On the eve of the Opium War, in 1839 (the 19th year of the Qing Dynasty’s Daoguang era), Lin Zexu, appointed by the Emperor as Minister of the Imperial Household, went to Macau on the morning of September 3, together with Deng Tingzhen, the Governor of Guangdong and a group of other local officials… This history (especially Lin Zexu and the Opium War) will not be lost on most Chinese and even Portuguese people. However, there is one question that probably 99.9% of the people around us do not know: Who was the Portuguese man who met Lin at the Lin Fung Temple during his visit?
From Lin Zexu’s arrival in Guangzhou in March of that year (1839), to the first exchange of fire between China and Britain in September off the coast of Guangdong, to the official outbreak of the Opium War in the following year (1840), Lin Zexu’s visit to Macau coincided with the eve of the storm that swept across the Chinese state. And I have always wondered: how did the people of Macau, caught between two empires, feel about being part of the tug-of-war before the war? What were the feelings of the people of Macau? And how did the hasty meeting between the Imperial Commissioner and the Portuguese official at the Temple of Lin Fung create ripples in the hearts of both sides?
The Opium War has been the subject of various creative works, but in most of the fictional and non-fictional works I have read, it is glossed over, or not mentioned at all. But the fact is that Macau was one of the key points on the eve of the Opium War, where many historical scenes were played out. How to imagine and write about Macau in this time and space is fascinating and challenging, not only for me but also, I believe, for Macau creators.
Writing about Lin Zexu and his time has always been one of my many writing projects, but how to write about him has been a challenge to me, and over the years I have been going over and over it, trying various forms and perspectives, but none were satisfactory. It’s a journey through a hundred years of time, through people and events that were unfamiliar and unheard of, and through a perspective that has never been seen before, a new look at a time of great turmoil and chaos…
Now that the novel The Curse of the Lost City has finally been written and published, the treasure chest left to Macau by history has finally been opened and presented to you, and I sincerely hope that you will enjoy the small and big surprises and small touches in it, just as I did when I first wrote the story.
