Parisian At Heart

A glittering new resort on Sands Cotai Strip, Macau, manifests an intricately carved door which becomes a portal for time travel each time it swings to allow a guest in. Parisian Macao is an ode to Paris of the early 1900s, its iconic streets and cobblestoned alleys.

- Anwesha Sanyal

Charles Lee walks into the front lobby, dapper in a suit, with briefcase in hand, looking for the right person to speak with. Anyone could have mistaken him for a guest—his unassuming demeanour, careful gait, and assertive eyes—he could even pass for a secretive billionaire gambler that this city was famous for. But here, on the day of the launch of the majestic integrated resort, he is the only man under the roof who looks rather unaffected by the grandeur that surrounds him. This is my cue to walk up to the man who is actually behind this palatial new property.

In a brief second, the chief architect of the four-million-square-feet hotel levies a broad smile so varnished with modesty, that it drives me to contemplate if hiring this man was the deciding moment for the brand that the ‘hotel with an Eiffel Tower’ would do well. As we walk across to sit at Le Buffet, the all-day diner, I nudge to ask this man behind the sets of The Titanic, True Lines, and a few James Bond movies (which he calls “smaller projects”) about his vision of a Paris in Macau.

“When I took up Parisian Macao,” he explains, “I approached the idea like that of a movie.” To this, I nod vehemently in approval—the curtains were raised only the previous night, and I remember feeling goose bumps at the foot of the Tower. “So far, yet so near,” I had thought. As the camera panned to the sets of a classical Paris of the exuberant 1900s, every rendition became self-explanatory, especially because there was no holding back on his vision.