XuGuangqi City’s son introduces European science
3 min readXu Guangqi was the first Chinese person to introduce advanced European scientific knowledge into the country in the late Ming Dynasty（1368-1644）.He was also a famous scholar-official，mathematician，astronomer and agronomist.And he was a very proud son of Shanghai.
Born in today’s Songjiang area of Shanghai，Xu was from a relatively poor farmer’s family.His father worked both in farming and teaching and managed to send his son to school.
The young Xu understood the hardship of life very well, so he studied hard and tried his best to excel in school. He passed the county-level civil examination at 19. But later, he failed to obtain higher degrees for quite a long time.
It was not until he was 43 that he eventually passed the imperial civil examination for the degree of “Presented Schol-ar”or a graduate of the palace examination. Then, he entered the Imperial Academy. These paved the way for Xu to be ap-pointed to senior positions in the imperial court, where he spent most years of the second half of his life.
During his career as a scholar-official, Xu made important contributions to agricultural science, mathematics, astronomy and calendar reform.
Xu wrote a 700,000-word book entitled “Nong Zheng Quan Shu”or”Complete Treatise on Agriculture.”The book is another monumental treatise on traditional Chinese agriculture after Jia Sixie published his “Qiming Yaoshu”or “Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People”in 533 AD.
Xu became interested in agriculture when he was a young boy. To help his father in farming, Xu often worked in the fields after school.
He first learned the practice of top pitching and bud picking to boost the cotton output from an old farmer. Then, he told his father about these methods and introduced topping and pruning into the cotton growth in their own fields. It turned out to be very successful in increasing their cotton production.
In his treatise on agriculture, Xu included not only farm-ing management and administration, land reclamation, divina-tion of seasons, hydraulic engineering, cultivation of cereals, vegetables and fruit trees, but also new technologies in sericul-ture, cotton growing and cotton field management, and the proper use of key grafting techniques.
Xu also collaborated with Italian Jesuit priest and mis-sionary Matteo Ricci(1552-1610) to translate the first six books of Euclid’s Elements.
After he first met Ricci in today’s Nanjing in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province, Xu was fascinated by the European scientific knowledge that he had learned from the Italian. Xu told his new friend that he wanted to translate Euclid’s Ele-ments into Chinese. Ricci warned him that it would be an ex-tremely difficult task. Xu said:”I’m not afraid of any difficul-ty. This is because if I shy away, the difficulty will grow big-ger, and if I take the challenge and try my best to overcome it, the difficulty will disappear.”The two eventually succeeded in translating the first for-eign geometry book into Chinese.
Xu also collaborated with Ricci in reforming the calendar.
The one he and Ricci had been working on was later successfulin predicting an eclipse in 1610. And after Ricci’s death thatyear, Xu continued to work with other Jesuits on reforming the calendar. Xu was later succeeded by another Chinese scientist Li Tangjing, who finished the reform.
Shanghai has built the Xu Guangqi Memorial Hall in today’s Xuhui District as a memorial and museum to this great pioneer of China’s modern science and its proud son.
