Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Macao’s vibrant Latin City parade is a surreal introduction to its history.

- Diya Kohli

A Native American chief complete with his feathered war bonnet was standing two feet from me posing for a selfie with a Chinese grandma, beaming in spite of two missing front teeth. Across him, two beautiful boisterous ladies in their big hooped skirts were bantering with a petite fellow who had a giant Venezuelan flag draped over his shoulders. I pinched my arm to make sure that I was really wide awake and standing in a hotel lobby in Macao. It seemed like the perfect surreal beginning to the day of Macao’s Latin City parade.

Macao is a Janus-faced city, with one face turned towards its past and the other towards a glittering future. Since my arrival I had done the regulation sightseeing tours, museum visits, even an obligatory Cotai Strip casino tour. However, it was the parade that brought it all together for me. The mixed crews with their vibrant costumes and multitude of languages seemed to be in sync with the city’s multifaceted identity. As the day unspooled through colour and music, what amazed me the most was the gusto with which the event celebrated the region’s cosmopolitanism and its Portuguese, Chinese, and Macanese heritage.

A view from the top made the parade look like the sparkly trail of a giant comet. And as I followed a train of strange and beautiful creatures, from the ruins of St. Paul’s to Tap Siac Square, I ended up collecting bits of Macao’s past like pieces of confetti saved after the last wedding hurrah.