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A Movie Produced in Macau that chronicles the life of Wu Li, a voyager from the past of whom played a significant role in Macau's Historical Value.

The significance of forgetting in the Zhuangzi and its methodological significance for living a good life in particular has long been recognized by Zhuangzian scholars. However, with regard to what is really meant by forgetting, scholars are still far from reaching some clear consensus. Thus, with the aim of clarifying what is meant by forgetting in the Zhuangzi, I propose a wholistic understanding of forgetting in terms of the Zhuangzian conception of human self-cultivation. On the one hand, it involves an analysis of how forgetting is used negatively in the Zhuangzi to characterize and explain human fallenness. On the other hand, it also entails a careful analysis of all positive uses of forgetting in the text to mean our elimination of chengxin, orientation to the Dao, and fitness with all things in harmony.

This article explores Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī’s political thought in relation to modern debates on secularism and Islamic reform. While often invoked by Islamist thinkers to support their anti-secular stance, al-Afghānī’s reflections on reason, religion, and constitutional politics show that he engaged with modernity in a more nuanced way than is commonly recognized. This article examines al-Afghānī’s writings and their reception. It argues that his thought was not about choosing a side between religion and secularism. Instead, his thought is better understood as a pragmatic anti-colonial strategy aimed at the revival of Muslim civilization. This reframing challenges the widely cited genealogical narrative that links him to later Islamists. His attempt to reconcile religious traditions with the imperative for reform provides valuable insights into the responses of Muslim reformers to modernity—insights that remain highly relevant today.

In the name of God and profit, Jorge Álvares, the first Portuguese to set foot in China, arrived in 1513 and opened a new chapter for missionary work. One of the most significant forms of “Sino-Portuguese” decorative art, ivory sculpture, is closely linked to the Portuguese mission in the Orient and serves as a witness to encounters between different cultures and religions. This study focuses on representative Sino-Portuguese ivory sculptures of the Virgin and Child from the Late Ming period through a detailed analysis of iconography and a comparative visual critique with European prototypes and Guanyin representations to discuss the significance of missionary visual imagery in cultural interactions. The ivory sculpture of the Virgin and Child is not merely an image; it is a physical object with both material and visual characteristics, acquiring its religious significance during the missionary process. The present study aims to present its artistic hybridity and demonstrate how the Chinese carvers make the Sino-Portuguese “speak” different visual languages, leading to different interpretations. It also reflects the cultural translation that occurs in the complex process of religious contact. In this space of ‘culture in between’, Christianity has been able to transcend cultural and religious boundaries.

Just war theory, significantly shaped by Christian moral theology, has provided a prominent ethical framework for discussions on the justice of war. Numerous works have been published on classical Chinese counterparts, including passages from the Mengzi, Mozi, Xunzi, and Huangdi Sijing. Although the Zhuangzi frequently discusses warfare, it has been largely overlooked in this field of research because its war ethics do not revolve around any concept similar to that of justice. Based on Zhuangzian critiques of Confucian and Mohist views on justice, this paper tentatively reconstructs Zhuangzian war ethics. This reconstruction reveals a perspective that the concept of just war or justified war is inherently problematic, and promoting such ideas can be perilous and even morally questionable. The belief that just war theory can help us identify a “just side” to morally condemn or legally restrain aggressors is a dangerous illusion. In practice, this approach fails to prevent wars and often exacerbates conflict. According to the Zhuangzian perspective, during wars, states do not operate as traditional political entities with universal jurisdiction and centralized authority. Instead, they resemble rivers and lakes with indistinct boundaries, rendering the concepts of justice and punishment largely irrelevant. A practical peace strategy, therefore, must abandon the pursuit of administering justice and punishing wrongdoers. Instead, it should focus on strategies that facilitate the involved parties to “forget” their grudges and start their peaceful relationship anew.

