Now familiar with some basic facts about China, Ricci set about learning Chinese with the aid of teachers and devoted his energies above all to the study of Mandarin, the language spoken by the educated classes12 and very different from the local dialects used in all the provinces. Although well trained in the learning of new languages, the Jesuit found Chinese completely different from any classical or contemporary language he had ever studied, including the hardest. He described it to Martino de Fornari,13 his professor of rhetoric at the Roman College, as “nothing like either Greek or German” and went on to give lengthy explanations of its characteristics and its difficulties for the learner. One of the peculiarities of Chinese was the absence of declensions, declinations, conjugations, genders, forms, tenses, and modes. The meaning of a phrase depended on the order in which the words were placed, with the aid of a few particles. Another was the fact of consisting mostly of short words of one or two syllables, whose pronunciation was an authentic riddle, as practically every word changed its meaning when pronounced in different tones.14 While pronunciation was a torment, writing proved still more complex. Ricci described the ideograms, elaborate characters made up of numerous minute strokes of ink, as “tangles of different letters” and the writing as something impossible for anyone to believe without seeing or attempting for himself. The language was made still more elusive by the fact that many Chinese words written with different characters were very similar in pronunciation. As a result, communication was often ambiguous, and writing from dictation was almost impossible. As if this were not enough, the pronunciation of the same words in the different dialects changed so much as to make conversation between the inhabitants of different provinces difficult. As the Jesuit complained to his former teacher, “It is the most ambiguous spoken and written language ever to be found.” He noted on numerous occasions that in order to make themselves understood and clear up misunderstandings in oral communication, the Chinese would often use their fingers to draw the characters corresponding to their spoken words in the air or on the palm of their hand, thus showing that it was the written rather than the spoken language that unified the empire. Children learned to write by devoting their first few years of school to memorizing the basic characters, a demanding task that required constant practice. Ricci was not frightened by the scale of this undertaking, which was still more onerous for an adult, because he was naturally gifted with an excellent memory and knew how to increase its capacity by means of the ancient mnemonic techniques studied at the Roman College. His ability was indeed such that he is reported to have had perfect recall even of things he read only once.15
Ricci committed as many characters as possible to memory and did exercises every day in the correct use of the brush used by the Chinese for writing, which was held with the wrist at a precise angle to the paper. The Chinese brushes varied greatly in shape and size, and the bristles of different animals were used in accordance with their purpose. Those preferred for writing were the stiff, short hairs of weasels, martens, and skunks, especially suitable for the smaller characters, or hares, rabbits, deer, and wolves, while goat bristles were prized above all for painting.16 Made of bamboo, ivory, wood, lacquer, porcelain, and precious metals, the handles could be sober or richly decorated. The technique Ricci learned during his daily exercises struck him as closer to painting, and his comment to De Fornari—“their writing is more like painting”—pinpointed the aesthetic and creative dimension of calligraphy, which had indeed become an art in its own right in China and was appreciated as much as the representation of landscapes or animals.
In his exercises and in writing letters to Rome, Ricci noted that Chinese paper was much flimsier than the type used in Europe and that only one side of the sheet could be used. Paper had been invented in China in the second century ad, if not earlier, and had come into general use there about a thousand years before Europe. It had been commonly used for centuries not only for writing but also to make hats, shoes, clothes, blankets, money, kites, and ornamental objects, as the missionary was amazed to discover.17
One year later, Ricci’s progress was already greater than his friend Ruggieri had managed in three, and he was now able to remember and write a large number of characters: “I’ve got a good number of them into my head and can already write them all.” It is hard to tell just how many characters Ricci learned in his first year of study and in the later course of his life, when he set about writing books in Chinese. He states in his history of the mission that Chinese has a total of seventy thousand characters, but knowledge of ten thousand is sufficient for everyday purposes. While this is an exaggeration, the total number is still very high—forty-nine thousand according to the dictionary published in 1716 during the reign of the emperor Kangxi.18
Books Galore
Having attained some familiarity with the writing, Ricci began to examine Chinese books and saw that they were produced in a different way from those in the West. He discovered that they were read in the opposite direction, turning the pages from left to right, which gave a European the impression of beginning at the end and ending at the beginning. Moreover, the writing on every page was vertical rather than horizontal, and the words and phrases were written one after the other with no breaks and no punctuation, thus leaving the reader the task of isolating the groups of characters constituting units of meaning.
In seeking out manuals to consult with the aid of interpreters in order to draw up the report on China requested by Valignano, Ricci became aware of the extraordinarily vast scale of book production. Printing was indeed widespread in the Ming era, including not only historical, philosophical, and ethical works published in literary Chinese, the written language that played a role comparable to Latin in Europe, but also a large number of books in the vernacular. Works for all tastes were to be found on the market, from romantic novels to all sorts of practical handbooks for everyday use, technical works on agriculture and handicrafts, dictionaries, glossaries, and guides for merchants.
