Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History
Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at Boston College.
利瑪竇中西文化歷史研究所.
bc.edu/bc-web/centers/ricc…
- These days we've been working on recording video here at the Institute. Stay tuned for interesting content featuring our visiting scholars!
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- A class in the history of modern China visited the Institute and we brought out a variety of primary sources, including Communist posters, Republican-era new year's prints, and manuscript memoirs.
- A few panels from a Chinese cartoon from the Republican era titled "Biography of Jigong" (Jigong zhuan 濟公傅). Jigong (1130-1209) was a Buddhist monk who became a kind of folk hero after his death. Legendary stories circulated about him.
- A Korean world map, probably dating from the 19th century. The map shows East Asia in some detail, but not Western Eurasia. Surrounding the central continent is a continental ring where various fantastical countries are located.
- The Institute recently acquired a set of account books from the Beijing diocese in the early to mid-1950s. This was a period of great change for the Catholic church in China, as the new Communist authorities wrestled control of the church from the Vatican.
- Details of a map of Asia dating from the "Third year of the French Republic," i.e., 1795. Its authors were Robert de Vaugondy (1688-1766) and Charles-François Delamarche (1740-1817). The map shows Manchuria and Mongolia as "Chinese Tartary."
- Happy New Year! A few more Foley photos today: From a flight with the Republic of China Airforce on February 15, 1958. The plane took off from Songshan airbase in Taipei. #空軍 #中華民國空軍 #空軍第十大隊
- A few more scans of contact prints of Frederick Foley's photographs from Taiwan in the 1950s. These three street snaps were all taken on 35mm film.
- Photos (more of Frederick Foley's contact prints, for which see our earlier posts) from the set of the movie "Love Song of the Tea Mountains" (Chashan qingge 茶山情歌), taken on July 4, 1959, in Taiwan. The movie was released in 1962.
- Rubbings from the stone plaques at Wujun xianxian zongci 吳郡先賢總祠 shrine in Suzhou (1829). The rubbings contain portraits of famous people from the region, from earliest times to the early nineteenth century.
- Staff and friends of the Institute gathered for some coffee and cake to celebrate Christmas and all of the work we've done together here this year.
- Details from the Anthony E. Clark Chinese poster collection. These 84 posters span the years 1965 to 1983. The contain a small number of posters from the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and a larger number from the early Reform-period in the 1980s.
- Proclamation issued by the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi and the Governor of Guangdong, on September 17, 1895, quoting an imperial edict. The edict orders local officials to protect churches and “Westerners” (yangren 洋人) in the wake of violent attacks on foreigners in Sichuan.
- @ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social Three maps depicting Macao reflecting different cartographic traditions. One shows Macao and a part of the Guangdong coastline. Another shows the peninsula in greater detail. The larger map is from the Qianlong emperor's great atlas of much of continental Asia.
- When roaming our stacks a few weeks ago, we found this set of four acupuncture charts. They depict, in color, a male body with acupuncture points marked. The set was published in Shanghai in 1955. The charts emphasize the locations of organs, nerves, arteries, bones, and muscles.
- @ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social The so-called Calbot Calotype, an early photographic process invented in 1841, was introduced for a Catholic missionary readership in this book by Antonacci Pietro from 1843. The book nicely complements our substantial holdings of missionary photographs.
- @ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social Details from a to-scale facsimile reproduction from 1925 of Clement XI's apostolic constitution Ex illa die of March 19, 1715 in Chinese translation. The Kangxi emperor objected to this interference in the religious lives of his subjects.
- @ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social Our copy of the first edition of Zhang Shuqi's 張書旂 (Shizhong 世忠, 1900-1957) Lingmao ji 翎毛集, published in 1929. The book is intended as a textbook to study ornithological illustration, depicting a great number of birds in different settings.
- Today we catalogued a number of issues of China missionary bulletin (Chuanjiao xuezhi 傳教學誌), which was published in Hong Kong in the 1950s. This was a tumultuous time for the Catholic missions to China, as the Communist authorities expelled or imprisoned foreign missionaries.
- 📣 Calling BC undergraduates: Fr. Robert Carbonneau, C.P., Ph. D., a researcher at the Institute, will teach the class ”Theology 3008: Asian American Catholics: A Journey of Faith and Theology“ at Boston College in Spring 2026. If you haven‘t registered yet, consider doing so!
- Upcoming event at IAJS: Gosciwit Malinowski (University of Wrocław) will speak on the topic of "Tomasz Dunin Szpot S.J., (1644/45–1713), Historiographer of Jesuit Missions in China, and His Times." November 25, 2025 | 9:00 – 10:00 AM. Reach out to iajs@bc.edu to register for this event.
- @ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social A few more photos from our scroll, Shizi chongxun 十字寵勳. We have since found out that a similar scroll was printed at the T'ou-sè-wè 土家灣 orphanage in Shanghai in 1929. This reproduction has not allowed us to determine with certainty that they are identical.
- The Institute's copy of Qinding shujing tushuo 欽定書經圖說, an illustrated edition of the Documents Classic, published at the Qing imperial palace in 1905. The book is lithographically printed in two colors, black and red. We're planning to post more pictures from this book later.
- @ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social Sanhe shengyu 三合聖諭, the Qing-dynasty Sacred edict in the three languages Manchu, Mongolian, and Chinese. Our book dates from the mid-19th century.
