Every Day Is Special: October 2 – Day after the National Day of the People's Republic of China

October 2 – Day after the National Day of the People's Republic of China – in Macau!

Posted on October 2, 2015

Why not continue the celebration?

Since 1999, Macau has been a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. So the people of Macau, I've been told, celebrated China's National Day yesterday.

But even though Macau's banks will be open today, the government will continue to be on holiday today. Because today is officially a holiday – the holiday called “Day after the National Day of the People's Republic of China”!

I just hope tomorrow isn't “Day after the Day after the National Day of the PRC.” because it could just get silly!

Macau's world records!

Macau is semi-independent (even though it is also sorta kinda part of China). It could be called a city-state. And it holds some world records!

It's so densely populated that it LOOKS
densely populated!!!

For one thing, it's super dense! Macau has the highest population density in the world!

That means that far more people live closer together in Macau than in anywhere else in the world. To be specific:

more than 18,000 people live per square kilometer (which is about 48,000 people per square mile)

As a comparison, the densely-populated New York City is still not nearly as dense:

fewer than 11,000 people live per square kilometer fewer than 28,000 people per square mile

One reason it's so dense is because Macau holds second place in the world for life expectancy. The average person lives between 84 and 85 years!

In comparison, people in the U.S. live an average of 79 years, and sadly places like Lesotho only live an average of 50 years.

Macau boasts the largest casino in the world, the Venetian Macau. All 3,000 hotel rooms are suites!

Actually, Macau is now the largest gambling center in the world. (It passed Las Vegas for this title in 2006.)

Since Macau was already really densely populated even before all the casino action, it did a huge land reclamation project that joined two islands with a strip on which the casinos are built.

This strip is named for the two island: Coloane and Taipa are the islands, and the strip is called the Cotai Strip.