A 500-year-old porcelain bottle and the last flag hoisted when the administration of Macau was transferred are some of the objects that tell the story of the relationship between Portugal and the region at the Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre in Lisbon.
These are just two of about 4,000 artefacts on display at the museum space of the Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre (CCCM) and which aim to “give an idea of 5,000 years of Chinese history and art, ranging from the Neolithic period to the beginning of the 20th century,” as explained by the museum’s director, Rui Dantas.
In this space, he told Lusa, visitors can understand “how Macau was created and the relations that were established between Europe and Asia, starting from Macau.
The collection includes examples of the first Neolithic ceramics, funerary terracottas, bronzes, song ceramics, objects for smoking opium, paintings, silverware and fans, among others.
One of the featured objects is a decorated bottle which was commissioned in 1522 by Jorge Álvares, a wealthy merchant from Freixo de Espada à Cinta in northern Portugal, the partner of Fernão Mendes Pinto, and who was one of the Portuguese pioneers in the porcelain business.
The work marks the beginning of the porcelain trade, as it was one of the first pieces commissioned at the start of a vast trade route, the director of the Museum of Macau explained .
Another outstanding piece is a Buddha signed by ceramic artist Pun Yu Shu, a disciple of the famous Shek Wan ceramic master. It was commissioned by the collector Silva Mendes, the first European to collect quality pieces with the characteristics of Shek Wan ceramics.
The space has a note on the handover (of the territory’s administration from Portugal to China), with the last flag to be hoisted during the official ceremonies of the handover of Macau in 1999 on display.
That was precisely the year the CCCM was created, with the aim of “promoting knowledge of the relations between Europe and Asia”, aims that are still maintained, with a strong component in training, according to the president of the Centre, Carmen Mendes.
In this area, she highlighted the Chinese Culture and Language course, recalling that the Centre was “the first institution to teach this course in Portugal”.
According to Cármen Mendes, this is a “living” centre, with many researchers, PhD students, scholarship holders and people interested in the relations between Portugal and Asia, and others who simply cannot resist training offers, for example, on the patuá (Macau Creole) or the guzheng (traditional Chinese music instrument), given in this space.
“We have more and more visitors, not only to our library – which is the best library with works about Asia in Portugal, that attracts researchers and others interested in Asia -, our museum and the training courses that we are teaching for specialists, academics and also the civil society and general public”, she told Lusa.
At the research level, “the centre has had a pioneering role in the connection of all the academics that work about Asia in Portugal, some Portuguese abroad and some foreigners with strong connections to the Portuguese academy”.
She also highlighted the Spring Conferences, which bring together around 180 speakers and the awarding of annual PhD scholarships, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), which oversees the Centre, to PhD students doing research on Asia.
The CCCM has 25 doctoral scholarship holders and volunteers who find close proximity to Asia in this space .
“We have people here from the most diverse disciplinary areas – art, religion, language, culture, also history and economics, but there is something that unites them: the passion for Asia,” she said.
Cármen Mendes is enthusiastic about the creation of a scientific and academic incubator, which “will allow researchers, entrepreneurs and even artists to have this connection to Macau, through the University of St Joseph, the Catholic University of Macau”.
In relation to the library, the head of the Information and Documentation Division of the CCCM, Helena Dias Coelho, presents it as first being “geared towards the study of relations between Portugal and Macau” and later extended to the whole of Asia.
“We are mainly sought by students of Asian studies, researchers, a lot by young students of higher education, doctoral students, and our documentation responds to this type of demand,” she told Lusa.
The most sought-after works in this library are the general ones on Asian history, but also the collections, namely those of monsignor Manuel Teixeira, a historian who lived in Macau, where he published more than a hundred books and hundreds of articles in the press.
He donated his collection to the CCCM, which is duly treated and accessible, including books, photographs, texts and small notes.
In the archives of this library, there is also a microfilm collection of about 7,000 microfilms, with more than 50,000 documents essential to the study of Macau and its institutions from the early 17th century to the mid-20th century.
