Macau Handover

MSLF's sister organization, the Association of Chinese Culture and Art of Macau, with the support of the governments of the People's Republic of China, Macau, and Portugal, was the coordinator of a large-scale exhibition about Macau held in Beijing in September and October 1999. Mr. Ambrose So and Prof. K.C. Fok of MSLF were members of the organizing committee for the exhibition. Under the title "Macau Handover Commemorative Grand Exhibition," this event celebrated the transfer of administration to China by introducing the people of Beijing to some of the salient features of Macau's history, culture, and society, and its direction for the future, focusing especially on the important role Macau has played as a center of cultural interchange. Display items included Christian sacred art objects; early Portuguese books, periodicals, photographs and maps published in or about Macau; replicas of sixteenth-century Portuguese costumes and of Ming Dynasty Chinese costumes; artifacts about Sun Yat-sen's connection with Macau; scale models of a Portuguese "nau" (the sixteenth century trading ships that made the journey to Asia) and of a Chinese junk; photographs and artifacts about Macanese culture and cuisine; photographs of Macau's unique architecture; and scale models of the infrastructure and development projects of recent years, including the Nam Van Lakes project, the Cultural Center, the Macau Tower, the international airport, the university, and so on.

This exhibition received research support and funding from several institutions. In China: the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Communications, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, both the Beijing and Macau offices of the New China News Agency, China's First Historical Archive, the Revolutionary Museum in Beijing. In Macau: the Diocese of Macau, the Maritime Museum of Macau, and the Macau Museum.