In 1573, the Portguese government began renting Macao from the Ming government, paying Xiangshan County at a rate of 500 taels of silver per year. Until the Opium War, Macao was the first and only Chinese sovereign area where Portuguese were permitted to rent and trade. Thus, it became China's most important port of foreign trade.
In August 1582, China was introduced formally to Western religion and academia by the earliest and most important transmitter, Matteo Ricci.
Ricci was keen and adamant. His arrival in China coincided with the Mongol rule and their brutal psychological impact on the nation. He described the almost absurd suspicion of outsiders in his notes: "The brutal conquest and the self-imposed autarky of Tartar rule could not be any more real…" Ricci also noted, "The amount of apprehension that is felt toward outsiders is simply beyond belief. Though China has exercised diplomacy with envoys for centuries past, outsiders have always been treated as exactly that, sometimes even as prisoners. Throughout their entire stay, they would be crammed into cattle-shed-like houses within the imperial city, their eyes forcefully blinded to the real China…Foreigners are only welcome at specific places, at specific times."
But, no matter how oppressive the regime, officially imposed restrictions were unable to contain the Xiangshan yearning for a global exchange. The governor of Guangdong and Guangxi eventually even placed a stern notice upon the gates of Xiangshan to discourage disobedient behavior.
In order to get to the mainland, missionaries like Ricci drifted between Xiangshan and Macao on countless occasions. Ricci recounted once seeing a notice on the gates of Xiangshan: "Macao is plagued with criminal activity, all of which is caused by the employment of interpreters by the foreigners. These backstabbing interpreters feed the criminal desires of the West, and compromise our sovereignty. In the extreme, some have even given away to foreigners our sacred language and literature. These foreign priests wish to settle in the provincial capital, serving their churches and private homes. Adoption of the foreigners is not the path to fortune for our nation. The failure to cease these activities of treachery will be punishable by death, with no exceptions." [9]
Pretty much due to the governor's self-imposed isolation and ignorance, after Ricci and Michele Ruggieri presented their gift of a clock and prism, his arrogance dissolved in an immediate transition to generous hospitality, spacious accommodation, linked to the quiet and secluded Tianning Temple and constant offerings of gratitude in the form of food and gifts.
Until his death in Beijing on the 11th of May in 1610, Ricci traveled between Macao, Xiangshan, Zhaoqing, Shaozhou, Nanchang, Nanjing and Beijing. He first introduced Western science of astronomy and mathematics into China with his world maps (in 1600 and 1602), once again opening the Chinese people's world view, giving China a perspective of where it really stood in the world.
For thousands of years, these two civilizations existed in isolation, and finally with the coming of the 17th century, Macao became their meeting point. In 1602, St. Paul's Church began construction of an attached monastery, teaching philosophy, physics and other Western sciences, becoming the first Western university of the Far East. Ricci, Johann Adam Schall von Bell and prominent scientist Xu Guangqi all engaged in studies here. Here, China raised its first international students, and founded its first astronomical observation center, medical laboratory and Western library…
From Xavier's placement of the stone monument in 1514, to the 1637 completion of St Paul's Church in Macao, in a century of mutual exchange, China bid farewell to its monarchies and opened the doors to modernity. In 1644, another series of Han peasant struggles cast China backward again. China had once again missed the boat to liberation from its bumpy past.
