In Sun After Dark (Bloomsbury; 2005), Pico Iyer writers, 'The modern, shifting world has brought disorientation home to us, and mystery and strangeness; even in the most familiar places we may come upon something unsettling ...' As I walk through the streets of modernised Macau, I recall these lines from one of my favourite travel writers, and I realise that I am confronted with the opposite. This Special Administrated Region (SAR) of China was administered by Portugal from the mid-1500s to 1999, after which it was 'handed back' to the Chinese government. All around me, I can hear what I guess is Cantonese, but every now and then, a Portuguese word or two drifts to my ears and I turn around in search of the speaker, in vain. It seems as if familiar ghosts of the past are haunting me in this remote Far East Asian territory. Read full text here:https://selma-carvalho.squarespace.com/nonfiction-1/2017/7/18/travelogue-a-goan-in-macau Joao Roque Literary Journal