This vast circulation of printed volumes surprised Ricci and confirmed his view of the Chinese as a literate people. The vast output of publications was made possible by the use of xylography, or wood-block printing, the most ancient technique known. This had become widespread in China as early as the sixth century ad, during the Tang dynasty, and long ahead of the West, where the use of an analogous procedure did not begin before the end of the thirteenth century. The characters and figures of a page of a book were carved in relief on a block of wood used as a matrix for printing, which was then coated with ink and pressed against sheets of paper so that the shapes in relief were printed as black characters on a white ground. Colored illustrations were also reproduced with the use of different inks. The method required considerable skill in carrying out the intaglio work but proved economical because the completed wooden matrices made it possible to run off as many copies of the book as might be required at any time. Ricci observed and admired the Chinese craftsmen and their mastery in carving the wooden blocks, and he realized that they worked much faster than the Western printers using the more recent technique of movable type: “As regards speed and facility, it seems to me that their engravers cut a block in the same time as it takes our printers to compose and emend a sheet, or slightly less.”19
Printing with movable type had also been known in China long before in Europe, with wooden or ceramic type being used there in the eleventh century, whereas it was not until halfway through the fifteenth century that Johannes, or Henne, Gensfleisch (c. 1400–1468), known as Gutenberg after his family’s hometown, brought it into large-scale employment in the West. Instead of wooden blocks engraved with entire pages, this technique used small blocks of lead, each bearing a letter of the alphabet in relief on one of its faces. This “type” was then arranged in a special container to compose the words for printing. Unlike wood-block printing, where the completed matrices were no longer susceptible of modification, the movable type could be used repeatedly fo
r different publications. Because the very high number of Chinese characters involved the use of an equally high number of types, thus making the printing process too expensive, this technique was used in China only for works of particular importance, such as imperial publications.
Ricci studied all the books he could gather together and had some parts translated by his interpreters, impatiently awaiting the day when he would be able to read them unaided. He was impressed by the quantity and quality of the treatises on medicinal herbs, embellished with detailed illustrations, and probably consulted some of the texts later included in the most important pharmacological work of the Ming era, namely the Bencao Gangmu or Compendium of Materia Medica by Li Shizen, published in 1596 and containing the names of 1,892 plants, 11,000 recipes for cures, and 1,100 illustrations. The work also made the first mention of a method of immunization against smallpox, over two centuries before Western medicine. Ricci commented on the methods of Chinese medicine in his letters—“they do everything delicately with herbs”20—and reported admiringly that the physicians were able to treat dental problems by inserting “iron” into the teeth, by which he probably meant something similar to fillings or primitive dentures.
The Jesuit also found useful information in the numerous Chinese geographic treatises featuring the different provinces of the empire, which he studied carefully with the intention of using them to draw more accurate maps of the country than those commonly circulating in Europe. The maps of the East published in the West were in fact not only incomplete in their representation of largely unexplored countries but also contained misinformation due to the unscrupulous manipulation of data by the Spanish and Portuguese so as to enhance the importance of the territories whose trade they monopolized. Ricci warned De Fornari not to trust maps of the world because of the gross mistakes they made, “either through lack of knowledge or due to the disputes over borders between the kings of Portugal and Spain,” and announced his resolve to correct the inaccuracies: “They will now cease.” He set to work immediately by calculating the geographic coordinates of Macao and deciding to do likewise for each of the other Chinese cities he would visit.
The Charade of the Permit and the Letter from Wang Pan
Ricci hoped that his stay in Macao would be short and that he would soon be able to settle in China together with Ruggieri, not least because various signs seemed to indicate that the Chinese authorities were not as hostile as had been thought.
While he was still en route from Goa to Macao, the governor of the Guangdong province, Chen Rui, resident in Zhaoqing to the northwest of Canton, expressed his desire to receive Macao’s two highest authorities, namely the bishop and the captain of the garrison, in an official audience. The invitation was significant, and the Portuguese decided to accept, albeit with the precautionary step of sending Michele Ruggieri and the judge Matthias de Panela, two figures of lesser official standing, in their place.21
Their meeting with the governor, described by Ricci in his subsequent account of these events as “shrewd and fond of money,”22 proved most cordial. The official showed his appreciation of the mirrors and lengths of velvet and wool presented to him as gifts and entrusted the two visitors with silver to buy other goods in Macao, asking them to return with new Western objects for a further meeting, at which only the judge was present. Being obliged by illness to remain in Macao, the Jesuit took care to send a pair of reading glasses, articles still unknown in China and in great demand throughout the East, as a personal gift, together with the promise that he would deliver a mechanical clock in person as soon as he was better.
The effects of these attentions were beyond all expectations, as the governor was so pleased with the gifts that he gave the judge a permit authorizing Ruggieri and a fellow priest to reside in China. Given this unexpected opportunity, Valignano decided to act quickly. As Ricci had now arrived in Macao together with Francesco Pasio, the Visitor asked the latter to take up residence in China with Ruggieri instead of leaving for Japan, despite his awareness that neither of them had yet mastered the language. After settling in, the two missionaries would be able to submit a request to the authorities for Ricci to join them. Valignano authorized Ruggieri and Pasio to adopt the dress and appearance of Buddhist monks, exchanging their customary black apparel for the traditional gray robes and shaving their heads and chins. In view of the fact that bonzes enjoyed great respect in Japan, where a Jesuit mission had been successfully established, this step was intended to convey the idea to the Chinese that the two men were priests in the easiest and most immediately evident way.
