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The article analyzes political violence in the First Portuguese Republic (1910–1926) as a structuring force of the revolutionary process and state consolidation, challenging interpretations that reduce the rupture of 5 October to an exclusively founding event. It argues that the collision between a republican agenda marked by secularism and the persistence of monarchical-clerical and Catholic matrices, as well as the doctrinal fractures within the Republican Party, broke the initial consensus and fueled persistent instability. Methodologically, the study proposes to understand "the planes of violence" as a mechanism of political regulation, a social device, and a symbolic-cultural production, observing how struggles for control of the state favored the exclusion of adverse sectors and the progressive gestation of an authoritarianist rhetoric centered on the idea of "order." The structural crisis of the state, exacerbated by conjunctures such as the Great War, functions as a condition of possibility for the intensification of revolts, conspiracies, and cycles of counter-revolution. It concludes that violence was not an epiphenomenon but a determining element in the institutional reconfiguration of the regime and in the redefinition of the Republic's political horizon, anticipating, in Portugal, tendencies of "order" that were also observed in contemporary revolutionary experiences.

The article proposes a sociodemographic portrait of the "Portuguese of Hong Kong" between 1879 and 1949, framing the Macanese diaspora within the context of the political and economic transformations of the nineteenth century in East Asia. The central thesis argues that the patterns, directions, and persistence of migration between Macau and the then British colony depended on established socio-familial networks, which conditioned the social composition of the Portuguese/Macanese community in Hong Kong. Methodologically, the study mobilizes primary sources of a consular nature, in particular the "Livros de Matrícula dos Cidadãos Portugueses" provided for by Portuguese consular regulations (1903 and later 1920). From these records, the author collects 4,168 names, exploring the available variables: sex, age, marital status, number of children, occupations, places and dates of birth and death, with treatment of documentary gaps and nominal duplication in cases of successive registrations. The results indicate a significant Portuguese/Macanese presence in the 1881 census, with 61.5% among European and American Westerners, and confirm a balanced distribution between men (2,086) and women (2,082) in the consular records. It is concluded that, although not corresponding to a population census, the consular corpus allows the reconstruction of relevant demographic and social trends for understanding integration and the maintenance of cultural ties with the territory of origin.

This article analyzes the presence of the French painter Auguste Borget in the South China region—first in Hong Kong and subsequently in Canton and the Portuguese colony of Macao—between August 1838 and July 1839, proposing that his visual and written production constitutes a singular mode of "seeing" and interpreting a culturally distant civilization. The author articulates the study of two complementary materialities: the artist's drawings and his texts, exploring how empirical observation is converted into aesthetic construction and, simultaneously, into explanatory discourse. Methodologically, the analysis draws on the comparative reading of motifs and visual conventions, situating Borget's iconographic choices within broader artistic networks, including influences from the Italian veduta and Western repertoires of the Canton factories, as well as the circulation of pre-existing images. Among the principal findings, the emergence of a landscape "manifesto" in "View of Hong Kong" stands out, which also functions as a discreet self-portrait of the draughtsman, along with the re-elaboration of the Canton factories according to a personal framing that combines familiar elements (buildings, flags, vessels) with a distinctive geometry of its own. The article concludes that Borget transforms the travel testimony into cultural mediation, offering a simultaneously aesthetic and interpretive vision of the coastline and the maritime structures of the territory.

This article examines the role of Portuguese missionaries in shaping linguistic knowledge of Japanese, focusing on João Rodrigues and the "linguistic outline" presented in *Arte da Lingoa de Iapam* (1608). The central thesis holds that Rodrigues' grammatical production must be understood as an instrument of intellectual mediation between Western linguistic theories and the systematic description of Japanese, situated within a historical context marked by intense Luso-Japanese cultural exchange in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Methodologically, the study undertakes a historiographical reading of the work's compilation process, correlating Rodrigues' formative trajectory (Jesuit education in Latin and the humanities, contact with internal translation networks within the Society, and everyday language learning) with the analytical and classificatory choices visible in the *Arte*. The analysis identifies how Rodrigues applies, adapts, and redefines categories derived from European traditions—particularly Latin grammars and European models—to address aspects where the "Latin" framework proved insufficient, simultaneously pursuing the "perfect expression" in Japanese and the explanation of its origin and development. The study concludes that Jesuit linguistics, by describing Japanese in a formal and transmissible manner, contributed to the transnational circulation of knowledge and to the establishment of a European "Japanological" horizon, anticipating debates on method, description, and linguistic comparison.

