António de Oliveira Salazar, expressing “concerns and apprehensions about Macau’s financial situation, added to others derived from the political aspect of the Colony in the face of [the] Sino-Japanese conflict”. Machado explained that “several hundred, if not thousands, of refugees, both Portuguese and Chinese, have flocked to Macau from Canton and Shanghai, almost all of them in precarious circumstances, forcing the colony’s government to provide for their subsistence, which has led to considerable unforeseen expenses”.
“Uneasiness” was gripping the population, the minister warned, emphasising how gamblers had turned away from lotteries and gaming houses, a major source of revenue for the administration. The wave of refugees was beginning and would grow. In a short time, they would double Macau’s population.
On the other side of the Portas do Cerco, the Japanese were implacable. In September 1937, newspaper A Voz de Macau ran with the headline “The Sino-Japanese conflict in Shanghai”, reporting on the attacks being carried out by Japanese aircraft and how “all the borders” of the invaders “have been considerably extended”. They advanced southwards, towards Guangzhou, the main Chinese trading post.
The approaching conflict was felt in Macau as a growing and palpable threat. From then on, the war would “greatly affect the course of Macau’s public affairs”, as Joaquim Marques Esparteiro, the 100th governor of Macau, summarised in a 1952 report.
The Japanese ended up dominating southern China in October 1938, when they finally took Guangzhou. With the occupation of the neighbouring district of Zhongshan, Macau’s difficulties became a daily struggle.
A Land that lacked nothing
On December 8,1941, less than 24 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour that shocked the United States, the Japanese invaded Hong Kong with the aim of preventing the passage of strategic goods to China. On December 12, they occupied the New Territories and the Kowloon peninsula. Six days later, they reached the island that gave its name to the then British colony. On Christmas Day, the governor of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Young, announced his surrender to the Empire of the Land of the Rising Sun.
For Macau, the consequences were immediate. For the next four years, it would be cut off from the world while a conflict raged in the small territory, in a neutrality that had little in the way of peace and quiet.
Macau’s ambiguous nature, its contradictions and contrasts, were exposed as never before. A haven for thousands of refugees, Macau was a place to conspire, collaborate and resist. Survival. It was all or nothing. While some made a profit selling the scarce goods that everyone was looking for, others starved to death on the streets. There was no shortage of cannibalism or lavish banquets.
In its compromised neutrality that left the door ajar, Macau became a haven for smugglers and speculators. The Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese all became involved in trade, importing and exporting goods that paid well in Macau or on the other side of the border, where there was an imperative to keep the resistance against the invaders alive. Once the war was over, accounts had to be settled and murders in broad daylight, in the street, were not uncommon.
“Macau was thus awash with money and wealth, a land that lacked nothing, not even the beautiful women who sold themselves for gold, boasting a spectacular life of pleasure and joy that was undoubtedly a shameful affront to humanity, who were enduring the fury of a ferocious war without quarter, suffering the most atrocious misery in a hallucinated and mad world,” recalls António de Andrade e Silva in his book “Eu Estive em Macau Durante a Guerra” (I Was in Macau During the War), written in 1946 but only published in 1991.
There was no shortage of delicacies such as shark’s fin soup or swallow’s nests at the lavish meals that never stopped being organised. All accompanied by the best French wines, to the sound of orchestras formed by Filipino musicians who had fled Hong Kong.
“I had great parties almost every night,” Stanley Ho, one of the men who was able to seize the opportunities that the strange circumstances of the war provided, would later recall. Perhaps better than anyone, the future king of gambling knew that luck was in demand.
“Bohemian nights” and misery in Hotel Central
If Hotel Central had a guest book of dishonour, its pages would be full of Japanese names. It was there that the military and special services agents gathered in a Macau that was only unofficially occupied.
On a typical day in a city besieged by war, describes Andrade e Silva, who captained the Port of Macau, “as usual, the Japanese, who had made Macau their headquarters and tourist resort, spent the night at Hotel Central, where they could enjoy all the pleasures that the Colony could offer at this time of tragedy – good Chinese food, drinks, gambling and women…”. In the city, the Japanese felt “at home, treated with the indulgence of a neutral people who receive through them everything that is indispensable to life… in exchange for blood”.