- This is the Gospel of Matthew in Romanized Hakka Chinese, translated by the German missionary Rudolf Lechler and published in 1860. Hakka is one of the seven major Chinese dialect groups, primarily in the southeastern Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi.
- This Gospel of John, published in 1853, contains the text in the Shanghai dialect of Chinese, written using the Latin alphabet. This little book has an explanatory introduction and vocabulary by the British scholar James Summers (Sang Moshi 桑莫士 1828-1891). Acquired in 2025.
- @ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social This scroll contains a Qing-period, hand-colored woodblock print titled "Shizi chongxun" 十字寵勳. It offers a fascinating glimpse into cultural exchanges in late 19th-century China and shows Christ on the cross revered by a unified audience of various ethnicities.
- The inscription above the Ricci Institute entrance: "Blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord." The phrase is a truncation of a Latin translation of Psalm 119:1. Shot on film by a staff member.
- Contact prints from photos by Frederick J. Foley 傅良圃. These photos were taken in Taiwan; we're guessing in the 1960s. The Ricci Institute has around 85,000 of Foley's photographic negatives that await digitization. They were given to us in 1985.
- Happy Halloween from us here at the Ricci Institute! 🦇
- Details from a painting by Hua Xiaoxian 華效先 (Luke Hua Hsiao-hsien), retrospectively titled "Our Lady Playing with a Parrot" 聖母逗鸚鵡. It was painted Peiping (Beijing), probably in 1948.
- Details from a silk painting by Lu Hongnian 陸鴻年 (1914-1989) from 1947, retroactively titled "Our Lady Carrying the Child Amidst the Clouds" 聖母抱嬰在雲中. The painting has been mounted on a scroll.
- @ricciinstitutelib.bsky.social A painting textbook by the Qing-dynasty painter Zhang Xiong 張熊. The book was published in 1933. It covers floral techniques of the four seasons and fish, birds, and insects.
- A few days ago, we shared images of our scroll titled Tiantang yaoli 天堂要理. We've since done more research and revised the date to 1937. Our scroll is related to a painting currently held in Belgium and reproduced by Jeroom Heyndrickx in his study of it. Full citation in the alt-text.
- Students in a class on East Asian art history made a visit to the Institute to learn about the history of Chinese printing.
- A polychrome paper scroll titled Tiantang yaoli 天堂要理 (Essential principles of Heaven). It presents a Catholic narrative of human history, with a "good path" (shandao 善道) leading to Heaven (via Purgatory) and an "evil path" (edao 惡道) leading to Hell. The scroll probably dates from 1929.
- Details from a copy of William (Wilhelm) Lobscheid's 羅存德 (1822-1893) A Chinese and English Dictionary (Han-Ying zidian 英漢字典) from 1869. A studious reader has left copious notes.
- Congratulations to Zhang Jie (Arizona State) on the publication of her article "Dying the Chinese Catholic Way: An Interreligious Study of Catholic and Buddhist Woodblock Printed Illustrations in Nineteenth-Century China" doi.org/10.1163/2542..., which discusses sources held at the Institute.
- A case containing 8mm movie film reels containing footage recorded by John A. Houle, S.J. (He Yongzhi 何雍之, 1914-1997) in Asia. Fr. Houle returned to the US in 1957. Dr. Joseph W. Ho (University of Michigan) has arranged for this material to be digitized. Details to follow.
- Rearranging the Taichung Polyglot, a dictionary draft held at the Ricci Institute Library. An essay on our library website has more details on this unique corpus.
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- Our librarian Mårten Söderblom Saarela reviewed Jiani He's Ruling the Mongols of Manchuria: Language, Literacy, and Power in Late Qing Borderlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2025) in the Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊. Sadly, the review is behind a paywall. doi.org/10.1017/jch....
- Our librarian Mårten Söderblom Saarela will give three online talks for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, on November 8, 2025, 9:00am-1:30pm Eastern time. The theme of the talks is "The Jesuit Mission to China." For details and registration, see ncta.princeton.edu.
- Since today is mid-autumn festival (zhongqiu jie 中秋節), or ch'usŏk 秋夕, we're sharing these images of Luke Hua Hsiao-hsien's 華效先 painting Our Lady on the Crescent Moon 新月上的聖母. Yes, we are aware that the moon today is full, not new, but this is the best we could do.
- Today we celebrate the birthday of our namesake, Fr. Matteo Ricci 利瑪竇, S.J. (Oct. 6, 1552-May 11, 1610). Happy Birthday, Fr. Ricci!
- Details from two illustrations in Shengjiao xiangshuo 聖教像說 [Images and explanations of the holy teaching] (web.bc.edu/ricci/indexT...), a Catholic publication with Qing-period origins. Clothing in the book appears to reflect Republican fashion. We thus conjecture that it was published after 1911.
- Our librarian wrote an essay on what he calls the Taichung polyglot, a draft for a multilingual Chinese dictionary produced in Taiwan in the 1950s and now held in part at the Library. This draft is part of the paper trail of the Chinese-French Grand dictionnaire Ricci. web.bc.edu/ricci/
- Our staff is in the process of cataloguing a recently donated collection of archival material. A cursory survey suggests that the collection primarily contains French-language letters and newspaper clippings relating to the Catholic church in China in the first half of the twentieth century.
