Zhong Wen: In 1582, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, born in Italy and barely thirty years old, traveled thousands of miles to arrive in Macau. The following year, he was permitted to settle in Zhaoqing, where the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi resided. From there he moved on to Shaoguan, Nanchang, and Nanjing, eventually entering the capital Beijing in 1601. In 1610, he passed away in Beijing. He studied Chinese language and culture and introduced to China the science and knowledge of post-Renaissance Europe. In doing so, he inaugurated what historians call a “golden age of the transmission of Western learning to the East.”

The Western scientific and cultural knowledge introduced to China by Ricci himself covered an extraordinarily wide range of fields. In geography, he drew world maps that included the five continents and four oceans; he told the Chinese that the earth is spherical; he measured the latitude and longitude of several major Chinese cities. In astronomy, he produced sundials, armillary spheres, and other astronomical instruments; he repeatedly and accurately predicted solar and lunar eclipses; he was the first to suggest reforming the Chinese calendar; and he wrote and translated several works introducing European astronomy. In mathematics, he collaborated with Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao, and others to translate Euclid’s Elements, Tongwen Suanzhi, The Meaning of Measurement, The Meaning of Capacity and Volume, and other works. In mechanics, he brought to China the chiming clock—an embodiment of Western mechanical principles—which became a foundational model for China’s later clock-making industry. In biology and Western medicine, his 1593 Chinese-language book introduced European biological and medicinal knowledge. In philosophy, his The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven introduced Thomist scholasticism via discussions of God. In logic, the Chinese translation of Euclid conveyed not only mathematics but Western logical thought. In ethics, Ricci wrote On Friendship, introducing Western ideas of interpersonal conduct; he also introduced to China the Christian ideal of monogamous marriage. In psychology, he authored The Memory Palace, describing Western mnemonic techniques. In linguistics, he compiled the first Chinese–foreign dictionary, the Sino-Portuguese Dictionary, and devised the earliest Latin-alphabet transcription system for Chinese, described in The Miracle of Western Letters. In Western literature, his Ten Chapters of Strange Stories introduced Aesop’s Fables to China for the first time.

Additionally, he introduced Western oil painting and the technique of perspective drawing; he brought the harpsichord (then called “Western qin,” “heavenly qin,” or “iron qin”) into China for the first time; he brought books on Western papermaking and printing, astonishing Chinese readers; and the snuff bottle he introduced later became a popular Chinese craft and accessory, among many other examples.

At the same time, Ricci offered Europe its earliest accurate and comprehensive descriptions of China through his numerous letters and through his History of the Introduction of Christianity into China, which is now known in Chinese as Matteo Ricci’s China Journals.

Ricci’s contribution does not lie merely in the cultural products he personally introduced; more importantly, he built a bridge between the civilizations of East and West. This achievement was the fruit of the Jesuit strategy known as “cultural accommodation.”

Bo Ya: The early Portuguese missionaries who came to the East behaved much like the Spanish missionaries in the Americas: they tried to conquer local cultures with their own. In China, however, this approach met constant resistance. Without a new method, no foreign missionary could have entered China, and cultural exchange between China and the West would have been impossible.

As the saying goes, “Times produce heroes.” The resistance encountered in mature Chinese civilization differed radically from that in the primitive civilizations of the Americas; consequently, European missionaries behaved very differently.

Zhong Wen: Ricci arrived in China in 1582 and died in Beijing in 1610, spending a total of twenty-eight years in the Ming dynasty during the Wanli reign. He had initially been sent to India to teach Greek. But Ricci felt that teaching Greek in India was needlessly complicated and asked for a change.

He thus came to China to learn Chinese and carry out missionary work. China at that time, dominated by Confucianism and Buddhism, strongly resisted Christianity. But Ricci was a genius—humble, diligent, and quick to grasp the secret of how foreigners could “culturally adapt” and even rise to prominence in China.

First, Ricci mastered Confucian doctrines and spoke like a Chinese scholar, quoting the Analects and talking of benevolence, righteousness, and ritual, thereby winning over the literati. Second, Ricci was an expert in “united-front work,” skillful in cultivating connections. Many of his friends in China were equivalent to today’s vice-ministerial officials: Li Dai, Minister of Personnel; Xiao Daheng, Minister of Justice; and Feng Qi, Minister of Rites, among others. He also befriended leading intellectuals such as the top-ranked scholar-official Jiao Hong, the thinker Li Zhi, the playwright Tang Xianzu, and especially Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao, and Yang Tingyun—who all later converted to Christianity under Ricci’s guidance.

Ricci also excelled in hospitality and gift-giving. Wherever he traveled—Guangdong, Nanchang, Nanjing, or Beijing—he presented local officials with exotic Western gifts. One key reason he was allowed to stay long-term in Beijing was that he had given the Wanli Emperor a chiming clock that struck the hour automatically. Fearing that no one else could repair it, the emperor kept Ricci in Beijing “just in case.”

