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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.

The article analyzes how the actions of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the first half of the seventeenth century were guided by a strategic logic that interwove mercantile objectives and military means. Departing from the conceptualization of "strategy" as a decision-making guide and an instrument for coordinating alliances, the author argues that, although modern language may seem inadequate for the period, the VOC effectively operated as a state-like entity "outside the state," using war to achieve business ends and, simultaneously, to support the foreign policy of the United Provinces against Iberian interests. The methodology combines a critical reading of official instructions, commissions, letters, and royal and corporate statutes of the VOC, articulating them with concrete episodes of navigation, confrontation, and maritime capture. The evidence discussed reveals an initial phase marked by caution: the Dutch sought to avoid zones of strong Portuguese State of India presence, diversify supply sources, and, when possible, circumvent the Portuguese commercial barrier in accessing China. However, from the growing alignment with the juridical-political rhetoric associated with Grotius and with the directives of the States General, the commissions expanded authorization for private war. Thus, the VOC's "strategies" shifted from avoiding Portuguese positions to selectively attacking them, highlighting moments of success and failure in consolidating routes, ports, treaties, and military capabilities within the space of the State of India.

The article analyzes the role of gifts and ceremonial offering practices in diplomatic relations between Portugal and the political powers of the Indonesian archipelago before effective colonization, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It argues that, although Portuguese contacts in the waters of the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia were frequently marked by coercion and military violence, the sustainability of diplomatic missions depended on adaptation to local protocol and the capacity to translate symbolic meanings into material objects recognizable by local rulers. Methodologically, the text combines a heuristic approach—characterizing the frequency, purpose, outcomes, and typologies of gifts—with a more conceptual reading of the practical and cosmological dimensions of these exchanges. The author draws on the analysis of Portuguese and Indian archival sources, published documentation, contemporary accounts, and secondary bibliography, seeking to balance the Portuguese and Indonesian perspectives. The article is organized into four parts: it contextualizes Portuguese learning of Asian diplomatic practices; identifies relevant missions to the archipelago; proposes a typology of gifts and discusses their significance; and concludes by assessing the legacy of these practices. It concludes that gifts functioned simultaneously as political instruments, technologies of cultural mediation, and vehicles of legitimation, structuring diplomatic outcomes that cannot be reduced to a purely commercial or military logic.

This article analyzes the presence and role of Liampó (Shuangyu/Two Islands) in Sino-Portuguese relations between 1524 and 1541, a period marked by a documentary void following the military conflicts of 1521–1522 and preceding the destruction of the settlement by a Chinese expedition in 1548. The authors argue that, despite the scarcity of Portuguese accounts concerning the early days of Liampó, official Chinese sources allow for the reconstruction of a framework in which Portuguese merchants, integrated into Asian maritime networks, would have participated in irregular trade along the southern coast of China, capitalizing on the dynamics of the "foreign barbarians" (fanyi 番夷) and the reorientation of routes after the collapse of official relations. Methodologically, the study proceeds through a comparative and chronological reading of Chinese documentation, with emphasis on reports and memoranda associated with maritime defenses (including references to Zhu Wan and passages preserved in later works), cross-referenced with scattered evidence of Portuguese provenance, such as information attributed to Fernão Mendes Pinto's Peregrinação. As its main findings, the article proposes the plausibility of an effective beginning linked to 1524, relates Liampó to the consolidation of "support points" for Luso-Chinese trade along the coast, and explains the process of militarization and harassment that would culminate in the eradication of the settlement.

This article analyzes the representation of Macau in English literature, arguing that the Anglophone image of the city results from an intertextual and diachronic production: travel accounts, poems, short stories, and novels construct a “chronotopic city” in which the territory functions simultaneously as an observed space and as a symbolic structure. Drawing on the history of the British presence in South China, the author contextualizes the appearance of Macau in works ranging from the sixteenth century (e.g., Richard Hakluyt and *Principal Navigations*) to twenty-first-century fiction, identifying recurrent themes and motifs. Methodologically, the proposal is grounded in a multidimensional reading of urban space and a semiotic framework inspired by the distinction between the symbolic, metaphorical, and metonymic levels of the city’s image, thus accounting for the heterogeneity of literary “visions.” As its main conclusions, the text maintains that Macau appears as a “frontier” between the West and the interior of China, frequently situated in adventure plots and in novels such as *The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe*, *City of Broken Promises*, *Tai-Pan*, and *An Insular Possession*. The city is thus mobilized as a stage for colonial asymmetries and as a narrative device to articulate time, power, commerce, and local colour, rather than constituting a homogeneous and stable portrait.

