12 - Learning from Heaven: the introduction of Christianity and other Western ideas into late Ming China

Summary

Of the alternatives represented in the intellectual scene in late Ming, the westerners' Learning from Heaven (T'ien hsüeh) was the least well precedented. In spite of efforts to assimilate some of it to vocabulary and concepts in classical texts, the Learning from Heaven could not escape also being labeled as western Learning (Hsi hsüeh). It was foreign, whereas the other main intellectual alternatives to the Learning of the Way (Tao hsüeh), including Buddhism, were only different (i). Although critics of the missionaries cited foreign origins in attempts to discredit the Learning from Heaven, its foreignness remained less an issue in late Ming than it became in the K'ang-hsi period in early Ch'ing. With no obvious detriment to his contemporary reputation, Ricci was well known under the name Li of the Far West (Li Hsi-t'ai). He and his confreres published books about that different part of the world, the Far West, from which they had come. Ricci reported being told in 1599 by a censor in Nanking that, having lived in Kiangsi and other places, he was “no longer a foreigner in China. Can there be any objection to his residing in Nanking, where there are so many Hui-hui [Muslims]?” Ricci had been proceeding since 1595 with the tactic of acting “as though we were men of China” (come uomini già della Cina). Especially in the early phase of the mission, there was a self-conscious effort by a few of the missionaries to be Chinese, but an important aspect of their impact on literati with whom they had contact was that they were from a distant, unknown place.