Ruggieri and Pasio arrived in Zhaoqing at the end of December 158223 and soon obtained permission from the authorities for Ricci to join them. In the meantime, Valignano set off again on his constant travels throughout the East for the purpose of organizing the missions, heading this time for India.24 Before Ricci was able to join his companions, however, the governor was removed from office by one of the guan responsible for ensuring the smooth functioning of the provincial administration—one of the dreaded censors known as “the emperor’s eyes and ears”—and the missionaries’ position in China became most precarious. Ruggieri and Pasio were ordered to return to Macao but managed to obtain a letter from the mandarin addressed to the haidao in Canton, who was in control of the entry of foreigners, asking him to grant the missionaries permission to reside in the provincial capital. While awaiting an audience with this official, the missionaries returned to Macao, and Pasio was authorized to continue on his way to Japan, abandoning the Chinese enterprise forever.
When the new governor, Guo Yingpin, took office in Zhaoqing, his subordinates found a copy of the letter delivered to the Jesuits by his predecessor in the records. Given the absence of any documentation of the steps that had been taken as a result, the officials feared punishment for failure to perform their duties and instructed the Portuguese authorities to return the original, which was lying unused and “sealed so that it could not be opened” in the Jesuit residence in Macao. Determined not to miss this opportunity for slipping through the meshes of the Chinese bureaucracy, the rector Francisco Cabral decided to ignore the order and to send Ruggieri and Ricci to present the letter to the haidao.
It was then that the missionaries entered the labyrinth of Chinese bureaucracy, discovering its complexities and its almost infinite procedural ramifications, and becoming aware that the strict laws safeguarding the territories of the empire were applied with the utmost rigor by some officials and with considerable elasticity by others. In order to be received by the haidao, authorization had to be obtained from the district official resident in Xiangshan, not far from the provincial capital, who made it known, however, that he regarded a document issued by a sacked governor as devoid of any validity. The missionaries then decided to leave without authorization, but nobody was prepared to take two foreigners without written permits by boat to Canton. Fortunately, the hostile official suddenly left Xiangshan, and his replacement, who knew nothing about the matter, granted the Jesuits permission to present themselves to the haidao. The latter, however, proved just as elusive as he was courteous, claiming that he lacked the power to grant a residence permit and advising the Jesuits to apply to the new governor, supposedly the only individual capable of doing so. After so much effort, they found themselves back at square one.
Not only were the Jesuits ordered to leave Canton posthaste, but the governor also had an edict posted on the walls of all the towns in the province forbidding anyone to grant foreigners residence permits and threatening anyone who taught Chinese to foreigners with severe punishment. Ricci and Ruggieri returned to Macao “with practically all hope now lost of ever being able to obtain entry . . . into China.”25
In August 1583, less than a week after their return to Macao, Ricci and Ruggieri received a letter signed by Wang Pan, prefect of the region in which Zhaoqing was located and hence an administrative official of a certain importance, inviting them to take
up residence in the town. This came as a great surprise. Nobody could imagine what had induced Wang Pan, an official famed for his integrity, to ignore the edict just issued by the governor, his superior. Some later reconstructions of the events suggest that Wang Pan was prompted by curiosity, having heard of the Jesuits’ mechanical clock—the “bell that rang by itself”—and wishing to see it for himself; others that the mandarin had learned that Ricci and Ruggieri were experts in mathematics and astronomical calculations and wished to meet these two sages from far away.
Ricci saw Wang Pan’s invitation as a sign “more likely to have come from heaven than through human agency,” but he also thought more prosaically that the handsome gratuity bestowed by Ruggieri on some administrative officials during his first stay in Zhaoqing so as to secure their intercession on the Jesuits’ behalf might have finally borne fruit.
Whatever the contingent reasons may have been, this development was one of great symbolic significance. After all the Jesuits’ fruitless efforts to gain entry to China, it was a mandarin that took the initiative and invited them in. Events had taken a turn favorable to the missionaries through unfathomable subterranean processes.
Residence on Chinese Soil in Zhaoqing
Ricci and Ruggieri prepared to leave for Zhaoqing at the end of August. The first difficulty was raising the money to finance the opening of the new mission, since the eight thousand ducats assigned to the Jesuits of Macao had disappeared with the wreck of yet another Portuguese ship the year before. The Portuguese merchant Gaspar Viega came to their aid with an offer to cover their initial expenses pending the arrival of fresh funds by sea.
With shaven heads and chins and clad in gray robes, with the addition of a square cap similar to the biretta of Catholic clergy26 being the only detail distinguishing them from Buddhist monks, the two Jesuits embarked at the beginning of September 1583, together with some servants and their Chinese interpreter, Filippo, a convert to Christianity born in Macao. They were to sail up the Pearl River to Canton, receive the permits needed to continue their journey from the haidao, and then proceed along the river to Zhaoqing with a military escort sent to protect and watch over them by order of Wang Pan.
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