The article argues that, from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, Macao functioned as a structuring hub in the dissemination, to Europe and Brazil, of the interest and “taste” associated with Chinese aesthetics, articulating inter-regional Asian trade and transoceanic traffic. Through a historical-cultural approach grounded in contextual analysis of the mercantile circuit and in the reading of period documentation, the study focuses on Macao’s role as a platform for the circulation of decorative and utilitarian goods—jade, lacquer, silk, and porcelain—whose value for Western audiences was often more symbolic and social than strictly aesthetic. It is argued that the arrival of the Portuguese in China (1513) reconfigured the perception of artistic products: they came to be regarded as commodities capable of generating profit and status, even though European clientele were unaware of formal Chinese criteria. With the opening of the port of Canton to Western trade at the end of the seventeenth century, commissions intensified and, simultaneously, the development of Chinese workshops oriented toward an external market, combining local influences, traditional models, and European demands. As evidence, the article mobilizes inventories and royal “Cartas de Quitação,” highlighting acquisitions by the Portuguese royal household and offerings to institutions such as the Jerónimos Monastery, demonstrating how the presence of Chinese pieces reinforced practices of consumption, prestige, and the incorporation of exoticism into the European universe.

This article analyzes the maritime route Macao–Nagasaki, emphasizing the articulation between ships, merchandise, and packaging as material elements of a Luso-Sino-Japanese trading system. It argues that the viability and profitability of the Portuguese traffic with Japan depended not only on the silver and silk circuits, but also on the practices of conditioning and circulation of goods along the stopovers on the Chinese coast, where a secure base linked to Canton was consolidated. Methodologically, the text proceeds to a historical and historiographical reading of Portuguese trade in the South China Sea, articulating chronologies of diplomatic-commercial contacts, navigation conditions, and expedition organization, in order to understand how flows between Malacca, intermediate points on the Chinese coast, and the Japanese archipelago were adjusted. The investigation shows that, after 1544, Portuguese mediation gained centrality due to the Japanese demand for Chinese silks and the Chinese interest in silver, a process that intensified with the establishment of a permanent presence in Macao (from 1557), through the payment of customs duties. It concludes that "the Macao formula" rested on an integrated set of port infrastructures, coastal security, and packaging and transport solutions that ensured commercial regularity and adaptation to the demands of the various jurisdictions involved.

The article examines the political economy and commercial relations of Macau during the transition period from the reign of Qianlong to the Pombaline era, situating the city within the broader process of reconfiguration of Luso-Portuguese trade in southern China and the dynamics of the Canton system. The central proposal is to relativize the historiographic tendency that privileges the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, arguing that an understanding of the “single port” and of the negotiations between European powers and Chinese commercial governance requires an analysis focused on the eighteenth century, when the dispute over foreign access to the coastline was still unfolding and reached peaks such as the Flint episode. Methodologically, the text undertakes an exercise in historiographic survey and analytical framing, comparing existing approaches to maritime trade, coastal mercantile networks, and the rise of the Cohong, as well as the Portuguese and Anglo-Saxon literature on the circulation of goods and societal structures. Among the conclusions, the article highlights that Macau operated as a decisive gateway vis-à-vis Canton in the eighteenth century, and that the integration of regional (Pearl River Delta) and global (Indian Ocean and Atlantic-Lusophone routes) scales can reveal continuities and institutional readjustments in the articulation between politics, regulation, and trade.

The article examines the figure of Father Álvaro Semedo and argues that his work, in particular the *Relação da Grande Monarquia da China*, constitutes a central landmark in the construction of European knowledge about China in the Ming period. Starting from the context of the "Sino-foreign cultural exchange" initiated by the Jesuit mission — frequently associated with Matteo Ricci — the author maintains that Semedo should be recognized not only as a missionary on Chinese soil, but as the first Portuguese sinologist and one of the pioneers of Western sinology, whose historiographical reception has been unjustly marginalized in favor of more frequently cited authors. Methodologically, the text articulates historiographical framing and biographical recovery in order to situate Semedo within mission networks and the practices of language learning indispensable to evangelization and textual production. The analysis of the *Relação* is oriented toward highlighting Semedo's contribution to the dissemination of Chinese culture to a Western readership, in dialogue with the dynamics of transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties. The conclusion is that Semedo's work deserves greater academic attention as a historical source and as a document of cultural mediation, thereby contributing to correcting gaps in studies on the Portuguese presence in China and on the circulation of Luso-Jesuit knowledge.

