Series
Every 'first' is a step a small city dared to take. This series gathers the people who set 'firsts' in Macau's history — from Edmund Ho, the SAR's first Chief Executive, to Jia Rui, Macau's first Asian Games gold medallist, Domingos Lam, the first ethnic-Chinese Bishop of Macau, and Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China.
When Macau returned to China in 1999, Edmund Ho became the first Chief Executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region, opening a new era of governance under "one country, two systems"; that same year, became the SAR's first Legislative Assembly president — and the first woman to hold the post. These firsts marked the beginning of a new age.
Edmund Ho Hau Wah
The 1st Chief Executive of the Macao SAR (1999–2009). Son of Ho Yin and former chairman of Tai Fung Bank. His decade defined post-handover Macao through the 2002 liberalisation of gaming, explosive growth, and the credibility of "One Country, Two Systems" in the territory.
Susana Chou
Susana Chou was the first President of the Legislative Assembly of the Macao SAR, holding the post across three consecutive terms from 1999 to 2009. Born into a Shanghai industrialist family and resident in Macao from 1968, she won a seat in Portuguese Macao's first direct Legislative Assembly election in 1976 and served across both the Portuguese and SAR eras. One of the city's best-known women in business and among its earliest localised legislators, she later served as a Standing Committee member of the CPPCC and deputy director of the Basic Law Committee, and received the Grand Lotus Medal of Honour in 2003.
Song Man Lei
Domingos Lam was the first ethnic-Chinese Bishop of Macau, a symbol of the local church coming into its own; and back in the nineteenth century, Robert Morrison had already used Macau as his gateway to become the first Protestant missionary to China, compiling the first Chinese-English dictionary and the first Chinese Bible. In culture, Ung Vai Meng was the founding director of the Macao Museum of Art, setting its curatorial course.
In the arena, Macau's athletes have written history again and again. Jia Rui won Macau's first-ever Asian Games gold at the 2010 Guangzhou Games; Li Yi is the first woman to win an Asian Games gold for Macau; and Han Jing won the post-handover SAR's first World wushu title in 2003. Drawing on public sources, this series records the firsts that belong to Macau.
A Macau judge who became President of the Court of Final Appeal in December 2024 — the first woman to head Macau's highest court. She has worked in Macau's judiciary since 1996, served as a judge of the Court of Final Appeal, and presided over major cases, including that of former Prosecutor-General Ho Chio Meng.
Domingos Lam Ka Tseung
The first Chinese-born bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Macau. Appointed Coadjutor Bishop of Macau in 1987, he succeeded the last Portuguese bishop, Arquimínio Rodrigues da Costa, in October 1988 and retired in 2003. He led the diocese for fifteen years, including across the 1999 transition of Macau from Portuguese to Chinese administration. He died in 2009, aged 81.
Robert Morrison
An England-born missionary and sinologist sent by the London Missionary Society, who arrived in Macau in 1807 as the first Protestant missionary to China. Working from Macau and Canton, he single-handedly compiled the first Chinese-English dictionary, made the first complete translation of the Bible into Chinese, and served as a translator for the East India Company. He died in Canton in 1834 and is buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macau.
Ung Vai Meng
A Macau-born artist and cultural administrator. An award-winning visual artist, he also served as the founding director of the Macao Museum of Art (1999–2008) and as President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau (2010–2017), shaping Macau's art development and cultural policy; he returned to his own art after retiring.
Jia Rui
A wushu taolu athlete for Macau, China specialising in changquan, daoshu and gunshu. At the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games he won the men's daoshu/gunshu all-round gold — the first Asian Games gold medal in Macau's history — and is a multiple World Wushu Championships gold medallist.
Li Yi
A wushu taolu athlete for Macau, China specialising in changquan, jianshu and qiangshu. At the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games she won the women's changquan gold — becoming the first woman to win an Asian Games gold for Macau — and is a multiple World Wushu Championships gold medallist, honoured with the Silver Lotus Medal.
Han Jing
A wushu taolu athlete for Macau, China, born in mainland China in 1973. Trained on the Beijing Wushu Team, she transferred to Macau in 2000 and, at the 2003 World Wushu Championships held on home soil, won jianshu (sword) gold — the first World Wushu Championships gold for the Macau SAR after the 1999 handover — adding further medals at the Asian Games, World Championships and East Asian Games.