The “bohemian” nights at Hotel Central began with abundant dinners accompanied by “courteous and permanent toasts”. Towards the end, stomachs resented the excesses and “some guests left the Hotel in irregular curves, often after violent conflicts in the ballroom, with ridiculous displays of valour, pistol in hand. They would then appear in the street drunk and unconscious, in a horrible offence to the misery of the starving people who, at the door of the Hotel, were waiting for a handout and were kicked out.” Andrade e Silva says that “on one of these occasions, the misery and hunger of a human being was revealed: two cadaverous boys, who were waiting on the pavement for a handout from some grandparents, threw themselves wildly on the disgusting vomit, and with their hands on the ground, approached the half-digested food, eating like dogs that horrible mixture impregnated with alcohol”.
There seemed to be no limit to the descent into the depths. Historian Manuel Teixeira guarantees that, during the war, Hotel Central “bought children” and, after fattening them up, “cooked and served them to customers”. According to Gabriel Teixeira, who governed Macau during this period, 27,000 people died in the city in the first year of the war. In the previous decade, mortality had fluctuated between 3,000 and 4,000 a year.
Alexandre Gomes dos Santos, the doctor who ran Macau’s Health Services at the time, said in a 1946 report that “every morning, the police and even private individuals would ask the Central Medical Centre to remove dozens of corpses found under the city’s arcades, among the starving people who took refuge there at night, fleeing from China at war”.
Crimes and associates
Somehow, life had to go on. In Macau, that meant that gambling couldn’t stop. There were bets that fortunes would change. Hotel Central’s croupiers couldn’t catch a break and the criminal gangs, which were proliferating in the atmosphere of general confusion, found a source of appetising wealth in Macau’s most popular hotel.
On Christmas Eve 1939, Hotel Central was the target of “a terrible bomb explosion”, reported A Voz de Macau, stating that “the house was full, with visitors coming from Hong Kong and many parts of Guangdong”. In the panic, “hundreds of people fled” and “many suffered injuries”. Fu Tak Iam, the owner of Hotel Central, was in the hotel at the time.
The richest man in Macau (and his hotel) continued to be a favourite target of the gangs and was even kidnapped for months in 1946, having lost part of an ear, cut off as evidence in a ransom demand. The episode, one of the most twisted of this period, is said to have involved Portuguese leaders of the PSP, in alleged collusion with the gangs.
These were the accounts that the war had left unresolved, and which were taking their toll as Macau tried to restore normality after the conflict ended. “The big orchestras in the hotels were replaced by local elements without this diminishing the turnout at the cabarets,” observes Luís Andrade de Sá. The music was different, but the spirit remained the same.
In October 1949, Notícias de Macau reported that “sinful Macau” was “now the cleanest city in the Far East” and was “on the way to complete regeneration”. This was the conclusion of a foreign reporter from the Washington Times – Herald, who assured that “before the war, stories abounded about Macau, an open city, with its opium chasms, gambling hells and dangerous neighbourhoods”. On the contrary, “today, the Portuguese administration has waged a continuous war on opium smokers, has torn down gambling houses and has made the smuggling trade more discreet”.
At Hotel Central, the American newspaper guaranteed, “anyone can stroll freely through the halls of the tall building, even on Saturdays and Sundays, without encountering players who outnumber the employees”. There was nothing to fear. “Macau today is the cleanest, quietest and coolest city in the entire Far East. The unique curves of its cobbled streets are guarded day and night by police patrols and troops armed with rifles, pistols and hand-held machine guns. Its three Portuguese-language newspapers are censored. Labour associations are unwelcome. The power of the Portuguese is feared. There is less risk there than in neighbouring Hong Kong.”
The “biggest ‘house of ill repute’ in the world”
In the 1940s and the following decade, before and after the war, Hotel Central was the centre of a city whose prosperity sometimes depended on trade with the Japanese when they occupied mainland China, or, after the war, relied on smuggling to Communist China.
