A Ancient nostalgia and distant vision of China and Europe are at opposite ends of the Eurasian continent, the snow-capped Pamir plateau separates China and Europe, and the desert in the north is uninhabited by thousands of miles of yellow sand, which few people in history have crossed except for the iron horses of the Mongols. Looking at each other is an illusion in which Europe and China have looked at each other and imagined each other through that only connection. 1. Chinese The first person to travel west was probably Gan Ying of the Han Dynasty, who reached the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Perhaps the furthest was Leban Sauma, who traveled to the British Isles, went to Paris, and finally became bishop in Baghdad, and it is not an exaggeration to call him the Marco Polo of China. Perhaps the first Westerners to come to China were the guests of Blanc, the sixty-year-old fat old man who walked from Paris to Hala and Rarin, over the mountains, and over the desert. However, he finally met the Mongol Great Khan, and it was worth the trip. Westerners who came to China and made a major impact in the West were the merchants of Venice, Marco Polo. Marco Polo was truly a great man in China: he accompanied the Great Khan to drink and hunt, traveled around the world as the Great Khan's envoy, and was said to have served as a parent official in Yangzhou. In fact, there were many Westerners who came to China in the Yuan Dynasty, Meng Gaowino, who was a bishop in Beijing, and Andrei, who was a bishop in Quanzhou, whose tombstones can still be seen in Quanzhou today. But in terms of influence, no one surpassed Marco Polo. Marco Polo's Khitan is too rich, spices are piled up, gold is everywhere, and the palace of the Great Khan is simply richer than heaven. The Khitans were not only rich, but also magical, and on long winter nights, they could use black stones to bake fires (because Europeans had not yet discovered that coal could be used as fuel); They could exchange paper for any food and goods, which was simply unthinkable (because there were no paper money in Europe at that time). Marco Polo left Europeans with a magical oriental dream, a topic they could never finish talking about in taverns during the long medieval nights, a happy and rich orient completely different from the serious prayers in the European churches. This Eastern myth has stirred the dreams of generations of people, and since then, the exotic Khitan has been the most desired place for Europeans. 2. Columbus, who loved sailing since childhood and was deeply influenced by the "Travels of Marco Polo", was an admirer of Marco Polo. This Italian Genoese was determined to find the Khitan that Marco Polo spoke of. The geographer Tuscaneri of the time, who was also an admirer of Marco Polo, provided Columbus with a map of his voyage west, based on the Travels of Marco Polo. The wealth of the Khitan not only attracted Columbus, but the Spanish kings of the time also longed for this distant wealth. He signed an agreement with Columbus: he was granted a title of nobility, appointed him marshal of all the places he found and could inherit from the generations, he could also own 1/10 of all the wealth he found, and he could be exempted from tax all at all, and he could even levy a tax of 1/8 on all ships in the area he discovered. Both men pinned their hopes on the far east, and it seemed that Columbus could be rich as soon as he arrived there. The King of Spain specially gave him a "letter to the Khitan Khan", expecting Columbus's success. On October 12, 11492, after more than 30 days of sailing without land, Columbus's fleet finally saw land, which is the Bahamas. On the island they met the Indians, who were still in the late stages of primitive society - the Neolithic period, and men, women and children were naked. Columbus thought it might be a fringe region in Asia, calling it the "Greater India Region." On October 28, 1492, they discovered Cuba and were surprised to see men, women and children smoking. The Spaniards quickly learned the habit and spread it all over the world. Columbus believed that Cuba must be the most desolate place in the Khitan, and this was by no means the case with the Khitans. He thought that Marco Polo would surely be rediscovered by him in the spice heap of the spice prickly harbor. On March 15, 1493, Columbus returned to the Spanish port of Palos from which he departed, and the 244-day voyage ended. Columbus declared to the people that he had found the Khitan. For Europe, this was groundbreaking news, and for a while, Columbus became famous all over the world. Portugal is located at the westernmost tip of Europe, and poets describe it as: "This is where the land ends and the sea begins." "This points to the situation of this small European country. At that time, the Mediterranean Sea was the traditional commercial sphere of influence of the Italians, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were the commercial sphere of influence of the Hanseatic League, the north and east