NEWSLETTER JULY – DECEMBER 2012. Nº11

2012

CCCM Heritage and Visibility

THE MING PORCELAIN BOTTLE OF JORGE ÁLVARESINTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM - MACAU: PAST AND PRESENT

MACAU SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL CENTRE P.I.MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

s 2012 advances, we face ever increasing obstacles - A present and future. These are undoubtedly difficult times and yet they are challenging. More than ever before, research, cooperation, training, publication and dissemination must move at the pace allowed and required in the 21st century. It is an increasingly oscillating, ambivalent and contradictory pace. Although everything seems less possible on the surface, if a coherent plan of action is put steadily and persistently in place the fruits of quality and cooperation are still within our reach as we strive to produce results and new horizons of knowledge and action.

The Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre, a Public Institute of the Ministry of Education and Science specializing in matters related to China, Macau, East Asia and relations between Europe and Asia in the past and the present, continues to invest in cooperation and research, in training and dissemination of Asian and Eurasian matters. It invests in the development of an international network of multidisciplinary dialogue that brings together Portuguese and other Europeans with the Chinese and other Asians.

In the second half of 2012, a number of important initiatives will be undertaken by the CCCM. Dissemination activities like the display of the functions and output of CCCM exhibited in the windows of the General Secretariat building of the Ministry of Education and Science on Av. 5 de Outubro.

Activities in museology and cooperation in September and October. On 19 September, the CCCM will inaugurate the exhibition, Wings of Culture on contemporary Chinese culture in cooperation with the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Portugal. During the International

th thSymposium which will be held from 15 to 17 August, the CCCM will inaugurate the exhibition of the Ming porcelain bottle of Jorge Álvares, dated to 1552, in the Museum repository due to cooperation with the Jorge Álvares Foundation.

NEWS LETTER2

EDITORIAL

This year's International Symposium is on the subject of Macau: Past and Present and is the fruit of cooperation between the Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre and the Macao Foundation of the Macau Special Administrative Region. Also in

thSeptember and October, the CCCM is organizing the XIX International Summer Courses of Cascais, beginning on the 24 , in partnership with the Instituto de Cultura e Estudos Sociais.

The great challenge in 2012 is to maintain the quality of the CCCM project despite the declining impact, visibility and quantitive results. It is a time of obstacles and challenges that result from the limited possibilities and circumstances of organizations - be they national or European, public or private. These difficulties, which are facing almost everyone, have made the ability to dialogue and the willingness to undertake joint projects (of research, publication, dissemination and training) serving very different interests increasingly indispensible.

President of the CCCM

Luís Filipe Barreto

NEWS LETTERLETTER3

EDITORIAL

NEWS LETTER4

THE CCCM on 5th October

he CCCM presence in the windows of the Ministry of Education and Science on Av. 5 de Outubro in August 2012, at the T kind invitation of the General Secretariat, brought great visibility. Four panels and many CCCM publications were exhibited in the form of a wall of books that demonstrated the essence of this public institute's work in recent years.

The first panel, “CCCM – A Research Centre” characterizes the strategic mission and objective. The CCCM is a multidisciplinary research centre dedicated to the study of China, Macau, East Asia and Eurasian relations in the past and present. Research in the field of social science is conducted in an international network.

The second panel focuses on the CCCM's function as an “Editorial Centre”. The CCCM publishes a wide range of historical sources and case studies in various languages, as well as symposia proceedings and teaching manuals, exhibition catalogues and six monthly Newsletters in different supports and with regular joint publications with foreign and national institutions.

The panel on “A Unique Museum and Library” highlights the exemplary external services. The CCCM has the only museum on Macau outside of China and the best equipped and most updated library in the entire Iberian Peninsula. In addition, the Museum has the most complete and diversified set of Chinese art collections in Portugal.

NEWS LETTERLETTER5

The last panel focuses on the dimension of “International Cooperation”. The work of this public institute of the Ministry of Education and Science is conducted in a worldwide network. The symposia and publications, the exhibitions, courses and conferences are the fruit of international cooperation. CCCM's three main partners are institutions and researchers from China, MSAR/Macau and Japan. The relations with similar organizations and colleagues in the rest of Europe and the United States, as well as Brazil and Mexico are also of relevance.

Through these functions, countless publications, reproductions and a variety of products such as the exercise book and notepad with the painting Thomas Pereyra by José de Guimarães, the CCCM shows how a micro public institution can develop the macro functions of science, culture and cooperation. A public institute run on a small budget, it has used its own rationale and action program to attract cooperation, partnership, patrons (public and private, international and national) and thus multiply its potential and results.

THE CCCM on 5th October

NEWS LETTER6

PORTUGAL-CHINA COOPERATION WITH THE WINGS OF CULTURE EXHIBITION

ooperation between the CCCM and the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Portugal has been one of the C priorities of this Public Institute since September 2006. The very raison d'être and meaning of this institution would be lost if it were not for active partnerships with China, Macau and East Asia.

This cooperation has given the Portuguese public access to a broad scope of updated information on the policies, society and economy, culture and heritage of China today and the past of this axial civilization which goes back thousands of years.

