Section of the Old City Walls

Take a good look at this rough, yellowish stretch of wall in front of you, because you are staring at one of the oldest pieces of European military architecture anywhere in China. It does not look like much at first glance, does it? Just a modest section of weathered masonry tucked behind the famous Ruins of St. Paul's. But this wall has been standing here since 1569, and the story it tells is nothing short of extraordinary. When the Portuguese first settled in Macao in the 1550s, they quickly realised they needed defences. Pirates prowled the Pearl River Delta, rival colonial powers eyed the lucrative China trade, and the relationship with Chinese authorities was complex and sometimes tense. So they built these walls using a technique called chunambo, which involves ramming together layers of earth, sand, clay, crushed oyster shells, and straw, then coating everything with a mixture of lime and oil. It was a building method borrowed partly from local Chinese traditions, which tells you something wonderful about how Macao has always blended cultures, even in its military engineering. Stand close and you can see the layered texture of the construction, each band representing a separate round of packing...