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The Letters and Writings of Francisco Xavier are eloquent narratives of a journey through the Orient that absorbed the entire life of the saint. His experiences and idiosyncrasies, values and categorizations are presented in clear scholarly discourse. The missionary is rarely neutral in his opinions, centered on his omnipresent goal: the conversion of peoples and the expansion of the Companhia de Jesus.

In the present text, based on their correspondence, some lesser-known aspects of the biography and work of Camilo Pessanha are examined: his empathy for the Chinese language and culture; his collection of Oriental art, laboriously gathered over many years; the efforts he made in defense of the Liceu de Macau, threatened by the economic vision of the Leal Senado, which sought to close it; his translation of the eight Chinese elegies; and his opposition to the extradition of a mandarin from Canton, requested from the governor of Macao in 1904 by the viceroy of Canton.

The central focus of the article is an interpretation of Brian Castro’s novel,

Camilo Pessanha’s references to the Orient prior to 1894 have not received much critical attention, pointing to the presence of an Orientalist mindset before his first journey to China. In fact, we find a schooled Orientalism as part of his literary baggage, revealed in his letters and certain poems. We will follow this analytical path regarding some references in his letters and other texts dedicated to China, but also to other Asian spaces, where certain issues emerge, such as the connection between death and eroticism, and the topics of disillusionment and the alleged impenetrability of the Oriental “other.” This will be interpreted in light of the thought of Edward Said and Victor Segalen.

Seeking to offer new interpretations on the life and times of Portuguese political deportees, this article focuses upon the remote Southeast Asian half-island colony of Timor as part of a far-flung network of prisons carried through under the authoritarian regime of António de Oliveira Salazar. First, it looks back at the political and economic instability in Portugal following the military coup of May 1926 ending the First Republic. Drawing upon newly available documentation, the article examines two waves of deportees from Portugal arriving in Timor, youthful activists involved in anarcho-syndicalist activities in the 1912–1927 period, and a more senior leadership group involved in a failed military coup of August 1931. It then tracks the reactions of the

Genre theory is an important tool for understanding the development of an artistic tradition, holding great practical value for rethinking Chinese literature. Obviously, since it is a Western conception, it is important first to investigate the extent to which genres are self-referential, and in what way they reflect a particular historical model. Thus, acknowledging the importance of the history of Greek literature for the development of Western genres, in its first part, the essay synthesizes the relationship between the process of cultural change and the organization of genres. In the second part, it critically describes the impasse experienced by the so-called

This new module of "Dimensions of the Canon" preliminarily addresses the problem of genres in Chinese-language literature, drawing upon the work "Wen Xuan" ("Literary Selections"). Dating from the sixth century, the "Selections" constitute the first major compilation organized by text type in the history of China, having exerted a millennial influence on the arts of East Asia, contributing to the consolidation of a peculiarly intellectual lifestyle in that region.

José Maria Braga or Jack Braga, as he was known, was born on the 22nd

This article focuses on the importance of hermeneutics and symbolism in both Paul Ricoeur and Camilo Pessanha, and how the latter, a poet-philosopher, conceived and experienced his poetry through the symbol, which embodies a way of life. It points to the dual symbolic function and how this is constitutive of the subject's personality. It reveals Camilo Pessanha as a bridge-builder, an epic-ethical educator who crosses the West with the East in his chromatic poetry.

This article compares the spiritual attitude of Camilo Pessanha and Wenceslau de Moraes in the face of the experience of exile and long-term settlement in the East. In this context, special attention is given to the relationship they maintain (or do not maintain) with their country of origin.

Camilo Pessanha and Wenceslau de Moraes met in Macao in 1894, belonging to the first group of teachers at the Liceu. Both determined their voluntary exile in the Orient following romantic disappointments. In Macao, they came to live with Chinese women, by whom they had children registered under their surnames. Upon the death of his first wife, Pessanha replaced her with the daughter; in Japan, after the passing of O Yoné, Moraes chose as his companion a niece of hers, forty years his junior. Apart from four visits to Portugal for health reasons, Pessanha spent the rest of his life in Macao, where he died in 1926. Wenceslau set off for Japan in 1899, where he lived for over thirty years, until his death in 1929, in Tokushima. They were profound connoisseurs of the peoples and cultures they encountered.

In this text, we will focus mainly on a letter from Fernando Pessoa to Camilo Pessanha, in order to make some considerations about his own conception of poetry, in comparison with the conception of Teixeira de Pascoaes.

Visualities — It is well known that, from a certain point in life, the poet’s photographs, due to their interest, came to privilege angles illuminated on the left side of the face, with the aim of lightening the asymmetrical gaze, which did not favor him, in this simulacrum of representation and displacement, as in the portrait. Behold Camillo Pessanha, a symbolist, brought into contemporary poetics! A simple subversion of a paradox, or mere betrayal of the anachronistic memory of the image? Probably a heuristic consequence of the imperatives of graphic illustration, or merely the convenience of aesthetic expression that confines itself to mere mechanical or digital reproduction. These are technical processes that, nonetheless, operate transformations of meaning, inherent to the manipulated image, leaving us captive before the dilemma of the visible—an ambivalent characteristic of images that, for that very reason, causes us unease and raises questions in the attribution of meaning between shadow and dream.

