MACAO: THE MULTICULTURAL FACE OF CHINA澳門：中國多元文化的臉面
The article argues that Macau constitutes a "multicultural face" of China, resulting from continuous historical encounters between the Portuguese and Chinese worlds, which produced a unique local culture irreducible to a single civilizational axis. The author contends that the relationships between...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
2015
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40049/2338 |
| Summary: | The article argues that Macau constitutes a "multicultural face" of China, resulting from continuous historical encounters between the Portuguese and Chinese worlds, which produced a unique local culture irreducible to a single civilizational axis. The author contends that the relationships between language, culture, and multiculturalism—particularly the role of Portuguese as an identity marker and institutional feature—must be understood in light of reciprocal and cumulative processes of acculturation. Methodologically, the text employs a historical-cultural approach supported by bibliographic contextualization: it reconstructs key moments of Luso-Portuguese presence and interactions with the Qing authorities, and examines documentary and literary production (in Portuguese and in records associated with officials and travelers) as testimony to the cultural "encounters" that shaped material practices, imaginaries, and systems of knowledge. Among the main conclusions, it is highlighted that Macau emerged as a specific geographic-political space in Asia that persistently incorporated Latin characteristics and a blend of Western and Eastern references, visible in its architecture, gastronomy, customs, language, and religion. Thus, Macau's cultural plurality must be understood as the result of material and intellectual exchanges over the course of expansion, reflected in its cultural landscape and textual production. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |