The moment
A monk called Alopen arrived at the Tang capital from Persia in 635, and in 638 Emperor Taizong permitted his 'luminous teaching' and paid for a monastery. The story is told on a stone stele set up in 781, in Chinese and Syriac, which lay buried until the 1620s. Christianity in Tang China faded after a ban on foreign religions in 845.
People: Alopen