Antunes is one of two senior Portuguese officials to survive Macau's handover; the rest went home to Lisbon, no longer needed by the new Chinese government. After -twenty-four years working as a civil servant here, he had grown to love the Asian version of an Iberian lifestyle: short working days and plenty of domestic help. Antunes is no doubt useful to the new government—his European face assures the outside world that Western tourists, and businesses, are welcome. The Portuguese weren't especially loved by their Chinese subjects. Unlike in Hong Kong, where a vague sense of dread descended as the last British governor sailed away in 1997, the Macanese were generally pleased to see the Portuguese go. Colonial rule hadn't done much for the locals. The backstreets, where metalworkers banged out woks and craftsmen from China made fake antique furniture, were charming but neglected; pastel colonial buildings crumbled. The Portuguese let a group of shadowy Macanese businessmen with connections to China run the show from behind the scenes.

There is something deeply reassuring about the fact that my turbojet hydrofoil to the territory from Hong Kong is just as down-market as it always was. On the "super deluxe" upper deck (ten dollars more than economy class), where you are less likely to find people spitting on the carpeted floor, the attendant serves plastic trays of unappetizing smoked fish, a layer cake, yogurt, and orange juice. An hour later, I am standing in line at Macau immigration, jostling with several aggressive Chinese grannies in pajamas, hands darkened from work in the fields. They are shoving in front of me, ignoring the line. (What is the etiquette: If you are pushed by a Chinese grandmother, is it okay to push back? I decide yes.) Behind me are two young, thuggish men, a Chinese woman in platform sandals and dark glasses with a large Chanel logo on the side, and a drunken Japanese man with tobacco-stained teeth and his giggly Chinese girlfriend. Happily, so far little seems to have changed since I was last here six years ago.

That impression is quickly wiped away. I arrive as night falls and mistakenly give my taxi driver the wrong hotel address, on what used to be a quiet outlying island, Taipa, and come upon a blinding, Disney-like scene. A pastel complex with Italianate trim on the rooftops and what looks like a moat looms above a vast construction site illuminated by klieg lights. At 10 p.m., dozens of cranes—I count forty-five as we zip by—are bowing like giant praying mantises, on land reclaimed from water. I realize that this is the Venetian, the spot where Adelson is betting two billion dollars on a mini-metropolis of twelve yet-to-be-built hotels and casinos. A billboard on the wall surrounding the construction site announces what's to come: city of wonders. The Four Seasons will open next door later this year, followed by a Hilton, a Sheraton, a Shangri-La, an InterContinental, a Hyatt, a Hard Rock, and others. On the way back to central Macau, I can see the glittering neon lights of the one-billion-dollar Wynn Macau, Adelson's Sands Macau, and the Grand Lisboa, a bulbous, glassy replica of a lotus plant, with grotesque skyscraper branches reaching up to the sky.