Publicado na imprensa estrangeira no dia 20 de Novembro de 1916, um artigo intitulado «MACAO – MONTE CARLO OF THE ORIENT» (1) 

MACAO – «MONTE CARLO OF THE I ORIENT»
FLOURISHING FANTAN MONOPOLY
AMONGST THE CELESTIAL ADVENTURERS.

“In my China paper the following brief telegram, headed “Macao,” takes the eye:
Eleven lenders have been received for the fantan gambling monopoly for a period of five years, dating from the expiry of the present monopoly on June 30, 1917, of which six are for over 1,000,000 a year. The highjest is $1,266.660, and the lowest $610,000 a year, as compared with the present payment of $603,000 per annum.
Evidently the fantan business flourishes at Macao. But what is Macao, and what is fantan? Those who love a resounding label speak of Macao as the Monte Carlo of the Orient. M. Blanc will not he flattered, and he who has not set eyes upon Macao will not be illuminated.
Macao is to Hong Kong as Margate to London, says H. Sachen in the “Manchester Guardian.” It is some forty miles away, and a trifle further from Canton. On Sundays you may make the return trip in a day.
The river steamers are capacious and comfortable. You can eat as well aboard them as ashore, with the same excellent service of Chinese “boys”— surely the best in the world except the almost extinct old-fashioned English waiter, — and if you travel by night you may get a cabin which the P. and O. would not despise. And there are suggestions of romance. On the top deck the pilot’s quarters are walled off with steel bars, and two armed sentries tramp up and down.
The West River and the Canton River swarm with pirates—there are those who say that every dweller jby the river is a pirate when his other business is slack—and one of their pleasant devices is to come aboard as passengers and seize the ship.
I have heard British skippers —most of the ships in Chinese waters are officered by Britons —prefer the room of the armed guards imposed upon them by the Hongkong Government to their company. Down below, where the Chinese are gatherled, there are more sentries. Here .the Chinese lie with their copious belongings, packed, odorous, but well mannered. It is not odours alone you may find there. In Chinese towns there is usually some epidemic  disease. When I came back from Canton we had smallpox aboard, and I in the season you may have plague. The Chinese take such things calmly. They will use as a pillow the body of a fellow-passenger dead of plague…”          (continua…)
(1) « The Sun» Volume III, Issue 867
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SUNCH19161120.2.45
«The Sun» jornal neozelandês sediado em Christchurch, iniciou-se em Fevereiro de 1914 e terminou em 1935 – fusão com outro jornal da mesma cidade e depois em Auckland de 1927 a 1930.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/sun