were Spain, and the west was the boundless Atlantic Ocean, which made the Portuguese have to advance south. So the Portuguese sailed slowly along the coast of West Africa in their three-masted schoon. In the struggle against the Moors and the development of maritime trade, the Portuguese nobility "exchanged horses for ships, shields and armor for compasses, and riders into captains". For merchants, territorial expansion meant prosperous business, and for the king's court, territorial expansion could increase prestige, especially opening up new sources of wealth, expanding territory and their own power. The emerging bourgeoisie wanted to "expand their commercial activities to markets farther away." In 1415, the Portuguese captured the important North African town of Ceuta, seizing a strategic point in the Islamic world and providing a stronghold for future expeditions to the coast of West Africa. After the Battle of Ceuta, the young Prince Henry was knighted and became head of the Portuguese Order, a semi-military, semi-religious organization with a large amount of money. He opened a nautical school, employing the most experienced navigators and the most well-known geographers of the time, where he developed maps and shipbuilding techniques, creating the flexible and robust Caravel light schoon. 1 The nautical expedition presided over by Prince Henry was a turning point in the whole of Portuguese navigation, and he "was the first in history to establish a clear geographical policy; A series of expeditions were deployed to make exploration and discovery an art and a science, and voyage a cause of national interest and a close interest in it". 6486188 European history books say that 26 degrees north latitude is a limit, and if you cross this latitude, the sea water there will burn people to death, and white people will be tanned as soon as they cross this line, and they will no longer become white people. But Prince Henry's expedition passed Cape Bohador in 1436, and not only did they not die of the scalding water, but they landed on the African continent and met the black people for the first time in history. The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese Toromew Dias was an important event in the history of Portuguese navigation. At that time, the Islamic Ottoman Empire arose, and the Ottoman Empire broke off the connection between Europe and Asia, and Asian spices could not be shipped to Europe. And Europeans eat beef, stew steak must have spices, otherwise the whole life will be tasteless. To make the Christmas beef stew even better, Europeans must find new routes to reach Asia. Where are the spices? Marco Polo said that in the Khitan port of Houtong was full of spices, so the Europeans decided to look for the port of Houtong. Diaz was 27 years old, the best navigator before Columbus, and his fleet had already rounded the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa into the Indian Ocean, which he called "Cape of the Sea," where he erected a stone pillar to signify his possession of the land. After his return to Portugal, João II renamed Cape of the Sea "Cape of Good Hope". Vasco da Gama is undoubtedly the greatest navigator in Portuguese history. In 1492, after the Spanish fleet led by the Italian navigator Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and discovered the West Indies (America), it greatly stimulated the Portuguese, and the wealth of the Khitan must not allow their nemesis Spain to monopolize. King Manuel of Portugal decided to send da Gama to lead the fleet on a voyage. They sailed along the East African coastline, and when they reached the mouth of the Zambezi River in Mozambique, they landed to rest, and were warmly received by local blacks. They also met two leaders in silk hats and gave them some calico, perhaps Zheng He's subordinates, because Zheng He had been away for more than 70 years, and this place was the farthest Zheng He had traveled to the West. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied Malacca at the western tip of the Indian Ocean, which meant that the outline of Portugal's colonial empire in the Indian Ocean was completed, and it also marked the beginning of its intervention in the maritime trade of the Pacific Ocean. Crossing the Strait of Malacca, the vast Pacific Ocean unfolds before the Portuguese. "Looking for the Khitan, this is the soul of a hundred years of Western maritime history." If Spain found land in North America, Portugal found civilization in the Far East, a highly developed Chinese civilization, a civilization much older than Christianity. When the Spaniards and Portuguese met in the waters off Fujian, Magellan completed his circumnavigation of the world in 1522, the world was encircled. The era of globalization has begun. Chinese civilization and European civilization suddenly met, opening a great era of exchanges and integration between the two major civilizations of the East and the West for 200 years, and a beautiful era of "first love" between Europe and China. The informants of the "era of love" of these two civilizations were Jesuit missionaries who came to China. Joseph Needham put it well: "There seems to be nothing in the history of cultural exchange that compares to the arrival of Europeans in China by the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century, who were both full of religious fervor and masterful of the sciences that developed with the rise of the European Renaissance and capitalism." 