《西国记法》by Matteo Ricci (1552-1616 CE)

[hbuchtel]

Hey folks, I recently came across what feels like a real treasure-trove of information about Chinese language, history, and culture, and wanted to share it here -

It started with a recent NYTimes article, "Secrets of a Mind-Gamer", in which the author, who professes to have no special talent for memorization, describes his journey from simply interviewing 'mental athletes' to actually participating in the USA memory championship. This article is definitely worth a read if you haven't done so already!

It caught my attention because I am preparing to take the Chinese medical license exam this summer, and in the past I have been hopeless at memorizing the vast number of 'herbal formula songs' (方歌) and quotations from medical classics that this exam requires. After using the "Memory Palace" method mentioned in the article to memorize five 'formula songs' with surprisingly little effort, I started searching online for more info about how to use this method specifically for memorizing Chinese-language material.

I came across descriptions of the book "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci", which includes an account of how Ricci, a 16th century missionary who died in Beijing, used the ancient Memory Palace method of memorization to pass the imperial examinations. It looks like a really good read, but what interested me the most was that an Amazon review of the book mentioned a "Chinese-language treatise by Ricci on the mnemonic arts". What could be better than reading about a method for memorizing Chinese in the same language?

After a bit of searching, I was able to find a list of all of Ricci's works on Baidu (which I think is copied from the zh.wikipedia page), and it was easy to identify《西国记法》as being the one described in the Amazon review. PDFs of this work can be downloaded from various sites.

《西国记法》is written in 文言文, which is a struggle for me to understand, so a bit more searching led me to a Chinese translation of "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci" called 《利玛窦的记忆之宫》, which, being written in modern Chinese, I find much more readable. Reading Ricci's original work is getting easier as the newer book gives me more of an idea of what he was talking about.

It is fascinating to read about Ricci's experiences in China at that time - quite inspiring - and the techniques that he shared in《西国记法》are quite useful for learning more Chinese!

[gato]

Interesting article.

[hbuchtel]

The NYTimes one? Yea, I enjoyed it too.

Here is a link (PDF) to the article "Exceptional memorizers: made, not born" that the NYTimes author mentioned.

[gato]

Yeah, pretty entertaining, though he doesn't really explain his mnemonics in the article (what is the rationale for each imagery?).

[imron]

There's no specific rationale, it's just something vivid and easily rememberable that he has personally associated with a thing he wants to remember.

[aristotle1990]

Great read. The guy behind SuperMemo (anyone remember this?) wrote something a while back about the importance of memorization that is somewhat related and also very interesting.

[gato]

There's no specific rationale, it's just something vivid and easily rememberable that he has personally associated with a thing he wants to remember.

He has 52 different images for 52 cards? How do you use that memorize poetry then? A different image for each word in the dictionary?

[imron]

Don't know about the poetry, but yep, he has 52 different images for 52 cards which he then places in his memory palace in the order he wants to traverse them.

[hbuchtel]

How do you use that memorize poetry then? A different image for each word in the dictionary?

In my limited experience, linking each line with a certain object or position in a familiar building is very effective. There don't have to be any obvious associations between the line and the object/position, as associations will naturally arise with repetition.

For example, here is one of the 'formula songs' I mentioned:

桑菊饮用桔杏翘，芦根甘草薄荷饶；

清疏肺卫清宣剂，风温咳嗽服之消。

I associated each 7 character line with a particular object in a living room that I'm familiar with: the first line is associated with a short red table, and the character 桑 makes me think of red wood. The second line is associated with the fridge, and the fridge has a deer magnet (lù, similar to the lú in 芦根) and has jars of dried foods (possibly herbs, ie 甘草 and 薄荷) on top. The third line is associated with a black leather couch, which makes me think of 清 (cooling) . . . and so on.

So a simple method like this works for longer things like poems, songs, etc.

The method recommended by Ricci is similar, but I'll have to read that part again several times before trying to translate it!

[kdavid]

After reading the NY Times article mentioned in the first post, I acquired Dominic O'Brien's "Quantum Memory Power" from a lovable demon.

Dominic is the seven-time memory champion. One of the first parts of the book (I'm listening to the audio version), walks you through "The Journey Method", which I'm assuming is similar, if not the exact same, as the memory palace.

Anyway, after the initial explanation and an example, I was able to memorize the 10 largest oceans/seas (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, Arabian, South China, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Baltic, Bengal) and last 10 US presidents of the 20th century (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Regan, Bush, Clinton) after only being told once.

Seems like a cool trick. I haven't finished Dominic's book yet, but only have about another 4 hours left. Good "read" so far.

[hbuchtel]

The guy behind SuperMemo (anyone remember this?) wrote something a while back about the importance of memorization that is somewhat related and also very interesting.

From that link:

"Last but not least: Two ideas do not come together to produce a great invention unless they sit in the same head. They either have to be called up at the same time or one has to come unexpectedly from the outside:

• Archimedes stepped into a bath and immediately associated the fact with all he knew about weight and buoyancy. Thousands of Greeks at his time failed to make the link. This was not solely because of their less lively minds. It was mostly because of their lack of understanding of hydrostatics
  
• Isaac Newton is said to have been hit by an apple that produced an immediate use of his knowledge of physics and mathematics to enhance his three famous laws of motion published in Principia by the laws of gravity
  
• James Watt is rumored to have watched a kettle boil to combine this inspiration with his knowledge of engineering to improve upon a Newcomen's steam engine. This association changed the industry upside down in the course of the hundred years that followed."
  

