Gold Nothing

A sleepy city on the South China Sea ruled by the Portuguese until 1999, Macau has become a glitzy playground for China’s ultra wealthy. But in pockets between the casino resorts fueled by mainland money, traces of its culinary history remain.

- Kevin Pang

It appeared at first that I had arrived in Macau by time machine. The hotel’s name, Morpheus, seemed picked to evoke either Greek mythology or The Matrix, but the exterior of the $1.1 billion building makes it clear the proprietors had chosen science fiction. Designed by the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, it looks as though a black block of liquid metal had three holes melted through it before it was wrapped in a fishnet exoskeleton. It’s even more difficult to describe the avant-garde dream space once you’ve stepped inside the lobby. Imagine a glass church built from fractals expanding skyward in chaotic harmony. It’s a bit like the city itself: ostentatious and awe-inspiring, a place that can bankroll wild ambition.

A tiny peninsula across the Pearl River Estuary from Hong Kong, Macau was a Portuguese colony for nearly five centuries. Twenty years ago, the city reverted to Chinese rule, and construction cranes quickly crowded its skyline. Gambling— thanks in part to American corporations such as Wynn Resorts and the Las Vegas Sands Corporation—boomed so unfathomably fast, it now makes Las Vegas seem like the nickel slots. The only territory under the Chinese flag with legalized gambling, Macau now brings in seven times more gaming revenue than Vegas. And so, new casino resorts keep shoehorning in; Morpheus is barely a year old, and it’s not even Macau’s newest hotel.