Far West | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() A satellite image of Europe, historically referred to as the Far West in East Asia | |||||||
Chinese name | |||||||
Traditional Chinese | 泰西 | ||||||
Simplified Chinese | 泰西 | ||||||
Literal meaning | Far West | ||||||
| |||||||
Japanese name | |||||||
Kanji | 泰西 | ||||||
Kana | たいせい | ||||||
|
Part of a series on |
Historical Chinese exonyms |
---|
The Far West is a Chinese and Japanese term for Europe, [1] or more broadly, for the entire Western world as a cultural region comparable to East Asian cultural sphere. Originally a name for parts of Inner Asia and India, the term Far West as a Chinese exonym for the West was coined by the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci. Ricci invented the phrase as an Asian parallel to the Eurocentric notion of the Far East, which positioned Europe as a region on the fringes of a Sinocentric world. The term Far West was also used in Japan and appears in many Japanese publications.
It was originally used in China as a name denoting parts of Inner Asia and India. The meaning of the term was changed to encompass Europe during the Chinese Ming dynasty. [2] This semantic change is credited to the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci, who used the Far West as the Asian counterpart to the Eurocentric concept of the Far East. [2] The Jesuits called India the Little West (Chinese :小西; pinyin :xiǎoxī) and identified their homeland as the Far West or the Great West (Chinese :大西; pinyin :dàxī). [3]
In his essay An Essay on Friendship in Answer to Prince Jian’an, Matteo Ricci introduces himself by saying, "I, Matteo, from the Far West, have sailed across the seas and entered China with respect for learned virtue of the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming dynasty." [4] He may have used the term to ingratiate himself with his Chinese hosts by identifying Europe as a region on the western fringes of the known Sinocentric world. [5] In 1601, an editor revised the essay by replacing the term Far West with Extreme West (Chinese :最西; pinyin :zuìxī), possibly because he considered taixi an awkward-sounding name. [2]
European knowledge was designated in China as tàixī xué (Chinese :泰西學; lit.'Western learning'). Zhou Bingmo gave Western learning a more elaborate name by calling it taixi zhixue, which first appeared in a postface for the 1628 edition of Matteo Ricci's Jiren shipian (The Ten Paradoxes). [6] The term taixi was still used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The "Western Sea" (Chinese :西海; pinyin :xī hǎi) and yuanxi (Chinese :遠西; lit.'Far West') were alternative Chinese names for Europe. [1] The Chinese referred to European people as xiren (Chinese :西人; lit.'Western people') and European missionaries as xiru (Chinese :西儒; lit.'Western scholars'). [7]
The term Far West was later expanded to include the United States. The official Zhi Gang wrote a diary titled Chushi Taixi Ji (Record of the First Diplomatic Mission to the Far West) during the 1868 Burlingame Mission, a Chinese diplomatic mission to Europe and America. [8]
Europe was also called taisei ("the Far West") in Japan. Rangaku, which literally means "Dutch Learning", was an intellectual tradition that came to prominence in the Sakoku period. [9] The term taisei appears in many sources about Western learning published during that era. Examples include the Taisei gankazensho (Complete book on Western ophthalmology) in 1799, Taisei honzomeiso (Botany of the West) in 1829, and Taisei naika shusei (Compilation on Western internal medicine) in 1832. [10] Western influence also introduced the Japanese to the geographical nomenclature of Europe, which included the idea of Asia as a continent. There were some Japanese intellectuals that opposed adopting the Western notion of Asia, and instead advocated retaining East Asian geographical terminology. One example is Aizawa Seishisai (1781–1863), who claimed that calling Japan an Asian country was an insulting name for the "divine land" (神州, shinshuu). He favored the continued use of traditional terms such as "Far West" or " Southern barbarian " (南蠻, Nanban). [11]
The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including East, North and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term.
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean world, the Roman Empire, and medieval "Christendom". Beginning with the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery, roughly from the 15th century, the concept of Europe as "the West" slowly became distinguished from and eventually replaced the dominant use of "Christendom" as the preferred endonym within the region. By the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, the concepts of "Eastern Europe" and "Western Europe" were more regularly used. The distinctiveness of Western Europe became most apparent during the Cold War, when Europe was divided for 40 years by the Iron Curtain into the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc, each characterised by distinct political and economical systems.
The Chinese Rites controversy was a dispute among Catholic missionaries over the religiosity of Confucianism and Chinese rituals during the 17th and 18th centuries. The debate discussed whether Chinese ritual practices of ancestor veneration and other formal rites qualified as religious, and thus incompatible with Catholic belief. The Jesuits argued that these Chinese rites were secular rituals that were compatible with Christianity, within certain limits, and should thus be tolerated. The Dominicans and Franciscans, however, disagreed and reported the issue to Rome.
Sinocentrism refers to a worldview that China is the cultural, political, or economic center of the world.
