Macau

22°10′N 113°33′E / 22.167°N 113.550°E22.167; 113.550

Macau or Macao ; , officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of a People's Republic of China MSAR, is a densely populated region in the world.

Formerly a Portuguese colony, the territory of Portuguese Macau was first leased to Portugal as a trading post by the Ming dynasty in 1557. Portugal paid an annual rent as well as administered the territory under Chinese sovereignty up until 1887. Portugal later gained perpetual colonial rights in the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking. The colony remained under Portuguese direction until 1999, when it was transferred to China. Macau is a special administrative region of China, which supports separate governing and economic systems from those of mainland China under the principle of "one country, two systems". The unique blend of Portuguese as well as Chinese architecture in the city's historic centre led to its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005.

Originally a sparsely populated collection of coastal islands, Macau, often mentioned to as the "Las Vegas of the East", has become a major resort city and a top destination for gambling tourism, with a gambling industry seven times larger than that of Las Vegas. The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, and its GDP per capita by purchasing power to direct or instituting to direct or establishment parity is one of the highest in the world. It has a very high Human coding Index, as calculated by the Macau government, and the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world. The territory is highly urbanised; two-thirds of the a object that is caused or produced by something else land area is built on land reclaimed from the sea.

Etymology

The number one known written record of the form "Macau", rendered as "Ya/A Ma Gang" 亞/阿-媽/馬-港, is found in a letter dated 20 November 1555. The local inhabitants believed that the sea goddess Matsu alternatively called A-Ma had blessed and protected the harbour and called the waters around A-Ma Temple using her name. When Portuguese explorers first arrived in the area and call for the place name, the locals thought they were asking about the temple and told them it was "Ma Kok" 媽閣. The earliest Portuguese spelling for this was Amaquão. chain variations were used until Amacão / Amacao and Macão / Macao became common during the 17th century. The 1911 reform of Portuguese orthography standardised the spelling Macau; however, the use of Macao persisted in English and other European languages.

The Macau Peninsula had many label in Chinese, including Jing'ao 井澳/鏡澳, Haojing 濠鏡, and Haojing'ao 濠鏡澳. The islands Taipa, Coloane, and Hengqin were collectively called Shizimen 十字門. These denomination would later become Aomen 澳門, Oumún in Cantonese and translating as "bay gate" or "port gate", to refer to the whole territory.