Reason for being Reason

A Culture magazine is now born in Macau. Why in Macau? Why now?

In this century, some Culture magazines were produced in Macau, which have constituted, in their respective epochs, something like an element for the cultural agglutination of the Portuguese community living in the Territory.

In some cases, as it happened with 'MOSAICO' (1950-1957), they attempted to go a little further, trying to reach English-speaking and Chinese-writing audiences through the inclusion of brief synopses of the contents of each issue, both in Chinese and in English.

It is that wider and now vacant space that we are trying to fill. And it is also the agglutinating function, extensive to both communities who live here, that we wish to fulfill. Such space and function, extended to the real dimension of the Chinese and the Portuguese communities in Macau, are thus open to the intellectual circles of China, Portugal, Brazil, the African Portuguese-speaking countries, the communities of Portuguese descent and Chinese descent scattered between the East of Suez and the Western coast of America.

Cultors of the common memories of the past, we shall dedicate much of our attention to them for reasons which are projected in the construction of the future. Three partially superimposed universes constitute the referential co-ordinates of the magazine which is now being born:

- Macau;

-The relationship between China and Portugal;

-The cultural presence of China and Portugal in the Asia-Pacific area.

The moment has come for the cultural organization of Macau to be operated, in view of the future. Macau constituted a political and administrative unit in the Portuguese juridical and constitutional ordinance until the 1976 Constitution of the Portuguese Republic came into effect. In its historical course, however, that political, administrative unit has always included two distinct cultural areas which have lived together and freely developed: the Chinese and the Portuguese one.

The cultural entity which Macau is today-not only Chinese and not so scarcely Portuguese - will only be able to survive in the future if the substantive character of Culture is emphasized over the adjectival function of Politics; if, from the co-existence of the two cultures 'in praesentia', we can be able to reach cultural interpenetration; if, from the basis of the two distant and linguistically separate commuities, the process of evolution can lead, quickly but surely, to a bilingual society; if in the various hierarchical echelons, in politics, in public administration, in the application of justice, in industry and in the tertiary sector, culturally mixed citizens can intervene in fast-growing numbers, irrespective of their ethnic origin, be it Chinese or Portuguese.

To idealize Macau, at the threshold of the third millenium, as a society whose four-century old signs of cultural sedimentation had been swept away, is not impossible. Humanity has witnessed the destruction of larger cultural entities, both as far as their territory and their population are concerned.

In the case of Macau, however, neither China nor Portugal would derive any benefits from

the destruction of its hybrid cultural identity. On the contrary, both countries would be culturally impoverished should they allow themselves to be amputated of the daintiest bloom of their old cultural interweaving.

Macau is an inimitable and inexhaustive sap-stream of the Chinese and the Portuguese cultures, which flow together and flow back in an endless, permanently renewed way in which both China and Portugal, each being the spring of itself, are also the mouth of each other.

China and Portugal. Such distant countries, both geographically and culturally, but to which History has forever given the innovating role of first interlocutors in the peaceful dialogue between the East and the West, which, in spite of the commotions fomented by other European powers with military force and colonial arrogance, has left meaningful marks of interchange and solidarity in the arts, the sciences, the health organization, the eating habits, etc., etc.

In the deeper analysis of the peaceful relationship between China and Portugal in the past shall the foundations be found for the harmonious relationship between two distant peoples which are culturally differentiated, economically different, demographically incomparable, politically opposed, but which have a deep understanding of the unity of mankind and of the indispensability of co-operation for its development.

Notwithstanding their difference in quantitative terms, China and Portugal have, for centuries, projected themselves beyond their political, territorial boundaries, a little into every Continent.

The communities of Chinese and of Portuguese descent in the Asia-Pacific area constitute, therefore, our third universe. To connect the ends of that immense net, bringing those communities into the knowledge of one another and promoting their solidarity with both the cultural matrices out of which they have originated and the States to which they are akin-that is our third purpose.

In this journey we are starting today and which we hope will be long and fruitful, who is afraid of joining us?