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Interview with Luís Filipe Barreto, Director of the Scientific and Cultural Centre of Macau, in Lisbon, based on a guided tour of the museum, and with Manuela Oliveira Martins, museologist at the Museum of the Scientific and Cultural Centre of Macau, conducted by Raquel Santos.

Interview with Luís Filipe Barreto, Director of the Scientific and Cultural Centre of Macao, and Roderick Ptak, from the University of Munich and sinologist, at the Scientific and Cultural Centre of Macao, in Lisbon, about the International Colloquium "Macao in the Ming Period", conducted by Raquel Santos.

Interview with Celina Veiga de Oliveira, head of the publishing house "Tágide", about fantastic literature, conducted by Raquel Santos.

Antena 1 Sports News.

Program dedicated to civil engineering and concrete infrastructure in the city of Porto: the bridges of Arrábida, Freixo, and São João.

Macau, a TDM studio debate moderated by journalist Ribeiro Cardoso, on the Portuguese-language media in Macau after the transition of powers to China, with guests João Francisco Pinto, TDM news director, Gilberto Lopes, head of Portuguese news and programming at Rádio Macau, and José Rocha Dinis, director and owner of the daily newspaper Tribuna de Macau; the statements were collected by journalist João Ferreira da Silva.

Program by Professor José Hermano Saraiva, produced to mark the 50th anniversary of the public television station. With extensive use of archive images, recalling some past programs of RTP, José Hermano Saraiva draws a parallel between the main historical events, the social changes that occurred, and the technological development that the station experienced and witnessed over this half century of broadcasts.

Interview with José Diogo Henriques Ribeiro, advisor to the Conímbriga Museum, conducted by Raquel Santos.

Interview conducted by Raquel Santos with Narana Coissoró, professor at the Technical University of Lisbon and President of the Oriente Institute.

Program presented by journalist António Louçã, about Macau and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, using archival footage and a studio interview with Moisés Fernandes, researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and author of the book "Macau in Chinese Foreign Policy 1949-1979".

Interview with Ana Paula Laborinho, professor at the Faculty of Arts of Lisbon and president of the General Assembly of the Wenceslau de Moraes Association, conducted by Raquel Santos.

Program presented by journalist António Louçã about the Portuguese administration in Macau during the 20th century, using archival footage, and a studio interview with Moisés Fernandes, researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, and author of the book "Macau in Chinese Foreign Policy 1949-1979".

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.