By Janette Jiang
Walking along the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro (Sun Ma Lo in Chinese), looking at the glowing signs of varied shops and crowds of people, no one could deny that it is a prosperous commercial street. “I seldom go there now,” Olivia Yang said. “There are too many tourists and it is too crowded.”
The Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro is one of the main streets in Macao Peninsula, a commercial, transportation and tourist center of Macao. Shops of luxurious products such as gold, jewelry and watches and retail shops of cosmetics, clothing, shoes and souvenirs have occupied the street. Internationally renowned brands including Omega, Rolex, and Lukfook Jewelry own shops at regular intervals; famous cosmetic franchises like Sasa are even more frequently seen, while local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) such as traditional Cantonese restaurants and local souvenir shops are rarely spotted.
“I only go there to take good pictures of the decorated street for festivals,” Selina Han said. “Or when I need to buy things that are sold only on that street.” Han also believes that the street has changed. “I’ve found out that shops that are customized for rich tourists are growing dramatically while local brands or local distinctive shops are closed because of increasingly growing rents.”
Similarly, other local residents like Mickey Chen said that she doesn’t go to Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro often even though it is one of the “mustgo” places and representative areas of Macao. The reason is — being crowded with tourists. “For me, Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro is a street which it is only for tourists,” Chen added.
Chen is not the only one who holds that opinion. Since the rising rent has forced local SMEs to move out of the street, local residents are not willing to go to the street because they lost the connection between them and the street-there are few familiar things left. “I don’t like the street now because of its commercialization,” Yang said. “There are just chain stores and I actually quite miss the old days.”