This is the rational I've heard for memorizing Chinese medical classics like 《伤寒论》，《温病条辨》，《黄帝内经》, etc. The contents perhaps don't make much sense out of context, but upon encountering particular patients those memorized lines will suddenly become meaningful (the 'eureka moment'), helping with diagnosis and treatment.

[Gleaves]

From the article --

Dr. Yip Swee Chooi, the effervescent Malaysian memory champ, used his own body parts to help him memorize the entire 57,000-word Oxford English-Chinese dictionary.

That's pretty cool. A little creepy, but cool.

[c4oyu4n]

Very interesting. But why isn't this type of memory architecture part of official curricula, if it's so effective? Probably because there's such a strong aversion to rote memorization in our present culture. Instead most of our time in school is spent being critical...

There's a german translation of Ricci's Xiguo Jifa: Ricci, Matteo, Alfonso Vagnoni, Ting-han Chu, and Michael Lackner. Das Vergessene Gedächtnis: Die Jesuitische Mnemotechnische Abhandlung Xiguo Jifa; Übersetzung Und Kommentar. Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag-Wiesbaden-GmbH, 1986. Print.

regards,

[kdavid]

Following up on my post above, I strongly recommend Dominic O'Brien's "Quantum Memory Power" to anyone who needs to memorize large amounts of information.

I was recently given very short notice to prepare for an MA program entrance exam. Using the techniques outlined in Dominic's book, I was able to commit to memory this time line after only about 3 hours.

To be fair, I spent about an hour learning the terms I didn't already know, and then cut the time line down to 52 items (I cut out events which didn't seem to be pertinent to my objectives). It then took me less than 3 hours to learn the material.

This is the first time I've attempted to commit "practical" information to memory, and I feel it was ridiculously too easy.

If you're someone who needs to remember lots of facts for whatever reason, I strongly recommend checking out Dominic's book.

After I take my exam tomorrow, I'm going to try my hand at this one for fun.

[hbuchtel]

How did the exam go?

I'm quite inspired by the amount of information you were able to memorize

I assume you chose 52 items because you adapted O'Brien's method for memorizing a deck of cards? How did that work out for you?

I've gotten a copy of his book and have started reading it, but am still using my version of the 'memory palace' technique, which is working out as well as I hoped it would.

[sleepy eyes]

hbutchel, do you think you'll manage to go through the original? If you do, please do report on your findings. I'm VERY MUCH interested in Ricci and classical mnemotechnics. I can deal with the latin and greek sources but, alas, not yet with classical chinese. And I'm particularly drawn to this work of his... Spence's descriptions unfortunately don't suffice, even though his book was one of the best reads in history I've ever had.

[hbuchtel]

No promises, 'cause it is difficult and I'm reading it in my free time, but its got my full attention at the moment!

Besides the memorization technique content, I'm finding his commentary on the function of the brain quite interesting. The audience he was writing for did not consider the brain to be an important organ - ie. very few bodily or mental/spiritual functions were attributed to it.

Also, he uses concepts from Chinese medicine (like 气) that did not exist in Europe at that time (for example, in a paragraph about diet and memory, he says: "凡浮胀之物，俱能混浊调脑之气，滞赛通脑之脉，故难记易忘。“ ("Generally, foods that are floating or swollen* will muddy brain qi and block brain vessels, resulting in poor memory."

*I'm not sure what he means here. Maybe food that is past its prime and is beginning to decompose?

Interestingly, the association between memory and the brain was recognized about 200 years later in the influential book《医林改错》. The author (a doctor famous for his very effective blood-moving formulas - still used today) was very interested in correcting traditional conceptions of anatomy based on his experience dissecting corpses.

I just got a copy of an article called "《西国记法》及其历史命运" ("A Treatise on Mnemonics by Matteo Ricci and Its Historical Fate") about why Ricci's book did not get much attention in China. I haven't read the article yet, but I'm thinking the reason might be related to the reception that his description of the brain received (I'm probably wrong... :rolleyes: ).

In another source I read the opinion that it was Ricci's chapter on his technique for memorizing Chinese characters that made people forget about the book, as his technique was very similar to that in a book written 400 years earlier (that *was* included in the《四库全书总目》) called《字说》.

[sleepy eyes]

Thanks for the info you've already shared! It's awfully interesting. Hopefully I'll be able to read it in a few years.

If only I could memorize scores and scores of characters in seconds like Ricci.

[c4oyu4n]

Come on, I don't want to sound pessimistic but isn't there probably a reason why not everyone is doing it like Ricci?

I mean maybe there's a slight risk that you end up as a rather special type of person with a rather peculiar mindset, thinking of all these images of elephants, swans, flying wallets, the Bee Gees and Claudia Schiffer (all in one image, connected logically...) when paying with your credit card.

[hbuchtel]

For anyone else who is using this method to learn herbal formulas, I recently found that in addition to 'formula songs' for each formula, which are full of information but are long and a bit dull, there are also one sentence "趣记", which are often funny or memorable sentences made from using characters that have the same sound as the herbs in the formula. These fit in the 'memory palace' method very well, as it is easy to make an interesting image out of them.

For example, for the formula 银翘散: "河牛吃草，连根梗叶花穗（全吃了）"

This stands for the herbs 薄荷、牛旁子、豆豉、甘草、连翘、芦根、桔梗、竹叶、银花、芥穗。

I really wish I had known about this method back when I was taking the herbs and formulas classes!