David Brookshaw's article analyzes Julian Lees's novel **The Fan Tan Players**, arguing that **Macao** constitutes the narrative's nuclear space, functioning simultaneously as the point of departure and return for its protagonists between 1928 and 1945. In light of comparison with Lusophone Macanese fiction—particularly authors such as **Rodrigo Leal de Carvalho** and **Henrique de Senna Fernandes**—the study contends that Lees mobilizes familiar configurations (geographical and chronological mobility; the presence of "White" refugees in post-Bolshevik-revolution China) yet reconfigures the types and the tone: in contrast to figures marked by melancholy and fragility, the novel privileges a **romantic regime of persistent love**, in a register more attuned to hope and attachment. Methodologically, the article proceeds through **interpretive and contextual reading**, highlighting the way in which Macao's **cultural topography**—sensations, social habits, and linguistic diversity—is worked through a choral cast of expatriates, friendships, and communal practices. Brookshaw concludes that the title alludes to the local imaginary of gambling (fan tan) above all as a **metaphor of contingency** (luck, coincidence, and probability), while the representation of Macao as a "home" relatively less hierarchical than Hong Kong simultaneously evinces an adherence to colonial myths and an implicit critique of the dynamics of prejudice.

The article "Canções de Beber e Outras Visitas" (Manuel Afonso Costa) proposes a cultural and intertextual reading of a set of lyrical texts that reenact, in the form of songs and confidences, the circulation of classical motifs and their reconfiguration in environments of "cosmopolitan" sensibility. The central argument holds that the figures of wine, wind, bamboos, clouds, and poetic encounter function less as thematic ornaments than as passage devices between worlds: between civility and retreat, desire and vanitas, social life and liminal experience. Methodologically, the author proceeds through comparative approximations and close reading, articulating explicit references to poets and writing regimes (e.g., Wei Mu, Wang Wei, Ruan Ji, Li Bai, Xu-Mo, Han-Shan), to evince how metaphors and textual allusions consolidate a common affective grammar. The conclusions highlight that poetry emerges as a practice of existential orientation ("one can even live in the midst of men"), while simultaneously dramatizing impermanence (aging, death, the flowing of rivers) and legitimizing forms of sociability mediated by song, intimacy, and wine. Thus, the analyzed texts reveal Macao as a possible mirror of cultural crossings, where languages and images regroup into new constellations of meaning.

Manuel Lobato’s article reexamines the figure of Francisco Serrão (c. 1511–1521), often presented in Iberian sources as the “first European” to settle in the Maluku Islands, critically situating him within the “shadow of Magellan” and, above all, within the geopolitical and historiographical context of the Luso-Spanish disputes over access to spices. Drawing on a heterogeneous body of documentary evidence—chronicles and archival records, including testimonies compiled from the 1520s onward in the context of the “Moluccan Question”—the author argues that much of the information about Serrão was shaped by national rivalry, diplomatic interests, and deliberate distortions, necessitating a strict reading and cross-referencing with potentially contemporary data. Methodologically, the text articulates source criticism and a reconstruction of the early process of maritime links between Melaka and Maluku, shifting the focus of traditional historiography from “discoveries” to navigation, trade, and regional political history. Among the findings, the insufficiency of biographical data prior to 1511 and the limited direct evidence about his life in Asia stand out; at the same time, the author contextualizes the Portuguese arrival within a setting previously dominated by commercial networks and Muslim alliances (especially Ternate and Melaka), which would help explain the rapid visibility and impact of Serrão’s actions in the early stages of the Portuguese presence in the archipelago.

This article analyzes the trajectory of the Macao International Music Festival between 1987 and 1999, a period of political and institutional transition in which the event moved from the "dream" of transforming Macao into "a Salzburg of the East" to a reality marked by material limitations and shifts in governance. Drawing on a retrospective reading of contemporary press and publications, the author frames the Festival as a cultural project that sought to elevate Macao's artistic centrality, confronting, from its very origins, the clash between programmatic ambition and the absence of infrastructure, know-how, and technical equipment. Problems such as the lack of a concert hall, the difficulty of operatic staging, and the scarcity of musical resources (including a quality piano, only acquired later) explain the need for improvised and costly solutions. Concurrently, the text emphasizes the impact of political upheavals—especially the change of governing team from 1990 onward—on artistic direction and on the delay of structuring projects, such as the restoration of the Teatro D. Pedro V, the creation of the Macao Cultural Centre, and the professionalization of local orchestras. The article concludes that public controversies over costs and "economy" must be read critically within their temporal context, articulating the budgetary discussion with the challenges of cultural consolidation in a regime in transition.

