Galeote Pereira

Galeote Pereira (sometimes also Galiote Pereira) was a 16th-century Portuguese soldier of fortune. He spent several years in China's Fujian and Guangxi province after being captured by the Chinese authorities in an anti-smuggling operation. The report he wrote after escaping China is one of the earliest known accounts by a westerner of life in Ming China; indeed, it is the first detailed observation of that civilisation by a lay (non-clerical) European visitor since that of Marco Polo.