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Going for the gold

Going for the gold

Beijing gears up for the Olympics, and beyond

Looking utterly surreal as it surfaces in Beijing’s sewer-thick haze, the National Grand Theatre hovers over the Great Hall of People like some hallucinatory monster. For obvious reasons, locals call it the Alien Egg; otherworldly, it resembles a gigantic, glistening metal egg hatched from deep in the bowels of outer space. The source of considerable controversy during its oft-halted construction earlier this decade, it has become, since completion last year, a celebrated icon, delineating a new [...]

Money

Paris in Beijing

Paris in Beijing

Amongst the glass-steel cutting edge architecture of Olympic Beijing, there’s a fin-de-siècle building, unashamedly French in its lines and décor. It’s a novelty in the Chinese capital, as is as the Portuguese restaurant in its interior. Closer visits the five-star Legendale Hotel, by Macau’s entrepreneur David Chow. [...]

Arts

Creativity on Sale!

Local organisation Pin-to Books and Music presents Macau’s creative products at China’s creative market in Shenzhen.

Months after the government mentioned an initiative to “further develop” a local “creative industry,” citizens are still waiting to see what kind of concrete policy will be put forward. [...]

Out of the Blue

Macau Museum of Art shows “Refresh: Contemporary Art of Emerging Macau and Shanghai Artists”.

As the extension of the Refresh: Emerging Chinese Artists exhibition held in September of last year at the Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, the current exhibition at the Macau Museum of Art might reasonably be termed Refresh 2. [...]

Home truths

“We are not a select group and we don’t have closed doors”

If you think that the International Ladies Club of Macau can only mean tea, gossip and shopping [...]

Cars

BMW 1 Series coupé

The One and Only 1

They say good things come in small packages and the BMW 1 Series Coupé released in Macau last month certainly proves it.

Look at the sorts of BMW’s driving around Macau these days and the word ‘compact’ doesn’t quickly spring to mind. If the next Bimmer that passes you by is not a top of the range 7 Series, then it’s at least likely to be an X5 or perhaps a 335i. But with the launch of the new BMW 1 Series coupé in Macau late last month [...]

Opinion

Bureaucratic Capacity and Civil Service Reforms in Macau

Bureaucratic Capacity and Civil Service Reforms in Macau

Recently, the Macau government has submitted a bill to the Legislative Assembly to improve the civil service system. Entitled “Civil Service Ranking and Establishment System,” the bill seeks to make a number of recommended changes so that the overall bureaucratic capacity of Macau can be enhanced. Some foreign business people who have invested in Macau’s booming casino industry have expressed their concern about whether the territory’s bureaucracy [...]

Editor's note

China’s shock and awe

By Nuno Mendonça.