EDITORIAL

RC has been, throughout its nine years of existence what it should be, issue by issue. We selected the shifting raw material available at the time. Each edition was almost like a venture with no end beyond itself. We surmounted obstacles and limitations, made constant changes requested by the aleatory production factors which are the usual hindrances to the success of a project.

Favoured in the field of critical judgment by the friendliness and kindness of the readers, only gradually did RC come close to the ideal design of its original conception -- a horizon which is now already within our reach.

This introduction should not be regarded as a defence or justification, or even as an invocation for mercy. We are not suggesting bitterness or dissatisfaction, refusing any confessional surge or any subjectivist impulse. We have a clear concept of action, solving any subjectivity in the higher architecture of the works. Thus, our work has always flowed from our desire and vocation of rendering a humble service to the agents, authors and receivers of culture.

We wish to leave a register and a confirmation of our editorial status and our intentions for the future., always aiming at the viability of a project which, from the very beginning, was intended to be everlasting.

We have stood serene and passive, always open to the breath of the spirit and thence to freedom -- either truth or of opinion --without bigotry and intolerance of the viewer and others. We want, however, to clearly state that we have always refused to be moved by 'bourgeois culture' which is impregnable to individualistic sensitivities, to the 'fireworks' of sterile erudition, to the deceitful glitter of great rational and abstract constructions, to meaningless utopian trends bearing no relation to real human and natural conditions. We have inscribed culture on a category of space.

In the East, and from the East, we are Portuguese living, working and dreaming in a 'Chinese land'. Our commitment to the future is based on a radical commitment with the earth and the past.

We have a commitment with the 'old' Portugal., with the heritage of adventurous experience of the seas, the lands and amongst the peoples of the Far East. We have an irrecusable commitment to a final conception of its historic movement.

As in Ksar el Kebir, and in the face of crepuscular shadows, we proclaim: "To die, but slowly." For, in Macao, we have the strongest of reasons to know that we are Portuguese because we are universal and universal because we are Portuguese.

We have a commitment with the great Lusitanian Motherland, the realm of the language, a sacred space of live powers. We have a commitment with Latin culture, the ancestral alma mater of Portugueseness, whose heritage was transported to the modern world through our effort.

And, to begin with, we have a commitment to Macao -- a minute entity in the process of strengthening its identity, its differences, autonomy, and projection in the body of the great China. Its vocation and utility to China will be directly proportional to its identity.

But we also have a commitment to China which we made in the course of the centuries; a pact of blood, spirit and solidarity.

For all these reasons, and as an example, we have set aside a kind of debate of vague erudition about the overly exploited 'East-West relationships', where there is no definition of knowledge of what these relationships are.

Therefore, within a spirit of service to the meeting of cultures, RC will engage in adding a branch of Sinology to the Portuguese culture movement at the end of the twentieth century, and via Portugal, to the place of Lusitanian and Latin culture.

Macao, having established itself as a cultural bridge, will be more helpful the more it gives an international dimension to its cultural service. Hence we shall be more and more committed to giving a specific vocation to each one of the editions of RC, published in Portuguese, Chinese and English. And, in terms of expansion and distribution we will enhance our international dimension through Internet.

For all this, in this Summer of 1995, we are confident in the potential and continuity if this cultural project initiated by the Cultural Institute of Macao.