"Human excrement is used, money is used to buy or exchange vegetables, and at the same time they carry the excrement out of the house. So they used money or things of value to make their toilets clean, despite the smell of the whole city. As they passed through the city with dung on their backs, they put it in buckets that were very clean on the outside, and even though the dung had no lids, they still looked like the country and the town were clean. In some cities, these barrels often have lids so that they don't smoke people. Human manure is used in their gardens, they say that the vegetables can grow after fertilization, and they mix the manure with soil and dry it in the sun. ”

"In the same way as with human dung, they use ingenuity in all kinds of things, and without brute force, they plough the ground with an ox, and plough it so that it can be ploughed well, though it is not as wide as ours. ”

"The country has artisans of all trades, and all kinds of necessities are very abundant, and this is so because of the countless population. Shoes are the most consumed commodity, and there are more shoemakers than craftsmen in other industries. There are two long shoemaker streets in Guangzhou, one selling high-end silk shoes and the other selling ordinary leather shoes, and there are many craftsmen in the city. ”

"The abundance of the land and the sufficiency of its produce" Since the land is sufficiently cultivated, as we have said, people are still diligent in earning a living, despite being big eaters and consumers. The land was extremely rich in production, and there was an abundance of food and all the necessities of life, because the main grain in China was rice, which was extremely abundant in the country, and there were many large rice fields with two or three crops a year.

"There is also a great abundance of good wheat, which they use to make bread, which they learned from the Portuguese, and they used to eat it from the same wheat. There are a lot of French beans, and other legumes, there is a lot of beef and beef-like buffalo meat, there are a lot of chickens, geese and countless ducks. Countless pigs, pork was their favorite food, and they made pork into very peculiar cured meats, and when the Portuguese went to India to trade, they shipped countless cured meats there. The Chinese value pork to the point of giving it to the sick to eat. They also eat frogs, which are kept in large basins of water at the door and sold, and the seller is responsible for peeling them. In a very short time they can peel a hundred, and they peel them from the back, and they make an opening to strip the skin from there.

"There are so many kinds of fish, there are so many varieties, they are all very good, and there is never a shortage of fish in the market. There are a lot of crabs and oysters and other crustaceans, all of which are very good, and these are available in the market. The bazaars are usually located at the city gates, under the archway of the Dog Street, and in the covered aisles along the streets, as we have already mentioned, but fish and meat are not sold here, because there are only streets where they are sold, unless they can be sold live. ”

"There are a lot of vegetables in the garden, such as kohlrabi, radish, cabbage, and all kinds of smelly vegetables, garlic, green onions, etc., which are extremely rich. There are also many fruits, such as peaches, prunes, and a kind of plum that we don't have, with long and wide cores, which they use to make preserved fruits. There are a lot of nuts and they are good, and there are a lot of chestnuts, both seed and wild, big and good, and the wild ones are better than ours, because they have removed all the shells, but ours does not.

Almost every street in the city has restaurants. These restaurants have plenty of cooked meat. There are a lot of boiled goose, chicken, duck, and plenty of cooked meat and fish. I saw a whole roast pig hanging in front of a restaurant, and I could choose which part to choose, because the whole one was cleanly cooked. Placing the finished meat at the door almost attracts passers-by. At the door there was a pot full of rice, red, well done. ”

"There is also a restaurant street outside the city wall in Guangzhou, where they sell dog meat cut into pieces, both boiled and raw, with the heads of the dogs and the ears removed, and they stew the dog meat like stewed pork. It was meat for the people to eat, and they kept the live dogs in cages and sold them in the city. It is worth seeing that at the gate of the city, there is a hustle and bustle of people coming in and out, some with dogs, some with suckling pigs, some with vegetables, some with other items, and everyone shouts to give way. ”

"One of the great things about this place is that they sell meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, and all sorts of necessities along the streets, so that all the necessities pass through their homes without having to go to the market. ”

"This place is inland two hundred, three hundred, four hundred leagues from the sea, and there is so much fish that every day all the markets are filled with fresh fish, which is nothing short of a spectacle. But it would not be surprising to see how they went to fish with amazing industriousness in the following ways. It is important to know that at the end of February, March and part of April, when the tide is high, a large number of marine fish spawn in the coastal estuary, so that countless varieties of small fish are bred in the estuary. In order to catch these larvae at this time, all the fishermen along the coast gathered in their boats, and the concentrated boats were so numerous that they covered the sea and were crowded into the estuary.

