They arrived individually, about 30 ordinary-looking people and a six-year-old child, with carrier bags holding yellow T-shirts with the words in English, "Truthfulness, Benevolence, Forbearance".
They came together, put these on, took off their shoes and sat down in the lotus position. One of them produced a Sanyo tape player and as the strains of Chinese spiritual music filled the air in the little park outside a Macau casino, they closed their eyes and stretched out their arms like aeroplane wings and remained perfectly still.
As word spread that members of Falun Gong were staging a protest on the day of Macau's handover to China, scores of photographers and police arrived and formed a jostling mob around them. Falun Gong is legal in Macau and Hong Kong, but banned in China as an "evil cult" because it organised protests there to gain recognition.
The Macau police, mostly ethnic Chinese, didn't quite know what to do with them at first. They made a bit of a charge, pushing us roughly out of the way and forming a ring around the practitioners, urging them to leave. When this didn't work, they decided to lift them bodily one by one to an underground car park, where they fetched buses to take them to the police station to "assist investigation".
Some retained their lotus position and beatific expressions and were carried off like statues of the sitting Buddha.
One policeman dragged away by the hand the little girl, a Korean, as a radio reporter gave a live commentary saying: "In a city notorious for its organised crime, the Macau police force has been mobilised to arrest a six-year-old child for doing breathing exercises."
It was certainly an embarrassment for the police and an ill omen for the independence of Macau which legally retains a high degree of autonomy for 50 years under the one country-two systems agreement.
All weekend, police in Hong Kong and Macau played a cat and mouse game with Falun Gong members trying to get to the Portuguese territory to protest to President Jiang Zemin of China about the treatment of Falun Gong members in mainland China.
Before she was arrested, Ms Zeng Jialing, a mainland Chinese accountant now living in Australia, told me that "it is unfair that China puts thousands in prison and President Jiang should resolve the problem".
Another member, Ms Xiao Hongying, said weeping she had come from Japan to testify that Falun Gong was only a spiritual movement which helped her get well after years of sickness.
Macau officials also refused entry to the Hong Kong-based Chinese dissident, Mr Frank Lu - who disseminates news on China's treatment of dissidents - and put him on a return ferry.
Yesterday's incident sparked criticism from pro-democracy groups. "Portugal just wants to curry favour with China and it's exercising political censorship so as not to cause any embarrassment to Chinese leaders," Macau's leading pro-democracy legislator, Mr Antonio Ng, said.
Mr Ng feared it would set a bad precedent for the post-handover government under the Beijing-approved leader, Mr Edmund Ho. The Amnesty International Hong Kong spokeswoman, Ms Catherine Baber, said: "This sends a very bad signal about the freedom of expression and `one country, two systems' in Macau."
AFP reports:
China's nuclear power plants could safely shut down operations if they faced any problems from the millennium computer bug, a senior official said yesterday. "If by any chance something occurs, the nuclear power plants can decrease their power or suspend their operation, and without any other mishap," Mr Li Dingfan, the president of China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC), told the China Daily.