La imagen de Pekín en la Peregrinaçam de Fernão Mendes Pinto

Abstract

After Vasco da Gama arriving in India in 1498, the name of China, initially identified, in a first moment, with the medieval Catay, is becoming more familiar to the westerners people based on the information collected in that place by the Portuguese. The identification of Cathay how China only was confirmed at the end of the sixteenth century, from the observations made by Matteo Ricci, Italian Jesuit who lived in this country from 1582 to 1610, and Bento de Góis, who travelled, by land, from the Celestial Empire to the Great Wall between 1602 and 1607. Through the various images conveyed by the writers of that time the Middle Kingdom will begin to be draw, in the Westerners’s eyes point of view, as a fabulously rich and powerful kingdom which plays a crucial role in the political, economic and cultural life in the Far East. Fernão Mendes Pinto does not remain outside of this process, the most admired country in the Peregrinaçam (1614) is the Chinese Empire, of the “grandissima ordem & marauilhoso gouerno”. In this paper the mainly focus will be on the description of Beijing, capital of the Celestial Empire.