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The article analyzes how the “localization policies” invoked in Sino-Portuguese disputes and negotiations during the transition period (1988–1999) influenced the administration of Macau. Starting from the institutional framework defined by the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration, the author argues that the dispute between Lisbon and Beijing over the scope and function of the joint commissions—above all the Sino-Portuguese Joint Liaison Group (JLG) and the Sino-Portuguese Land Group (LG)—structured divergent expectations about what should be “locally” legitimated and recognized after 1999. Methodologically, the study tracks the dynamics of the negotiations and the interpretive divergences over competencies, demonstrating how China tended to submit any decision with future impact on the Special Administrative Region to prior consultation, while Portugal claimed non-interference and administrative autonomy until the transfer. The main conclusion is that these “localization policies” materialized less as a homogeneous policy and more as a negotiated practice, which conditioned the decision-making process of the Portuguese administration in Macau, while at the same time preparing, through formal and informal channels, the acceptance (or contestation) of measures intended to ensure institutional continuity, social stability, and economic development in the post-handover period.

The article investigates why the Sanjie Huiguan (三街會館), “Guildhall of Three Streets”, in Macau, transformed from a corporate space of merchants into a sacralized place associated with the cult of Guan Di/Guan Yu. The central question—how a precinct linked to commercial transactions became a “temple” and a deity-guarantor of prosperity—structures a historical-cultural analysis that articulates the institutional transformation of the building, the “ascent” of Guan Yu to divine status, and the longevity of the cult in the polytheistic Chinese tradition. Methodologically, the study combines interpretive reading of cultural and discursive sources with ethnographic-historical contextualization of the role of guilds in the Macanese commercial ecosystem, examining especially the representation of Guan Yu in the historical novel Sanguo Yanyi (三國演義). The author argues that the literary dramatization of Guan Yu favored his expansion beyond the official biography, simultaneously legitimizing the intervention of imperial authorities in the production of a ritually glorified hero. It is concluded that the Sanjie Huiguan exemplifies the intersection between myth, popular culture, and socio-economic organization: the sacralization of the guild space operated as a symbolic mediation between heroic ethics, religious cosmology, and the wealth aspirations of merchants, contributing to the enduring centrality of Guan Di as a “god of fortune” in the Chinese imaginary in Macau.

The article examines, through Deolinda da Conceição's work *Contos Chineses*, how the author mobilizes an imagery of “River of Pearls, River of Confluences” to inscribe civilizational marks in the short Chinese narrative. It argues that the opposition between cultures—represented from the very cover (Chinese and Western elements in contrasting fields)—organizes the production of meaning by articulating body, fashion, symbolic language, and conflict. The analysis focuses on the inaugural tale “Cheong-Sam” as a key text: in it, the garment and the name (*qipao*/cheongsam; “cabaia” as metonymy for “woman”) become signs of persecution, mourning, and vengeance, while the adoption of “modern” Western codes is narrated as depersonalization and displacement of the traditional framework. Methodologically, the study proceeds through intertextual reading and the identification of formal and thematic recurrences, highlighting “war” as a spatial-temporal and traumatic vector, “incomprehension” as a relational fracture (especially between masculine and feminine), and temporal strategies (analepsis and prolepsis) that explain the present through the mediation of the past. It concludes that the tales stage a two-faced modernity: the convergence of cultural currents produces both aesthetic fascination and symbolic violence, making civilizational difference a driver of destiny.

The article analyzes the relationship between society and political power in Macao during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, taking as its starting point historiographical representations of Macao's ethnic and cultural composition. The author critically confronts two predominant narratives—a "traditionalist" tradition that tends to emphasize a Luso-Oriental origin and treats Chinese influence as late or secondary, and a "Luso-Chinese" interpretation that considers miscegenation as a structural element in the formation of identity and social practices. Methodologically, the study employs a comparative reading of theses and documentary evidence, with emphasis on baptism records and matrimonial patterns. As findings, it is argued that both versions incorporate verifiable elements and, far from being mutually exclusive, can be integrated into a more complex explanation of identity formation. The empirical evidence is illustrated by data from the parishes of Sé and S. Lourenço (1802–1831), which reveal, in Sé, the presence of children with Chinese maternal and Portuguese paternal ancestry (or of converts) and, in S. Lourenço, a greater endogamy among local elites, contrasting with the gradual increase in unions with women of Chinese ancestry in lower strata. It is concluded that miscegenation, although constant, was accompanied by social hierarchies that conditioned the circulation, legitimacy, and visibility of Luso-Chinese alliances in the political field.

