Monday, May 16, 2022

Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - Hotel Caravela, Macau

It took a while for me to find the identity of this building but finally prevailed. I also found out that the website that helped in my search has been secretly pinching my screencaps for the past 10 years and never once provided a linkback. He's not the first and won't be the last. Such is life. Paul Li, Hong Kong's foremost expert on Bruce Lee, once told me someone from Mainland China had taken all my Bruce Lee content (from both blogs) and passed it off as their own stuff. There's really not much I can do about it I'm afraid. People generally suck.

Anyway, this is Hotel Caravela, one of Macau's early (circa 50s) smaller, boutique hotels. However, the house was originally built in the 1920s by Bernardino de Senna Fernandes as his family home. Sadly, despite Macau's better form in terms of preserving old buildings (although that now seems to be changing) this place was demolished in the late 70s to make way for...nothing! At least that's according to Macau's only available Streetview images for the location (62-64 Avenida da República) which is dated 2008. The problem is I can't go back and provide a more up-to-date check because no one is currently allowed into Macau due to the ongoing Covid problem. Anyway, if you click on that Streetview link you can see that despite the building going, the hotel's front steps and distinctive front wall are still intact.

The hotel doesn't really feature at all in the film other than a quick shot as some cars drive by but it's interesting to find out where it was.

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