"China Revolutionized": 1913

"China Revolutionized" de John Stuart Thomson foi publicado nos EUA em 1913. Macau surge no capítulo 21 - "Foreign Cities of China". Eis um excerto:

The writer in his book, The Chinese, dealt at length with the oldest foreign settlement in China, the Portugese city of Macao, and its famous author, Camoens, who wrote The Lusiads. Authors who have written on quaint medieval Macao are Doctor Eitel, Norton Kyshe, Montalto de Jesus, Kutschera, Ljungstedt, the famous Sir John Bowring and the immortal Camoens himself. The largest library on the subject is to be found in the National Libraries of Lisbon, Coimbra, and other educational centers of old Portugal. The first American consuls lived at Macao, as did also the noted Jesuit explorer Abbé Huc, in 1840, in the seminary here. 

The British artist, Chinnery, lived and painted at Macao, as did the lovely Chinese colorist, Nam Cheong. Edmund Roberts, the first American ambassador of the United States “to Siam, Cochin and Muscat” died of bubonic plague here on June 12, 1836. In a study of Macao384 the old volume of the Chinese Repository should not be left unsearched. In a temple at Wang Hiya, beyond the quaint Porto Cerco gate, the first commercial treaty between America and China was signed respectively by Cushing, Daniel Webster’s son Fletcher, and Ki Ying. The remarkable miniature garden at the governor’s summer palace on the Monte Road should be seen, and rather amusing miniature photo statues are to be seen in the cemeteries. 

The largest cement factory in China (British owned) is on Green Island, which is connected by a causeway with Macao. The silted up harbor is being dredged in an effort to bring the long lost shipping back to old Macao. There is to be railway connection with Canton, and there is palatial steamer connection with Hongkong and Canton. The modern hotels, such as the Boa Vista and the Hing Kee, are excellent, the former occupying an unusually scenic site. The drives and Praya Grande are delightful. Macao is famous for its medieval carnivals and processions. It has an ambitious Chinese population whose leading spirits are the progressive Ho Sui Tin and Fong families. Its gambling houses are possibly notorious, and its opium farm, now somewhat restricted, was once a great thorn in international and hygienic matters. (...)

Lovely flowery Macao, of fast and festival, is the favorite health resort of Hongkong, because of its soutwest monsoon in the summer months. 

The wave of the Portuguese republican revolution took a month to reach Indian Goa and Cathayan Macao. The newspapers were read by the soldiers in the two beautiful barracks which stand high over Cape Sao Francisco and beneath Monte Fort. They were then loaned to the sailors on the gunboat Patria which rose and fell on the yellow tide in the offing. 
On November 29, 1910, the sailors of the Patria landed, marched to the square where the Senato Leal stands on high ground on Rua Central in the center of the closely built city. There three volleys were fired as a signal to the troops who, a mile away, broke into the armories and armed with ball cartridge ready for liberty’s business! 

The Legionaires Regiment first proceeded to the Santa Clara Convent, drove the nuns to the steamboats lying in the inner harbor, and forced them to sail for Hongkong, forty miles away, the objection to the long intrenched religious orders being that they successfully compete with business by not paying taxes. Then the revolutionists, dragging cannon, marched to the artistic government “Palais” on the picturesque Praya Grande, where the governor and representatives of the Senato Leal were forced at the bayonet’s point to agree to the expulsion of favored religious orders, the establishment of a republic in Portugal and her colonies, the suppression of the oligarchic and religious organ, Vida Nova, and similar reforms obtained by the republicans in Portugal. 

Most wonderful to relate, as a new sign on the horizon of the twentieth century, the Chinese viceroy of Kwangtung province brought up his Chinese army to stand by and see that order elsewhere was maintained while European revolutionists, European monarchists and reactionary Catholics fought out questions of representative and popular government in a corner of the sacred soil of old China. Correctly speaking then, it was little historic Portugal, and not ancient China, that first established a republic on Chinese soil, and Portugal’s republican influence, multum in parvo, as well as America’s and France’s, has been influential with Chinese reformers.