Times may have been different after the war, but Macau’s largest hotel retained its reputation. After all, the city was “famous for the first lighthouse built on the entire coast of China”, for the “giant ruins of St Paul’s Church, and finally, for the largest ‘house of ill repute’ in the world”. This is how Ian Fleming, creator and author of James Bond, introduced the world to Hotel Central, “the world’s largest gambling and self-indulgence parlour”.
Fleming visited Macau in 1959 when he was preparing Thrilling Cities, a travel book that he would publish in 1963.
In the chapter dedicated to Macau, Hotel Central is the main character, only overshadowed by the brilliance radiated by the “gold king of the Orient”, the “enigmatic Doctor Lobo of Villa Verde in Macau”, to whom Fleming felt “irresistibly drawn”, with “the internal Geiger counter of a thriller writer working furiously”.
“It’s not exactly a hotel. It’s a nine-storey skyscraper, by far the largest building in Macau, and it’s dedicated exclusively to so-called human vices. It has another unique feature. The higher you go up the building, the prettier and more expensive the girls, the higher the stakes at the gaming tables and the better the music,” Fleming wrote.
On the ground floor, the ordinary Chinese labourers, who filled the streets and alleys of Macau in an incessant tingling, could “choose a girl of his class and play for pennies, placing his bet on a fishing rod contraption through a hole in the floor to the gaming tables below”. Those with deeper pockets could “climb through various skies until they reached the earthly paradise on the sixth floor. Above this are the bedrooms”.
“The sixth floor was spacious and well-lit, with the kind of pseudo-modern décor you’d find in a once expensive French café that’s already in decline. Across the foyer was gambling hell, to which we were drawn by the clatter of the dice and the shouts of the attractive croupiers. Here we found Fantan being played and a rather complicated dice game known as hi-lo. Having read about fantan back in my Doctor Fu-Manchu days, when I assumed it was the most sinful game on the face of the earth, I headed straight for the fantan table, exchanged a hundred Hong Kong dollars for chips and sat down firmly at the sparsely occupied table next to the dealer, an almond-eyed sorceress dressed in a green cabaña. On the other side of the table, next to the chip rack, was a similarly dressed girl with an air of authority. She ran the game, while the girl on my right made the necessary moves.”
The evening (and the game) proceeded. “While I happily lost my hundred dollars, enjoying the gentle ritual, the authoritative girl opposite was never wrong in guessing the winning number from the pile. It was something extraordinary, and the girl smiled appreciatively when she heard my polite applause.” After this “delicate piracy”, time for other vices.
It was time to head to the dance hall. “The place had a central, well-lit dance floor and a well-disciplined eight-piece combo playing good but conventional jazz. Twenty or thirty ‘hostesses’ sat in the shadows around the walls. Dick and I settled on a comfortable stool in the sparsely frequented room and ordered gin and tonics and two hostesses. Mine was called Garbo, ‘the same name as the film star’, he explained.
The evening was still in its infancy, but “as the reader will be relieved to know, it ended decently in a little snowstorm of twenty-dollar bills and protestations of undying love, and Dick and I left the magnificent Central Hotel on a wave of virtue and elation, showering blessings on Mr Fu [Tak Iam] and his much-maligned nine-storey palace of ill repute”.
The end of an era
Ian Fleming didn’t know it, but he was actually saying goodbye to the golden age of Hotel Central, and to a certain era – which undoubtedly had its heyday – of Macau.
By the time Thrilling Cities was published, Tai Heng’s Fantan operations had already come to an end. Also in 1961, a public tender decided that the concession for the lucrative exclusive business would be awarded to Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau. New masters were appearing on the city’s horizon. Among them was Stanley Ho, who would personify the new era that Macau was entering.
The concession contract, signed in March 1962, provided for “three minimum obligations”, says Jorge Godinho. “The first was to build a ‘model casino’ and the second was to build a ‘luxury hotel’.” It can be deduced that the “qualification of the future casino was obviously a criticism of the operation that had taken place at Hotel Central, which, in the opinion of the Administration, was not at all a model to follow. The choice of this word was intended to raise the bar considerably”.
In a land of successive transformations, in which much is lost and little is created, the old hotels “may still have a lot to tell,” Luís Andrade de Sá ponders at the end of his book, the only one dedicated to the memories that came and went with the guests. “If they long to be what they never were, perhaps they will survive.”
