Fulong New Street (福隆新街) in Macao’s Sao Lourenco parish was built in the late Qing period as a lane of teahouses and shuttered shops, their wooden doors painted the deep red that gave the quarter its old nickname of the Red Window Street. For eight days in August the same lane traded that modern memory for an older one, dressing as Tang-dynasty Chang’an (长安), the imperial capital of a thousand years earlier, for the Macao Traditional Chinese Attire Cultural Festival.
Eight Days of Tang Splendor
The lane’s red-windowed shop fronts date to the 1870s, when the quarter was laid out as one of Macao’s most fashionable commercial streets, and the festival leaned into that theatrical backdrop. Organizers of the Macao Traditional Chinese Hanfu Attire Festival ran it daily from noon to 10 p.m. between August 8 and 15, free of charge, closing the street to traffic and lining it with stages, market stalls and Tang-costume photo spots where the old wooden doors became dressing-room backdrops.
The opening ceremony on August 8 at 6 p.m. was hosted by the legislator Shi Jialun (施家伦), Liu Dongyi (刘冬怡), acting head of the tourism bureau’s product section, Cai Zhicheng (蔡志成), deputy director of the Macao district development center, Zhang Jiansheng (张健昇), project planning deputy director of Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace, Jason Kian, president of the Guangzhou Tourism Association, and Zeng Wenyan (曾文妍), president of the organizing Macao Internet Marketers Association. The festival was framed by its organizers as part of Macao’s economic diversification strategy, turning a historical quarter into a stage for cultural tourism.
The Street’s Program
Each day brought a rotating bill: Hanfu parades in Tang-style robes, Dunhuang flying-apsaras dances with trailing ribbons, performances on classical Chinese instruments, traditional shadow puppetry and talks on incense culture. A Chinese-style creative market lined the lane with locally made handicrafts and Macao snacks, and visitors in rented Tang dress filled the street, many arriving specifically for photographs against the red window frames. Organizers said the mix was chosen to pull younger visitors from spectatorship into participation.
Macao’s signature snacks, from almond cakes to egg rolls, shared the stalls with handmade fans, pouches and calligraphy cards, and as evening fell the lanterns came on above the red window frames, stretching the lane’s usual closing hours. Visitors who wanted the full experience could rent a Tang-style robe at the photo spots, have their hair pinned up, and walk the same route the parades took through the quarter.
Hands-On Stations
Beyond watching, visitors could work with their hands. Stations taught movable-type rubbing, sachet making, stamp-your-own postcards with traditional costume seals, shadow-puppet play and mochi making, closing the gap between the stage and the street. The festival closed on August 15 with the lane returning to its regular rhythm, but the format left a template Macao’s tourism bodies are likely to reuse: a historic street, a wardrobe of Tang robes and eight days in which a small lane briefly became the capital of an empire that ended more than a millennium ago.