Most of the transport in China took advantage of a network of rivers and canals enabling vessels of all shapes and sizes to proceed through the country. All the merchants in the south of China stopped in Canton, where the most important markets were located. Ricci’s impression on leaving the provincial capital was that the port of the densely inhabited metropolis was more crowded than Venice or Lisbon and that the Pearl River, which he judged to be wider than the Po, was so congested as to constitute “one long harbor.” When the Jesuit learned that the capital, Beijing, could also be reached by way of the river and canal system in approximately three months, he had the image of China as “an enormous Venice,” as he wrote to Giambattista Román, the Spanish procurator resident in the Philippines, from Zhaoqing on September 13, 1584.27
Sailing alongside the Jesuits’ medium-sized junk were all kinds of sampans, the flat-bottomed wooden boats used in the Far East for rivers and coastal waters; huge barges carrying materials or passengers; and the sumptuously equipped and decorated ships of eminent mandarins. Ricci found out that the Chinese distinguished all vessels in terms of their cruising speed, the fastest junks being called “wind boats” and the slowest craft “horse boats.” In addition to the vessels in motion, he observed ramshackle sampans moored along the banks and used as dwellings for entire families together with a few ducks and chickens.
The two Jesuits saw the rich Chinese countryside opening up before their eyes, rice paddies and cultivated fields alternating with plantations of sugar cane, thick clumps of bamboo, orchards, and market gardens. Along the banks of the river, lined in the Chinese fashion with embankments covered in vegetation and “cool, shady” trees, they saw peasants carrying large wicker baskets hung at both ends of long bamboo canes resting on their shoulders. When the river came to one of the very numerous and thickly inhabited villages, they caught glimpses of enclosures full of pigs, ducks, geese, chickens, goats, and water buffalo. Ricci could see no flaw in the well-being of the inhabitants of the fertile land “full of trees and gardens” into which he was now venturing for the first time. On viewing the regular succession of villages and towns, he formed the unreal idea of China as a very orderly country. As he wrote to Román, “The whole of China looks as though it was constructed by a mathematician who went around, compasses in hand, putting all the inhabitants in their right place.”
On September 10, 1583, after about ten days of travel, the Jesuits disembarked in Zhaoqing, a town of subtropical climate surrounded by wooded hills, cultivated fields, and orchards at the confluence of the Xi Jiang, a tributary of the Pearl River, and one of its lesser branches. They were taken with no delay to an audience with the man who had arranged their entry into China, the prefect Wang Pan, before whom they knelt down and asked for permission to remain and live in the town in order to worship their god, the Lord of Heaven and Earth. The official gave them a warm welcome and responded to their request for land on which to build a house by granting them permission to look for a suitable site. The missionaries found a spot meeting their requirements just outside the city walls and close to the point where the two rivers met, which Ricci described as “very cool due to the many trees and gardens all around it.”28 An octagonal nine-story pagoda called the “blossoming tower” or “tower of good fortune” was already under construction there to house the city’s administrative offices. Traditionally erected with an odd number of floors gradually decreasing in size, towers were used throughout Chinese territory as religious or public buildings.
The Jesuits’ choice was approved by Wang Pan and endorsed by the governor. The prefect arrived in the park on the day of the official granting of the site in order to celebrate this important event, borne by four grooms in a litter that struck Ricci as very similar to the one used by the pope, and accompanied by a procession of guards and lesser officials. Some carried large colored parasols or wooden tablets indicating the prefect’s rank in the imperial bureaucracy. Some beat gongs to warn the populace that the procession was passing. Some held bamboo canes and iron chains, instruments commonly used to punish outlaws, which they beat on the ground to produce a sinister noise.29 One guard marched in front with a sealed box containing the indispensable seal required to validate every document issued by the prefect. This precious object, from which Wang Pan never allowed himself to be separated, had been entrusted to him by the emperor during the official ceremony of appointment, when the guan had solemnly sworn to perform his duties faithfully and justly. Ricci knew that any official who lost his seal, the symbol of his power, would be stripped of office and severely punished. He was even told that some mandarins slept with the seal hidden under their beds for fear of being robbed.
While a crowd of people poured into the park to witness the unusual ceremony and to peer at the faces of the two Westerners, whose features were of a kind never previously beheld, the Jesuits kowtowed in the customary manner, kneeling three times and bowing their foreheads to the ground three times on each occasion, and thanked Wang Pan, promising to respect the Chinese laws and never to accommodate other foreigners in their dwelling.
The governor assumed that the Jesuits would wish to worship the same idols as the Buddhists, whose robes they wore, and was astonished when the two Westerners requested another small plot of land to build a chapel to their god, the Lord of Heaven. Even though the newcomers’ religion was completely unknown to him, the mandarin granted their request with the typically detached Chinese attitude toward forms of religion, saying that it made little difference to him what deity his protégés might wish to worship.
