A01=Jonathan Porter
Afonso De Albuquerque
architectural heritage analysis
Author_Jonathan Porter
Barra Point
Category=NHF
china
Chinese Educational Mission
Chinese Popular Religion
coast
Colonial Port Cities
colonial urban studies
Coolie Traffic
cross-cultural exchange
East West cultural transformation
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
estuary
Eurasian identity
fort
Guan Di
Hong Lou Meng
Imperial Astronomical Bureau
imperial China interaction
International Maritime Trade
Leal Senado
Macau Grand Prix
Maritime Trade System
Mazu Temple
Miniature Temple
monte
Northwest African Coast
pearl
Pearl River
Pearl River Estuary
port
Portuguese Maritime Expansion
religious syncretism
river
south
South China Coast
treaty
Tu Di
Young Man
Zheng Chenggong
Zheng Zhilong
Zhu Di
Product details
- ISBN 9780813337494
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 Dec 1999
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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"For many people who have encountered it, Macau makes a deep impression on the imagination, as if the city were not entirely real or, rather, not of the real world. Macau often seems dreamlike, as though it were sustained by the effort of some powerful imagination." In this evocative essay on the cultural and social history of a unique and fragile city, Jonathan Porter examines Macau as an enduring but ever-changing threshold between East and West. Founded by the Portuguese in 1557, Macau emerged as a vibrant commercial and cultural hub in the early seventeenth century. The city then gradually evolved, flourishing first as a Eurasian community in the eighteenth century and then as an increasingly Chinese city in the nineteenth century. Macau became a modern manufacturing center in the late twentieth century and is now destined for reversion to the People’s Republic of China in 1999. The city was the meeting ground for many cultures, but central to this fascinating story is the encounter between an expansive, seaborne Portuguese empire and the introspective, closed world of imperial China. Unlike the other great colonial port cities of Asia, Macau did not provide natural access to the hinterland, and this geographical and historical isolation has fostered a unique balance of cultural influences that survives to this day. Poised on the periphery of two worlds, an isolated but global crossroads, Macau is a unique cultural and social melange that illuminates crucial issues of cross-cultural exchange in world history. Establishing Portugal and China as distinct cultural archetypes, Porter then examines the subsequent encounters of East and West in Macau from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Avoiding the traditional linear chronological approach, Porter instead looks at a series of images from the city’s history and culture, including its place in the geographical context of the South China coast; the architecture of Macau, which reflects the memories of its historical passages; the variety of people who crossed the threshold of Macau; the material culture of everyday life; and the spiritual topography resulting from the encounters of popular religious movements in Macau. Jonathan Porter concludes his literary journey by reflecting on the character and meaning of the many cultural and social influences that have met and mingled in Macau. His words and photographs eloquently capture the essence of a place that seems too ephemeral to be real, too captivating to be anything but an imaginary city.
Jonathan Porter is professor of history at the University of New Mexico and the author of All Under Heaven: The Chinese World.
