By Xu Leiying

Zhong Lin, a taxi driver in Macao, says he feels both happy and worried at the same time after witnessing the fundamental changes that have taken place in Macao during the past decade since the area's return to China.

The 60 year-old is a Cambodia-born Chinese. Forty years ago, he fled from war-ridden Cambodia to Macao, while many other Cambodians chose foreign countries such as France as their destinations.

Although he has to drive a taxi each day until midnight to support his four-member family, Zhong says he is quite satisfied with the choice he made. He has found it easy to make a living in Macao without any language and cultural barriers.

"If you went to foreign countries and couldn't speak English or French, you could hardly work and would probably face discrimination, Zhong said. "While in a place that belongs to Chinese, only if you were diligent, would you be able to find a job and make a living here."

Since Macao returned to China in 1999, tremendous changes have occurred in this small region. Zhong said he is ambivalent about all the changes he has witnessed.

Thanks to the soaring local economy, the Macao Special Administrative Region government launched a "wealth share" scheme last year, under which each resident could get thousands of patacas, the local currency, as an annual bonus.

"I got the bonus twice -- 5,000 patacas for the first time and 6,000 patacas the second," Zhong said.

Furthermore, more jobs have been created in Macao during this period. The area's unemployment rate dropped to about 3 percent in 2008 from 6.4 percent in 1999. With gambling as the pillar of Macao's economy, Zhong's son works in a casino just as many other Macanese.

Rising housing prices also worry Zhong. As a father of two children -- a 22-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter��he is eager to buy a new apartment where his son and his future daughter-in-law can set up a nuclear family. But the gap between high housing prices and the average income has widened so quickly that Zhong has begun thinking about buying house in Zhuhai, a neighboring city of Macao in south China's Guangdong Province.

Many Macanese have bought homes in Zhuhai. According to the city's Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau, there have been 1,046 cases of Macao residents buying houses in Zhuhai during the first 10 months of this year, accounting for more than 5.5 percent of the city's entire purchasing total.

Deeply influenced by Chinese traditions, Zhong would like to give all he has to his children even though they have grown up. He told reporters from China Radio International if his son gets married, he will give him his own apartment as a wedding gift. As for himself and his wife, they may buy an apartment in Zhuhai, where the housing prices are much lower compared to those in Macao.