Series
From Portuguese epic to Macanese fiction, from early-Qing Catholic verse to today's contemporary Chinese poetry, Macau has nurtured a literary tradition across languages. This series gathers poets and writers with deep Macau roots — from Luís de Camões and Camilo Pessanha to Henrique de Senna Fernandes, the Patuá poet 'Adé', and the contemporary poet Un Sio San.
Macau's literary tradition reaches back to the Portuguese epic poet Luís de Camões — by legend he wrote part of The Lusiads in Macau, and the Camões Grotto in the Casa Garden still honours his name. In the early twentieth century the Portuguese Symbolist poet settled in Macau and died there; and earlier, the early-Qing painter-priest wrote verse infused with his Catholic faith.
Luís de Camões
Portugal's national poet and author of the epic Os Lusíadas (rendered in Macau as 葡國魂), regarded as a founding figure of Portuguese-language literature. Camões Garden in Macau is named after him; the well-loved story that he composed part of the epic in a grotto there is a legend, not documented fact.
Camilo Pessanha
A Portuguese symbolist poet, born in Coimbra in 1867, who came to Macau in 1894 to teach, headed the property registry from 1900, and died in Macau in 1926. His collection Clepsidra is a landmark of Portuguese symbolism. Rua de Camilo Pessanha — formerly 爐石塘街 — was named after him in 1926.
Wu Li
A master of early-Qing landscape painting — one of the "Six Masters" — who was also one of China's first Catholic poets and Jesuit priests. In 1681 he came to St Paul's College in Macau to study theology and Latin, and in 1688 was ordained at Nanjing as Simon-Xavier a Cunha, among the earliest Chinese Jesuit priests. His Macau years mark a distinctive chapter in the history of Chinese–Western cultural exchange.
Macau's Macanese community has a literary voice all its own. Henrique de Senna Fernandes wrote novels of old Macau's people and loves; the writer Deolinda da Conceição drew the fate of Macau's women in short fiction; and José dos Santos Ferreira ("Adé") wrote poetry in the endangered Macanese creole (Patuá), safeguarding a unique language.
Today, Macau's Chinese-language literature keeps speaking. Un Sio San carried Macau's contemporary poetry onto the international stage, giving the city's verse a voice of its own; the senior man of letters Leong Pei Wan was poet, calligrapher and educator in one; and the essays of the Portuguese scholar Manuel da Silva Mendes record his reflections on Macau and Chinese culture. Drawing on public sources, this series presents the cross-lingual depth of Macau's literature.
Henrique de Senna Fernandes
Henrique de Senna Fernandes (1923–2010) was a Macanese writer and lawyer. He studied law at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and wrote in Portuguese, setting much of his work in the Macau of the 1930s and 1940s and portraying the lives of the territory's mixed-race community. His novels A Trança Feiticeira (The Bewitching Braid) and Amor e Dedinhos de Pé were both adapted into films. Regarded as a guardian of Macau's memory, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Macau in 2006.
Deolinda da Conceição
Deolinda da Conceição (1913–1957) is regarded as Macau's first Macanese woman writer and journalist. Writing in Portuguese, she ran a women's column in a Macau newspaper. In 1956 she published her only book, the short-story collection Cheong-Sam — A Cabaia, centred on the fate and suffering of Chinese women, regarded as a pioneering work of Macanese Portuguese-language literature.
José dos Santos Ferreira (Adé)
José dos Santos Ferreira (known as Adé, 1919–1993) was a Macanese poet and writer. He spent his life writing poetry, prose, plays, and radio works in Macanese patuá — a creole based on Portuguese and mixing in Cantonese and other elements — and is regarded as the last poet of distinction to write in the language. His works include Macau sa Assi (1968) and Poéma di Macau (1983); a bronze statue in Macau commemorates him.
Un Sio San
A Macau-born contemporary poet and writer regarded as one of Macau's leading younger poets. Educated at Peking University and the University of Toronto, she is the author of several collections including Exile in the Blossom Time, Naked Picnic and Evolution of Love, and a multiple winner of the Macao Literature Award and cross-strait poetry prizes, with work featured at international poetry festivals.
Leong Pei Wan
Leong Pei Wan (born Leong Long Kwong, 1907–2010), a native of Yongchun, Fujian, was an educator, poet, calligrapher and public figure who lived to 103. Educated in his youth at Waseda University in Japan, he founded and served as principal of Liming Senior Middle School in Quanzhou in 1930, and later led overseas Chinese schools in Indonesia and Malaysia and the National Coastal Frontier School. From 1966 he was assigned by Liao Chengzhi to handle returned-overseas-Chinese work in Macao, where he settled long-term, chairing the Macao Returned Overseas Chinese Association and leading cultural bodies such as the Macao Chinese Language Society and the Macao Cultural Research Association; in later life he revived Liming University as its board chairman and principal. A member of the 6th, 7th and 8th National CPPCC, he received the inaugural Macao SAR Silver Lotus Medal in 2002 and the Grand Lotus Medal of Honour in 2007.
Manuel da Silva Mendes
Manuel da Silva Mendes (1867–1931) was a Portuguese scholar, lawyer, and collector of Chinese art who lived in Macau from 1901. He taught at the Liceu de Macau and twice served as interim rector, practised law, served as judge and prosecutor, and presided over the Leal Senado. An early systematic collector of Chinese art whose collection helped form the Luís de Camões Museum, he was also a pioneer in introducing Taoist thought and Chinese culture to the Portuguese-speaking world.
