Writings, columns and thoughts

As if by coincidence, I glanced at the clock last night. It was 01:57 and, drowsy, I put on the headphones that lie close by to listen to the news on Antena 1. The bulletin opened with sad news: Júlio Pomar had died at the age of 92. I looked at…

They swear blind that “Cristòfor Colom ès el nostre” and that “la independència de Portugal ha afectat a la nostre”, even though other kingdoms, such as Castile, Navarre and Aragon, had become independent. The question of independence arose when…

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves…

Perhaps this reflection ought to begin with “once upon a time”. Yet the history of China is far too long, and here I wish to revisit its recent past, when, around 1977, Deng Xiaoping returned to power, consolidating it this time. The former student in…

French, creative, a resident of Macau for 25 years. Her look is spare, her eyes blue, shadowed in black. Her gaze is piercing. Here and there one glimpses a look somewhere between amused and ironic. This is Armelle Lainsecq’s second exhibition, and it is no less…

On show in the largest temporary exhibition hall of the Macau Museum of Art is an exhibition called Ad Lib, by Konstantin Bessmertny. Regardless of its Latin etymology and its musical usage, Ad Lib represents the convergence of the visual discourses and of the…

All things want a name, of them all one unnameable, only two cannot be explained. God, and the City of His holy name. A city named, explained in etymologies of learned illusion; let the goddess A-Ma come and converse with God, the two smiling at the truth of men,…

The sea breeze is ever-changing. With it comes the whisper of the prow parting the waters, and the creak of the timber and of the rigging that holds the sails swollen by the wind. Ears and experience dictated the course in the dark of night. Wong Siu Ieng, lying on the deck,…

José Plácido Meireles de Lima tried to push from his mind the words he was hearing about the deceased, framed there by dozens of flowers. He thought how the living discovered virtues in all who departed, even in the worst of scoundrels. They were in the Cathedral…

Imprecise, in 1986, a news item reported that a tricycle driver had committed suicide by hanging himself from the railings of the Macau–Taipa bridge. The city’s skyline seemed benevolent against the light of the setting sun. With the tip of his foot, which he drew back at once lest…

He stepped out into the Rua Central, breathing in the humid air. It was already night. The day at Headquarters had been tiring, but he decided not to go straight home. He had changed in his office and now wore a grey linen suit that the mainato had handed to the orderly. He dismissed the car.…

On 3 February it was reported that the Colombian Jackson Martínez had been transferred from Atlético de Madrid to Guangzhou Evergrande for the modest sum of 42 million euros, beating the recent record of 21 million pounds that Jiangsu Suning had paid to…

The passage of Time instils past and memories in us. And in the second that lies between the old and the new, another time comes to me, in this very place. Macau, the Calçada do Tronco Velho and a venerable building that was lost to the storms stirred up by people who today…

Night fell early, as is usual at this time of year, although here the heat robs the breath of the ox in the Nativity scene of the whole set of clichés that have been imposed on us. I was away, and that too made some difference to my habits. The hotel entrance displayed a tree…

I met Virgínia Or some years ago and always found a genuine, warm smile. Strangely, or perhaps not, Macau seems to be large, for we rarely met, but empathy can bring people together. Virgínia always aroused my curiosity. I am…

Planning for creativity, culture and cities often leads to limited and sensationalist visions, in which cultural creatives are seen chiefly from an economic point of view. This is a pity, says Charles Landry, for culture is much more than…

Now that the shock caused by the attacks on Paris has passed, the City of Light is the stage for the Climate Summit this December. A summit on cities and citizenship would come in handy here too, especially as Charles Landry is about to arrive in…

“Reason, even when defeated, does not cease to be reason” António Aleixo One of the most fundamental principles of all governance is the existence of ordered, structured thinking, so that it may be said that to govern is also to foresee. To that coherent body of…

He played football from the age of eight until 35 in national championships. He then pursued a career as a coach. He trained under Fernando Peres and Vítor Damas. He spent nine years with Sporting Clube de Portugal and in youth football, where he worked…

Professor Augusto Mateus comes to Macau at a good moment, at the invitation of Albergue SCM, for a Seminar on the Creative Industries, within the framework of a strategic platform for economic relations between China, the European Union and the Portuguese-speaking Countries.…

In the post-election period, Portugal is grappling with the question of Cavaco’s nomination of a prime minister, seeking to define alternatives on the basis of the country’s structural questions. The media are full of debates on structural and structuring issues, involving parties…

A leaf, when it falls from the branch, returns to the roots. Chinese proverb From the apple tree of Eden, ancient, vast and leafy, to the Sephirot, the tree of life of esoteric Judaism which, arranged in three columns, represents the divine emanations of God’s creation (ex…

As social development grows, cores expand, sometimes through migration and sometimes through copying or independent innovation carried out by their neighbours. The techniques that worked well in an older core – whether those techniques are…

Here in Macau, above all in the gardens at dawn, one sees middle-aged people and even older citizens practising different kinds of exercise, impassive and indifferent to what goes on around them. It is the return to the old Chinese wisdom, the…

Social media make it easier to establish contacts. Without quite meaning to, I followed Joanne Kuai, first on TDM and then on social media. We made brief contact. I wanted to know whether she would agree to a short interview, since her connection to…

To be great, be whole: exclude Nothing, exaggerate nothing that is you. Be whole in everything. Put all you are Into the smallest thing you do. So in each lake the whole moon shines, Because it lives aloft Odes of Ricardo Reis Do your best, even in trivial things. From there, you can…

If you, reader, are fond of firearms, perhaps dreaming of a Glock, a Smith & Wesson with a laser sight, or even the .45 Magnum that Clint Eastwood popularised on screen as “Dirty Harry”, you may go on dreaming lying down, for it will be impossible for you to own…

Time is the Space where Memory dwells, where it flows and comes alive, resurfacing as a dimensional journey to pick up the thread again, in the manner of Theseus. That Time which takes or brings all things is, in itself, the ball of thread that carries the past and with it a small part of the…

Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni (the sage of the Shakyas) lived some time between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, the dates of his birth and death being uncertain. All that is known is that he was the son of a king who made himself poor and wise, at last attaining enlightenment beneath…

Intangible is an immaterial word, like all words, a flowering of ideas and memories. In this vestibule of the twenty-first century, ideas should preside over the common good, resting on cultural foundations that show discernment, a sense of belonging and of the future, nourished by the…

Zhuge Liang was the most important strategist of the turbulent Three Kingdoms Period of Chinese history (AD 220 – AD 280), in the twilight of the Han. His other name was Kong Ming, and he became famous for the way he led the strategy of the State of Shu,…

We come from another time, when what we held dearest was sincerity. The innocence of youth and, possibly, a great deal of naivety. We lived in a time that gave more of itself, generously. Just as now, there were acacias, trees of…

In 1046 BC, some 3,500 years ago, in the midst of the Bronze Age, the Shang fought their most crucial battle against the Zhou, in what is today Henan province, in the basin of the Yellow River, cradle of Chinese civilisation. The battle of Muye pitted the army of the Shang, of…