Apresentação [Presentazione]

With the intention of celebrating 500 years of contacts between Portugal and China, in 2013, the Porta Macau Group: literatures, languages and cultures, certified by CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), promoted the 1st International Colloquium of LIA/FFLCH/USP (Laboratory of Asian Interlocutions of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo) – Portugal-China: 500 years: changes, challenges and contrasts – bringing together experts around a common and multidisciplinary study, the Orient as a common topic and constant in the discourses of European culture. most of the The results presented here are the result of this meeting and the evolution that research took. Spaces like Goa, Macau and Timor, among others, began to have unique relevance to the cultural interfaces of a geography that did not continue land, but rather as an important route of maritime routes that developed from the Navigations. Very recently, the The People's Republic of China announced the creation of a platform – The New Silk Roads –, seeking to develop the relations between maritime Southeast Asia, Portugal and the countries of Portuguese language. Thus it is observed that those old ways were not overshadowed, but strengthened in the construction of new connections for this 21st century.