Four things that you can’t miss in Macao

Macao Tower AJ Hackett Bungee Jump

The Macao Tower, 338 meters is the world’s 10th highest tower, with a variety of activities, such as gambling, eating and entertainment. One of the acclaimed activities is the bungee jump. The AJ Hackett Macao Tower Bungee Jump is 233 meters high, making it the highest commercial bungee jump in the world. Raise your arms and off you go! If you are not daring enough to jump that height, you can try the skywalk on the 57th floor —it’s still remarkable.

Grabbing a traditional Portuguese dinner

Macao was colonized by Portugal before 1999. As a result, Portuguese culture is deeply immersed into many comers of Macao. Many Portuguese settled and opened Portuguese restaurants in the special administrative region, but the flavor is more adaptable to Chinese people.

Marking at the Ruins of St Paul

The Ruins of St. Paul is the significant landmark of Macao. The ruins consist of the St. Paul’s College and the Church of St Paul, built in 1583. However, after three intense fires in 1595, 1601 and 1835, the church was seriously damaged. It is beyond belief that after the vigorous cycles of rebuilding and fires, the huge surface and the front stairway remain unburned.

Visiting a museum

Macao, as a tiny city with only an area of 30.5 square kilometers, has 23 eye-catching museums. Due to its unique history, both eastern and western historical sites can be found. Many of them are preserved for cultural heritage, tourist spots or museum, such as the Grand Prix Museum, Maritime Museum and Wine Museum.

Praised as the “Edgar Snow of a New Era”, British journalist Andrew Moody devoted himself to accurately reporting on China for over a decade.

Born in West Stockwith, Nottinghamshire, on Sept 2, 1960, Moody’s interest in journalism began at age 15. What came next was a storied career that would span four decades. 

A visit to Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in 1997 turned his attention to China. During that visit, he was surprised by the great changes that had taken place in China.

Moody began working for China Daily in 2008. In his 13 years at the paper, he published more than 1 million words in the newspaper group’s different publications. 

“These stories aim to explain to a wider audience the strategies and aims of the Chinese government, and also look at the challenges and difficulties it faces,” Moody wrote. “It is also to highlight important issues, which go largely ignored in the mainstream Western media, which often fail to provide a full or true picture of China.”

To better cover China, Moody read a lot. In his Beijing apartment, there were more than 160 books about the nation.

Su Qiang, a China Daily editor who worked with Moody for eight years, said: “He had read all the books that top experts had written about China, and he closely followed how the world viewed China.”

Moody also learned to speak Mandarin, traveled to most provinces and autonomous regions throughout China and immersed (沉浸于) himself in the Chinese way of life.

“China is moving into a new era in which it is much more confident about its position and status in the world. I had a definite sense of history in the making,” said Moody. He hoped that he could be one of the witnesses and reporters of this historic time. 

So even after he was diagnosed with a degenerative (退化性的) disease, Moody still soldiered on. 

“All he cared about was whether he could keep on working,” said Wang Liping, Moody’s attending doctor.

When he passed away in June, many people were sad. 

“He will be a huge loss to those who are working hard on the dialogue between China and the outside world,” said Kerry Brown, a professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College London.

An ancient plant, amaranth, is drawing attention throughout the world and connecting indigenous people (土著人) to their history. It has become a billion-dollar food and cosmetic product since the 1970s. The ancient grain can be found in greater numbers of grocery stores in the US and Mexico, and increasingly in the Asia Pacific and Europe. 

“This is a plant that could feed the world,” Beata Tsosie-Pena, a coordinator of the environmental health and justice program at nonprofit Tewa Women United, told The Guardian.  

Amaranth is actually a grain, like buckwheat (荞麦), and native to Mesoamerica, a region including southern Mexico and many counties in Central America. Its seed is a highly nutritious source of protein, vitamins and minerals. It’s proved to be an attractive product for health-conscious shoppers.

A single amaranth plant produces hundreds of seeds and can be grown in a wide variety of climates and countries from India, China, Southeast Asia, West Africa and the Caribbean. Growing amaranth has also provided a degree of economic independence for indigenous farmers in Guatemala and the US, according to The Guardian. 

It’s this resilience that allowed the plant to survive over the centuries, even when the Spanish arrived in the America in the 16th century and outlawed (宣布……非法) amaranth. Even after facing a near-extinction event in Guatemala when state forces targeted the Maya people and burned their fields, farmers preserved their amaranth seeds by hiding them in jars in the field and under their floorboards. 

“What we want is for the whole world to produce their own food,” Maria Aurelia Xitumul, a member of agricultural community Qachuu Aloom, told The Guardian. “For the seeds, distance doesn’t exist. Borders don’t exist.”

Most recently, Xitumul said that during the pandemic, people with their own gardens, especially in locked down communities, felt secure knowing they had control over their food supply, thanks to amaranth.

“Amaranth has completely changed the lives of families in our communities, not only economically, but spiritually,” added Xitumul.