Jesuit Schools, Kit Siang, Culture & the PSMI
In 1582 when the first Jesuits arrived in the Guangdong province their first task was to seek out the local literati class not to convert them to Christianity, in contravention of their purpose of leaving Europe for China.
There were many reasons why White Europeans did not spend their first several years proselytizing. Noteworthy is the absolute failure to gain many souls. Matteo Ricci (picture, left), after spending two years in Guangdong, had one convert, a destitute man who might have been a leper hanging around the place he lived.
Four hundred years ago, entering China require no passports but foreigners like Jesuits still must have formal authorization to be resident. In numerous cases this demand is ignored (today, they are called illegal immigrants). In the way members of the Islam PAS party treat Chinese as infidels ripe for the conversion, European missionaries at the time adopted a superior attitude to their Chinese hosts, a community of godless, therefore, ignorant souls ripe for trading. Then, the Chinese literati class, as opposed to the palace appointed officials such as eunuchs, formed the backbone of the legal, administrative and governing apparatus. Coddling up to this class and flattering them pays dividends, not least of which is the residence permit.
Ricci and other Jesuits showered the officials with mechanical clocks that the latter hadn’t before seen (it is called bribery). They drew world maps and in time translated them into Chinese. They especially passed around scientific and mathematics text, one of which was Euclid’s Elements, not the original but the translated version from the ancient Greek and published a few years earlier in Europe.
