was 6, the family had saved enough to send him to a local school, where a later hagiographer records him piously upbraiding his classmates when they spoke of wanting to use their education for wealth or mystical power. Instead, he supposedly advised, "None of these things is worth doing. If you want to talk about the sort of person you want to become, then it should be to establish yourself and to follow the Way. Bring order to the state and the people. Revere the orthodox and expose the heterodox. Don't waste the chance to be someone who matters in this world." From 1569 to 1573, the family sent Guangqi to the school at the Buddhist monastery at Longhua. It is not recorded, but this school was probably a separate secular and fee-based institution for families too poor to hire private tutors for their sons. His mother died on May 8, 1592, and he undertook the ritual mourning period in her honor. His whereabouts over the next few years are uncertain but he seems to have failed the provincial exam at Beijing in 1594, after the mourning period was over. Career In 1596, he moved to Xunzhou (now Guiping) in Guangxi to assist its prefect Zhao Fengyu, a Shanghai native who had passed the juren exams in 1555. The next year, he traveled to Beijing in the spring and passed its provincial exam, becoming a juren. He seems to have stayed there for the imperial exam the next year, but failed to pass. He then returned to Shanghai around April, turning his attention to the study of military and agricultural subjects. The next year he studied under Cheng Jiasui. He first met Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit, in Nanjing in March or April 1600. He collaborated with Ricci in translating several classic Western texts—most notably the first part of Euclid's Elements—into Chinese, as well as several Chinese Confucian texts into Latin. Ricci's influence led to Xu being baptized as a Roman Catholic in 1603. His descendants remained Catholics or Protestants into the 21st century.. From 1607 until 1610, Xu was forced to retire from public office and returned to his home in Shanghai. It was during this time that he experimented with Western-style irrigation methods. He also experimented with the cultivation of sweet potatoes, cotton, and the nu zhen tree. He was called once more to serve the Chinese bureaucracy,