Preface

At the beginning of 1989 I learned, that Mr Edward Kajdański got his study "Michał Boym. The
last emissary of the Ming dynasty." (Michał Boym. Ostatni wysłannik dynastii Ming) into print. I
came to Poland at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture and Art in May of that very year. While
residing in Warsaw up until February 1990, I also went to Gdańsk at that time, where I met and
befriended Mr Kajdański. I also received this book from him. I translated in into Chinese after I
came back to China at the end of February 1990. It was published over four years in quarterly
journal "Eastern Europe" (3-4 / 1995; 1-4 / 1996; 1-4 /1997 and 1-4 / 1998), publicised by the
Beijing Foreign Studies University. At that time the Research Center of Overseas Sinology began
publicising the series of research papers by foreign sinologists. That is the reason why its director
Prof. Zhang Xiping asked Mr Kajdański to write "An Ambassador of the Middle Kingdom"
(Ambasador Państwa Środka) based on "The last emissary of the Ming dynasty". The content of this
book, published in Poland in 1999, is vaster than the content of "The last emissary". I translated this
book into chinese as soon as I have received it from Mr Kajdański and publicized it in publishing
company Daxian (Great Elephant) in Zhengzhou city in Henan province. In September of that year,
when Mr Kajdański arrived to Beijing on aforementioned publishing company invitation, we visited
much more than Zhengzhou along with him and my wife Wang Yenxiu. We also saw a famous
capital of ancient China – Luoyang; stone sculptures Longmen from Tang dynasty; Shaolin temple -
famous for its "kung fu" martial arts and the Temple of a White Horse – the oldest Buddhist temple
in China, built in 64 CE. The publishing of "An Ambassador of the Middle Kingdom" met with
widespread interest in China and was declared the best Michał Boym monograph in the world. It is
on the grounds that it contained the widest range of materials about Boym and fairly judged his
great contribution to disseminating the knowledge in Europe about the civilization of ancient China.
After publication of this book, at the invitation of professor Zhang Xiping, me and my wife began
to translate all Michał Boym works, which were all previously translated from latin by Mr
Kajdański, to which I added many annotations. Whenever I had any troubles in translating I always
asked Mr Kajdański and he was an enormous help. Besides that, Mr Kajdański has translated all
names of plants, animals, drugs and medical terms directly into chinese, which was a significant
help to this translation. Our several year-old academic cooperation is the first large scale
cooperation of a chinese scholar and western sinologist in terms of studying sinology and
translating classic foreign sinologic works. It is a momentous event in history of sinology's
development and in cultural and academic exchange among Poland and China.

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