Michael Shen Fu-Tsung arrived with Philippe Couplet by boat from Portuguese Macau in October 1682.

[4] Shen was presented to King Louis XIV on September 15, 1684, and he demonstrated how to use chopsticks and how to write Chinese characters.

[5] He is described as participating in a royal dinner with Couplet, wearing green silk with deep blue brocade, decorated with Chinese dragons.

[4] After his visit in France, Shen Fu-Tsung also went to Oxford where he met with Thomas Hyde in 1685,[6] and he taught him some Chinese.

[10] Shen Fu-Tsung was able to catalogue the Chinese books that were present in the Bodleian Library, and to describe their content, something which nobody had been able to do until then.