From the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, Macau functioned as a Portuguese trading port and settlement on the South China coast under strict Chinese supervision and sovereignty. During this time, the settlement also ‘served as the principal and most important base for the spread of Catholicism into mainland China’. Tang Kaijian considers in eight essays several significant aspects of the Macau gateway. In the first essay the origins and development of Catholicism in Macau itself are considered, followed by a narrative of the spread of Christianity into mainland China in the second essay. Key issues concern Macau as an important site where people from the mainland could convert to Catholicism and as a refuge for missionaries from the interior suffering from illness or persecution. In addition, some space is devoted to the occasional intervention of Chinese officials concerned about religious activities in the territory. While particular emphasis is placed on the endeavours of the Society of Jesus under the Portuguese patronage system, the author is aware of competition from Spanish Dominicans, Franciscans and Augustinians. Chapter iii helpfully focuses on the presence of Japanese Christians in Macau. The remaining chapters link Macau with the rise and fall of Catholicism on the island of Hainan, with the funding of Jesuit missionary work, with the religious visual arts and music as well as with what the author calls the Jesuits’ ‘clock diplomacy’.

It should be noted that Tang has long advocated the importance of sufficient language skills for those who study the Catholic missionary enterprise in China. He argues that scholars with only a limited knowledge of either European languages or Chinese tend to view the early history of the Catholic Church in China ‘through either a Chinese or a European lens’ (p. 1). It comes, therefore, as a surprise that Tang has relied almost exclusively on Chinese translations of older European texts. To be sure, such translations make rare texts dealing with Catholic Church and mission history more accessible to Chinese readers. However, not all Chinese translations are of acceptable quality. Thus, in a letter written from Shangchuan Island shortly before his death in 1552, Francis Xavier mentions the distance between the island and the city of Canton (Guangzhou), which in the double-translation (from Latin to Chinese to English) is given as only fifteen kilometres. This is either a printing error or a mistranslation or wrong conversion of the actual distance indicated in the Latin text.

Whereas the above example is no doubt a simple oversight, in other instances certain translations may have tendentious implications. Tang, quoting from the Chinese translation of Louis Pfister's biographical notices on the Jesuit missionaries of the old China mission, writes that the French priest Jean-Joseph de Grammont is reported to have had his own ‘slaves’ in Beijing as late as 1806. However, Pfister's original French text refers to ‘domestiques’ (domestic servants). Since Tang refers to ‘slaves’ in several other contexts in the volume, is this merely an unfortunate translation problem or was a deliberately negative image of the missionary presence in China intended by the translators? Finally, it is puzzling that Tang has relied on the recent Chinese translation of Historic Macao by C. A. Montalto de Jesus when the original was published in English. A close examination of the original English text against Tang's English text derived from the Chinese translation reveals that the two texts are not identical. Indeed, the latter text employs rather tendentious vocabulary that is absent in the original version. Furthermore, the translators of European language texts into Chinese were evidently not familiar with the specialised vocabulary employed in Catholic church and mission history. The issue may have been further confused by the rendition of the Chinese translations into English. Tang writes, for example, that foreign priests in China's interior received financial support from ‘agencies’ in Macau. The accepted English term for such agencies is ‘procure’ or ‘procuration house’, an office where a capable person (‘procurator’) sent from a missionary society's overseas headquarters dealt with financial and business affairs on behalf of the missions in mainland China.

It is, of course, encouraging to note that Tang has extracted helpful information on the Catholic presence in China from a number of Chinese sources. Yet it must also be pointed out that these sources have been accepted at face value. For example, basing his argument on a Chinese document from the Yongzheng reign period (1723–35), the author repeats without critical comment the assertion that the missionaries, in order to lure poor Chinese people to convert, gave every convert some money. Similar assertions are made in several other Chinese sources consulted by Tang. One of these, namely Xu Changzhi's Shengchao poxie ji [An anthology of writings exposing heterodoxy] of 1639, states that the Jesuit Alfonso Vagnoni (1566–1640) offered three silver taels to each convert in Nanjing. Although these claims are obvious exaggerations, the author fails to offer critical analyses of such hostile Chinese texts. For one thing, he fails to mention that Xu Changzhi (1582–1672) was a lay Buddhist who had produced Shengchao poxie ji as an attack on Christianity in the wake of the anti-Christian incident of 1616–17. Tang's volume also contains a number of inaccuracies. Note, for instance, that the Guangzhou clinic returned to Macau in the 1730s, not the 1830s (p. 18). It should be Martín de Rada, not Reda (p. 19). Since the Dominican priest came from Spain, his name should be given in Spanish: Bartolomé López, not in the Portuguese form of Bartolomeu Lopes (p. 20). The priest Ignace He (p. 82) was Chinese, not French. It would have been helpful if the Guangdong official Jiang Yougua could have been properly identified (p. 84). The only Jiang in office during the Jiaqing reign was Governor-General Jiang Youxian.

In conclusion, this is by no means a sophisticated study. The author offers some helpful contributions, but the work should be use with a degree of caution.