Your search

The article reconstructs and interprets the presence of Alexandre de Rhodes (1591/93–1660) in Macau, proposing a new reading of his status as the "first Frenchman" to live and work in the city for more than twelve years. Drawing on a historiographical approach centered on biographical reconstruction and critical analysis of missionary itineraries, the author articulates the documentation produced by the Jesuit himself (memoirs and writings) with the institutional context of the Portuguese Padroado, the Atlantic-Asian dynamics of the Goa routes, and the political conditions of the missions in Vietnam. The research demonstrates that his arrival in Macau in 1623 should not be understood as a peripheral episode, but rather as a point of logistical and linguistic articulation for Jesuit expansion. By highlighting the importance of learning Vietnamese, the author reveals the difference between missionary practices mediated by interpreters and the strategy of cultural integration that Rhodes sought to develop. It concludes that his work in Macau functioned simultaneously as a platform for recruitment, training, and circulation of knowledge, influencing how evangelization in Tonkin and Cochinchina was consolidated—within a context of instability, expulsions, and rivalries among local powers.

This article examines the “translatability” of Chinese poetry into Portuguese and other Western languages, arguing that assessing this possibility depends, first of all, on recognizing the spatiotemporal situatedness of languages. Starting from the idea that language is a historically located social fact, the text argues that the translation of classical Chinese poetry requires defining “which” Chinese is at stake (at least in diachronic, geographic, and sociopolitical terms), since the very notion of language often eludes strictly linguistic boundaries. The analysis discusses, as an example, the implications of the ideographic writing system and the tendency, common in Western receptions, to confuse characters with pictograms/ideograms, which fosters exoticization and mythification of Chinese writing. Based on theoretical references and a critical reading of translation discourses, the article mobilizes the case of the translator Camilo Pessanha and his comments on the incompatibility between the art of the ideogram and European phonetic writing. It concludes that the difficulties and possibilities of translation derive not only from linguistic correspondences but also from cultural frameworks and power relations inscribed in the history of languages and their receptions.

The article examines the Jewish presence in the Portuguese Far East throughout the sixteenth century, taking as its interpretive axis the diaspora of the Perez family and, in particular, the case of Ruy Perez, a mercantile figure associated with Macau, Nagasaki, and Manila. The main thesis holds that the descendants of Jews converted to Catholicism—designated “New Christians” in Portuguese documentation—constituted strategic actors in European commercial expansion in Asia, mobilizing family networks and capital to face both opportunities and life risks within a predominantly Christian European context under inquisitorial surveillance. Methodologically, the study is based on historiographical research guided by unpublished documentation (to be published by the author) and by the analysis of the juridical-religious vocabulary of Portuguese sources, justifying the use of the term “New Christian” instead of “converso.” The reconstruction of Ruy Perez’s trajectory allows for mapping the continuities and reconfigurations of Sephardic commercial practices among different Asian ports and highlights how state policy and the control mechanisms of the “world of faith” conditioned mobilities, investments, and survival strategies. It concludes that the Sephardic network in Southeast Asia and the Far East was decisive for regional economic dynamics and reveals the social complexity and tensions inherent in Luso-Asian mobility in the sixteenth century.

Marking the centenary of the birth of Deolinda da Conceição (1913), Maria de Lurdes N. Escaleira proposes a critical-historiographical reading of her literary and journalistic production, arguing that the author's short stories and chronicles constitute a "route of emotions" that allows us to understand the daily life of Macao at decisive moments—from the Sino-Japanese War to the post-Second World War period—as well as to observe the way in which her writing stages women's struggle for freedom, equal opportunities, and social recognition. The article articulates textual analysis with historical contextualization, drawing on publications surrounding the newspaper *Notícias de Macau*, especially the set of narratives gathered in *Cheong-Sam. A Cabaia*, and on Deolinda's role as a contributor and editor responsible for a supplement dedicated to the condition of women. Among the findings, the emphasis stands out on an emotional realism that bears witness to lived "dramas," the valorization of the print press as an instrument for defending interests and for the dissemination of information and culture, and the formulation of a conception of the "modern woman" in which feminine difference is not denied but affirmed in parity with competence and autonomy. The article concludes that the author occupies a significant place in Macao's cultural history, articulating literature, the press, and emancipatory claims.