The article argues that the historiography of maritime trade in Southeast and the Far East, often constructed from Iberian and Dutch sources, overestimates the centrality of “silk–silver” as an explanatory axis for the transition from the 16th to the 17th century. Countering this interpretation, the author mobilizes complementary evidence from Chinese and Japanese texts (including merchandise lists and administrative compilations), as well as data on exchanges between Korea, the Ryukyu Kingdom, and the Japanese archipelago, to reconstruct the circulation of animals and animal products and contextualize it within broader flows of goods. The methodology is essentially historiographic and comparative: it compares the weight assigned to certain goods by European sources with the relative importance suggested by catalogs, registers, and local documentation for different periods. The conclusions point to a strong continuity in the composition of commercial “baskets” between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period: the increasing emergence of Japanese silver does not imply an abrupt decline in exchanges considered traditional. On the contrary, the “new” circuits of silver and silk tended to coexist and, possibly, to drive the expansion of previously circulating products, articulated by regional institutional and political networks that included the circulation of animals and animal-derived products.

Starting from a rereading of the collection transported by Melchior Nunes Barreto to Japan in 1556, this article reexamines what may lie behind the "first Jesuit library" established there, going beyond the inventory and classification of its contents carried out by Jesús López-Gay. The author reconstructs the function of the bibliographic ensemble by linking the preserved list of titles brought by Barreto with later directives associated with the missionary governance of the Society, particularly through comparison with an inventory compiled by Alessandro Valignano in the early seventeenth century. The method combines bibliographic analysis and cross-referencing of textual evidence to identify continuities and absences between lists, as well as to interpret editorial and thematic choices in light of the intellectual culture of the nascent Society. The main thesis holds that the library was structured with formative objectives, especially for the training of new clergy, organized into "practical" books (liturgy and everyday pastoral use) and "didactic" books (teaching materials and doctrinal formation). Among the findings, notable are the confirmation of liturgical works and manuals of confession, as well as the presence of titles of theological reflection and spirituality that reinforced exemplary models of Christian conduct, aligned with the Jesuit ideological program. The comparison with Valignano also suggests that certain gaps result from editorial availability subsequent to the period of embarkation.

The article analyzes the role of the Manila Galleon in structuring the Atlantic-Pacific trade of the Spanish viceroyalty and, in parallel, the way in which Macau merchants sought to engage (legally or clandestinely) with this route, particularly through trade with the Philippines. Starting from the historiographical framework of Manila–Acapulco navigation, the author shows that the Spanish occupation turned Manila into a strategic entrepôt oriented toward the redistribution of Asian goods, especially silk, without direct projection into China being realized. The research mobilizes documentary and administrative-normative information to characterize travel times, departure schedules, costs, and fiscal impositions associated with the route (export duties, royal freight, and entry and first-sale taxes in New Spain). The text then contrasts this state machinery with the initiatives of Macau agents: mercantile competition, use of intermediaries, and route reconfigurations stimulated by opportunities opened by the arrival of the galleon San Martin in Macau (1583) and by subsequent direct sailings to the Americas (1584–1587). It concludes that the commercial dynamics between Macau and the Philippines functioned as a competitive pressure factor on the Spanish monopoly, explaining tensions and reorganizations in governance and maritime circulation.

The article analyzes how the *Relaciones de Pedro Teixeira* (Antwerp, 1610) mobilize references to "Asian drugs" and medical practices in order to interpret cultural, economic, and political relations between the Portuguese world and Asia. Drawing on a historiographical and textual reading compared with other contemporary sources, Rui Manuel Loureiro reconstructs the trajectory of the author-traveler and shows that his writing operates not merely as ethnographic observation, but as a device of knowledge linked to imperial mobilities, the circulation of knowledge, and experiences of military service in the Estado da Índia. The study identifies, in the passages where substances, therapeutic uses, and commercial itineraries are mentioned, an articulation between European medical repertoires and local information, often mediated by colonial hierarchies and by the authority of the travel "account." The conclusions suggest that references to drugs and healing function as indicators of supply networks and the circulation of medicines, as well as of narrative strategies that legitimize the Portuguese presence. Thus, the *Relaciones* reveal medicine as a field of cultural translation and the negotiation of credibilities, framing the body and disease within the broader logic of the empire.