Starting from a historical reading of globalization as a multidimensional process (economic, political, and cultural) and the centrality of cities in the reorganization of flows and powers, this article analyzes the relations and "bridges" between Macau and Hong Kong, focusing on the contemporary period after the transfer of sovereignty in 1999 and the early years of the 21st century. The argument maintains that, in the Pearl River Delta space, the persistent ties between the two cities simultaneously contribute to preserving local specificities and enhancing integration strategies at distinct scales—China, Asia, and the World—converging toward the emerging status of "global city." Methodologically, the text articulates a historical-cultural approach with analytical syntheses inspired by academic literature on globalization and urbanization, mobilizing references on urban and economic policies and on the role of Hong Kong in regional and international connections. As results, the article shows that Hong Kong consolidates its integration into the world economy through planning and modernization (housing, revitalization of the central district, port infrastructure, and airport), reinforcing its function as a platform connecting to international markets with the rise of the PRC as a commercial power. It concludes that interdependence with Macau, within a regional metropolitan ecosystem, sustains the capacity of both territories to position themselves in transnational networks, from the regional space to the global scale.

The article argues that the concession of Hong Kong, agreed within the framework of the First Opium War and formalized in the Treaty of Nanking, should not be read merely as a Luso-British territorial reconfiguration on the southern coast of China, but rather as a "disturbing factor" interpreted by the Portuguese of Macao in their dealings with the Chinese authorities. Based on a critical reading of official documentation and public interventions attributed to Portuguese protagonists of the period (including communications and discursive framings regarding the expected economic and administrative effects for Macao), the author reconstructs how these agents allegedly sought to sensitize the imperial power to the gravity of the arrangement: the transfer of the island and port would be presented not only as an immediate commercial threat, but as an ominous sign for the continuity of the Qing "imperial order." Methodologically, the text combines historical contextualization with rhetorical and political-institutional analysis, highlighting a significance that historiography has barely explored concerning the meeting held on 6 November 1841 at the Temple of Lianfeng, in Macao. It concludes that the Portuguese initiative aimed to produce mutual awareness and reinforce the possibility of a Chinese response articulated with the defence of Macanese interests, anticipating systemic tensions that historiography has frequently relegated to the background.

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.

This article investigates how the urban fiction of Henrique de Senna Fernandes and Leung Ping-kwan mobilizes the cityscape to reflect on social change and the construction of regional identities in Macau and Hong Kong, particularly against the backdrop of the political and cultural transformations of the late twentieth century. The central argument posits that, although urban nostalgia is a recurring trait in Chinese literatures and even comparable to those of other metropolises, the case of Macau and Hong Kong renders this nostalgia inseparable from specific historical conjunctures: the peripheral status of the cities and their dual position as cosmopolitan centers of cultural encounter. Methodologically, Brookshaw proceeds with a comparative reading of the two authors’ works, articulating literary analysis (including differences in realism, narrative structure, and stylistic effects) with cultural geography and social history, in order to relate representational strategies to uses of territory. The article concludes that Fernandes, associated with a more conventional realism crossed with romanticism, tends to reconstitute an “anterior past” in which hierarchies and ties between zones—the “Chinese city” and the “Christian city”—appear less threatened by contemporary ruptures. In contrast, Leung’s writing, with its looser narrative structures and influences from the nouveau roman, dramatizes the city as a space in continuous mutation, highlighting new forms of sociability and disintegration. Thus, the texts function as imaginative archives that inscribe urbanity into the region’s history.

This article analyzes the presence and circulation of Iberian *arbitrismo*, taking the colonial spaces of Macau and Manila as case studies, and seeks to understand how discourses of *arbítrios* (technical-political and fiscal proposals directed at royal authority) were mobilized to address conjunctures of crisis, financing, and governability within the Spanish imperial system and, in articulation, within the Luso-Asian universe. The central argument holds that, beyond mere reformist rhetoric, *arbítrios* functioned as mechanisms of mediation between local observers and decision-making centers, converting mercantile, administrative, and maritime experiences into suggested solutions—often with a strong fiscal bent and generating tensions vis-à-vis representative bodies. Methodologically, the approach rests on a historical-semantic contextualization of *arbitrismo* and of the agent known as the *arbitrista*, articulated with the reading and framing of the opinions and proposals related to these two Far Eastern nodes. It concludes that the circulation of these texts reconfigured administrative practices and expectations of rewards (*mercês*) and, simultaneously, contributed to the construction of an ambivalent image of the *arbitrista*, marked by criticisms of extravagance, opportunism, and increased burdens on populations and privileges.

The article argues that Hokkien merchants from the southern coast of Fujian acted as "bridges" between the Eastern and Western maritime systems in the Asian space before 1683. Rather than treating these agents merely as isolated participants in trade routes, the author proposes analyzing them as a group integrated into a regional system of ports and entrepôts, capable of connecting itineraries spanning from the far north (Korea) to the south (Sumatra), with special emphasis on Qing (Quanzhou) as a logistical and shipbuilding center. Methodologically, the study combines a historiographic reading of Chinese sources and ancient compilations with a comparative selection of representative entrepôts. It examines a framework of ports within the East Asian maritime system (Korea, Kyushu, and Taiwan), complemented by the case of Manila as an emblem of a Hokkien hub in Southeast Asia. The main findings indicate that the formation of temporary overseas communities, conditioned by seasonality and monsoon winds, fostered stable networks of trade and cultural mediation. The article further demonstrates that the expansion of Hokkien activities, already structured between the 6th and 13th centuries, predates and helps explain later transformations in the regional organization of maritime trade.

