Scholarly Work
During his tenure in Fujian province, Xu Jiyu had the opportunity to interact with a number of Westerners who had just arrived in the province, such as the American missionary David Abeel, the and British consular officials, Rutherford Alcock and George Tradescant Lay, father of Horatio Nelson Lay. Xu also collected information on the West from missionary literature in Chinese. The information Xu collected was crucial to his publication of A Short Account of the Maritime Circuit (Yinghuan zhilüe, 瀛環志略) in 1849. Although this work is lesser known than the work of his contemporary Wei Yuan, A Short Account was more accurate in its description of Western geography. The work was reprinted in 1866 and was also republished in Japan.
In 1853, an excerpt about George Washington from A Short Account was inscribed on the stone donated to the Washington Monument by a group of Chinese Christians. The stone and the inscription can be seen at the base of the Washington Monument today, a fact that was mentioned by President Clinton's 1998 speech in China.
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