Il Milione
While the encyclopedic scope of "De Christiana expeditione..." can be compared to that of The Travels of Marco Polo, or Juan González de Mendoza's "Historia ... del gran reyno de la China" (1585), its content reveals the author's much closer familiarity with China's language, culture, and people than that of the 13th-century Venetian traveler or the 16th-century Mexican bishop, because of Ricci's personal experiences and his studies of Chinese literature.