This article analyzes how the poetry of Leung Ping-kwan (Yesi) mobilizes Macao to reflect on the "cultures of the sea" and the Luso-Chinese cultural encounters in the Macau Peninsula and the Pearl River Delta region. Arguing that maritime experience—marked by circulation, displacement, and the translation of sensibilities—operates as a poetic and historical matrix, the text reconstructs the way in which the author transforms urban landscapes, figures, and flavors into forms of cultural memory. The methodology is eminently interpretive and intertextual: drawing on passages and cycles mentioned by the poet himself (including the Macao series, "Macao: East and West," and poems integrated into projects such as Foodscape), the article articulates aesthetic reading and cultural reflection, highlighting strategies such as the emotional restraint characteristic of Chinese landscape poetry, descriptive imagery, and the elision of direct commentary to suggest tensions and mediations. Among the main findings, the article concludes that Macao emerges less as a fixed "theme" and more as a relational device: a place in which multiple "Easts" and "Wests" interpenetrate, producing "dong xi," that is, things and materials created by contacts, with food and the sensory archive (cuisine, streets, houses, shorelines) serving as privileged avenues for historical understanding.

The article analyzes the historiographic value of the unpublished manuscript *Autobiography and Reminiscence of Candido Gutierrez (1824–1903)*, written by a pioneer born in Macau and deceased in Emeryville/Oakland. Arguing that autobiographical writing, even if scarcely ‘literary,’ constitutes a privileged archive for understanding transnational mobilities and experiences, the author frames the document within the institutional context of the Society of California Pioneers (archival records, transcriptions, and supplementary documentation such as the “In Memoriam” and the biographical file). Methodologically, the research combines critical reading of the text with documentary contextualization and comparison with other pieces from the Society’s archive, emphasizing how Gutierrez organizes the narrative in response to a constitutional ‘request’ to gather information on the early settlement of California and on the institution’s members. Among the results, the reconstruction of the author’s stages of displacement stands out: birth in Macau, passage through Hong Kong, and arrival in California in 1849, as well as specific episodes from the first weeks in San Francisco. The autobiography is also explored as a source for economy, legislation, and financial risks associated with gold and mining, revealing practical networks and ethical-professional dilemmas in a context of territorial expansion and integration of foreigners.

Wilhelm Snyman's article analyzes the manuscript-memoir by John Pownell Reeves, “The Lone Flag,” highlighting how this document, little explored to this day, reconstructs the political and social life of Macau during World War II. From the singular point of view of a British consular official (consul in Macau between 1941 and 1946), the text argues that the city’s Portuguese neutrality did not signify safety: the constant presence of the Japanese threat conditioned decisions, refuge networks, and assistance practices. Methodologically, Snyman bases his historical reading on the intersection between Reeves’ memoiristic narrative and known contextual information (including institutional records and biographical references), allowing the interpretation of the “lifting of the veil” as a recovery of a daily life of tension, intrigues, and rescues. The main conclusions emphasize that Reeves does not merely observe; he intervenes strategically, mobilizing scarce resources to protect refugees, particularly those with British passports. The article also highlights the value of the account as a first-hand source on mechanisms of diplomatic mediation, espionage, and local solidarities, in addition to evidencing Reeves’ human and ironic tone, which transforms a personal archive into a historical testimony on collective survival in Macau under regional siege.

This article proposes a critical reading of how the West constructed "cultural realities" about China, arguing that the arrival of the Jesuits in 1582 marks a decisive turning point: from otherness fabricated through excerpts, textual mediations, and fragmentary imagination to an otherness produced through coexistence, sustained observation, and comprehensive understanding. Within this framework, Beatriz Moncó analyzes the trajectory and work of Diego de Pantoja as an expression of an encounter between history and anthropology, capable of articulating cultural singularity and the claim to universality. The methodology articulates historiography and the anthropology of history, mobilizing biographical chronology and the institutional context of the Society of Jesus to interpret the knowledge devices employed in the mission (strategies of insertion, circulation through networks and spaces, and forms of representing difference). The main conclusions sustain that the image of an "exceptional" China in Pantoja results not only from European presuppositions, but from the practice of co-presence and direct observation that reorients categories and sensibilities. Thus, the article highlights how the construction of the "other" can shift from myth and the "absolute other" toward a situated understanding, without eliminating the tensions and limits inherent to the missionary enterprise.

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.