The article “De Pernas para o Ar,” by Mo Yan, explores the seemingly banal scene of a reunion among former classmates, narrated from an episode in a hotel lounge, in order to unveil mechanisms of power, social discipline, and desire underlying the “etiquettes” of everyday life. The argument departs from the contrast between corporeality and gestures (the hasty rising, the laughter that commands conduct, the staging of Western courtesy) and the persistence of informal hierarchies anchored in language, nicknames, and complicity. Methodologically, the interpretation mobilizes close reading of discourse and social performance in the text: the analysis of the jocular tone, irony, and direct interactions reveals how authority becomes “natural” through minor impositions and ritual exchanges, culminating in tensions between submission, constraint, and resistance. As main conclusions, the article argues that the “ar” (air) of the title—associated with the act of inverting the body’s position—functions as a metaphor for moral instability and role reversal: those who appear to obey also participate in the control machinery, while laughter and protocol operate as instruments of social governance. Thus, the narrative transforms the fraternization into a historical-cultural microcosm, in which the past re-enacts relations of domination in the present.

The article analyzes how Deolinda da Conceição, in short stories such as “Cheong-Sam,” stages the relationship between trauma and memory within the historical context of Macau during the Pacific War. Departing from the premise that colonial and nationalist violences continually displace the conditions of identity representation, the author proposes that fictional writing creates a borderland “domestic space,” wherein the annihilating past returns in the form of disturbing images and liminal experiences. Methodologically, the text articulates a close reading of the short stories with theoretical frameworks from postcolonial theory (in dialogue with Homi Bhabha), privileging the narrative mechanisms of the irruption of the uncanny, the dream, and the haunting as devices of mnemonic reconstitution. As central evidence, the figure of the cheong-sam, associated with the ghost of a dead woman, functions as an icon of a memory of extermination: violence silences the victim, yet the trace persists, pursuing and destabilizing certainty regarding the authorship of the crime. The article concludes that eschatological revenge and doubt (“was that crime really hers?”) reveal the rupture of familial norms and the fabrication of subjects in a state of exception, thereby enabling the interpretation of Deolinda’s literature as an affective archive of Macanese trauma and as a critique of the regimes of power that produce it.

This article revisits the cartography and historical documentation of commerce in the "Foreign Quarter" of Canton between 1760 and 1843, challenging the historiographical belief that three continuous commercial streets—New China Street, (Old) China Street, and Hog Lane—existed throughout much of the late modern period. The central thesis contends that, during this interval, only two streets structured retail and supply in the sector controlled by foreigners: the thoroughfare later associated with China Street (originating in 1760) and Hog Lane (recognized by sources at least since the 1740s). Methodologically, the author undertakes a critical comparative reading of maps, travel accounts, European archival records, and iconographic evidence (plans and views of the factories), confronting the names, locations, and chronologies attributed in secondary works with primary sources. The results indicate that "New China Street" did not constitute a third functional artery prior to 1822; it appears after the fire that destroyed the factories, when access was redefined and a new street was established in the context of reconstruction. Thus, the review clarifies the policy of segregation and surveillance of the Co-hong (公行) and contributes to a more precise reconstruction of the commercial geography of foreign Canton.

The article proposes ten historiographical observations on the Chinese presence in Malacca and Manila in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, discussing how Iberian Europeans mobilized information concerning merchants and Sino-Southeast Asian networks to define expansion strategies. The argument contends that "Chinchéus" and "Sangleys" do not merely designate ethnic groups, but rather categories collected and re-signified in Portuguese and Spanish sources, functioning as indicators of commercial access, diplomatic potential, and geopolitical knowledge about "China." The method consists of a comparative critical reading of chronicle accounts and period reports, articulating them with the context of the conquest and consolidation of Luso-Spanish positions in the region. In Malacca, the integration of Chinese merchants is presented as a factor of success: they informed, mediated, and influenced decisions, including in the transition toward the military resolution of the local conflict. In Manila, one observes the persistence of expectations of direct contact with "China," in a scenario of correction of imperial goals after frustrated experiences in the Visayas. The main conclusions emphasize the selective circulation of knowledge concerning ships, wealth, frequency of voyages, and religion, as well as the role of Chinese intermediaries in constructing the possibilities of Iberian imperial continuity in the Far East.

