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adult, because he was naturally gifted with an excellent memory and knew how to increase its capacity by means of the ancient mnemonic techniques studied at the Roman College. His ability was indeed such that he is reported to have had perfect recall even of things he read only once. 15
    Ricci committed as many characters as possible to memory and did exercises every day in the correct use of the brush used by the Chinese for writing, which was held with the wrist at a precise angle to the paper. The Chinese brushes varied greatly in shape and size, and the bristles of different animals were used in accordance with their purpose. Those preferred for writing were the stiff, short hairs of weasels, martens, and skunks, especially suitable for the smaller characters, or hares, rabbits, deer, and wolves, while goat bristles were prized above all for painting. 16 Made of bamboo, ivory, wood, lacquer, porcelain, and precious metals, the handles could be sober or richly decorated. The technique Ricci learned during his daily exercises struck him as closer to painting, and his comment to De Fornari—“their writing is more like painting”—pinpointed the aesthetic and creative dimension of calligraphy, which had indeed become an art in its own right in China and was appreciated as much as the representation of landscapes or animals.
    In his exercises and in writing letters to Rome, Ricci noted that Chinese paper was much flimsier than the type used in Europe and that only one side of the sheet could be used. Paper had been invented in China in the second century ad , if not earlier, and had come into general use there about a thousand years before Europe. It had been commonly used for centuries not only for writing but also to make hats, shoes, clothes, blankets, money, kites, and ornamental objects, as the missionary was amazed to discover. 17
    One year later, Ricci’s progress was already greater than his friend Ruggieri had managed in three, and he was now able to remember and write a large number of characters: “I’ve got a good number of them into my head and can already write them all.” It is hard to tell just how many characters Ricci learned in his first year of study and in the later course of his life, when he set about writing books in Chinese. He states in his history of the mission that Chinese has a total of seventy thousand characters, but knowledge of ten thousand is sufficient for everyday purposes. While this is an exaggeration, the total number is still very high—forty-nine thousand according to the dictionary published in 1716 during the reign of the emperor Kangxi. 18
    Books Galore
    Having attained some familiarity with the writing, Ricci began to examine Chinese books and saw that they were produced in a different way from those in the West. He discovered that they were read in the opposite direction, turning the pages from left to right, which gave a European the impression of beginning at the end and ending at the beginning. Moreover, the writing on every page was vertical rather than horizontal, and the words and phrases were written one after the other with no breaks and no punctuation, thus leaving the reader the task of isolating the groups of characters constituting units of meaning.
    In seeking out manuals to consult with the aid of interpreters in order to draw up the report on China requested by Valignano, Ricci became aware of the extraordinarily vast scale of book production. Printing was indeed widespread in the Ming era, including not only historical, philosophical, and ethical works published in literary Chinese, the written language that played a role comparable to Latin in Europe, but also a large number of books in the vernacular. Works for all tastes were to be found on the market, from romantic novels to all sorts of practical handbooks for everyday use, technical works on agriculture and handicrafts, dictionaries, glossaries, and guides for merchants.
    This vast circulation of