Remembering Dodjie Laurel in Macao

MACAO – This colony of Portugal spelled in Portuguese as “Macau”, lives off its 36 casinos operating in its area of 30 square kilometers. Twenty-two of these 36 are reportedly owned by Hong Kong-based billionaire Stanley Ho and nine more, one of which is Ho’s, will be operating by 2020.

The Macanese know that other than the casinos, there’s really not much that attracts the more than 33 million tourists that visited Macao in 2012. Seventy percent of these tourists came from Mainland China where gambling is banned. Hong Kong, for purposes of comparison, reportedly attracted a whopping 48 million visitors last year.

Macanese businessmen and entrepreneurs state that everyone who wants to work can get a job resulting in almost full employment of Macao’s population of 540,000. (Hong Kong, seven million).

Because of a shortage of English-speaking trained person power, Macao has taken to following what a great part of the world has done - employ Filipinos. Certainly, there is plenty of room for the Philippines’ hotel and restaurant management and hospitality graduates as Macao’s hotel rooms build up to 50,000 by 2020.

Casino-hotels outdo each other in the services and amenities they offer. The Venetian Macao is now the world’s biggest casino, while the City of Dreams, which actually consists of three hotels, features the “House of Dancing Water”, an aquatic show which uses up some 3.7 million gallons of water, enough to fill up five Olympic-size swimming pools.

The Four Seasons is just right for those who simply want to rest and do a little shopping since its casino is small compared to Venetian Macao and the rest of the leading casino-hotels.

Portuguese influence is very much evident in the Macao Peninsula and the two islands of Taipa and Coloane. The Portuguese were in Macao from 1557 up to 1999, when Portugal turned over the island-city to China. Two years earlier, the British turned over Hong Kong also to the Chinese.

Street signs and public notices are in Portuguese and Cantonese although very few Macanese speak Portuguese. Government officials are among the few who still speak Portuguese while all those born before 1999 carry Portuguese passports and are considered Portuguese citizens.

One attraction that Macao has to offer is the 5.5-km Friendship Bridge not because it’s an architectural wonder but mainly because the bridge emanates from the Macao International Airport and ends right at the Macao-China border. Another structure that the Macanese are understandably proud of is the 61-storey, 238-meter high Macao Tower that features a revolving restaurant in the 60th floor. The tower is regarded as one of the 12 tallest buildings in the world and the eighth tallest in Asia.

Catholicism is perhaps one of the legacies bequeathed by the Portuguese in Macao. Churches, some of them, unnoticeable in street corners or up a hill, abound in Macao, Taipa and Coloane. A great number of Macanese are Catholics who observed Holy Week rites.

For Filipino baby boomer-sports aficionados, Macao is synonymous with the Macao Grand Prix (MGP) and Filipino motorcar racer, the late Arsenio “Dodjie” Laurel.

Laurel, the youngest of nine children of Jose P. Laurel Sr., President of the Philippines during the Japanese occupation, died in a Macao Formula 3 Grand Prix race on November 19, 1967. Reports of Laurel’s death show that his Lotus 41 skidded out of control during the race and he tried to avoid hitting the spectators by driving his car into a sea wall. The car burst into flames and Laurel, who was then 36 years old, was trapped in the burning inferno. He was the first fatality of the MGP.

The death of Laurel, two-time winner of the MGP (1962 and 1963) was met with shock and disbelief not only by the Filipino sports community but also by the many who knew him as a humble unassuming person notwithstanding his pedigree and his outstanding achievements he earned on his own.

The MGP is one of few sports activities in Macao. The scarcity of sports events is due to the small population that doesn’t make the economics of professional sports attractive. The dog and horse races, held several days during the week, do attract substantial numbers and bettors. The sports pages of the two local tabloids, the Macau Post Daily and the Macau Daily Times don’t have any news about local sports events although the former had a three fourth spread on the Chicago Bulls ending the Miami Heat’s winning streak at 27 in Chicago.

Other than these two races and the MGP, Macao is known for the Macao International Marathon held every December and, for a while, the FIVB Volleyball Grand Prix that Macao hosted from 1994 to 2003. The Macao Golf Open is held every May as part of the Asian Tour. Macao is not a member of the International Olympic Committee but is a member of the Olympic Council of Asia.