The article discusses Mo Yan (莫言) as an intellectual “from the countryside, the homeland, and the world,” arguing that his writing results from the articulation of rural experience, institutional formation, and the creative appropriation of Western literary models. The author contends that the development of Chinese fiction since the late 1970s has accompanied profound social and cultural transformations, in a process comparable to economic modernization: through learning, imitation, and borrowing, a renewing vitality was consolidated, finding its highest exponent in Mo Yan. Methodologically, the analysis proceeds by way of biographical-professional contextualization and an interpretive reading of early-career works, highlighting “The Transparent Carrot” (透 明的胡籮蔔, 1985), conceived from a dreamlike experience and structured by the childhood sensitivity of its protagonist, Heihai (“dark boy”). It concludes that the narrative, episodic and deliberately lacunar, mobilizes an impressionism capable of transforming poverty, hunger, and displacement into psychological density, revealing symbolic relations between figures and objects in the narrated universe. Thus, Mo Yan reconfigures rural memory into a transnational literary language, converting the “land” into a device of imagination and of the world.

The article analyzes the literary representation of the hotel-casino that, since the 1970s, has consolidated itself as an emblem of Macau—the Hotel Lisboa—in a chronicle by Clara Ferreira Alves (1999). Drawing on an intertextual and comparative reading, the study seeks to understand how the text reconfigures the "Other space" through narrative strategies such as figurative descriptions, contextualizations, analogies, and metaphors, simultaneously operating a visual translation and an imagological decoding of the architectural complex. Methodologically, the investigation articulates the analysis of the chronicle "Hotel Lisboa" with other representations, in Portuguese and English, of symbolic buildings, establishing dialogues with descriptive traditions and with twentieth-century Anglophone travel writing. It is concluded that the Hotel Lisboa functions as a platform of passage, a place of pleasure, and a cultural frontier, where modernity and progress articulate with a dynamic of illusion and escape from everyday life. The casino intensifies structuring binaries of the imaginary—luck/misfortune, happiness/sadness, wealth/poverty, reality/escapism—suggesting the proximity between anonymity, public spectacle, and personal tragedies. The article thus interprets literary "fantasy" as the production of a transnational imaginary, often analogous to that of "sin cities" such as Las Vegas, but reconfigured in a local key.

The article analyzes how Rui Rocha’s poetry articulates “the Orient” and “silence” as aesthetic-philosophical principles, arguing that his writing subverts the Western tradition grounded in discursivity, logic, and the primacy of utterance. Taking as its starting point the work *A Oriente do Silêncio*, the author contends that, already in the dedication, a structuring triad is delineated—the reverberation of an ancient China, the ethical mandate to be fulfilled in the succession of lovers, and the sovereignty of tones and writing—which permeates the entire book and relates to a mode of non-abrupt movement sustained by serenity and the continuity of “occurrence.” Methodologically, the analysis combines close reading of passages with a theoretical framework from the Zen tradition (associated with Mahāyāna/Chan Buddhism) to show how the notion of emptiness and the refusal of oppositions guide the poetic experience. It concludes that silence, far from functioning as a mere thematic device, operates as a territory of authenticity: between words and images, the poem instates an ethics of listening and rhythm, offering a worldview fundamentally distinct from the loquacity and artificiality of “showing.”

The text presents an analytical index of authors and studies published in issues 37 to 41 of *Review of Culture* (2013), bringing together contributions in Portuguese and/or English on the history and cultures of Macau and its Luso-Asian intersections. The organization of the material reveals a thematic framework that articulates literature, philology, intellectual history, colonial policies and institutional transitions, as well as studies of identity, linguistic practices, and commercial circulation. Although the document does not itself constitute a methodologically structured research article, the compilation functions as a tool for disciplinary mapping: it allows one to locate recurring research agendas, identify clusters of authors, and recognize approaches ranging from textual analysis and historical commentary to socioeconomic micro-history and the intermedial reading of cultural objects. Among the highlighted lines are studies on Henrique de Senna Fernandes and fictional reconfigurations of Macau, investigations into Portuguese missions and Japanese grammar, dynamics of trade and intercultural encounter, debates on political models and regimes, as well as analyses of cultural mediation in periods of transition. It is concluded that the index reinforces the interdisciplinary nature of the journal and facilitates critical consultation of the corpus for future historiographical and cultural revisitations.