Cathay is a historical name for China that was used in Europe. During the early modern period, the term Cathay initially evolved as a term referring to what is now Northern China, completely separate and distinct from China, which was a reference to southern China. As knowledge of East Asia increased, Cathay came to be seen as the same polity as China as a whole. The term Cathay became a poetic name for China.
The Xi'an Stele or the Jingjiao Stele, sometimes translated as the "Nestorian Stele," is a Tang Chinese stele erected in 781 that documents 150 years of early Christianity in China. It is a limestone block 279 centimetres high with text in both Chinese and Syriac describing the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China. It reveals that the initial Church of the East had met recognition by the Tang Emperor Taizong, due to efforts of the Christian missionary Alopen in 635. According to the stele, Alopen and his fellow Syriac missionaries came to China from Daqin in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong (635), bringing sacred books and images. The Church of the East monk Adam composed the text on the stele. Buried in 845, probably during religious suppression, the stele was not rediscovered until 1625. It is now in the Stele Forest in Xi'an.
Gweilo or gwailou is a common Cantonese slang term for Westerners. In the absence of modifiers, it refers to white people and has a history of racially deprecatory and pejorative use. Cantonese speakers frequently use gwailou to refer to Westerners in general use, in a non-derogatory context, although whether this type of usage is offensive is disputed by both Cantonese and Westerners.
Figurism was an intellectual movement of Jesuit missionaries at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, whose participants viewed the I Ching as a prophetic book containing the mysteries of Christianity, and prioritized working with the Qing Emperor as a way of promoting Christianity in China.
Xu Guangqi or Hsü Kuang-ch'i, also known by his baptismal name Paul, was a Chinese agronomist, astronomer, mathematician, politician, and writer during the Ming dynasty. Xu was appointed by the Chinese Emperor in 1629 to be the leader of the Shixian calendar reform, which he embarked on with the assistance of Jesuits. Xu was a colleague and collaborator of the Italian Jesuits Matteo Ricci and Sabatino de Ursis and assisted their translation of several classic Western texts into Chinese, including part of Euclid's Elements. He was also the author of the Nong Zheng Quan Shu, a treatise on agriculture. He was one of the "Three Pillars of Chinese Catholicism"; the Roman Catholic Church considers him a Servant of God. On April 15, 2011, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi announced the beatification of Xu Guangqi.
Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. In 2022, the Apostolic See declared its recognition of Ricci's heroic virtues, thereby bestowing upon him the honorific of Venerable.
Chinese as a foreign or second language is when non-native speakers study Chinese varieties. The increased interest in China from those outside has led to a corresponding interest in the study of Standard Chinese as a foreign language, the official language of mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. However, the teaching of Chinese both within and outside China is not a recent phenomenon. Westerners began learning different Chinese varieties in the 16th century. Within China, Mandarin became the official language in the early 20th century. Mandarin also became the official language of Taiwan when the Kuomintang took over control from Japan after World War II.
Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628) was a Jesuit, and a missionary in China. He was also known by his latinised name Nicolaus Trigautius or Trigaultius, and his Chinese name Jin Nige.
Sabatino de Ursis was an Italian Jesuit who was active in 17th-century China, during the Jesuit China missions.
The Shanhai Yudi Quantu is a Ming dynasty Chinese map published in 1609 in the leishu encyclopedia Sancai Tuhui.
Wanguo Quantu or the Complete Map of the Myriad Countries is a map developed in the 1620s by the Jesuit Giulio Aleni in Ming China following the earlier work of Matteo Ricci, who was the first Jesuit to speak Chinese and to publish maps of the world in Chinese from 1574 to 1603. Aleni modified Ricci's maps to accommodate Chinese demands for a Sinocentric projection, placing the "Middle Kingdom" at the center of the visual field.
De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu ... is a book based on an Italian manuscript written by the most important founding figure of the Jesuit China mission, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), expanded and translated into Latin by his colleague Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628). The book was first published in 1615 in Augsburg.
Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, printed in Ming China at the request of the Wanli Emperor in 1602 by the Italian Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci and Chinese collaborators, the mandarin Zhong Wentao, and the technical translator Li Zhizao, is the earliest known Chinese world map with the style of European maps. It has been referred to as the Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography, "because of its rarity, importance and exoticism". The map was crucial in expanding Chinese knowledge of the world. It was eventually exported to Korea then Japan and was influential there as well, though less so than Giulio Aleni's Zhifang Waiji.
St. Paul's College of Macau, also known as College of Madre de Deus, was a university founded in 1594 in Macau by Jesuits at the service of the Portuguese under the Padroado treaty. It claimed the title of the first Western university in East Asia.
The history of the missions of the Jesuits in China is part of the history of relations between China and the Western world. The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of knowledge, science, and culture between China and the West, and influenced Christian culture in Chinese society today.
The eastward spread of Western learning refers to the spread of Western technologies and ideologies in China since the late Ming dynasty, which is contrast with the westward spread of Eastern learning that introduced Chinese technologies and ideologies to the West.