In short, the boats from the sea thought it was solid land when they saw them, but when they got closer, they realized what it was, and they were surprised that there were so many fishing boats. I have heard that there are two thousand ships in total, or more or less, and I cannot be sure, because I know that no one believed me. But given the size of the population, there will be no shortage of boats, which is not unbelievable to those who have been to China and lived there, mainly because of the innumerable number of fishermen in the coastal counties. The fishermen then caught large quantities of these small fish, put them in ponds enclosed by stakes and sturdy nets, where they were raised until the end of the season. ”

"The Chinese are big eaters and use a lot of dishes, they eat fish and meat at the same table, and the untouchables sometimes cook fish and meat together. The dishes used at the same table are all placed on the table, so that everyone can eat what he likes. Noble and urbane people are particular about their interactions, conversations, and dress. The common people were more vulgar.

These words, even in the twenty-first century, are very pleasant to read, and there are many such records of the travelogues of the missionaries of the Ming Dynasty, who marveled at the various legends of the Ming Dynasty and began their legends here.

Most of the early missionaries had the necessary knowledge to argue for the existence of God. The spread of Geometry is a good example. The most wonderful thing about the Geometry is its rigorous logical system, and the missionaries studied the original in order to apply this formal logic to religious arguments. In the eyes of the missionaries, science was merely a means of understanding God.

For example, Matteo Ricci, a missionary in the late Ming Dynasty, was one of the pioneers of Catholic missionary work in China, and was also the first Western scholar to read Chinese literature and study Chinese classics. Matteo Ricci's actions not only attracted many ordinary people, but also attracted many intellectuals, and attracted a large number of Chinese scholars and doctors, and their influence became more and more significant. First, Qu Taisu followed him, and Qu learned and made the celestial globe and astrolabe by himself.

Later, there were many people who studied mathematics from Matteo Ricci: there were the well-known scholar Gu Qiyuan, the prefect Wang Pan, the son of the famous scholar Li Xinzhai and his two students, and Zhang Yangmo, a student of the Hanlin Wang Kentang at that time.

Fifteen years before Xu Guangqi translated the Geometric Originals, some people had already begun to make attempts in this regard. This pioneer is Qu Taisu. However, it is obvious that this translation was not taken by Matteo Ricci on his own initiative and consciously, but by Qu Taisu for the convenience of his own learning and to show his talent. The translation is also limited to the first volume of the Geometric Primitives.

When Matteo Ricci asked Zhang Yangmo to spread Christianity, Zhang said it was a waste of time, and he thought that teaching mathematics to enlighten the Chinese would be enough to achieve his goal. When Zhang Yangmo once wanted to translate "Geometric Originals", he was also rejected by Matteo Ricci. However, when Matteo Ricci arrived in the capital, he found that if he did not provide Western scientific and technological knowledge to the Chinese scholarly class, he would interact with each other negatively, and the people who came to visit him were far less than before.

Xu Guangqi insisted that "the arithmetic, the worker's axe is looking for a ruler, and the two families of the law are beside the ruler, and the palace and chamber instruments they build are also used, and this matter cannot be thoroughly resolved, and everything is not easy to discuss", and Matteo Ricci reluctantly agreed to the request to jointly translate the "Geometric Originals". In the process of translation, many of China's highest-ranking officials and scholars participated in the discussion, such as Yang Tingyun, Li Zhizao, Ye Xianggao, Feng Yingjing, Cao Yubian, Zhao Kehuai, Zhu Zaibo, and Wu Dashen. Among them, Ye Xianggao served as the highest-ranking civil official of the Ming Dynasty three times after the 36th year of Wanli - the first assistant of the cabinet.

In the 32nd year of Wanli, Matteo Ricci said in a letter to Fan Li'an, the president of the Jesuit Society in the Far East: "We have been with the dignitaries of Beijing, including scholars, Shanglang, Shilang and close branch clans. Tell them about the earth in the center of the universe and the eclipse of the sun and moon. He also made them armillary spheres and globes, drew maps of the world, and answered their countless questions. From then on, they could no longer think that Westerners were ignorant. ”

By the ninth year of Chongzhen, the Ming Dynasty officials and scholars had 14 first-class scholars, 10 jinshi, 11 lifters, and 300 students.

In the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, there were three concubines, 50 palace maids, more than 40 eunuchs, and more than 14 people in the royal family in the Ming Dynasty court. It is estimated that 40,000 or 50,000 people will join the church nationwide by the end of the Ming Dynasty. It can be seen that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was already a rather strong atmosphere of advocating Western studies and Western religions. Although the contradictions between Chinese and Western cultures are often in conflict with the treatment of missionaries and their missionary activities, the general trend is that the process of learning from the West is becoming more and more deep.

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