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For Macau-based journalist Nelson Moura, the city’s pandemic years evoke an unrelenting cycle of Covid tests,quarantines, and official slogans. But they also recall the absurdities, unexpected solidarity, and flashes of dark humour that helped residents endure an extraordinary period.
Those competing realities underpin Let’s All Persevere — Covid, Gaming and Other Macau Oddities, a new collection of 75 chronicles written by Moura, a contributing editor at Macau Business magazine and former Macau News Agency editor-in-chief, as events unfolded between February 2020 and July 2023.
Originally published as opinion columns by Macau News Agency and its affiliated publication, Macau Business, the pieces document a period of profound disruption in a city whose economy depended heavily on the flow of tourists and casino gamblers. The collection also looks beyond the pandemic to examine the economic, social, and political developments reshaping Macau at the time.
“I wanted to preserve the humorous and fun parts of those strange days, so that in the future we can go back, read them and laugh again,” Moura told MNA. “It might be a good lesson for the next pandemic.”
The book was launched on Wednesday evening at the Rui Cunha Foundation’s headquarters at an event attended by Moura, who now works for Portuguese news agency Lusa, and José Carlos Matias, director of Macau Business and MNA.
Published by the International Institute of Macau (IIM) in partnership with Macau Business and with support from the Macau Foundation, the book features a cover by Portuguese illustrator Afonso Castro.
An unlikely historical record
Moura began considering the project after revisiting one of his old columns last year and realising that Macau’s experience of the pandemic had generated relatively little public discussion or published reflection. “I thought it would be interesting to collect these articles and publish them as a kind of historical record,” he said.
Revisiting the pieces brought home just how extraordinary the period had been. The repeated nucleic acid tests, strict border controls, quarantines, and climate of social suspicion can now seem almost implausible, even to those who experienced them.
“When I read these articles now, it is hard to believe that these things even happened,” Moura said. “I think the pandemic left a permanent mark on everyone who went through it.”
Still, he didn’t want the collection to focus exclusively on anxiety and disruption. The crisis also produced acts of empathy, solidarity, and mutual assistance that helped residents navigate the uncertainty. “That is one of the reasons I wanted to publish the book: to remember some of the positive things that emerged from those difficult times,” Moura said.
Absurdness
The title borrows from one of the public health slogans repeatedly used by the Macau government during the pandemic,though Moura deploys it with deliberate irony. Humour and satire offered a way to scrutinise official policies and social behaviour while making an otherwise grim period easier to process, he said.
Macau, in Moura’s telling, is particularly fertile ground for the unusual and absurd. Its combination of casino wealth,small-town familiarity, political and social sensitivities, and occasional eccentricity can produce episodes that would appear implausible almost anywhere else. As an example, he offered a story of a casino junket agent being arrested for selling counterfeit almond biscuits hidden in the boot of a Grand Prix car.
“Macau is a ridiculous place, with lots of ridiculous things happening all the time, which provides great content for humour,” he said. “Satire has always been an important part of Macanese culture.”
The reference to “other Macau oddities” in the subtitle captures those moments, though Moura acknowledged that defining a distinctly local oddity can be difficult. Having lived and worked in Macau for a decade, he has tried to retain an outsider’s eye for the city’s peculiarities. Long-term residents, he said, can become accustomed to events that might strike a newcomer as extraordinary.
Liberty and resilience
The pandemic also reshaped Moura’s understanding of Macau and the balance between public safety and individual rights. The experience showed how quickly civic freedoms could be restricted in the name of collective welfare, with residents having limited scope to challenge the measures, he said.
Yet the period reinforced a more personal lesson: people retain some control over how they respond to circumstances they cannot change. “We all saw how people across the city tried to make the best of it [during the Covid period],” he said. “I took that lesson [from the pandemic], and I still use it today.”
The collection also offers readers a chance to con
front the lingering psychological effects of the Covid years. Moura hopes the distance provided by time — together with the book’s humour — will make the experience easier to revisit.
“Hopefully, it won’t make it worse,” he added.
The book is now available from the International Institute of Macau, with details of further distribution through bookshops to be announced.
https://macaubusiness.com/new-book-casts-a-humorous-eye-on-macaus-covid-years-and-oddities/
