The European-style mansions scattered throughout Macau reflect its 400 years of Portuguese heritage, but in a sad reminder of the city's changing face the families who lived in them are mostly long gone.
Macanese - those born through mixed marriages between Portuguese and local Chinese - numbered more than 100,000 in the 1960s. Now only about 20,000 call Macau home as Hong Kong and places further afield attract a growing diaspora of the city's colourful minority.
Unlike Hong Kong, Macau has successfully preserved many of the buildings of its past. Keeping the people - and the cultural heritage that goes with it - is proving tougher.
Mainland tourists now flock to Macau to admire the green and pinks of the Portuguese architecture, the big windows of the public buildings and European-style gardens. Off the main streets the smell of Portuguese and Chinese fusion food emanates from countless restaurants. But like that other famous tourist trap Venice, the original inhabitants are in danger of becoming an endangered species.
The UN's cultural organisation Unesco has classified the Macanese language - Patua - as a critically 'endangered language'.
Grant Thornton partner Patrick Rozario's family is a typical example of the city's loss of identity over the past few decades. Rozario's earliest Portuguese ancestor, Janaurio de Almeida, arrived in Macau in 1776 and founded a maritime insurance company for traders. Another ancestor, Domingos Pio Marques, was born in Macau in 1783 and went on to become a successful merchant.