Tomás Pereira, whose Chinese name was Xu Risheng, was a distinguished Portuguese Jesuit, scientist, and musician, born on 1 November 1645 in northern Portugal, more precisely in São Martinho do Vale, Famalicão, Minho. He arrived in Macau in 1672 and, one year later, began working at the court in Beijing before Emperor Kangxi. Beyond his divine mission, his musical talent was also widely renowned. Alongside his proselytizing work, Pereira served as an ambassador of Western sciences and held an important position at the Qing court, playing a prominent role in negotiations with Russia following the invasion of Chinese territories. The episode of the Chinese Rites Controversy reveals the influence that Tomás Pereira had attained: after the prohibition of missions in China, and thanks to his arguments before the emperor, the Jesuit succeeded in having the Edict of Toleration of Christianity published. Furthermore, as an expert in music theory, he served as music teacher to the emperor himself and wrote the first work in Chinese on Western musical technique.

During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong (1941–1945), many European nationals, American residents, and Portuguese immigrants from Hong Kong sought refuge in Macao to escape the war. As a neutral territory, Macao provided them with a temporary wartime sanctuary and kept them informed of war developments and current affairs through its local radio broadcasts. The renowned historian of Macao, J.M. Braga, who was then a journalist and broadcaster, hosted an English-language program every Friday evening. This radio programme offered solace to the refugees and enabled them to stay abreast of social affairs. After the war, J.M. Braga was honored by the Chinese government for his contributions to Chinese intelligence services in Macao.

At the end of the 19th century, Camilo Pessanha, the greatest Portuguese symbolist poet, exiled himself in Macao. While alleviating his solitude through opium consumption, he developed a profound interest in Chinese poetry and art. He diligently studied the Chinese language and, with the assistance of a friend, translated poems from the Ming Dynasty, culminating in the publication of the book “

This article examines, within the scope of collecting and museum heritage, the circulation and recontextualization of Chinese cultural practices through artefacts associated with cricket fighting in the early twentieth century. The author argues that the "singing crickets" held in the collection of the Museum of the Macao Scientific and Cultural Centre are not merely ethnographic objects, but artefacts of material memories that condense a broader tradition—hua niao yu chong (flowers, birds, fish, and insects)—and its transformation into performative arts, particularly within the historical context of cages and the continuous "concert." Methodologically, the research articulates historical and cultural reading (sources on the prestige of crickets and the emergence of fights as organized entertainment) with collection analysis: identification of the artefacts, attention to their functions and possible acquisition circuits, and interpretation of their role in the museum's exhibition policies in Macao. As its main conclusions, the article demonstrates that the museum artefacts function as mediating devices between China and the Lusophone world, preserving knowledge of capture, care, and sonic appreciation, while also producing new heritage narratives that reconstruct, for the present, the "memories of fights" associated with everyday life and urban taste at the turn of the century.

The article "Poetry in Macau (Creative Writing)" proposes an essayistic reflection, of a literary matrix, on how the Portuguese presence in Macau materializes not only in buildings and institutions, but also in poetic spaces and urban imaginaries. Starting from narrative itineraries through the city initiated in 2013, the author focuses on places such as the Jardim de São Francisco—associated with the transition between religious orders, barracks, and urban transformations—to discuss the fragility and persistence of Luso-Iberian cultural memory in the "Far East". The argument articulates local history, symbolic interpretation, and intertextual reading, resorting to the contrast between ordering practices (religious and military) and the lyrical dimension represented by poetry, with particular emphasis on Camões and, allusively, figures such as Camilo Pessanha. Methodologically, the text operates as creative writing with a critical function: wandering, descriptive detail, and the biographical problematization of the figure of the poet function as tools to think about exclusions, displacements, and cultural survivals. It concludes that poetry acts as a force of sustenance and reorganization of meaning, converting urban and political losses into symbolic continuity, albeit always "reduced to minimal expression".

The article argues that the image of Macau as the “Land of the Lotus Flower” (Lianhua Di) operates as a historical and cultural metaphor of hospitality for diasporic subjects, especially for Chinese “displaced returnees” who found lasting shelter in the city. Drawing on the trajectory of Liang Piyun 梁披雲 (1907–2010)—intellectual, educator, social activist, and also poet and calligrapher—the author reads the experience of errance and repositioning as a process of “regeneration” in the Macanese space. Methodologically, the text articulates historical-biographical analysis with intertextual reading: it mobilizes classical poems attributed to Liang’s practice and sensibility, as well as literary and toponymic references that relate Macau to the lotus (cartography, place names, and visual traditions). The protagonist’s contributions are examined in educational networks extending across Quanzhou and Southeast Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia), as well as in efforts to preserve Chinese calligraphy as a cultural legacy between Hong Kong and Macau. It is concluded that Macau functions simultaneously as a “port of refuge” and as a symbolic device of reinsertion, allowing the diaspora to find rootedness and local recognition.

In this essay, Clara Sarmento argues that Intercultural Studies should be understood as a communicational and political movement situated at the intersection between knowledge production and social regulation. Drawing on the notion of "interculturality" as encounter, transit, and mediation—from colonialism to contemporary digital heteroglossia—the author contends that the current intercultural journey is global and accelerated by technologies, rendering insufficient any approach that reduces the "inter" to a "us/them" opposition. The proposed analysis intersects the reconceptualization of identity according to contexts of migration, deterritorialization, and virtuality with Homi Bhabha's idea of the "third space," wherein hybridism and cultural translation operate as politically subversive forms capable of deactivating conservative binaries (such as theory/practice). Methodologically, the text adopts an interdisciplinary and self-reflexive dialogue, critically reading the normative practices of academia and the editorial and economic pressures that shape stereotypes and research outcomes. It concludes that, although globality reconfigures regimes of power, researchers tend to respond through strategies, innovations, and subversions, often situated in "border zones" and peripheral thresholds that, paradoxically, prove central to cultural and scientific experience.