The Confucian hermeneutic approach to the Yijing 易經 (or Book of Changes) delineates a transition from the pursuit of divinatory meaning to the cultivation of virtue and action. As an integral part of the Yijing’s semantic framework, decisive phrases (Duanci 斷辭)—such as those denoting auspiciousness or ominousness—not only reflect historical efforts to ascertain the significance of divinatory cases, but also embody a distinct normative orientation inherent in the text’s teachings. This orientation not only guides human action but also shapes moral character, which in turn provides the foundation for virtuous and effective action. The interpretive paradigm initiated by Confucian exegetes thus offers valuable insights for contemporary theories of ethics and practical philosophy.

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This paper examines the genesis of Avenue Praia Grande in the context of Macao’s urban development to spotlight several critical factors that influenced the construction along the bay and the formation of the promenade. Praia Grande’s geographical characteristics, the nature of the Portuguese colonisation, the Ming and Qing courts’ attitude towards foreign powers and trades, as well as the modern idea of city beautification, are the four aspects in this discussion on how a promenade took shape in Macao during Portuguese rule. From a marginalised frontier to a promenade of wealth and nostalgia, and a zone of ignorance at the fringe of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Avenue Praia Grande has been a testament to the contest of a multitude of forces in Macao.

Since the avowedly Catholic Portuguese officially settled in 1557, Macao has been fervently brought into contact with the monotheistic Christian faith. Despite the evangelical zeal of missionaries, the majority of the local population has traditionally embraced a religious culture that richly exhibits polytheism and the syncretism of disparate beliefs. The dynamics and complexity of religious syncretism are deftly epitomized in Tianhou, Guanyin, Guandi, and Nuwa, who are enshrined in four notable temples in Macao. In hagiographies, Tianhou—the autochthonous Daoist Goddess of the Sea—and Guanyin—the Avalokitesvara-incarnated Buddhist Goddess of Mercy—were living maidens. They adamantly defied patriarchal authority to be married and died premature deaths. Their ‘undefiled’ virgin bodies duly became quintessential in their paths to ascending to sainthood. Guandi, a historical warrior with flagrant human flaws, was elevated as a ‘divine-human’ to embody the ideal of masculinity that hailed excellence in both literary attainment and martial valor. These three mortals were systematically forged as immortals by statecraft for inclusion into the state-sanctioned religion. In Chinese mythical history, the were-snake Nuwa is the creatrix of the cosmos and the Chinese people. This great goddess fails to stand the test of time, and her worldly roles have been modified, though she still retains her elemental grandeur in the supernatural realm.

This work aims to provide a reading of Henrique de Senna Fernandes's *Os Dores* and, through his writing, to reveal a vision of the city of Macao and Macanese society at a time when personal and social relations were governed by social standing and stratification, as well as by the relations—or the lack thereof—between the Christian city and the Chinese city, which, side by side, teemed with life. Nevertheless, an individuality prevailed, interspersed here and there with cross-cultural relations that defied the dictates of the time and proved that such relations were possible, should one so wish. The richness of the author's writing is also highlighted, immersing us in the settings and moments of the characters' lives as though we too were part of the narrative.

While it might be assumed that separate communities in Macao, whether custodians of churches, Chinese temples, and public buildings have always attended to preserving heritage, the ravages of time, economic cycles and even the fluctuation of real estate values have frequently impacted the built environment. As this article demonstrates, while many other Asian cities turned a blind eye to heritage protection, Macao’s landmark Heritage List of 1976 went far beyond built environment to include precincts and natural settings such as trees. Without this list and its socialisation, or a view of heritage as holistic and dynamic, it is argued that Macao’s historic centre may have missed the boat for its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2005.

This article explores the diary of an American merchant's wife written in 1853 during a voyage between the USA and China in 1853. Beyond the incidents of the long round trip, the diary also addresses the period of approximately two months that the couple spent in Macao. This type of intimate record was rare among women and was only made public some 200 years after it was written. The document provides not only information on the physical aspects of the cities of Canton and Macao, but also portrays the social fabric, including the interaction of the foreign community with the local population. As an unpublished manuscript, Sarah's Diary holds exceptional historical value. Being the only known account of its kind to date about life in Macao in the early years of the second half of the nineteenth century, it is an essential source of information for understanding the reality of the region during a period marked by multiple diplomatic initiatives and intense commercial exchanges between Asia and the West.

