Macau, China, Sept. 22, 2024 (Lusa) - The first crossing between Macau and Taipa Island is 50 years old on 5 October. It was an innovative engineering project that pursued local economic development and has a history that involves dragons and fortune-telling.
It takes half an hour by boat to reach the other side of the river, on the island of Taipa, and one hour to reach the island of Coloane. Of these crossings, Anabela Ritchie recounts ‘otherworldly adventures’, such as when, on school trips, the tide went out and ‘the chat was even greater’, with the boat stopped in the estuary of the River of Pearls and the staff waiting for the waters to rise before resuming the journey.
In adulthood, other certainties arrived, like the certainty that the Macanese would reach their destination without any mishaps. The construction of the first land bridge between the Macau peninsula and the island of Taipa—a long-awaited project postponed due to a lack of funds—was finally announced in January 1969.
And the regional press gave voice to the long-standing claim: Gazeta Macaense wrote about the ‘enhancement of the islands’; Tai Chung Pou noted ‘the most important and largest construction in the last 400 years’; Notícias de Macau recorded the ‘historic decision’, which the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong daily, called ‘Macau's favourite dream’.
‘It will make a decisive contribution to the development and economic expansion of this province and will constitute a high standard for documenting and affirming Portuguese policy in the overseas territories,’ announced the then governor of Macau, Nobre de Carvalho (1910-1988), considering the bridge indispensable for opening up “excellent prospects” in the tourism and communications sectors.
Construction began the following year, and a few months after the April Revolution, on 5 October 1974, the link was inaugurated, one of the last Estado Novo projects in the territory, designed by Portuguese engineer Edgar Cardoso (1913-2000).
On the Macau side, the Governador Nobre de Carvalho bridge faced two other symbols of the city: the Lisboa, one of the main local casinos owned by Stanley Ho (1921-2020), who had a monopoly on gambling, and the giant equestrian statue of former governor Ferreira do Amaral (1803-1849) waving a whip at a group of Chinese, a legacy of the Salazar regime that was removed before the transition to China.
On the other bank, the bridge reached the base of the Taipa Pequena mountain in the north of the island, and until the early 1980s, there was a toll booth at this entrance.
On the verge of her seventh birthday, Violeta Couto do Rosário crossed the river for the first time by car. She did so in her father's blue Volkswagen Beetle, in which there were five adults and four children. In front of her, says the Portuguese woman from Macau, were many others in Mr Moura's green Mazda RX3. ‘I was little, but I have a strong feeling about that day,’ she says.
‘Everything changed; we had easier access to the beaches because otherwise there was nothing special about the islands; it was all rural,’ recalls the Institute for Municipal Affairs lawyer.
According to official figures provided to Lusa, out of a total population of 248,636 in Macau in 1970, 5,352 people lived on Taipa Island and 1,871 on Coloane. The islands had already been connected by an isthmus since 1968.
‘Nobody can imagine what a shambles Taipa was,’ confirms Anabela Ritchie, who moved there around 1975 when her husband was seconded to the islands as health delegate. They moved into one of the five green colonial houses on Avenida da Praia.
‘The bridge opened up Taipa, although for a long time, we continued that peaceful life,’ recalls the then teacher, noting that, by shortening distances, the Nobre de Carvalho had a “very special meaning” for the family.
‘Crossing the bridge in the morning and at the end of the day, after work, is something that is in my drawer of great memories,’ recalls Ritchie, the first woman to hold the presidency of Macau's Legislative Assembly (1992-1999).
Carlos Ferraz, from the Edgar Cardoso Structures Laboratory, who accompanied the engineer to the region years after construction to carry out tests on the bridge, doesn't forget ‘the monument’, of ‘extraordinary lightness’, largely prefabricated, ‘as if it were a lego’.
Initially built over three kilometres long, it has since been reduced to around 2.5 kilometres. The crossing has the highest point of the deck at 35 metres above sea level, so boats can pass through. At the time of construction, it was considered the longest continuous prestressed concrete bridge in the world, according to the Macau Public Works Bureau website.
‘It was innovative in that it made structures that were continuous, without joints, because joints always cause a lot of problems in terms of maintenance,’ explains engineer Carlos Ferraz.
But science aside, the bridge, which has always been said to suggest the shape of a dragon's back, its head represented by the hotel-casino Lisboa and its tail by the zigzagging monument Conjunto Escultórico (1985) da Taipa, was once in the hands of a fortune-teller.
Carlos Ferraz recalls the episode when someone he prefers not to identify consulted a master at one point to bring luck to that passage. ‘He [the soothsayer] was told that there had to be a break in the bridge, so there started to be a cast lamp at all times,’ he says.
Today, the Nobre de Carvalho Bridge, also known as the Macau-Taipa Bridge or the Old Bridge, only allows public transport or authorised vehicles and is the only one that can be crossed on foot. The fourth crossing between the two banks is now being built to cater for a city that receives nearly 30 million visitors a year, at least four times more than at the end of the last century.
CAD/ADB // ADB.
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