The original and complete Italian version of the "History of the entry of the Company of Jesus and Christianity into China" has been at last re-published, to mark the fourth hundredth anniversary of the arrival to Beijing by its author, Matteo Ricci [2000 Quodlibet - Macerata - 775 pages - ITL 98,000].

A priest and a scholar, Matteo Ricci may be considered the first man to have accomplished and documented a real encounter between the European and the Chinese cultures. While pursuing his mission to China, where he spent the last 28 years of his life, he dressed himself as a mandarin (first left in the cover picture) in order to be accepted by the local upper class, to whom he disclosed the western science and the Christian religion.

By far more accurately and deeply than Marco Polo three centuries earlier, Matteo Ricci gave to the West a precious and thorough insight into China at the end of the Ming dinasty. His book, where the practice of tea-drinking is described for the first time, is a vivid and enriching reading still today.