Bo Ya: Ricci was a polymath straddling East and West. He opened a window for China onto the sciences: at a time when Chinese still believed in a “round heaven, square earth,” he introduced the spherical-earth theory. He pioneered the dissemination of modern geography in China, using planar projection and latitudes and longitudes to map the earth, achieving near-modern accuracy. His world map helped Chinese understand the outside world. Many modern Chinese geographical terms—Mediterranean, Nile, Canada, globe, Atlantic, Asia, Romania, Cuba, equator, and others—were coined by Ricci and survive to this day. Yet I must stress: soon after Ricci’s death, under Manchu rule China sank back into ignorance and forgot Western learning entirely. By the Opium War, China had to start again from zero.

Zhong Wen: Of course, Ricci’s primary mission remained evangelization. His scientific skills served mainly to earn respect and goodwill, thereby facilitating missionary work. By the time he died in 1610, he had already converted more than two thousand Chinese.

Bo Ya: At his death, Beijing’s intellectual community held an elaborate public funeral. The Wanli Emperor granted him a burial plot at today’s Tenggong Zhalan (now inside the Beijing Administration Institute), the historic cemetery for Catholic missionaries in China. Many Western missionaries and Chinese Catholics were buried there through the Ming and Republican periods. Today the Communist authorities use the grounds for cadre training, leaving only a small portion of the cemetery intact, including Ricci’s tomb. During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the Boxers destroyed Ricci’s tomb, but it was later restored. During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards—discovering that Ricci was a “cultural-imperialist agent disguised in religious robes”—again destroyed his tombstone.

Zhong Wen: Some say, “The Ming dynasty was a global superpower, and Ricci had no imperial power behind him. Where could any imperialist conspiracy have come from?”

Bo Ya: But such concerns were not completely misplaced. At the time of Ricci’s death, Spain and Portugal had already been engaging in genocide in the Americas for a century. Europe’s expansion toward China was inevitable—only a matter of time.

Zhong Wen: Throughout China’s two thousand years of imperial rule, state power shaped all ideology. Any religion could survive only by submitting to or serving the political order.

Bo Ya: Exactly. Under pressure, Chinese people developed a shallow worldview. Though they possessed “faith” and even “reverence,” these were grounded in practical concerns: sacrifices to Heaven and Earth promised good harvests; ancestral rites ensured family harmony; admiration for loyal officials reflected moral ideals or material benefits. Thus their interests were not metaphysical but practical—family order, governance, social harmony. Chinese philosophy became optimistic but superficial. They welcomed religious practices that were useful but rejected doctrinal rigidity. No fundamentalist religion could ever take root in such soil.

Zhong Wen: Across history, the acceptance of missionaries in China depended less on doctrine and more on personal character and practical benefit.

So-called “foreign religions” could take root only if tolerated by imperial power. The first Western religion allowed into China was the Nestorian version of Eastern Christianity, known as Jingjiao. Alopen was the first Westerner to spread Christianity in China. The Tang court honored him not only because of his erudition and dignity but also because his teachings helped China understand the Western regions.

Six and a half centuries later, John of Montecorvino became another representative missionary in the Yuan dynasty. He built churches in Khanbaliq, translated the New Testament into Chinese, and spread Catholicism.

Three centuries after that, Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci broke through the Ming dynasty’s closed-country policies. In Zhaoqing, Ruggieri—though dressed as a Buddhist monk and even helping officials procure curiosities for tribute—could not restrain himself from criticizing Buddhism and Daoism, provoking opposition from both.

Ricci’s mission, in contrast, contained few dramatic events, but his Treatise on Friendship resonated with Chinese values, earning him the title “Western Confucian.” He completely transformed missionary methods by shifting from religious admonition to intellectual education. This shift was made possible by Europe’s advances in knowledge. On the one hand, he studied Chinese classics and rites, entering the same cultural space as the literati; on the other, he introduced Western astronomy, mathematics, and geography. His collaboration with Xu Guangqi on Euclid and his publication of the world map secured his place in Chinese history. He offered mechanical clocks and scientific instruments to the throne and to officials, thereby opening China’s ruling class to scientific knowledge and the world beyond its borders.

Bo Ya: Ricci translated the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ave Maria into Chinese, and he translated the Four Books into Latin—thus becoming not just a missionary but a “two-way agent” of cultural exchange. To win trust, he first claimed to be from India and wore Buddhist robes, then later grew his hair and beard and dressed as a Confucian scholar. He held public science demonstrations and displayed advanced memory techniques. He earned admiration especially after accurately predicting an eclipse. Although Christian doctrine forbade ancestor worship, Ricci insisted on coexistence with Chinese traditions, enduring criticism. In the end, while he attempted to convert China to Christianity, it was Chinese culture that conquered Western minds—in thinkers like Leibniz and Voltaire, whom we will discuss later.

Zhong Wen: The last prominent missionary was the German Johann Adam Schall von Bell in the late Ming and early Qing periods. Renowned for his mastery of astronomy and calendrical science, he collaborated closely with Xu Guangqi and authored Explanations of Western Calendrical Methods, Star Charts, Tables of Fixed Stars, Explanations of Eclipse Predictions, The Great Calendar, and many others, raising Chinese astronomy to new heights. Yet Schall von Bell eventually suffered imprisonment—not through personal fault but because his scientific dedication and political naïveté led him into the vortex of palace intrigue.

Bo Ya: Rather than saying they spread Christianity, we should say they educated the Qing empire. Fortunately, the Manchu rulers were too ignorant to appreciate them. Had China modernized earlier, the West might have faced a far earlier challenge.