Still, once the bus pulls into its terminus at Hác Sá beach, the bustle recedes. There is a cluster of low-rises and a row of houses. There is a resort at the far curve of the strand. Otherwise, it is the end of the road at the southern tip of Macau at a juncture that feels like the slow fade of a particular Asian history.

Plus there is Fernando’s, a beach hut guarded by its own sentinels of non-change. Three scruffy dogs sprawl on the asphalt, observing the sky darken over the ocean.

An outer dining room, its white-washed walls covered in scrawled hymns of customer praise, gives way to a kitchen where chickens, fish and whole pigs are roasted or barbecued, smoke billowing out into the corridor. Deeper within the compound are a courtyard and gazebo bar and then a larger dining space lit like a bus terminal. Birds clamour from branches, and checkered tablecloths flap on lines. Off to one side, three middle-aged men play a Portuguese version of horseshoes, called malha, tossing a disc across the lawn at a peg. They dangle cigarettes from their lips.

The menu is in Portuguese. I order a bowl of caldo verde, a half-portion of a tomato salad and a quarter chicken on a bed of fries. Other tables are heaped with communal plates of camarões fritos con alho (fried shrimp with garlic) and sardinhas assadas na brasa (charcoal-grilled sardines), along with various bean dishes, grilled fishes and crispy meats, especially the fatty pork beloved by Chinese. My white wine, decanted from a jug, is glacial. Water arrives at the table in a plastic bottle. The salt and pepper shakers aren’t fancy.

“I don’t like things fancy,” Fernando Gomes tells me. “It’s like dating a beautiful woman who doesn’t even know how to make love.”

The owner, one of the malha players, has left his friends at the bar. Though he refuses a glass of wine, he sits for an hour, dismissing his critics and shrugging off the make-over of Macau, the city he has called home for nearly 30 years since emigrating from the Azores. He is a lanky man with a gruff amiability and a blunt philosophy of life.

“I cook the food I want to eat,” Gomes says. “You like it, okay. You don’t like it, okay.” He remembers that he once took a date to a five-star hotel, where they spent a small fortune on a meal. Afterwards, they ate a sandwich back at his restaurant to fill their stomachs. “Eat properly, drink properly, pay properly and feel properly,” Fernando Gomes says of the ideal dining experience. He insists I try the crème caramel, which he prefers firm and not too sweet. The coffee is coal-black.

“Chinese come here and Portuguese come here and Hong Kong people come here,” he says as he rises. “I don’t care what else goes away or changes. I stay.”

By now it is dark. The dogs have ambled off. A minibus idles at the stop, waiting to hustle passengers back to the ever-brighter lights of Macau. Satiated and sleepy, I contemplate a night on an empty beach to extend this moment and then observe a new Asian day.

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