A Árvore das Patacas is based on real events that have now been fictionalized. At the center of this narrative is the controversial financing of a Portuguese political party, obtained through funds raised from Macau businessmen and involving processes of dubious legality. These facts culminate in the transfer of a substantial sum of money to Portugal, without knowledge of the final destination of these funds. This novel is one of the few literary works from Macau that employs an intersection of historical facts and fiction to construct a sociopolitical landscape of Macau during a specific period of time.

The earliest collector of the painting

Focusing on the dynamics between negotiation and homogenisation in discourses about heritage, this paper provides a philosophical analysis of the idea of ‘medium of memory’, complemented with the case of the Festival of the Drunken Dragon in Macao, and attempts to demonstrate how an item of heritage can, in the course of its regular practice, be (re)mediated through different collective and individual memories. The motif of the ‘ouroboros’ is suggested throughout our analysis to compare with the self-perpetuating memory-mediating processes expressed in the emergence of ‘heritage’. Conceptualising heritage as a medium capable of being bestowed with differentiating narratives and memories allows us to come to an alternative perspective of ‘heritage’, that is both malleable and sustainable. Such a perspective also sheds light on certain abuses of ‘heritage’, such as the creation of simulacra.

This paper examines the effectiveness of Macao’s cultural heritage management, specifically through the historic districts revitalisation project since 2023, in enhancing community engagement. Despite the city’s inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) and efforts to promote sustainable tourism, many residents perceive heritage activities as primarily serving tourists rather than the local community. This study employs a mixed-method approach by integrating both qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate the effectiveness of the revitalisation project in Macao, highlighting the necessity for targeted interventions that genuinely reflect local perspectives and experiences to effectively bridge this disconnection.

The Romance of Yolanda, by Rodrigo Leal de Carvalho, is a fictional narrative published in 2005. Yolanda, the main character around whom a rich cast of other characters gravitates, is a woman unconcerned with social conventions and the opinions of others, embracing an overwhelming passion for Ramon, a Filipino, who physically and verbally assaults, humiliates, despises, and abandons her. The climax occurs when Yolanda takes revenge by handing Ramon over to the police, and he spits all his contempt and hatred in her face.

This article presents the synthesis of a larger research on the presence of migrants from Macao in the Mascarenes archipelago, in the Western Indian Ocean, and the contemporary Chinese heritages that are part of the local Creole cultures. The methodology moves between archival research and ethnography, crossing historical research with heritage and cultural studies, opening dialogues between history and cultural landscapes, the past and the present, the archives and contemporary society. Besides, this text is not only about historical traces of Macao in the Mascarenes, but also interrogates how today’s Chinese cultural heritages are seen, debated, and narrated in the archipelago, and how they integrate contemporary diasporic senses of belonging. This article is from the research paper for the project ‘Macau, from the Ocean to the Archives: Maritime Routes, Emigration and Heritage in the Mascarenes’, funded by the Academic Research Grant 2020 of the Macao SAR Government.

Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Canton was facing increasing tensions and difficulties not only with foreign officials and traders, but also with foreign sailors visiting the port. These years witnessed a marked increase in the number of Western ships trading at Canton. The increase in the number of foreign ships brought an attendant increase in the number of foreign sailors — in the thousands by the early nineteenth century — who on 'liberty days' in groups of anywhere from 12 to 50 men headed to Hog Lane alongside the Western factories for a day of whoring and drinking.

Based on an interview conducted by Portuguese journalist José Pedro Castanheira, this work examines various archival sources to compile all relevant biographical information about a life story that spans the 85 years of the subject’s life. The richness of this information gathering lies in the impartiality with which Roque Choi recounts facts and characterizes figures, unraveling a thread of events that extends from local society to global contexts, with particular relevance to China, surrounding Asian countries, America, and Europe. This study aims to spark readers' interest in a subject that is captivating due to the sincerity, clarity, and disinterestedness with which it is presented.