{"id":66,"date":"2010-05-06T12:57:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T16:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tobeycat.com\/ub\/?p=66"},"modified":"2010-05-18T14:21:17","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T18:21:17","slug":"young-lovers-of-historical-relics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"Young Lovers of Historical Relics"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rex Leng Chi Chon<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Michelle Ng is standing by the old wall of Mandarin\u2019s House, she feels passionate and fascinated by the history of this place.<\/p>\n

According to the trend in society today, we can call Ng a post-80s teenager. Not long ago, teenagers were considered not as hard-working as the previous generations. However, recently these teenagers have shocked the society. They have shown their concerns for the society, politics and environment. They have dreams, and they have the guts to make them come true.<\/p>\n

For a long time, the Ruins of St. Paul’s has been seen as the symbol of Macao. In 2005, the World Heritage Committee inscribed \u201cThe Historic Centre of Macao\u201d (HCM) on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization\u2019s (UNESCO) World Heritage List.<\/p>\n

It was the same year that Ng graduated from high school and decided to have a further study on heritage. \u201cOnce I saw an officer from the Cultural Heritage Department on TV,\u201d Ng recalled. \u201cHe was introducing the renovation and restoration of the Mandarin\u2019s House and I was excited about that. I have a fancy about cultural and traditional stuff, which is the reason I chose heritage studies as my profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

As more and more professionals are needed to work in the field of Macao’s world heritages and to fill that need a bachelor\u2019s program in heritage studies was also started in 2005 at the Institute for Tourism Studies.<\/p>\n

Ng was an outstanding student at school. There was once a time when her professor thought her presentation in class was so good that she introduced Ng’s group to present their ideas to officers in the Cultural Affairs Bureau. \u201cIt was a research project on how to develop the Ruins of St. Paul’s area into a sustainable tourist spot,\u201d Ng explained. This topic has become a hot issue recently.<\/p>\n

There is one old painting in the Mandarin\u2019s House which Ng has helped to restore. This involved a technique that she learned outside school. \u201cIn the university, the courses were mostly about management and tourism. What I really wanted to learn was practical restoration skills of antiques,\u201d she said. Hence, she took courses of restoration and renovation, and followed a local professional in order to learn the techniques of restoring paintings and antiques. She is chasing her dream step-by-step.<\/p>\n

In Macao, the locals seem less interested in World Heritage. Ng is enthusiastic to promote the World Heritage to them, as the government mainly focuses on using the HCM to attract tourists. She is in a management team of the Macao Heritage Ambassadors Association, whose members are mostly post-80s teenagers with passion and interest in Macao’s World Heritage. They hold events regularly to raise the awareness of protecting the heritage buildings among the locals.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough I am not doing it full-time, I am passionate to protect and restore the heritages in Macao,\u201d Ng said with an ambitious voice. Ng is now working in an office, which does not quite match her plan when she was studying in the university. \u201cMy ultimate goal is to find a job about restoring antiques. But now I will accumulate more experience in my leisure time first.\u201d If there are more people like Ng, it is believed that the HCM will become more than just a place to attract tourists.<\/p>\n

The HCM contains over 20 locations, including some famous tourist spots and historical buildings such as the Ruins of St. Paul\u2019s, A-Ma Temple, Senado Square and Mandarin\u2019s House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rex Leng Chi Chon When Michelle Ng is standing by the old wall of Mandarin\u2019s House, she feels passionate and fascinated by the history of this place. According to the trend in society today, we can call Ng a post-80s teenager. Not long ago, teenagers were considered not as hard-working as the previous generations. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}