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The article examines how the popular cult of Nezha 哪吒, the "prince"/child god often characterized as rebellious and eccentric, took root in Macau and how its forms of devotion reflect the circulation between religious traditions and concrete social needs. Drawing on legendary narratives and historical evidence associated with two temples dedicated to Nezha, the author argues that the development of the cult cannot be understood merely as a continuation of Chinese mythology, but rather as a practice of local reinterpretation. Methodologically, the analysis articulates competing versions of the apparition legend (including an episode described as witnessed by both local residents and a Portuguese woman) with records of the cult's founding and institutional reconfiguration, particularly following epidemic outbreaks. The findings highlight that, in 1898, the miraculous survival of the inhabitants of the Morro do Diabo/Carvalho area—associated with "Morro do Marmelo" 柿山—spurred pilgrimages, donations, and the expansion of the temple, converting myth into a mechanism of consolation and healing. The conclusion is that Nezha functions as a liminal deity, recognized by Daoist and Buddhist practices, and whose devotion in Macau materializes folkloric "humor" and community agency in contexts of crisis.
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The article analyzes how Leung Ping-kwan (也斯), one of Hong Kong’s leading poets and cultural critics, constructs an image of Macao through his “new poetry” (xinshi 新詩). It is argued that the author’s poetic writing transforms the observation of landscapes, ruins, and everyday practices into cultural reading: the city emerges simultaneously as a historical-Portuguese space and as a setting for Luso-Oriental encounters, traversed by nostalgia, ambivalence, and stereotyped perceptions. Methodologically, the author undertakes a thematic and chronological reading of the poetic corpus associated with Macao, articulating textual images with concrete historical contexts—namely, the infrastructural modernization linked to the bridges (Macao–Taipa) and the persistence of religious and material memories (such as inscriptions, temples, and ruins). The main conclusions emphasize that Leung’s poems mobilize topographies (cobblestone streets, shadowy houses, provisional supports, murky sea) to dramatize decay and uncertainty in the face of the future; at the same time, the juxtaposition of Western monuments and Chinese devotional spaces reveals a cultural “ecology” of coexistence, but also signs of dissonance and erosion. Thus, Leung’s “Macao” offers a critical window onto transformations and the ways in which the city is imagined, remembered, and reinterpreted.
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This article examines "An Audience with the Envoy" in *The Peony Pavilion* (1598), a scene frequently omitted from performances and studies of Tang Xianzu. The author argues that this passage functions as a "crossing point" between east–west and south–north dynamics, anchoring literary imagination in Tang's historical experience in southern China, when he visited Macau, then an entrepôt of the Portuguese Empire. Methodologically, the work proceeds through a close reading of the scene and its role in the dramatic architecture, combined with historical-cultural contextualization: the representation of Macau as a space of encounter is compared with the way the plot organizes exogamous relations between north and south and, simultaneously, between a European alterity and the oriental "Middle Kingdom." The main conclusions indicate that the text does not stage the West merely as peripheral exoticism; rather, it integrates a western enclave and a Chinese world into narrative unity, allowing cultural geography to operate as a device of meaning. Thus, the Macau scene reveals how Tang transforms colonial contact into aesthetic imagination, reconfiguring regional identities and cultural exchanges within the very logic of love and resurrection.
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- Journal Article (3)