Background part I of my music history paper (about chinese elements in western music ) As the quote from E.T.A. Hoffmann, “Wo die Sprache aufhört, fängt die Musik an.” if you are a present-day European composer and want to craft a piece about china or at least with some Chinese elements, you must first accumulate certain degrees of knowledge about Chinese cultural. The language, Chinese characters, translated Chinese poem and Chinese folk melodies maybe the best place to start. However, if you are a musician who come from a time frame in which internet and cell-phone is not available, for instance 17th century, the only resource that is accessible for you could only be the encyclopedia and dictionary in library. The first recorded Chinese dictionary for a western language should be attributed to Jesuits who sailed from Portugal. Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus (SJ). Since the first Jesuit St. Francis Xavier arrived Shangchuan island of China in 1552 and died in the same year, generations of Jesuits strived to expand their evangelisms and missions from the off coast commercial spot Shangchuan island to the mainland of china but bring little effect. Why? The negative attitude of the government of Ming dynasty is only part of the reason, the Chinese language is the major obstacle for European missionaries. Before the age of discoveries, the Sino-European relationship is merely commercial, it relies on a safety and unmolested silk road and translations from the middle east merchant, which indicate this three sides orally communication is friable and lack of continuity. This phenomenon remained the same not until two Italian Jesuits finally came to China. These two pioneers are Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci. They sailed from Portugal and came to China separately in 1579 and 1582, after several years of learning Chinese, to convenient themselves and their successors, they started to edit the first Chinese-Portugal dictionary during their missions in Zhaoqing county, Guangdong province. Confusingly, both Ruggieri and Ricci are Italian, so why do they choose Portuguese to translate? According to the research of David E. Mungello, from 1552 to 1800, about 920 Jesuits had come to china and 34% of them are Portuguese, the second largest component of the sum is French Jesuits but with only 14%. Portuguese, as the vanguard in the age of discoveries naturally had superiority at the right time and in the right place. There is no doubt, in terms of missionary works in China, Portuguese missionaries took the dominant position.