6486189 3 Since the Portuguese settled in Macao for a long time in the name of seafood, Macao has gradually evolved into a meeting point for cultural exchanges between China and the West at that time. Since Portugal has the right to apologize throughout the East, it has always been the dream of the Portuguese to open up China, establish stable relations with China, and obtain huge trade profits from it. In 1517, the Portuguese governor in the East Indies sent the royal physician Pires to visit China. This was the first Western mission to China, and in 1521, Pires and his party arrived in Beijing, but three reasons aborted this visit: first, the envoys of the Manchurian state destroyed by Portugal came to Beijing to report the bad deeds of the Portuguese in the Strait of Malacca; second, Emperor Wuzong of Ming, who allowed them to enter Beijing, died; Third, the translator at the time, Yasan, had a very poor reputation in Beijing. As a result, Yasan was executed, and Pires and his party were sent to death row, and their fate was unknown, leaving only a few letters written by his colleagues in prison. Most of the Westerners who came to the East in the early days were very unhappy. Slightly better than Pires, the first Jesuit to come to the East, S. Françiscus Xaverius (1506-1552), who first preached in Japan, when the Japanese asked him, Do you Chinese know your religion? Xavier said, I don't know. The Japanese told him that if Chinese don't know about your religion, your religion is definitely not good. Only then did Xavier understand the place of Chinese culture in East Asia, and thus formulated the policy that "missionaries in the Far East must first naturalize China." Soon, he came to Macau from Japan in search of an opportunity to enter Chinese mainland. Later, he was taken by a Chinese fisherman to a small island near Guangzhou called Shangchuan Island, where no one lived on it. Xavier shouted, "O rock, when will you open the door!" But China's door never opened to him. In the autumn rain, Xavier died on Shangchuan Island. 1 Xavier, though defeated, inspired his latecomers. Later, Alexandre Valignani (1538-1606), the head of the Jesuit mission in the East, set an "adaptation route" that would allow missionaries in China to adapt to Chinese culture. The first to follow this route was the Italian missionary Michel Ruggieri (1543-1607). After Luo Mingjian arrived in Macau, he found a Chinese literati and began to babble with him, read pictures and talk, and learn Chinese. When Mr. Luo, speaking fluent Chinese, appeared at Guangzhou's annual trade fair, which is open to foreigners, it immediately caught the attention of Chinese officials. After local Chinese officials contacted him, they found Luo Mingjian to be gentle, elegant and familiar with Chinese culture. This naturally made the officials at the time overjoyed. Thus, after two years of exchanges, local Chinese officials allowed Luo Mingjian to live for a long time in Zhaoqing, the seat of the governor of Liangguang at the time, and in 1583, Luo Mingjian came to Zhaoqing, where China's first Catholic church was soon built, and the local official Wang Pan named it "Xianhua Temple". Soon, Luo Mingjian transferred his fellow countryman, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), a Jesuit priest from Italy, to Zhaoqing. Luo Mingjian traveled around as a missionary, and he began to realize that China was a centralized state, and if the emperor did not do his job well and did not recognize Christianity, then Christianity could not develop significantly. How to do a good job of the Chinese emperor? Only by allowing the Vatican Pope to personally come forward and write a letter to the Chinese Ming Emperor and send a generous gift can the missionaries meet the Chinese emperor and, after winning the favor of the emperor, can they propose their missionary plans. In order to carry out this plan, Luo Mingjian returned to Europe. Who knows that the situation in Europe is changing, the Pope of the Vatican has died one after another, Luo Mingjian's affairs have long been left behind by the Pope, and Luo Mingjian finally died in his hometown of Naples. 