The article analyzes two opera seasons in Macao—in 1833 and in 1865—to explain how the archipelago became integrated, by maritime routes, into a global musical culture of the nineteenth century. The author argues that, far from constituting isolated episodes, the performances by itinerant Italian companies fit within a transcontinental circulation of operatic repertoires, artists, and tastes driven by oceanic routes and by networks of cultural mediation. Methodologically, the study combines critical reading of contemporary sources, including local press records and residents' diaries, with historical-musical framing on the "globalization" of opera—marked by the expansion of the so-called "Rossini universe" and, more broadly, by the hegemonic weight of Italian production. In comparing the two dates, the author identifies continuities and transformations in the way the Italian repertoire was selected, disseminated, and received in Macao: in 1833, a touring South American company—described locally as operatic "circumnavigators"—staged an expressive series of operas, while in 1865 the presence of a new dynamic of circulation confirms the persistence of Atlantic-Asian maritime connections. It is concluded that the opera seasons functioned as articulation points between Macao and the musical circuits of the nineteenth-century world, revealing the role of maritime routes in the construction of a transregional performative culture.

The article analyzes the need for harmony as a transversal philosophical principle between the Confucian East and the Leibnizian West, taking as its starting point the approach already attempted by Leibniz to Confucian thought and the Yijing (易經). The author argues that, although they share a concern with the pacification of tensions and the integration of differences into a complementary whole, the traditions diverge above all in how they conceive the religious and metaphysical foundation of this harmony. Methodologically, the text proceeds through comparative reading and selective exegesis of passages from the Analects, articulating them with Leibnizian concepts concerning education, perspectival knowledge, and the “pre-established harmony” that guarantees harmonization among monads. As results, the article shows that, in Confucianism, harmony is not merely internal: it requires plurality, sociability, and the cultivation of moral virtues, which makes knowledge a communal exercise. In Leibniz’s case, each point of view would be an expression of a divine order, allowing a rational harmonization without the collapse of plurality. Finally, the author discusses the problem of Western theological translation, suggesting that Leibniz’s approach to Chinese religion requires conceptual mediations (notably via Neo-Confucianism).

The article provides a critical-documentary analysis of Manuel de Saldanha's embassy to Peking (1668–1670), drawing on an unprecedented collection of 52 letters preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa. The author argues that this corpus—comprising first-person writings, including appointments, instructions, directives, and orders issued by the ambassador himself—offers a more detailed account of the mission's internal dynamics and the political-institutional framework surrounding the diplomatic enterprise than other, then-scarce sources. Methodologically, the study systematically cross-references complementary accounts and testimonies, in particular: the itinerary of the Jesuit Francisco Pimentel, the tendentiously negative interpretative framing of Domingos Navarrete, the ambassador's letters to Jesuits linked to the Province of Japan, and the minutes of the Leal Senado of Macao. The analysis concludes that the embassy failed to gain credibility with the Mandarinate authority, suffered successive setbacks over the course of its two-and-a-half-year tenure, and did not achieve the objectives initially envisioned by the Leal Senado and the mercantile community of Macao, thereby contradicting any reading of presumed Sino-diplomatic understanding and acceptance. The text further relates the mission's outcome to the political and economic conjuncture of the Middle Kingdom, marked by dynastic instability and restrictive policies on coastal trade, which structurally undermined the viability of the Macanese settlement.

António Aresta’s article examines how José da Costa Nunes—a Portuguese figure active in the East, particularly in Macao—conceived of China and interpreted its culture and history. Taking as its point of departure the intellectual and moral context of late 19th-century Macao—marked by political-institutional instability, the erosion of knowledge, and social tensions exacerbated by epidemics and rumors—the author frames Costa Nunes’s reflections as a response to a broader crisis of values, not merely local but civilizational. Methodologically, Aresta undertakes a historical-interpretive and contextual reading of the writings and interventions attributable to the author, cross-referencing them with contemporary documents that allow the conditions under which his perspective was produced to be situated (notably correspondence, reports, and administrative acts). The conclusions suggest that José da Costa Nunes’s “vision of China” is not reducible to exoticism or a purely missionary judgment, but rather articulates an observation of the world with a moral and religious project, conceiving the reformulation of the social ethos as a means to confront cultural degradation. Thus, China emerges simultaneously as an object of knowledge and as a critical mirror of European and colonial difficulties, revealing continuities and tensions between doctrine, pragmatism, and expectations of the re-Christianization of public life.