The article proposes a philological and historiographic reading of references to the “mongoose” (menggui 蒙貴/蒙貴 with variable characters) in Chinese sources from the Ming and Qing periods, focusing on the circulation of descriptions between Siam (Xianluo 暹羅), Guangdong, and Macau. Drawing on information from the *Aomen jilüe* 澳門記略 (1751), the author observes that the characterization of the animal—resemblance to a cat, long legs, hairy tail, three color varieties, and utility in rat hunting—also appears with remarkable proximity in Qu Dajun (*Guangdong xinyu* 廣東新語, c. 1700). The methodology consists of comparing entries and descriptive sequences across relevant compilations and treatises, including the *Guangdong tongzhi*, *Tong ya* (1636/1666), *Nan Yue biji*, and above all, the *Hai yu* 海語 by Huang Zhong (1536), which explicitly links the animal to “Thailand” and records lexical variants such as *mengju*/muɐkœy. The main conclusions indicate that the “Siam–Guangdong–Macau” constellation does not derive from a simple episodic importation, but from a long duration of circulation of animals and zoological knowledge, mediated by compilatory practices and phonetic correspondences with southern traditions. Thus, the article suggests that “exoticisms” in Macau reflect networks of textual and commercial transmission, rather than merely local observation or narrative intent.

The article proposes a comparative reading of two literary and anthropologically oriented works about the enclave: *A Chinesinha* (1974), by Maria Pacheco Borges, and *Aguarelas de Macau 1960–1970* (1998), by Ana Maria Amaro. The central thesis holds that both narrators, albeit in distinct registers, construct “ethnographic landscapes” of Macau and southern China through a memorial and pedagogical gaze, rearticulating racial images, social relations and cultural topographies as if they were field observation. To sustain this argument, the study mobilizes intratextual and contextual analysis, crossing narrative procedures (focalization, descriptions of spaces and social figures) with biographical and historical data on the authors and the conditions of production/edition of the works. In particular, the article examines how Macanese childhood and youth function as an affective archive in *A Chinesinha*, while *Aguarelas de Macau* operates a retrospective reconstitution anchored in everyday practices (such as horticulture and local dialogues) and in experiences of crossing between the Portuguese territory and China under Portuguese administration. It concludes that the ethnographic representations produced in these texts reveal an ethnography “situated” by memory, yet also modulated by colonial imaginaries and by categories of classification of the “other,” offering an interpretive path to understand the persistence and transformations of the images of Macau and the population(s) of southern China.

The article examines the Senna Fernandes family as an interpretive axis for the historical and cultural formation of Macao, articulating genealogy, public life, and diaspora dynamics. The central thesis holds that the prominence of the Senna Fernandes family in the political, economic, and social spheres is not explained solely by individual trajectories, but by the way the family crystallizes broader patterns of Macanese society: the embrace of diverse origins through marriage, the creation of translocal networks, and participation in migratory movements that projected the name of Macao onto other continents. Methodologically, the text combines genealogical reconstruction (based on biographical records and historical references), a contextual reading of the positions and institutions associated with family members, and an interpretation of the connections between geographical origin, family alliances, and integration into port economies. The analysis culminates in the figure of Bernardino de Senna Fernandes (1815–1893), whose diplomatic, mercantile, and philanthropic career accompanies the consolidation of the local elite, simultaneously evidencing the continuity and transformation of Macanese family models through endogamous marriages and connections with Goa, Lisbon, and other regions. The article concludes that the family functions as a "living archive" of the relations between family, culture, and mobility, enabling an understanding of Macanese identity as a historical synthesis in constant recomposition.

The article analyzes the little-known figure of the French painter Auguste Borget through his visual and epistolary diary of his journey in China between the summer of 1838 and the summer of 1839, proposing that this experience explains the singularity of his watercolors and sketches “directly from life.” The author argues that, although contemporary reception tends to reduce Borget to a “painter of exotic places,” his gaze is not guided by commercial exoticism nor by a touristic pursuit of profit; rather, it manifests fidelity to Chinese reality and an intention to remain and understand “from within” the territory visited. Methodologically, the text articulates a biographical reading and a historical framing of the evolution of landscape painting in France (from the classical tradition to Romantic innovations) with an analysis of the artist’s trajectory as a humanist nomad. Based on the letters and the iconographic corpus produced during the journey, it concludes that Borget positions himself simultaneously as a sensitive observer and an emotional participant in the space depicted, transforming the landscape into celebration and contemplation, rather than mere record.

