Mei-lai, the mixed race little girl from the interior porto of Macao, in “A-Chan, a tancareira” (1950), de Henrique de Senna Fernandes (1923-2010)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze in Henrique de Senna Fernandes´s A- Chan, a tancareira (1950), the mestizo condition of Mei-Lai, blonde and light-eyed, the daughter of a Portuguese and a Chinese, born in Macao at the end of the Pacific War. The mother of the child, was sold by her parents at age 6 to be a tyrant´s domestic slave (mui-chai), who offered it to the owner of a tancar, a small people-carrying vessel and goods in the Porto Interior region. In the floating neighborhood of Macao, the servant, often beaten, learned the hard work and was freed by her owner, who inherited the boat. In 1944, the power of chance, crystallized at the request of Manuel, a sailor from “Macau” gunboat, for his personal displacement, transformed the life of the masculinized young woman, who had muscular arms and calloused hands, but was sensitive and delicate in nature. The narrative of the Macanese writer, which address the plight of parents and Mei-Lai, who had European (Eurasian) traits, in a Taoist society, colonized by Portugal, will be analyzed according to reflections on Macanese identiy, mestizaje and stigma (Goffman).