Wang Bing's article provides a comparative analysis of the inscriptions associated with the tomb of the Portuguese Jesuit Tomás Pereira (Xu Risheng, 徐日昇) in Beijing, preserved in three rubbings held in the rare books section of the National Library of China. Based on the catalog description and material identification of two distinct stelae—one linked to the request for "safeguarding/defense of Catholicism" and the other erected in the Nantang Church—the author argues that the inscriptions, by combining Pereira's petition with an imperial edict of the Kangxi Emperor, constitute a key document for understanding how the legal and symbolic status of Catholic missionaries was formalized at the end of the 17th century. Methodologically, the work undertakes a documentary reconstruction centered on the articulation between the front and back of the stelae, the chronology (1692, the 31st and 47th years of Kangxi), and the historiographical function of the engraved texts. It concludes that the textual insignia of the edict—beyond legitimizing the missionary's cultural and technical activities (music, calendar, and instruments)—frame imperial tolerance as a response to local initiatives and to the process of mediation between missionary work and governance.

The article analyses the sacred idol sculpture of Macau as intangible cultural heritage, framing its origin and evolution within Chinese popular religious practices, particularly ancestor worship. It is argued that the specificity of this art resulted from the interaction between the living conditions of the fishing community and ritual needs: until the mid-twentieth century, the majority of fishermen had no residence on land, performing worship within the space of the vessel itself. Low literacy favoured the replacement of inscribed memorial tablets with small wooden figures that were more visible and comprehensible; these, however, were easily deteriorated by prolonged exposure to wind, rain and sunlight, necessitating constant replacement. Methodologically, the text proceeds from a historical-cultural reconstruction supported by descriptions of the socioeconomic context (1920s–1930s) and the dynamics of the craft, including demand from local fishermen and those from neighbouring coastal regions, which drove technical advancement and specialisation. It concludes that industrialisation and the decline of fishing, from the end of the 1950s, reduced the number of family workshops, but the continuity of some artisans and adaptation to the carving of Buddha statues enabled the survival of the know-how. The article culminates by justifying the candidacy and the inscription, in 2008, on the Second List of National Intangible Cultural Heritage.

This article examines how recent (largely post-1980s) English-language poetry about and from Macao represents the city as both historical stage and symbolic “otherworld portal” between East and West. Rather than treating contemporary Macao poetics as the start of a simple intercultural dialogue, the paper argues that Macao writing inherits multiple global literary traditions while grounding its imagery in a locally experienced sense of tangible continuities and ruptures. Methodologically, the study performs a thematic and close reading survey of published poems for the English-language reader, focusing on recurrent motifs—including border economies, gambling and “luck,” prostitution and marginal figures, development, and reclamation—through which poets negotiate the tension between orientalist or connotative place-making and direct witnessing of everyday Macao life. Special attention is given to spatial and geographic “illusions” in the poetic imagination (e.g., Macao’s frequent portrayal as an island, or mountain views borrowed from across the border), which both aestheticize and disclose Macao’s political embeddedness within the PRC. The article concludes that contemporary poetry turns reclamation and dredging into metaphors for cultural mixture and misunderstanding, revealing how poetic representation accounts for Macao’s hybrid, world-historical significance.

This article analyzes the literary construction of Macao in two travel texts belonging to chronologically and culturally distinct universes: Ferreira de Castro's chronicles, recorded after his visit in 1940 (in *À Volta do Mundo*), and Miguel Torga's testimony, written after his stay in 1987 (in volume XV of *Diário*). The author proposes a comparative reading centred on the image that each narrator-traveller projects onto the territory, considering the distance of nearly five decades and the historical conditions framing their perceptions—from the "oasis-city" in a context of war and sanitary instability to the urban and communicational transformations of the late twentieth century. Methodologically, the study articulates discursive analysis of descriptions and metaphors with attention to strategies of alterity (including forms of distancing from the "other," such as exoticism and cultural distance), exploring how landscape and everyday life are converted into literary signs. Among the findings, the alternation between a "Lilliputian" and romantic gaze—grounded in diminutives, personifications, and nostalgia for the familiar—and the emergence of exoticism stands out, particularly when the "Chinese city" is represented as picturesque, congested, and polychromatic. The conclusion is that, despite differences in tone, both authors produce Macao as a space of singular coexistence, where the cultural border remains visible rather than dissolving.

