November 29 to December 1, the Macau Ricci Institute held its seventh International Symposium dedicated to Chinese Modern Literature. Looking back to its near past, the MRI research, interest and attention were placed on various historical and cultural, administrative and legal interactions between Macau-China and the Western World. In the past Symposiums we were also trying to cultivate the memory of our great predecessors in the Christian Mission to China, par excellence, of Francis Xavier and Wu Yushan.

Forty-five scholars took active part in this year’s Symposium; the theme – “The Individual and Society in Modern Chinese Literature” – the main concern and attention was paid to the Chinese person as well as to Chinese contemporary society, seen through the writers’ eyes.

The speakers tried an approach to a history of Chinese literature, from the point of view of “the history of social and human values.”

The Symposium provided a platform for Macau‘s famous poets and writers of Chinese and Portuguese languages, as well as of the Patois dialect.

History teaches us that in the final decade of the Ming Dynasty, the Jesuit order had initiated a Sino-European dialogue, based on knowledge and belief, arts and letters, friendship and diplomacy. The Jesuit intellectual activities in China were based first and foremost on a ground of communication and knowledge of languages. It can’t be said too often, that the very first bi-lingual, Portuguese-Chinese dictionary was compiled by Ricci and Ruggieri in 肇慶 Zhaoqing in 1588.