Industrial Heritage in Macau: Reinventing the Site of the Iec Long Firecracker Factory

Macau is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) located in the south of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Over the centuries as a maritime city Macau saw its fortunes coming as trade boomed in the 16-17 th centuries, however with the establishment of Hong Kong as a port city the importance of Macau decreased. The authorities resorted to gaming and tourism as key sources of tax revenues, however manufacturing continued in Macau until very recently and consisted of textile manufacturing, matchsticks, incense, firecracker production and ship-building.

From the 1930s to 1980s firecracker manufacturing was a large-scale labour intensive industry and involved whole families including children working at home and in the streets. Firecracker manufacturing was a dangerous business, accidents frequently happened and people including children got killed (Kin, 2015) making the current tourist site a part of “difficult heritage” (Nelson, 2019) with traumatic content, a site strikingly different from the surrounding landscape aimed to induce fun, relaxation and festive sociality.

As gaming boomed in Macau in the 2000s, it became the Las Vegas of Asia. During the pandemic gaming revenues declined and the Macau authorities decided to diversify its offer of tourist attractions. Two new attractions were developed to help reposition Macau as a city with a rich cultural history. The two new sites that opened in 2023 were the long abandoned Iec Long firecracker factory and Lai Chi Vun shipyards . Both sites narrate different stories about Macau and its past, thus connecting the visitors with the past in the present. In this paper we use ethnographic data as well as visual analysis of the site to provide a “thick description” of Iec Long firecracker factory and reflect on the cultural and political significance of the industrial memories of hard labour in the recent urban revitalization plan.