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Retired Men's Association of Greenwich Dedicated to good fellowship, community service, and fun


Robert Henery, Author, “Shen’s Unlikely Journey”

  • 01/22/2025
  • 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (EST)
  • Christ Church, Parish Hall, 245 E Putnam Ave, Greenwich

RETIRED MEN'S ASSOCIATION OF GREENWICH, Inc. 

Invites you to its meeting, January 22, 2025, at 11 am at

 Christ Church, Parish Hall, 254 East Putnam Ave., Greenwich, CT.

The program will also be shown on Zoom: https://bit.ly/30IBj21


Robert Henrey

 Shen's Unlikely Journey: From Confucian China to the Court of Louis XIV

It was a first – a young Chinese scholar’s venture into a politically fractious and religiously divided Europe awakening to the Scientific Revolution. It was the most unlikely of journeys: shipwreck, teaching  the French king the use of chopsticks, kissing the Pope’s feet at the behest of his Jesuit mentors, helping publish the first European book dedicated to Confucian wisdom, having his portrait painted by order of the English king, and sipping port as a reward for explaining away Chinese books at Oxford. It’s a tragic yet inspiring story, recounted as a novel but based on the real lives of remarkable people dedicated to bridging the great cultural divide.

Robert Henrey describes this most unusual of journeys from China to the West in his recent book, “Shen’s Unlikely Journey.” Henrey will comment on how issues that would bedevil the West’s relationship with China were already present in the closing decades of the 17th century. These include each side’s conviction that theirs was the one-and-only divinely ordained culture, China’s policy of dedicating its superior craftsmanship to the goal of accumulating wealth through one-sided foreign trade, welcoming foreigners only to the extent that they provided useful scientific and technological information, pursuing territorial expansion to include Tibet and Taiwan, China’s feelings of vulnerability arising from its deep cultural attachment to a centralized imperial system that was periodically challenged by internal rebellions and foreign invaders – the Mongols, the Manchus and the Japanese – and finally a belief in the West that the only way to open Chinese to foreign influence and profitable trade was to do so by force.

Professionally, Mr. Henrey enjoyed a long career in finance. At the New York City office of Coopers and Lybrand, he headed the firm’s International Tax Consulting Practice and wrote numerous articles on foreign exchange. Since his retirement he has pursued a lifelong scholarly interest in history and linguistics – through writing and lecturing and most recently with a particular focus on Western encounters with Asian cultures.

Robert and his wife Lisette are both graduates of Oxford University, have resided in France, England and in the 1970s in Singapore, and traveled extensively.  They have one child, two grandchildren, and live in Greenwich.

Our next speaker, on January 29, will be author Steven Ujifusa, on “The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I.” This presentation will be via Zoom.

The Greenwich Retired Men’s Association offers a free program every Wednesday that is open to the public, both men and women; no reservations are required. Our social break starts at 10:40 am followed promptly by our presentation at 11:00 am. For additional information see https://greenwichrma.org.

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