Macau

Macau, which China governs as a special administrative region, faces Hong Kong across the Pearl River estuary from its western shore. It is made up of a peninsula and the islands of Taipa and Coloane, joined by Cotai, a strip of land reclaimed from the sea, and much of the rest of its ground was won from the water too. A long bridge links it to Hong Kong and Zhuhai across the estuary. The climate is subtropical, with hot, wet summers and typhoons.

Portuguese traders settled here around 1557 with the consent of Chinese officials, and for centuries the port linked China, Japan and Europe and served Jesuit missions in Asia. Of the Church of St Paul, burned in 1835, only the carved stone façade still stands above its flight of steps. Portugal claimed the territory as a colony in the nineteenth century, confirmed by treaty in 1887, and handed it back to China in December 1999, the last European colony in Asia.

Streets carry their names in Portuguese and Chinese, and the A-Ma Temple, older than the Portuguese settlement, may have given the city its name. Macanese cooking draws on Portuguese, Chinese, Malay and Indian kitchens in dishes such as minchi and African chicken, and Portuguese egg tarts are sold on almost every corner. Casinos, many of them on the Cotai Strip, earn most of the territory’s income, and the Macau Grand Prix has raced through its streets since 1954.