Chinese Imagery In The Eyes Of Europeans Before The Times Of Matteo Ricci

Mendoza’s Historia del Gran Reino de La China was born in the 16th century, mainly describes the content of Europeans recognize that all aspects of China in the 16th century.Its author,Mendoza,is a missionary. When he is young, he is interested in the East,especially China. Because of the special experience, the author can contact with a lot of information about China, then he wrote a book called Historia del Gran Reino de La China. This work about the introduction of China and Western exchanges facts,shows the Europeans to China’s overall perception and imagination at that time. The content of this work is rich and explicit, reflecting two types of heterogeneity of the East-West cultural exchange, mutual penetration and influence various situations. It can be an important document as the study of the history of cultural exchange. This article is based on the book called Historia del Gran Reino de La China, try to comb the contents and analyze the role of this document in the Changing Image of China in the West.The text of this paper is divided into four parts, The first part introduces Mendoza and the basic situation of his work, including the origin of writing this book, the sources of materials,main content, structure arrangement and version circulated, to expect to have a general understanding of this book.The second part combes the images of China presented by Historia del Gran Reino de La China. Mendoza has done a detailed introduction of profile,economic, institutional, religious, cultural, customs of China.China has vast territory.abundant resources,prosperity economic and advanced System. Chinese culture and customs are different from the West, but there are similarities.Since Mendoza not personally been to China,his narrative is inevitably inconsistent with the facts.I would point out inaccuracies and make corrections, in terms of politics, economy and culture are reflected.The third part explain the Chinese and foreign relations reflected by Historia del Gran Reino de La China. The Ming Dynasty implemented ban on maritime trade and Tributary System, and this was reflected in the book. At the same time, the emergence of the Pirates named Lin Feng promoted the first official communion between China and Spain, Mendoza also described this in the book.The fourth part discusses Historia del Gran Reino de La China with the evolvement of the image of China in the west. The image of China in the west from the Yuan Dynasty to the Age of Discovery is constantly changing and developing. In terms of shaping the image of China, the attention on the substance transferred to the regime, in terms of European people’s attitudes towards China, from surprise to disdain to praise,until the emergence of Historia del Gran Reino de La China, Western Culture finally establishes a comparatively comprehensive Chinese imagery.This paper argues that the Chinese imagery depicted in the book, is a basic appearance of Chinese imagery in the eyes of Europeans before the times of Matteo Ricci and a milestone in the development of Chinese image in Europe.Regardless of Chinese imagery reflected in the book is true,but for Chinese imagery in Western culture,having an important impact and showing that the cultural choice and the phenomenon in the Chinese and Western cultural exchange.