Martín de Rada: the Augustinian who led the first Spanish mission into Ming China, 1575

A friar from Pamplona who offered to be carried into China as a slave if that was the only way in, and who went instead as an envoy from Manila in 1575 with a friar born in Mexico. He came back with printed Chinese books, a Chinese vocabulary he had compiled, a bilingual copy of the Lord's Prayer and a written account of the journey. The vocabulary is lost; the account became the spine of the book that told Europe what China was.