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We are in a town square.

A building has walls festooned with blue and white tiles and a courtyard with busts of dead poets. The square is paved with small stones fashioned in black and white swirls, like ocean waves, surrounded by rococo-trimmed buildings in whites and pastels of pink, blue and yellow. At one end of the square we see a courthouse with a multi-storied library filled with ancient books. On a sidestreet we pass a store window decorated with dried shark's fins and a stand selling $3 silk ties, plastic kitchen utensils and brassieres, all padded and stacked, like a cordierra, according to size. At the other end of the square, inside a church named Santa Domingo, the faithful light candles before a pastel Virgin Mary. It is a church so inviting in its pastel delicacy that one could be deceived into the notion that God hath no wrath whatsoever.

Where do you think we are? Brazil, Portugal, the Azores? How about China?

Macau, an hour jetboat ride from Hong Kong, became a special administrative district of China in December of 1999 after being dominated by Portugal since 1554. Did you know that? It was mentioned, almost in passing, in the Western news media. The story did not have the buzz of the Hong Kong changeover with a Queen and a tearful Prince Charlie sailing off into the sunset of empire. It was also not nearly as contentious either. Macau didn't have a counterpart of Chris Patten, the rabble-rousing Governor of Hong Kong, to irritate the Chinese. The Macau changeover went quietly, with no PR overkill.

What was brilliant about this shift in rule was that the Portuguese were able to indelibly brand their cultural heritage on their former colony before they went the way of Vasco De Gama and sailed back home. The first time I visited Macau, in 1987, it was a tired colonial backwater that had taken on the character of many Asian cities.that is none whatsoever. Haphazard development: building ranging from blocky highrises to corrugated metal sheds, 1950s concrete boxes and Chinese shophouses crumbling beyond repair. The remnants of Portuguese culture, as well as everything else, were dying before my eyes.

Macau's reason to be was as a place for Hong Kongers to gamble. Playing the slot machine is called "feeding the tiger." Macau was and may still be rife with gang life and corruption, even though one of the main Triad bosses is now in the slammer on Macau's island of Taipa. The place to go then was the old Lisboa Hotel on the waterfront, which looks like a bird feeder made from a Quaker Oats box. Young Chinese and Russian "professional women" in revealing outfits still frequent the hotel's gift shops, making eye contact with single men. You don't see them upstairs in the lobby, however, where you will find a spectacular display of Chinese antiques from intricate scenes in hand-embroidered silk, to an ancient earthquake detector, which consist of a bowl filled with mechanical levers attached to dragons clinging to its side resting on a compass circled with frogs. An earthquake would set the machinery to work, loosening a dragon, dropping a ball from the dragon's mouth in to the mouth of a frog. The frog's placement on the compass marked the direction of the earthquake.

The Lisboa, however, now isn't the only game in town. Aside from the clack of mahjong tiles in the streets, Macau now has a giant neon-lit floating casino. International hotel chains and Las Vegas interests are vying for a cut of the action as well. The old Lisboa and its crowded, seedy casino, which once stood alone in creating Macau's ethos, is now dwarfed by glitzier gaming halls and the Bank of China building which looms across the street.

Portugal's parting cannon ball was particularly classy. It was to beautifully restore Macau's old central city and plus some areas of its islands of Taipa and Coloane, where Hyatt and Westin have established resorts. If you were to suddenly wake up in the central square of Macau, you would swear it was Europe. Up the hill, past the Chinese markets and faux antique stores, the facade of St. Paul's cathedral, Macau's landmark, has been shored up and restored.. The rest of the 17th Century cathedral burned to the ground in 1835. When I was there last, it stood alone in rubble. Now, it is the centerpiece of an archeological site with crypts containing the relics of 17th century Christian martyrs from Japan and Vietnam and a museum of sacred art. In case you don't know, Christianity had a big following in Japan and there is a cult there that believes today that Jesus finally settled in Japan and married a local girl.

Above St. Paul's, Monte Fort, which was once an exhausting uphill hike, is now reachable by escalator through the Museum of Macau. The walls of the escalator are an etched marble mural designed jointly by Portuguese and Chinese artists. It, an other pieces of art, symbolize the mix of cultures. The museum tells story of the genesis of Macau including its defense against the Dutch who even though they actually conquered Macau, were scared away by a single priest who blew up their ammunition dump. There are excellent multimedia demonstrations of various aspects of Portuguese and Chinese culture including booths that capture the sounds of tradesmen and villages of an earlier era. There is a display of the sport of cricket: not English cricket but Chinese cricket fighting.where the winners are pickled and preserved in tiny coffins.

One of the few places you can catch the sounds of Portuguese Macau, these days, is at the University, which has a demonstration dining room in its tourism college. The food is decent, but not imaginative.typical tourist fare. The entertainment, however, from Tuna do Macau offers songs of Portuguese Macau.

So hats off to the Portuguese, who bowed out gracefully, with a sweep of a cape -- as Vasco de Gama undoubtedly did to Emmanual II -- leaving a strong reminder their heritage. To them we say obrigado.thank you in Portuguese.a culture that, as nasty as it could in the old days, taught the Japanese to say thank you (arrigato) and did a splendid job of leaving their cultural stamp on Macau. We hope that no future "cultural revolution".or inattention by the Chinese will topple Macau's monuments or silence the rhythms of its Portuguese heritage.