The article analyzes a practice of cultural representation and negotiation that articulates religion, diplomacy, and material arts: a "dialogue" concerning Chinese porcelains attributed to Frei Bartolomeu dos Mártires and Pope Pius IV. Departing from the observation that porcelain circulates not merely as a commodity but as a symbolic language capable of producing legitimacy, prestige, and persuasion, the study interprets the episode as a rhetorical device between metropole and periphery, in which knowledge about the origin and appreciation of China is mobilized to the benefit of Catholic hierarchies and networks. Methodologically, the author proceeds through a contextual and comparative reading of sources and coeval descriptions, articulating textual discourse with evidence of the Iberian circulation of porcelain and imitations (especially in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula) and with the visual culture of the Baroque apparatus. The conclusions highlight that images of porcelain, including stagings in courtly ceremonies, functioned as instruments of cultural translation and assertion of authority, although the commercial viability of imitations was frequently limited. Thus, the "dialogue" reveals tensions between fascination with China, strategies of local appropriation, and the historical limits of production and the market in the early seventeenth century.

This article analyzes the Sephardic presence — Jews and New Christians — in Asia and Brazil during the Early Modern period, arguing that the diaspora was sustained and expanded by interconnected social and commercial networks. Starting from Portuguese expansion since the fifteenth century, the authors situate Lisbon as a logistical hub for the circulation of information, people, and capital, where merchants, sailors, agents, and ecclesiastics of different faiths cooperated and competed under state frameworks and institutional surveillance. Methodologically, the study articulates a historiographic and comparative approach, reconstructing trajectories and mercantile practices from documentary evidence related to Atlantic-Eastern trade and the activities of figures associated with Sephardic groups, with attention to the tensions arising from inquisitorial policies. The analysis highlights convergences between Asian and colonial circuits regarding mobility, the use of intermediaries, and the circulation of high-value goods, while also underscoring local specificities: in Brazil, the expansion of networks is articulated with colonial ports and routes, but faces intensified persecutions and denunciations; in Asia, commercial connections favor strategic adaptations and the maintenance of ties. It concludes that such networks functioned as an infrastructure of modernity, making the diaspora a relevant agent in the global circulation of goods, credit, and knowledge.

This article investigates the “possible landscapes” of Macau in the poetry of Alberto Estima de Oliveira, arguing that the city emerges less as a descriptive referent than as a space of language, perception, and silence. The author maintains that, in the poet’s work, the relationship between word and urban space produces a gaze that excavates what lies hidden beneath tourist and cartographic evidence: voids, intervals, and silences become conditions of the very act of reading. Methodologically, the research combines close reading of excerpts (with particular attention to poems such as “Alto contraste” and to the recurrence of motifs of silence throughout books such as O Diálogo do Silêncio, Infraestruturas, O Rosto, Esqueleto do Tempo and Estrutura I: O Sentir) with an interpretive contrast between the poetic experience of the city and the “evident” perception conveyed by postcards and simplifying images. As its main conclusions, the text argues that Estima de Oliveira’s poetics displaces Macau from the field of representation to that of the habituation of the gaze: the city is rediscovered as a social and mental “body” in mutation, traversed by memories, affections, and uncertainties, especially in the historical context following the 1999 transfer. Thus, the research proposes that thinking Macau through poetry also entails rethinking urban experience itself in the face of the disappearance of stable referents.

The article argues that George Chinnery's arrival in Macao (1825–1852) is not to be explained primarily by commercial motivations or by the search for "new subject matter" for a European audience, but rather by a personal need to escape his creditors in India. Paradoxically, this decision afforded the artist the consolidation of a "second homeland" in which he found a visual repertoire capable of corresponding to his skills and aesthetic conceptions. Drawing on a comparative analysis of drawings, watercolours, and albums circulating in the art market, the text reconstructs the evolution of his manner of drawing, articulating earlier phases (London and his academic training, Madras and his consolidation as a master of line) with his Macanese production. The study identifies, in particular, the persistence of notions of the "Picturesque" — the valorization of the irregular, the decayed, and the quaint — as the interpretive key to Chinnery's gaze upon urban landscapes, buildings, and human types. It concludes that Chinnery's iconographic legacy in Macao constitutes a rare document of the daily life and culture of the period, while simultaneously revealing the transformation of a European aesthetic of travel into a mode of observation deeply rooted in a local context.