The Wings of Culture exhibition at the CCCM from September to December 2012 introduces the visitor through panels and sttexts to the panorama of the Chinese cultural renaissance in the 21 century. China is one of today's great world powers and

wants to affirm its culture, science and technology at an increasingly global level.

Projection of documentaries, Moyu, Xinjiang Exhibition at the China Braille Library in Beijing

NEWS LETTERLETTER7

This exhibition reveals the essence of China's st cultural policy in the 21 century. At the domestic

level, it promotes a national cultural market based on public services that create conditions of equal access for all to cultural goods and services. Enhancing both the inherited and newly created cultural universe, everyday consumer goods, as universally as possible to a population of around one billion and three hundred million. The development of cultural services and industries in China over the last 12 years shows that this investment is bearing fruit and has been successful. This exhibition shows how state finance is used in China primarily for public service and to regulate and orientate private markets.

At the external level, China's cultural policy has been committed to an ongoing plan of action hosting events such as the Beijing Olympic Games and the Shanghai Expo, and with institutions like the Confucius Institute that affirm and promote the country on a world scale. China's goal is to strengthen intercultural relations with Asian, European, American and African cultures and societies. Developing cultural relations of interdependence but highlighting the value not only of China's millenary civilization and language but also its cultural modernity in terms of new technologies, market scale and cultural industries.

PORTUGAL-CHINA COOPERATION WITH THE WINGS OF CULTURE EXHIBITION

NEWS LETTER8

Movable type for printing Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, ca. 1350, by Huang Gongwang (1296-1354)

National Library of China, Beijing

PORTUGAL-CHINA COOPERATION WITH THE WINGS OF CULTURE EXHIBITION

NEWS LETTERLETTER9

LANTERNA EM FORMA DE PATODinastia dos Zhou Orientais, Período dos Estados Combatentes (475 - 221 a. C.) /

Dinastia Han do Ocidente (202 a. C. - 9 a. C.)Bronze com embutidos de jade

37 × 38,5 cm

National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing

Danxia natural landscape

PORTUGAL-CHINA COOPERATION WITH THE WINGS OF CULTURE EXHIBITION

here were two Portuguese named Jorge Álvares on the T South China seas, from Malacca, in the first half of the 16th century. Portuguese of importance to Portugal – China relations.

The first Jorge Álvares was the factor and clerk on the junk carrying pepper, and armed in equal part by the royal exchequer and the wealthy Tamul merchant Nina Chatu. Accompanied by two other Portuguese (whose names are not known), Jorge Álvares sailed from Malacca to the islands of Guangdong (Lintin/Tamão) with four other junks owned by the private Cantonese merchant, Xu Lada (who the Portuguese called Cheilata and Chulata and had known since 1509).

These three men (two anonymous and Jorge Álvares) were the first Portuguese to set foot on the China island, the island of Lintin/Tamão, where they erected the stone padrão. The clerk and merchant soldier, Jorge Álvares, maintained his link with trade from Malacca to Tamão in the following years - 1517, 1519 and 1521 (already in a context of open armed conflict with the Chinese authorities of Guangzhou). He died in July 1521 on the seas of Guangdong, and was buried in Lintin near the stone padrão.

BottleWhite porcelain with underglaze blue decorationJingdezhen, Province of JiangxiChina, Ming dynasty, Jiajing mark and period (1522-1566), dated to 1552H: 23,7 cm; Diam. of foot: 8,3 cmJorge Álvares Foundation Collection, permanently in the repository of the CCCM Museum

NEWS LETTER10

THE MING PORCELAIN BOTTLE OF JORGE ÁLVARES

The second Jorge Álvares was a rich merchant from Freixo de Espada à Cinta, business partner of the wealthy merchant-writer Fernão Mendes Pinto and therefore part of the Portuguese-Chinese-Japanese trade of spices and sapon wood from Southeast Asia, Chinese silks and porcelain and Japanese silver. This is the maritime and merchant network that led to the birth of Macau in 1555-1557. This Jorge Álvares is the author of the first work about Japan written in Portuguese (or any other Western language), in Malacca at the end of 1547: Informação das Coisas do Japão. It was given to Saint Francis Xavier who sent it immediately to Rome from Conchin in January 1548.

This second Jorge Álvares commissioned the Chinese “blue and white” porcelain bottle of 1552, now on exhibit and permanently in the repository of the CCCM Museum thanks to the support of the Jorge Álvares Foundation.

For over five hundred years, Portugal has been the Asia of the Monsoons' quintessential border in Europe, the face of this Eurasian heritage etched in bodies and things. It is through this Ming porcelain, acquired by a Portuguese in international trading on the seas of South China and Japan, that the Jorge Álvares Foundation and the CCCM contribute to the preservation and dissemination of the cultural and patrimonial heritage linking Portugal to China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

NEWS LETTERLETTER11

THE MING PORCELAIN BOTTLE OF JORGE ÁLVARES

MACAU SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL CENTRE, P.I.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

Rua da Junqueira, nº 30, 1300-343 Lisboa – Portugal Tel.: 21 361 75 70 / Email: geral@cccm.pt / www.cccm.pt

Exercise book which reproduces the painting Thomas Pereyra, by José de Guimarães, made exclusively for CCCM