Думаю, зависит от аудитории. У меня американский английский и второе звучит более нормально, но для британцев может быть по другому.

The sentence is not written clearly but from the context I assume they are talking about small habitats that are connected when it rains a lot and disconnect again when it's dry. So the reptiles can get trapped in the small habitats after the rains are over, and will be confined there until the next rainy season.

That means "pulled it out abruptly" or "yanked it out." This is not a stable idiomatic expression but more of a poetic language.

Background part II of my music history paper (about chinese elements in western music )

Louis XIV and the French [OR France] surpass Portugal ["surpass" is a transitive verb, it needs an object. Intransitive expressions could be "the French get ahead OR France takes over"]

However, the Portuguese domination didn’t last long. From 1580 to 1640, Portugal suffered from regime changes and several times of wars. The Dutch-Portuguese War which happened in Far East [uppercase] colonies led this nation in peril and eventually to the loss of its dominion in India sea Indian Ocean. In contrast, as the age of absolutism was slowly established in France, Louis XIV’s nation was became increasingly powerful and that brought even more diplomatic ambitions. Shortly after the coronation of Le Roi Soleil, the first published Chinese-European dictionary (Chinese-Latin) shown up in 1667. It is, 8 years after the death of its editor, French Jesuit Michael Boym. Only 3 years later, the first Chinese-French dictionary under the name of the same editor also had its publication.

Compare to that unpublished work done in China by Ruggieri and Ricci, these two voluminous dictionaries which were published in Europe are even more meaningful. It meant Jesuits priests could now receive plenty of education in Chinese before boarding a transoceanic navigation. Soon, in 1685, to break the Portuguese dominance in China, Louis XIV sent 5 well-educated missionaries to China.

Not only In addition to that, thanks to the evangelisms done by Ricci and other pioneers, Chinese localized Jesuits started to get involved in this transcontinental communication. Chinese missionaries such as Arcadio Huang and Michael Shen Fu-Tsung finally came to Europe at the turn of 17th and 18th century. Since then, the image of China and Chinese become more and more crystal [do you mean, "became clearer"?], and French finally surpassed Portuguese and took over the baton of Sino-European communication.

Part 2

[IMHO it is stylistically better to put this paragraph in the past tense]
Why? The negative attitude of the government of Ming dynasty is only part of the reason, [new sentence] the Chinese language is was the major obstacle for European missionaries. Before the age of discoveries, the Sino-European relationship is was merely commercial, it relied on a safety and unmolested silk road and translations from the middle east merchant, which indicate this three sides orally communication is friable and lack of continuity. [This is unclear. Perhaps something like: Before the Age of Discovery the only Sino-European relationships were commercial. They were mediated by the Middle Eastern merchants who delivered goods by Silk Road and took care of the language barrier. Communication through a middle man / third party was friable and lacked continuity.]

This phenomenon remained the same not until two Italian Jesuits finally came to China. These two pioneers were Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci. They sailed from Portugal and came to China separately in 1579 and 1582, [new sentence] after several years of learning Chinese, to convenient themselves and their successors for their own and their successors' convenience, [OR to make things easier for themselves and their successors] they started to edit the first Chinese-Portugal dictionary during their missions in Zhaoqing county, Guangdong province.

Confusingly, both Ruggieri and Ricci are Italian, so why did they choose Portuguese to translate? According to the research of David E. Mungello, from 1552 to 1800, about 920 Jesuits had come to China and 34% of them were Portuguese, [new sentence] the second largest component of the sum is French Jesuits but with only 14%. Portuguese, as the vanguard in the Age of Discoveries naturally had superiority at the right time and in the right place. There is no doubt, in terms of missionary works in China, Portuguese missionaries took the dominant position.

Part 1

Background part I of my music history paper (about chinese elements in western music )

As the quote from E.T.A. Hoffmann goes, [sentence needs a verb] “Wo die Sprache aufhört, fängt die Musik an.” if you are a present-day European composer and want to craft a piece about China or at least with some Chinese elements, you must first accumulate certain degrees of knowledge about Chinese cultural culture [cultural is an adjective]. The language, Chinese characters, translated Chinese poem [either poems (plural) or a poem (singular)] and Chinese folk melodies may be the best place to start. However, if you are a musician who comes from a time frame in which internet and cell-phone is not available, for instance 17th century, the only resource that is accessible for you could only be the an encyclopedia and a dictionary in a library. [when you are talking about specific books below, use the dictionary, when you are talking in general, use a dictionary]

The first recorded Chinese dictionary for in a Western language [or, a dictionary of Chinese by westerners] should be attributed to the Jesuits who sailed from Portugal. Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus (SJ). Since the first Jesuit St. Francis Xavier arrived to Shangchuan island of China in 1552 and died in the same year, generations of Jesuits strived strove [irregular verb] to expand their evangelisms and missions from the off coast commercial spot Shangchuan island to the mainland of China but bring to little effect [or with little effect].

[Also, "expand evangelisms and missions" sounds clear but awkward. Maybe a better way to put it is "strove to expand their influence and establish missions on the mainland"]