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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-sixty-third issue:

“Xizi Qiji 西字奇跡The Miracle of Western Words: Matteo Ricci’s Innovations in Language and Faith,” by Zhaofei Chen.

https://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp363_matteo_ricci_xizi_qiji.pdf

ABSTRACT

Matteo Ricci’s Xizi Qiji (The Miracle of Western Words), published in 1605, is a landmark text in the history of cross-cultural communication. Written in Classical Chinese and annotated with Roman letters, it enabled Western readers in late Ming China to pronounce Chinese texts for the first time. The work is divided into five sections: the first three adapt Biblical stories into Classical Chinese prose, aligning them with Confucian moral principles, while the last two record Ricci’s interactions with Cheng, a Chinese ink master, and their discussions on faith and the importance of writing. This project focuses on translating selected sections of Xizi Qiji into English, making this significant text accessible to modern readers. By preserving the elegance of the original Classical Chinese stories and incorporating Ricci’s Romanized annotations, this translation highlights the literary and linguistic innovations of Ricci’s work. Through this translation, the project aims to allow contemporary audiences to appreciate the aesthetic and intellectual value of Xizi Qiji.

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All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.
To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/

Selected readings

• "The Miracle of Western Writing" (12/31/23)
• "Matteo Ricci's tombstone" (11/24/21)
• "Translating from Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic to Mandarin" (1/14/24)
• "Candida Xu: a highly literate Chinese woman of the 17th century" (7/7/20)
• "The invention of an alphabet for the transcription of Chinese characters half a millennium ago" (11/21/22) — based on Takata Tokio's detailed codicological study of Matteo Ricci's Jesuit colleague, Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628), whose Xīrú ěrmù zī 西儒耳目資 (An Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati)
• "The past, present, and future of Sinography" (8/15/24)
• "Dramatic Transformations of Sinography,in East Asia and the World", Sino-Platonic Papers, 352 (August, 2024), 1-59.
• Victor H. Mair, "Sound and Meaning in the History of Characters:  Views of China's Earliest Script Reformers", pinyin.info.  From Difficult Characters: Interdisciplinary Studies of Chinese and Japanese Writing, edited by Mary S. Erbaugh, copyright © 2002 by the National East Asian Languages Resource Center of the Ohio State University. Used by permission of the National East Asian Languages Resource Center.

September 2, 2025 @ 12:06 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Alphabets, Romanization, Writing, Writing systems

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