111 At this time, Matteo Ricci was alone in the situation. Matteo Ricci did two great things that opened up Christianity in China. First, take off the cassock, replace it with a Confucian robe, and correct the appearance of the past as a "Western monk" and change it to "Confucian Yi Buddha". So, Matteo Ricci went out and began to sit in a sedan car, like the Chinese Confucianists, read the "Four Books", read the "Book of Poetry", and went in and out of the literati and inkers, and for a time, the Western Ru Matteo Ricci became famous in Jiangnan. Second, it entered Beijing and approached the Ming Dynasty. In 1601, Matteo Ricci finally came to Beijing after many hardships, relied on the self-ringing bell he presented to the Wanli Emperor, settled in Beijing, and became a protégé of the Wanli Emperor. Although he never met the emperor and never participated in the affairs of the dynasty, he was quite influential among the literati, not only late Ming ministers like Xu Guangqi and Li Zhizao, but also alternative literati like Li Zhen who appreciated his talent and helped Matteo Ricci everywhere. In 1610, Matteo Ricci died of illness in Beijing and was buried in Tenggongshilan in the western suburbs. Since then, Christianity has truly taken root in China. 14 When Wu Sangui opened the gates of Shanhaiguan, the Ming Dynasty was doomed. After the Qing army entered the customs, Chinese society was in a state of extreme change, and the Jesuits at this time were also the three caves of the rabbit, active in various political forces in China. In Beijing, the German Jesuit John Tang became the "Marfa" of the Shunzhi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and for a time the power fell to the opposition. In the south, missionaries such as François Sambias (1582-1649) and Michel Boym (1612-1659) followed the Southern Ming Dynasty, and even the mother, empress, imperial princess, and crown prince of the Yongli Emperor were baptized into Catholicism. In Sichuan, the Jesuits Louis Backio (1606-1682) and Gabriel de Magalhaens (1610-1677) became Zhang Xianzhong's "heavenly masters." After the Shunzhi Emperor ascended the throne in Beijing, Zhang Xianzhong died at the hands of Haoge, the Yongli Dynasty was destroyed by Wu Sangui in Burma, and the Qing Empire finally ruled the country. In the early Qing Dynasty, Yang Guang first put Tang Ruowang, Nan Huairen, An Wensi, Li Shusi and others on death row, and there was a dispute between the Western calendar and the "Hijri calendar" that had been used in China for many years. In the process of handling this case, the young Kangxi Emperor not only showed a high degree of political wisdom, but also used this case as an opportunity to smash the Aobai clique; Moreover, it was in this astronomical calendar dispute that his interest in Western science was aroused, and it was during the Kangxi Dynasty that Western science and technology and culture were widely spread in China. Kangxi calculates mathematics, studies medicine, draws maps, and calculates astronomy, and shows a keen interest in Western science. Qianlong inherited the legacy of Kangxi, and has always loved Western missionaries for ten minutes, and the momentum of Western style in the palace has not decreased, painting Western paintings, building the Great Water Law of the Old Summer Palace, and making Western watches, Western culture has continued, spread and developed in the form of entertainment. Religion, war, and trade are the three major ways of communication and dissemination Chinese human history. The entry of missionaries represented by the Society of Jesus into China was a major event in the cultural exchange between China and the West, and the missionaries, a group standing on the dual track of cultural exchanges, became the main intermediary and bridge of early cultural exchanges between China and Europe. It is through this intermediary that China and Europe meet on a spiritual level; It was through this bridge that Western culture was first introduced into China on a large scale, contributing to major changes in Chinese thought and culture in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties; At the same time, it was through this bridge that Chinese culture and ideas were introduced to Europe, and the "Western Transmission of Middle School" gave birth to the Chinese fever in Europe in the 18th century. If compared with the cultural relations between China and the West after 1840, the cultural exchanges between China and the West at this time were basically on an equal basis, it was an era of mutual admiration and mutual respect, although each of them absorbed each other, explained each other, and understood each other from its own position, but on the whole, it was an era of no hatred, fraud, no condescending domineering, no servile flattery, only mutual learning between the two cultures. There are differences, and there are fierce conflicts, but everything is focused on the understanding of the culture. Hu Shi believes that the cultural exchanges between China and the West in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties are a model of love at first sight between cultures, which is indeed an incisive summary. This was the era of the most stable relationship between China and the West in thousands of years, and the era of the most peaceful mutual understanding between Chinese culture and Western culture. The relationship between China and the West in this era is a valuable cultural heritage between China and Europe.（AI翻译）