Happiness Street
Rua da Felicidade (hapiness). Near the end of the street, towards the Inner Harbor, a Pawn tower show with its imposing presence the money price to pay for a (gambler) happiness.
These street is the best-preserved to our times of a typical Chinese quarters of Macau. Built by the end of the 19th century when the population and business were growing this area become a gambling center, the entertainment area and the red district.
The houses follow the traditional Qing dynasty practices in South China region. The brick structural walls serve as firebreak partitions. The ground floors where used for commercial purposes and the above level for residence.
Most of the Chinese houses of this period follow the same style, making difficult to distinguish a shop from a residence house.
The difference were of course in the characters signs but also in the detail elaboration of painted over plaster frescos, decorative ceramic frieze on the gable walls, and on non structural parts like the crafted timber doors; the mother-of-pearl windows, the inner gilded crafted screen partitions.
The street paved with granite slabs clear demonstrate the wealth of this quarters.
A pawn tower at the end of the road (recently demolished) was not part of the military structure of the city, but was part of banking institutions, that provided credit as well safety for the goods of the wealthy.