May 11 marks the 400th anniversary of the death in Beijing of
the legendary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610). The Italian-born Jesuit
priest arrived in Macau in 1582, moved to the city of Zhaoqing
in the southern province of Guangdong the following year and
spent the remaining 27 years of his life in China actively
engaged in cross-cultural exchange. So successful was Ricci in
immersing himself and the Gospel fully into Chinese culture,
that he is almost as well known in China as he is in the rest of
the world. In China he is known as Li Madou, which was both his
Chinese name and ultimately his identity as the wise man from
the West. For the many elsewhere who remember him, Ricci stands
as a pioneer of sophisticated and sympathetic East-West
engagement. The early period of modern Chinese Catholic history
has been obscured by hagiography because Ricci was a legend in
his own lifetime. Despite the oft-recounted anecdotes about him,
Ricci is so well known that he is known not at all. This year,
as the Chinese Catholic C