Francesco Sambiasi

Francesco Sambiasi or Bi Fangji (1582 in Cosenza, Calabria, Italy – January 1649 in Kanton, China) was a Catholic missionary to China, part of the Jesuits. He was sent with the boat Nossa Senhora da Piedade to the East on 23 March 1609 and arrived in Macao in 1610. He worked in various places during his mission in China: Beijing (1613–1616), Kiating and then Shanghai (1622), took a trip to Korea, then to Kaifeng (1628), Shanxi, Shandong, Nanjing (1631–1643) and then to Macao ("patente de Embaixador", 1645).
In 1646 he worked for the last Ming emperor Yongli as a "folk master" and the year after as a mandarin.
He was involved in the revision of the Chinese calendar.