This article examines the experience and transformation of the late Yuan Huizhou scholar Zhao Pang (1319–1369) during the transition from the Yuan dynasty to the Ming. In contrast to his reputation as a reclusive scholar devoted to his studies of the classics, and to later appraisals that viewed him as a Yuan “remnant,” Zhao actively engaged with the transition as it happened in his home region. Recovering this history from the writings in his collected works, this article reveals his attitude toward the powers that governed Huizhou in this period and shows both how his attitude remained consistent and how it changed. In place of the framework of loyalty and dynastic identity, this article proposes that local literati like Zhao Pang are better interpreted through local realities, and put in the context of the forms of literati writing and political participation that developed in the specific political system of the Yuan.

In the seventeenth century, Chinese philologists rejected imperial orthodoxy and sought to return to the ways of antiquity through textual criticism; they described their approach using a first century phrase: “Seeking Truth from Facts” (shishi qiushi, 實事求是). Two centuries later, Mao Zedong appropriated this phrase to encapsulate his approach towards revolutionary work, which privileged the first-hand investigation of local socioeconomic conditions. In between these episodes, shishi qiushi was found in automobile advertisements, missionary translations, and on the gates of Confucian academies. Since the 1700s, Chinese intellectuals have found shishi qiushi strangely alluring, and employed the phrase to describe their intellectual and moral commitments. To explain this longevity, this article provides a genealogy of shishi qiushi and argues that the phrase came to be associated with the epistemic values of reflexivity, expertise, and syncretism. These qualities became valued by Chinese intellectuals as they navigated a rapidly changing world.

A few years after Singapore was founded, Lady Sophia Raffles sponsored a school for girls started by the wife of a London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary. This and several other early attempts at female education by missionary women linked to LMS or the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) were largely forgotten by historians. Then there were girls’ schools operated by the Protestant Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (SPFEE) in Britian; the secular Singapore Institution founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles; and the Catholic Convent of Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) linked to Sœurs de l’Enfant Jésus-Nicolas Barré (EJNB) in France, followed by others. As there were many pioneering schools and some better-known ones tend to overshadow others, recent studies often contain inconsistent information as to which were the earliest schools, when they started, and who and which organisations were involved. This article uses primary sources from several archives to reconstruct the stories of the first Western-style girls’ schools on the island to hopefully clarify matters and close some knowledge gaps for readers interested in the history of female education in the early decades of colonial Singapore.

This article discusses the official discourse that appeared in Macau’s Portuguese-language media and the documentaries that were shot there by Portuguese filmmakers in the 1960s and 1970s, especially focusing on the productions that followed the 123 Incident and which largely functioned as a response to it. These riots occurred in December 1966, when Chinese residents of Macau used Cultural Revolution-like protests to contest what they viewed as an inefficient and unfair Portuguese administration. They had a long-lasting and deep impact, weakening Portuguese colonial rule and increasing the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and local Maoists in Macau. In an attempt to counter the image-damage caused by the incident and legitimise Portuguese sovereignty in the territory during what was its worst crisis in the post-war period, Portuguese official discourse and these films came to promote Macau as a site of ‘miraculous’ development and modernisation that had as its basis Luso-Chinese partnership. Furthermore, Macau was advocated as an exemplary case of good neighbourhood policy towards the PRC and of coexistence at all levels, particularly ethnically and politically. This, it was suggested, made it a unique place and a model for the world in a time of cold war.