The article argues that Henrique de Senna Fernandes’ picaresque literature constitutes a privileged cultural archive for capturing the “factual” of old Macao, as it transforms characters and situations into mechanisms for reconstructing daily life, social tensions, and interactions between communities. Starting from the premise that literary texts are simultaneously aesthetic narratives and historical documents, the author proposes a contextualized reading of two works by the writer: *A Trança Feiticeira* (set in the 1930s) and *Amor e Dedinhos de Pé* (inspired by oral accounts from childhood). The methodology is based on an articulation between literary analysis and historical-cultural framing, considering the functioning of picaresque figures as “living documents” capable of reflecting power relations, mobility, and identity change in the 1930s–1950s. It concludes that, in the novels, the heroes’ trajectories reveal the interweaving of the Chinese, Portuguese, and Macanese communities, allowing for the observation of moments of decline and/or socioeconomic rise. Fiction, in turn, functions as a nostalgic and critical mediation in the face of transformations in the territory under Portuguese administration, contributing to safeguarding a threatened cultural memory.

This article examines how food functions as a vehicle for nostalgia and cultural preservation in Henrique de Senna Fernandes’s fiction, focusing on the role of cuisine in *A Trança Feiticeira*. Building from broader accounts of Macanese culinary history, the study situates “Cozinhaçã” as a frontier cuisine shaped by Portuguese adaptation and successive influences from Malay, Indian, African, and Chinese traditions. Methodologically, the article reads Senna Fernandes’s culinary references as textual markers of identity work: dishes, ingredients, and eating practices are treated not merely as atmospheric detail, but as narrative devices that stage memory, belonging, and the fragility of cultural continuity. The argument is that culinary discourse in the novel performs a dual task. On the one hand, it maps Macao’s historical position within oceanic and diasporic networks, using food to demonstrate mixture and reinvention. On the other, it mourns the loss—or threatened disappearance—of specific “home-town” recipes by linking them to family life, religious occasions, and communal gatherings. The article concludes that in Senna Fernandes’s writing, cuisine becomes an archive of sensory heritage, transforming everyday eating into a literary strategy for maintaining cultural uniqueness amid rapid social and political change.

This article examines how the fiction of Henrique de Senna Fernandes constructs "lives" and modes of living in the territory of Macao under historical and political tensions, articulating politicization, patriarchy, expectations of "progress," and post-colonial problematics. Starting from the author's singular position as a "son of the land" (born in 1923 into a Macanese family with plural roots), the text argues that his writing—though often anchored in first-person short stories and novellas recalled from the post-war period—functions as a cultural chronicle of the almost-past, capable of revealing social continuities and epochal fractures. The methodology combines intrinsic literary reading with historical-cultural contextualization: the study observes configurations of power in gender relations, the narrative regimes of transmission (stories told, collected, and retold), and the manner in which certain images of modernization coexist with persistent hierarchies. It concludes that, by representing life in Macao before and after decisive turning points (the Japanese occupation, the instability of the 1960s, the 1974 Revolution, and the transition period), Senna Fernandes not only preserves local memory; he also exposes, through fictional means, the way in which politics and patriarchy organize everyday life, producing an implicit—and often ambivalent—critique of colonial narratives and the promises of development that succeeded them.

The article analyzes the work of the Luso-Chinese sculptor Raúl Maria Xavier (1894–1964) in order to understand how his “Oriental” experience—particularly the visual and cultural learning acquired in Macau and through contact with the art of mainland China and Japan—translates into a sculptural aesthetic mobilized within the context of the Portuguese Estado Novo. Starting from a biographical and historical framework—marked by his training in Lisbon, a period of study in Italy, and professional trajectories between colony and metropolis—the study argues that the presence of a “Spirit of the Orient” does not operate as peripheral exoticism, but rather as a formal and symbolic resource incorporated into artistic languages recognized by the official culture of the period. Methodologically, the text is structured as a contribution to an interpretive catalog: it reconstructs trajectories, maps works and typologies (portraits, civil and military statuary, allegories, and religious figuration), and relates institutional reception (exhibitions, missions, decorations, and teaching positions) to strategies of aesthetic legitimation. The conclusion is that Raúl Xavier, despite his subsequent historiographical marginalization, constitutes a singular and little-studied case of Luso-Asian circulation of artistic repertoires, revealing how hybrid identities and visual grammars of European matrix are articulated in the art of the Estado Novo.

