The article attempts to present the image of China through the eyes of the
famous Russian orientalist of the 19th century N. Ya. Bichurin (Father Iakinf), who served as head of the Ninth Spiritual Mission in Beijing for more than 10 years. On the basis of Bichurin’s mainly polemical articles, the lofty humanistic ideas of the learned monk are consistently revealed, who offered European and Russian scientists to formulate value judgments about a foreign civilization in the only right way — through a deep and comprehensive study of its history and culture, moreover, from the position of a bearer of this culture.