15 A Map of Mankind They remain silent for a while. The old scholar touches the parchment here and there with his fingertips. “I do not see my land, Father.” “We are here, my good friend Pao,” says the young man, pointing to a spot near the Great Sea. “All of this land, from the cold wasteland of the Mongol here, to Ton-kin in the south, and from the sea westward to the mountains of Tibet, all of this great land is yours.” “I had thought we were almost the whole world,” said Pao, shaking his head a little sadly. “Master Pao,” the Jesuit Matteo Ricci replied, laying a hand upon the old man’s shoulder, “that is a fond dream to which all men are prone.” Meeting people in Love When Matteo Ricci traveled to the Far East as a missionary in 1580, he knew he had to learn everything he could about the Chinese culture, in order to bring them the Good News most effectively. He understood that the Chinese were an ancient and proud people, with long and venerable traditions. He spent several years in the Portuguese colony of Macao, mastering Mandarin Chinese, a language as different from any in Europe as it is possible to be. He had already studied mathematics and astronomy in Italy under the famous Father Christopher Clavius, with an eye to using those studies to earn the esteem and the friendship of the Chinese, who
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