This article analyzes Tang Xianzu's *The Peony Pavilion* (Mudan Ting) as a literary device that reconfigures Confucian ethical-political norms through female desire, taking the dream–death–rebirth cycle as its narrative axis. The author argues that the work, although often classified as a romantic drama, also operates as a critique of the expectations of "filial obedience" and the social regulation of the body, by granting the protagonist Du Liniang an affective agency that challenges the moral pedagogy conveyed by the *Classic of Poetry*. Methodologically, the reading combines cultural contextualization with a symbolic hermeneutics of the central names and images (Peony, Plum Tree, and Spring Fragrance), treated as dense signs that condense categories of gender, youth, eroticism, fertility, and the life cycle. The analysis further articulates the temporal dimension of the plot (political crises and military conscription) with the persistence of love as a force capable of suspending the boundary between life and death. It concludes that, by staging the legitimacy of the amorous impulse and its transformative efficacy, the play articulates a plural vision of the human—often read in dialogue with Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism—and offers a model of final reconciliation that nonetheless emerges from a fundamental transgression.

This article investigates how the unpublished poem “Macao” (1950), by Austin Coates, mobilizes the imaginary of the Portuguese “discoveries” to represent intercultural encounter in Macau. Starting from Coates’ relevance to Anglophone historiography and literature on the enclave, the author contextualizes the text through biographical data and the recurrence, in the writer’s interviews and works, of themes such as contact with “other realities” and fascination with the Portuguese presence in the East. Methodologically, the study is based on a textual and thematic analysis of the poem, subsequently articulated with a comparative procedure that brings “Macao” closer to *Os Lusíadas*, understood as a structuring intertext for the construction of images, values, and narratives of cultural mediation. The analysis demonstrates that the poem reconfigures the epic of the navigations as a device for reading the Macanese territory: the idea of discovery ceases to operate solely as a myth of conquest and comes to function as a key to thinking about circulation, cultural translation, and the historical Sino-Portuguese coexistence. It is concluded that, by inscribing Macau within a Luso-epic grammar, Coates produces a vision that is simultaneously celebratory and ambivalent, in which “interculturality” appears less as a rupture and more as prolonged cultural sedimentation.

The article argues that “Macao” functions, in Western and Hong Kong imaginations, as a liminal space where the marginal becomes magical: a shadow zone that simultaneously threatens and seduces, particularly in narratives that mobilize the “capitalist casino,” the circulation of images, and the economy of desire. The author maintains that although Macao plays a “decisive” role in contemporary logics of gambling and profit, it remains paradoxically “absent” from everyday life and narrative framing, transformed into a setting or cipher for other cultural experiences. Methodologically, the text undertakes a critical-intertextual reading of media representations—above all cinema and literature—articulating them with theoretical notions of Orientalist imagery, extraterritoriality, and cultural ambivalence (including the figuration of “dark writing” as writing in the shadows). Among the cases discussed, notable are cinematic and satirical reinterpretations of Macao by authors and directors from diverse horizons (for example, Josef von Sternberg, Timothy Mo, and Johnnie To), who at times re-enact noir and detective exoticisms, and at others reconfigure the underworld in a mode of action. It concludes that such “imagined Macaos” redirect the place into a global grammar of fantasy and risk, where local people and routines are erased, while the city persists as a metaphor and device for the circulation of capital and images.

The article analyzes the birth year of José Vicente Jorge, first-born son of Câncio José Jorge and Aureliana Maria Guterres, which occurred in Macau in the parish of São Lourenço on 27 December 1872. Based on the fragility of the local press—marked by the closure and suspension of critical newspapers and by the dependence on a Gazeta de Macau e Timor, then edited by the governor's secretary—the author argues that the widely repeated date lacks rigorous documentary verification. The methodology is based on a historiographic reading and on the critical reconstruction of the media and political context of Macau between 1868 and 1872, articulating it with the identification of possible registration routes (births, baptisms, and obituaries) and with the analysis of local governance, particularly the transition to the Viscount of São Januário. As a result, it is concluded that the problem of the "year of birth" should be treated as a limit case of incomplete circulation of sources, in which the credibility of the datum depends less on genealogical memories and more on the confrontation with available documentation and with the material conditions of news production.