# Montanha
## English
### Etymology

From Portuguese Montanha.

### Proper noun

Montanha
* (historical) A former island in Xiangzhou district, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China, that became part of Hengqin.
** 1861, “Approaches to Canton River, including Hong Kong”, in The China Pilot: The Coast of China, Korea, and Tartary; the Sea of Japan, Gulfs of Tartary and Amur, and Sea of Okhotsk‎, 3rd edition, pages 15-16:Mong-chau, or Ballast island, bears N.N.W., distant 2 1/2 miles, from the west point of Montanha, and between them there are two passages leading to Macao, but both so shoal at low Avater as only to afford a passage for boats.
** 1912 October 4, “The Expedition Against Pirates.”, in Hongkong Daily, number 16981, Hongkong, page 2, column 5:The junk which was used in the raid on Cheung Chau, it will be remembered, was seized by the Portuguese police at Macao lying off Lappa. It was in consequence of these facts that the Hongkong Government made the strong representations to the Government of Macao and to the Chinese Authorities at Canton which resulted in a junk expedition made up of Portuguese and Chinese troops, assisted by several armed vessels, to the island of Wong Kam, known by the Portugues at "Montanha."
** 2001, Gary M. C. Ngai [魏美昌], “Macau's Identity: The Need for its Preservation and Development into the Next Century”, in Arthur H. Chen, editor, Culture of Metropolis in Macau: An International Symposium on Cultural Heritage: Strategies for the Twenty-first Century‎, Cultural Affairs Bureau [文化局], →ISBN, →OCLC, page 142, columns 1, 2:Macau will never be able to overcome its limitation posed by its tiny size, unless after 1999 the Central Government in Beijing would be generous enough, to make the adjacent islands D. João and Montanha part of the Macau SAR, which would increase the territory’s area at least three times.
** 2016, “Timeline”, in Geoffrey C. Gunn, editor, Wartime Macau: Under the Japanese Shadow‎, HKU Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 194:1937 (3 December) Memorandum on boundaries of Macau relating to Lapa, Dom João and Vong Cam (Montanha) signed between consul for Portugal and consul for Japan in Hong Kong. 1937 (28 December) Japanese bombing of Montanha (Hengqin) Island and Portuguese occupation of Man Lio Ho village.
** 2019 June 14, “Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese”, in Macau Business‎, archived from the original on 16 September 2023‎:Perhaps it would have been simpler if, like Taipa and Coloane, the Portuguese had physically merged Macau with two other islands: Montanha and Dom João (Xiao Hengqin and Da Hengqin, in Cantonese, with Montanha known as Tai Vong Cam). […] The most curious thing: this small, economically more valuable part corresponds almost entirely to the landfill that in the 90’s linked the two islands, which means that the original land of Montanha and Dom João was mostly hilly and unsuitable for real estate development (as the images in these pages show). […] For a short time, two years later, the Japanese expelled the Portuguese, and at the end of World War II, Montanha and Dom João passed definitively to the Chinese side (in 1938, a Portuguese-language newspaper published in Macau tells us that General Chiang-Kai Chek proposed a landfill connect the two islands . . .).
** 2021 November 21, “On Chinese islands next to Macau, great stories of pirates, typhoons and war played out”, in South China Morning Post‎, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 November 2021‎:It’s hard to imagine now, but there were once three mountainous, verdant islands between Macau and mainland China. The Portuguese named them Dom João, Montanha and Lapa. Later the islands became known in Chinese as Xiao (Little) Hengqin, Da (Big) Hengqin and Wanzai, respectively. The two Hengqins, which faced Coloane and Taipa, were eventually joined by land reclamation to form a single island while Wanzai, a mere few hundred metres from Macau’s Inner Harbour (Porto Interior), saw its inclines levelled enough to become a peninsula.

#### Translations
### See also

* Dom João, Hengqin
* Montana