Richard Wilhelm (卫礼贤) went to the prestigious school Tubinger Slift and was ordained as a protestant minister. In 1899, the Allgemein Protestantischer Missionsverein sent 26 years old Wilhelm to China as a missionary in Qingdao, as Tsingtao, a then German colonial city.

He has never baptized a single Chinese. Instead he learned to speak and read Chinese, studied in Chinese universities in Tsingtao and Peking, encountered and befriended many cultural leaders. In the meanwhile China underwent great changes including the Boxer Rebellion, the Hsinhai Revolution and the New Culture Movement. When he left China for Germany after 21 years in the middle kingdom, China had already turned to the Republic of China and Tsingtao was a Japanese territory based on Treaty of Versailles. Wilhelm himself had been transformed to be probably the most important bridge between Chinese spirituality and German and the Western culture.

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