The article investigates the “culture of time and space” in Macau, arguing that the territory’s urban identity and socio-cultural practices depend on a sensitive articulation between historical continuity and contemporary transformation. Departing from a reflection on recurring destruction and reconstruction in cities (including dynamics accelerated by recent technologies and policies), the author contends that the spatial erasure promoted by the territory’s current economic landscape has produced a perceptive and affective rupture: the loss of the physical fabric of the past reverberates in collective memories, patterns of coexistence, and the emergence of social tensions and urban protests, especially outside the historic center. Methodologically, the text articulates a critical theoretical reading of the city as language/spatial communication with an analysis of the effects of the accelerated replacement of the urban structure on the local “sense of history,” also considering the limits of heritage and planning policies. It concludes that Macau faces a growing division between urban heritage and a new “landscaping” of consumption and devastation, making it urgent to construct a coherent vision that avoids the production of historical simulacra and ensures conditions for long-term cultural survival.

This article serves as an introduction to the thematic volume “Inter-Arts Dialogue and Macau” of the Revista de Cultura, arguing that since the 16th century, Macau has been continuously (re)presented through multiple languages—pictorial, cartographic, literary, and historiographic—creating conditions for a persistent inter-artistic dialogue. The editorial proposal articulates the idea that, although urban studies require multidisciplinary approaches to the city, the representation of Macau is never homogeneous: the city emerges simultaneously as a historical, literary, and imaginary space, as well as an enclave of dreams and affections, constructed by authors and artists of various nationalities over the centuries. The presentation synthesizes the volume’s contributions through a sequence that moves from the architectural micro-spatial to the literary chronotope, and from poetry to narrative, also integrating biographical, artistic, and documentary dimensions. Among the highlighted lines are the analysis of urban micro-spaces and economic and territorial growth; the “poetry of testimony” applied to the Pearl River Delta and reading contracts with Anglophone audiences; the reading of landscapes and hidden sonorities in Portuguese poetry; and the study of travel narratives that stage otherness. Additional contributions address intellectual trajectories, European painting of Macau, and the circulation of Chinese porcelain in ecclesiastical networks and European courts. The volume thus concludes with an interdisciplinary reading of the ways of seeing and making Macau.

Starting from the Western representation of Macao as an "enigmatic Orient" and exotic territory, this article analyses the singular way in which Manuel da Silva Mendes (1876-1931) observed and interpreted Chinese culture and the Macanese space, in contrast with the dominant colonial clichés of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author argues that Silva Mendes's "fascination" was not limited to exoticism, but rather assumed the form of a civic and intellectual commitment: a practice of reading, criticism, and dissemination guided by moral values, language, and education. Methodologically, the text is based on the reading and contextualization of the author's articles and interventions, highlighting their generic hybridity (impressions, accounts, and narrations) and the sometimes tense coexistence between artistic sensibility and scientific rigour in themes such as Chinese painting and Buddhist temples. The analysis also incorporates critical testimonies and memoirs from contemporaries and students, which underscore his public role and the polarized reception of his discourse. The article concludes that Silva Mendes functioned as a cultural mediator and urban intervenor, denouncing problems in education and local administration, criticizing the architectural "de-Portugalization" of Macao, and combating the Portuguese community's ignorance of Chinese culture, thereby preserving a lasting interpretative relevance.

The article analyzes the Treaty of 1860 as a decisive instrument in the reestablishment of Luso-Japanese relations after a long interregnum of political and commercial disruption between Portugal and Japan. Situating the document within the historical framework extending back to the seventeenth century, the author seeks to understand the motivations, strategies, and alliances of Portuguese diplomacy conducted by Isidoro Francisco Guimarães, plenipotentiary minister and governor of Macao. The methodology rests upon a critical reading of the treaty text (signed on 3 August 1860) and the utilization of epistolary sources and the governor's official correspondence, interpreted as evidence of the political-economic objectives pursued by Portugal. As a result, the text demonstrates that the rapprochement of 1860 emerges not merely from a coherent and centralized "strategy," but also from the persistence of regional and conjunctural interests associated with the merchants of Macao, as well as from the weight of the earlier legacy of Catholic missions. In this regard, the article reconstructs the logic that led to the expulsion and subsequent relative closure of Japan, articulating religious factors, rivalries among Western powers, and commercial dynamics. It concludes that the treaty expresses a reconfiguration of Portuguese priorities in East Asia, reinforcing the functionality of Macao as a platform for presence and negotiation.