Immediately after this exchange of promises, the Jesuits presented the mandarin with their gifts in accordance with ritual as the indispensable event crowning every meeting. The climax of the ceremony came when Ricci slowly opened a small wooden box and solemnly extracted a transparent object shaped like a pyramid. On direct exposure to the sun’s rays, this mysterious entity emitted all the colors of the rainbow. Referred to by Ricci as “a triangular glass from Venice,”30 this prism of glass with a three-cornered base made by Venetian craftsmen was capable of breaking down the light that struck one of its faces into the seven colors of the spectrum. Wang Pan’s reaction to the object, which looked like a magical amulet, told the Jesuits that prisms and mechanical clocks would prove the most suitable gifts to ensure the favor of Chinese officials.
The mandarin also appreciated the other gifts of a more customary nature, a small painting of the Virgin Mary and some handkerchiefs embroidered by hand, which he sent home for his wife to see but then returned to the Jesuits together with the prism in order to avoid any suspicion of deriving personal gain from the priests’ arrival.
Wang Pan’s friendly and helpful attitude toward the missionaries contrasted with the evident hostility of another important mandarin, who had taken part in the ceremony with obvious reluctance, namely the official supervising the construction of the tower. The Jesuits gave little thought to this, as their safety was guaranteed by the protection of Wang Pan, the most important official resident in the city after the governor, but they were soon to realize that these feelings of aversion were shared by a large section of the local population.
Well aware of the great privilege granted them as the only foreigners resident in the Guangdong province, the Jesuits expressed a desire to pay their respects to the governor. Having issued the edict against foreigners and being certainly influenced by the very Chinese fear of losing face, the official made it known that the Jesuits were to content themselves with his permission to stay and not to request a meeting. He had no intention whatsoever of receiving them.
Notes
1. FR, book I, ch. V, p. 36.
2. Letter to Claudio Acquaviva, February 13, 1583; OS II, p. 35.
3. The work written by Ricci and published after his death with the title Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina will be referred to in the text for brevity as his history of the mission.
4. FR, book I, ch. VIII, p. 88.
5. Nigel Cameron, Barbarians and Mandarins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), illustration p. 128.
6. Letter to Claudio Acquaviva, February 13, 1583; OS II, p. 35.
7. FR, book I, ch. IX, p. 102.
8. Established in the fifth century under the Sui dynasty, the system of examinations for the selection of state officials developed through Chinese history to become to backbone of the empire. Its abolition in 1905 was followed six years later by the collapse of the empire.
9. The term used by Ricci in his history of the mission is viceré, or viceroy, corresponding to “governor” in the current terminology.
10. Cf. Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 195.
11. At the beginning of their history, the Chinese numbered the years starting from the accession of each sovereign. A new system was introduced in 163 bc (the seventeenth year of the reign of Emperor Wen of the Han dynasty) whereby each emperor selected a nianhao or “era name” of particular significance, which could refer to his reign as a whole, and thus be retained until his death, or be changed at will to indicate different periods. This lasted for over fifteen centuries until the advent of the Ming dynasty, when each ruler adopted just one nianhao, thus leading to the practice in Europe and to some extent also in China of referring to an emperor by the name of his years on the throne. “Wanli” is the nianhao of Zhu Yijun (1563–1620). According to the dating accepted by most authors and adopted here too, Wanli took the throne in 1573. According to Ray Huang and others, he did so in 1572.
12. The term “Mandarin” is instead used today to refer to Putonghua, the official language of the People’s Republic of China.
13. Letter dated February 13, 1583; OS II, pp. 27 ff.
14. Mandarin Chinese, the language spoken by the ruling class, had five tones in the south of the country but four in the north. Ricci thus speaks of five tones in his history of the mission. The fifth is the neutral tone.
15. See the section on the palace of memory in chapter 8.
16. Marina Battaglini, “Matteo Ricci e la tradizione libraria cinese,” in Padre Matteo Ricci. L’Europa alla corte dei Ming (Milan: Mazzotta, 2003), p. 48.
17. Robert Temple, The Genius of China (London: Prion Books, 1998), p. 81.
18. Knowledge of between 2,000 and 3,000 characters is enough to read a newspaper in contemporary China.
19. FR, book I, ch. IV, p. 31.
20. Letter to Martino de Fornari, February 13, 1583; OS II, p. 30.
21. FR, book II, ch. II, p. 162, no. 3.
22. FR, book II, ch. II, p. 161.
23. The Gregorian calendar was not introduced in Goa until 1583, and the date therefore refers to the Julian system.
24. Valignano made regular visits to Macao and always kept in contact with the missionaries dependent upon him by letter.
25. FR, book II, ch. II, p. 175.
26. Letter to Girolamo Benci, October 7, 1595; OS II, p. 163.
27. Letter to Giambattista Roman, September 13, 1584, pp. 36–49.
28. FR, book II, ch. III, p. 185.
29. Letter to Martino de Fornari, February 13, 1583; OS II, p. 30.
30. FR, book II, ch. III, p. 188.
Chapter four
v
The Man from the West
Zhaoqing, 1583–1584
Books arrive where the fathers cannot and our things are stated much better in writing than speech in this land due to the great power of letters here.1
—Matteo Ricci
Fan Chi inquired about wisdom. The Master replied, “To devote yourself to what is appropriate for the people, and to show respect for the ghosts and spirits while keeping them at a distance can be called wisdom.”
