AFTER THE communist triumph on the mainland in 1949, a group of exiled Jesuit priests in Shanghai boarded a south-bound train. In their baggage was more than 40 years' study of the Chinese language. That material travelled with them through Hong Kong and Macau, before landing in Taiwan, where it formed the core of an ambitious project to produce an encyclopaedic Chinese lexicon.
The result of that work, a seven-volume Chinese-French tome known as the Grand Ricci Dictionary, has now made its way back to Hong Kong. This time, however, it came via DHL and its spokesperson isn't a priest but a banker, Claude Haberer of BNP Paribas. 'It's a unique project,' says Haberer, chairman of the Association Ricci, which arranged for a display about the epic endeavour as part of the Le French May festival. 'Putting on this exhibition of so much effort really touches people.'
It's rare for a dictionary to stir emotions, but the Grand Ricci is an exceptional work. It's the largest Chinese lexicon in any western language (Russia and Japan have larger versions). The 9,000-page work features more than 300,000 entries and explains Chinese characters dating back 3,000 years. Initiated in 1952, the project endured the deaths of many of its creators, funds running out and the tech revolution before finally going into print in December 2001. All the scholars involved, such as Father Yves Camus, feel awe and pride in the project.
'I've learned a lot, and forgotten more than half of it,' says Camus, 74, who worked on the dictionary for more than a decade. 'I got a sense of the immensity of the Chinese world and cultural background. It's a matter of broad knowledge - organised and factored, geographically or historically.'
The roots of the dictionary stretch back to 1583, when Matteo Ricci was posted to Macau. The Jesuit priest mastered the Chinese language and developed a deep understanding of the culture, then persuaded Emperor Wanli to allow him to settle in Beijing, where he began translating western works into Chinese and helped introduce Chinese to Europe. It marked the start of a cultural dialogue that continued long after his death in 1610.
One of Ricci's intentions was to share his religious beliefs with the Chinese, and he converted some high-ranking officials to Catholicism. But although it's inspired by his work, the Grand Ricci dictionary isn't about religion, says Father Benoit Vermander, head of the Ricci Institute in Taipei, who's been involved with the dictionary since 1996. Rather, it's driven by what the knowledge might contribute to cross-cultural understanding.