The article proposes a historiographical reassessment of Francisco Vieira de Figueiredo, a prominent figure as a merchant and benefactor linked to the Portuguese presence in the Far East, reinterpreting him as a “fidalgo” socially produced by institutional mechanisms rather than by lineage alone. The argument articulates biographical reconstruction with a critical analysis of the gaps and persistences in historiographical production: from the pioneering mentions by Charles Boxer, who for decades omitted the character’s place of origin, to the author’s recent study, grounded in primary documentation. Methodologically, the text cross-references traces dispersed across different archives and editions, with particular emphasis on the process of the Tribunal of the Holy Office for admission as a familiar of the Inquisition of Goa. Based on this dossier, the article reconstructs filiation, place of birth (Azambujal, near Ourém), and mobility trajectory, identifying the consolidation of the patronymic “de Figueiredo” in India, associated with the conferral of the “Habit of Knight of the Order of Christ” in 1647. As main conclusions, it is shown that Vieira de Figueiredo’s social ascent is understood through the convergence of service and recognition and through verification procedures (purity of blood, origin, and status), allowing for the reading of the emergence of an aristocratizing identity in the colonial context of Goa and Macau.

The article examines how returns to Macau — simultaneously as place, archive, and symbolic desire — contribute to the elaboration of contemporary postcolonial narratives within the Luso-Portuguese context and that of so-called “Greater China.” Departing from the long European colonial tradition of travel accounts, the author shifts the focus from exploration to an “expedition” of restitution: rather than extracting benefits from the colonial enclave, the aim is to restore what would have been “borrowed.” To support this thesis, the article mobilizes a cultural and literary reading of Portuguese works set in Macau and reinterprets the territory’s peculiar status, often described by scholars as a “special” colony, marked by incomplete sovereignty and implicit negotiations with China. Methodologically, the analysis articulates intertextual genealogies (especially the Camonian heritage and its mythologies of symbolic reconstitution) with an examination of circulations of power and affect across cross-border networks (Hong Kong, the Chinese littoral, and beyond). It concludes that the literary reappropriation of the return to Macau produces new narrative configurations: it reorients imperial memory beyond direct domination, shifts the “end of empire” toward an ambiguous discontinuity, and allows an understanding of how postcolonial meanings are constructed in the present, in tension with the contemporary intensification of the China–Portugal bond.

The article analyzes how Agustina Bessa-Luís, in *A Quinta Essência* (1999), constructs images of Chinese culture through the gaze of the protagonist José Carlos, whose search for the "source" of the Chinese spirit organizes a "temporal journey" that articulates practically four centuries of Portuguese presence in Macau. Arguing that otherness is produced by mechanisms of familiarization—mixing fantasy, delirium, and historical reality—the author interprets the novel as a device for reading cultural encounter, simultaneously proximate and distant. The study mobilizes a critical-literary approach centered on the articulation between plot and underlying History, examining "bridge-texts" and documentary references (letters, memoirs, diaries, travel accounts, dictionaries, decrees) that sustain a frequently stereotyped view of the Orient. As an interpretive axis, the inscription of *The Dream of the Red Chamber* (*Hong Lou Meng*) stands out, functioning as a structuring cultural archive: its images, themes, and narrative forms intersect with the empirical experience of the characters in Portugal, Macau, and China. It concludes that the novel reconfigures the relationship between identity and difference by converting History into a matter of imagination, exposing the conditions of production of cultural "others" and the limits of deciphering the foreign.

The article analyzes the echoes and influences of the First Portuguese Republic in Macau, seeking to explain how the process of recognizing the new regime unfolded in a singular colonial context, marked by political, institutional, and social distance from the metropolis. Arguing that the circulation of republican determinations encountered practical and symbolic limits in the territory, the author maintains that many mechanisms were not fully applied, nor immediately, while others were adapted according to local conditions or simply did not materialize. The approach mobilizes a historiographical perspective centered on reconstructing the reception of the Republic in Macau, taking as reference events and debates from the period between 1880 and 1910, as well as the particular dynamics of local administration and the ideological sensibilities linked to the previous regime. It concludes that the republican proclamation, while arousing expectation, fear, and a reconfiguration of social perceptions, also generated administrative embarrassments and interim decisions, revealing the specificity of the republican “impact” in an imperial space distinct from the remainder of the Portuguese patrimony.