The China of the Jesuits: Travels and Experiences of Diego de Pantoja and Adriano de las Cortes

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many reports and travel narratives helped to create a more positive image of China around the world. The remarkable efforts of the Society of Jesus were essential to this new view, thanks to a unique policy of evangelization and the personal and ethnographic contributions of some of its members. However, through a comparative analysis of narratives from Diego de Pantoja and Adriano de las Cortes (both Jesuits), we can see how the texts are not just standard doctrinal narratives but also contain personal experiences, selections, interpretations and creative evaluations capable of transforming the reality