This book could not have been completed without the assistance of Professor Rui Paulo da Silva Martins,who is in charge of research at the University of Macau. As this book could never have been published in the absence of the generous funding he provided for the translations and other work it involved, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to him and for all of the support he has provided.

I would also like to express my thanks to Professor Yin Shuxi from the Ren-min University of China for his work in translating the book from Chinese.

Thanks are additionally due to Mr.Jason L.Standquist and Hsin-Fang Wu from the University of Pennsylvania for proofreading the original manuscript, which further improved the quality of the translation.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Ronnie Po-chia Hsia,of the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania,who is a fellow of Academia Sinica and a renowned scholar of Chinese Catholic history. His support was crucial in publishing this book.

Finally,I would like to thank Professor Robert Aleksander Maryks,the associate director of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College and the editor-in-chief of Brill's Jesuit Studies book series,and Ivo Romein,the editor of religious studies at Brill.I would also like to thank Tim Page for the copy-editing work and Raymond DePew-Paas for his work in compiling the index.