Paper short abstract:

Culinary arts have awarded Macao with the UNESCO title of Creative City of Gastronomy through the process of politicization, commoditization and tourism promotion. In postcolonial Macao, food symbolises identity and heritage, and also the city's resistance and differentiation from mainland China.

Paper long abstract:

The Macao Special Administrative Region, China, was one of the latest members to join UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the gastronomy field. The application led by the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture and the tourism stakeholders of the Macao SAR, with the support of China central government, was officially assumed as a powerful international branding which will bring new opportunities for Macao to develop as a diversified and sustainable city. Consistent with a world heritage site - image that the political authorities have been fabricate since Macao's handover to China - aspirations lie in the city's representation as a cultural and heritage destination, offering multiple tourist attractions suitable for differentiated tourism segments and beyond the richest gambling market of the world that made famous the Asian enclave. Ethnographic fieldwork concentrated on festivals within the Year of Gastronomy initiative, the kick off of the four-year action plan for forging Macao into a Creative City of Gastronomy, revealed the spectacular political performances of displaying and reaffirming traditional practices and knowledges in the public urban space.

This paper focusses on governments uses of culture for identity construction and heritage projects at the internal level and for tourism destination image imaginaries at the external level. I am particularly interested in exploring how secular culinary art traditions are commodified as touristic products in Macao postcolonial context and turn out to be the result of wider economic and political interests while, at the same time, make communities' aspirations - specially the Eurasian Macanese - more apparent.