The Patúa in Macau is a hybrid of Portuguese, Cantonese, Malay and Indonesian, a language developed after the first Portuguese males arrived about a 100 years ago marrying local Chinese women.
The cooking also underwent a change. The Chinese women wanted to cook Portuguese dishes to please their husbands but having to settle for local ingredients, the dishes retained Portuguese names but took on Chinese cooking flavours. Macanese food is reputed to be the first fusion cooking. Some Macanese men retained their Portuguese male ancestors’ skin tone and names while practising the local Chinese customs of their maternal line. Macanese Patúa is fast disappearing in Macau with hardly 50 speakers left although there are a million of them in the diaspora. One is reminded of the Anglo-Indians with their own English language patois that has similarly dispersed from India into their own diaspora. Champurrado is a chocolate flavoured Atole sweet, originally a Mexican beverage, but no stranger to Goa, as “Atoll” in Konkani. Macau Sâm Assi (This is Macau) https://youtu.be/JmPYVbKWF70 Macau Champurado https://youtu.be/luqX4AM0zO0 Roland. Toronto.
