And while only 4, 000 self-described Macanese now remain among a population of 450, 000, the racial mixing that distinguished the Portuguese in their empire from, say, the British in theirs has bequeathed the onetime colony an air of acceptance, and of variousness.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | Visions of China: Macau

This tallies with the outcome of natural experiments in recent history, such as the influx of 610, 000 Russian Jews into Israel in the early 1990s, the return of 900, 000 Frenchmen from Algeria in 1962 or the homecoming of 600, 000 Portuguese after the collapse of their empire in Africa in 1974-76.

ECONOMIST: Of bedsheets and bison grass vodka