Cross-Cultural Epistemology: How European Sinology Became the Bridge to China's Modern Humanities

European sinology since Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), founder of the Jesuit mission in China, was occupied with interpreting the Chinese classics, unpacking the learned worldview of the elite that adhered to them. ¹ However, the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin’s late-nineteenth-century rediscovery of ancient hidden cities buried along the Silk Road unleashed a new wave of sinology [Fig. 25]. The magnificent collections of Silk Road material that Paul Pelliot, Aurel Stein, and Albert Grünwedel then plundered provided European scholars with previously unknown source material that the Chinese themselves could not easily consult. Hedin’s find sparked a modern direction in sinology and inspired Western sinologists to travel east for more discoveries. In the same time it sent Chinese scholars going the opposite direction.