—Confucius, Analects (6, 22)2
Chinese Life
On Chinese soil for the first time in the company of Ruggieri alone, Ricci was conscious of being observed with curiosity whenever he walked through the streets. The local inhabitants gazed at the strange man from far away and smiled in amazement at the shape of his eyes and face. The Jesuit in turn examined the new world surrounding him, eager to understand its diversity but also to discover reassuring similarities with life in Europe.
The missionaries intended to devote the first months of their stay to the construction of their residence. They planned a two-story brick building in the European style, quite unlike the one-story Chinese dwellings made of wood with no foundations. Just as the laborers were about to start, however, the official in charge of erecting the tower, who had already displayed a hostile attitude, made it known that the day chosen was not considered propitious and that the commencement should be postponed. The interpreter explained to the astonished Jesuits that nobody in China ever began any enterprise, and certainly not the construction of a house, without consulting the astrological almanac with its list of the days and times considered auspicious or inauspicious for undertaking every type of activity. Published every year by the imperial astronomers together with the calendar and its astronomical predictions, this “book of fortune” was in such demand that stocks soon ran out and a flourishing industry had developed for the production of unauthorized copies. Opposed to every form of superstition and suspecting duplicity on the part of the Chinese, Ricci refused to take the warning into consideration, but as luck would have it, a sudden torrential downpour made it effectively impossible for work to begin.
The Chinese took advantage of the delay to ask the Jesuits to move the location of the building farther away from the entrance to the tower. Ricci agreed, and his obliging attitude was rewarded with a gift of wood, bricks, and other materials. The episode was an instructive lesson in local customs. The missionaries realized that the Chinese preferred not to say directly what they wanted, just as they would avoid flatly refusing by inventing obstacles, possibly of an astrological nature, until it was dropped.
Even though work on the residence took up most of Ricci’s time and energies, he resumed his study of Chinese in order to become independent of interpreters as soon as possible, and he endeavored to improve his knowledge of the local ways and customs so as to adapt fully to the new life.
His observation of the activities carried out in the town told him that the Guangdong province was rich and abundantly provided with all the requisites for prosperity and that trade and handicrafts were both thriving. He thought Zhaoqing much more densely inhabited than an Italian town of equivalent size and more orderly in appearance with its “well built, straight, paved” streets,3 and he was struck by some peculiar constructions on columns similar to triumphal arches. Made of brightly colored wood on a stone base, these monuments erected to commemorate important figures were a common feature in all Chinese cities.
The Jesuit observed the inhabitants and their constant activity as he walked through the streets teeming with life. Men and women wore garments reaching down to the ground, very often made of silk and with long sleeves “like our Venetians.”4 The men wore various kinds of round caps made of horsehair or velvet, square hats being reserved exclusively for mandarins. He noted the presence of a great many elderly people in the streets and deduced that the deadly epidemics well known in Europe were unusual in China and that the life expectancy there was high. He was surprised to see that, unlike Europeans, none of the Chinese carried weapons, with the sole exception of the bodyguards of important guan or soldiers on duty, and that the brawls and disturbances commonly encountered in the streets of European cities, where violence was an everyday occurrence, were practically nonexistent. Noting also that the Chinese did not consider it dishonorable to turn and run when attacked, he regarded them as peaceful by nature and even effeminate in view of their attention to dress and their apparently submissive nature,5 a hasty judgment that he revised when his understanding of
Chinese society deepened.
His explorations led him to wander through the large and small markets, meeting places for the local population where products of every kind were on sale, from fruit, vegetables, and cereals to pork, poultry, and freshwater fish displayed on wooden tables or simply laid out on the ground. Some vendors offered boiled vegetables and rice ready for consumption, together with wine made from cereals. Onlookers gathered around people crouched on the ground between the stalls to play cards or dice, the common pastimes of the poor. Fortune-tellers, both men and women, and sometimes blind, were to be found offering their services for a few copper coins in front of every shop in every street and square. On seeing just how numerous they were, Ricci realized with dismay that horoscopes and all kinds of fortune-telling were even more popular than in Europe.
Intermingled with the people in the streets were priests of the two most important Chinese religions, Taoists6 with long hair and square, black caps and Buddhists with shaven heads. The latter were mendicants and carried bowls for the morsels of boiled rice and vegetables they received as alms.
Women were seldom seen in the streets of Zhaoqing, as it was considered seemlier for them to stay at home out of sight, and it was only the female peasants who went out regularly to work in the fields. Polygamy was practiced in China, at least among the members of the upper classes wealthy enough to maintain one or more concubines. Deeply rooted in the traditional way of life, this practice stemmed from the need for male heirs to perpetuate the family name and perform the rites of the cult of ancestors, a duty incumbent on all Chinese. It was in connection with polygamy that Ricci referred to the emperor in a letter to Giulio Fuligatti as a “poor Sardanapalus shut up [in his palace] with more than forty women, who are his wives.”7
Matteo Ricci Page 7