Grounded goddess

With buildings popping up like mushrooms, a scenic view today can be a blank wall tomorrow in Macau. And not even the gods and goddesses are immune from broken sight lines.

Macau's Goddess of Seafarers, A-Ma, has had her seaward gaze blighted by landfills. However unintentionally, this has disrupted our goddess' job of keeping watch over fishermen and sailors. To do that, she needs to see the ocean, but waterfront reclaiming has marooned her farther inland, and new buildings have drastically narrowed her view.

The A-Ma Temple was first built in the 15th century on the southwestern shore of what is today's Macau Peninsula. Immigrants from Fujian province erected it on the waterfront.

Legend has it that the mortal-turned-goddess, born into a Fujian fishing family in 960, saved her brothers from a storm at sea - while she was dreaming. After her death, stories continued about miraculous sea rescues. People came to believe that, from her temple, the canonised A-Ma could see and hear endangered fishermen when they were hundreds of kilometres away.

It is widely believed that Macau is named after the temple. When Portuguese seafarers first arrived in the 16th century, they asked locals the island's name - while pointing in the temple's direction. Locals responded by giving the temple's name, 'Ma Kok', which the Portuguese repeated as 'Macau'.

The city has had nine reclamation drives since the 1980s. Five of them have extended the land between the temple and the sea. By the late 1980s, a museum and a dockyard had blocked half the temple's sea view. Then the government began to talk about building a school directly in front of it. Suddenly, an obscure society - claiming to be the temple's guardians for 500 years - spoke up.