Following on from Professor Longxi Zhang's inaugural lecture, this presentation will examine the Chinese reception of John Webb's The Antiquity of China Or an Historical Essay: Endeavouring a Probability that the Language of the Empire of China is the Primitive Language, Spoken Through the Whole Word, Before the Confusion of Babel. The analysis will centre on the scholarship of Ch'en Shou-yi, who served as Head of the History Department at Peking University during the early 1930s. Having trained in comparative literature and world history at the University of Chicago, Ch'en returned to China with a mission to establish new paradigms for Sinology. This lecture will illuminate his pivotal role in scrutinising early modern European images of China, a project he undertook first at Lingnan and later at Peking. It was there that Ch'en made bold attempts to chart new intellectual territory for the study of Chinese, history, religion, and philosophy, thereby reshaping the disciplinary foundations of Sinology itself. The enduring impact of his scholarly endeavours, traceable through the work of his students and their successors, will also be considered.