The article explores the problems of the nomination of the foreign world by the Russian people of the 17th century. Three reports on trips to China were used as a source: by the Tomsk Cossack Ivan Petlin (1618-1619), by the official of the Tobolsk administration Fyodor Baykov (1657-1658), and by the experienced diplomat and scientist Nikolai Spathari-Milescu (1675-1676), describing the path and the actual course of the embassy, as well as the Bulletin of China in 1669, created under the leadership of Petr Godunov. The indicated time frames reflect the dynamics of the initial acquaintance of the Russian world with the new country, the gradual accumulation and further deepening of knowledge about it. Created by people of different social status, different levels of education and knowledge about China, the reports demonstrate both different ways of presenting information, and envoys' biased attention to areas of life of a foreign state that were significant to each of them due to their professional activities, which is especially significant for our analysis. The object of study is limited to an anthropological sphere, with a structure that distinguishes a number of segments, all representing ethnically significant features: territories and their ethnic groups; language and writing; beliefs; general lifestyle; social composition; main activities; structure of public administration; appearance, clothing; character traits (mindset); national traditions, rituals, court etiquette; country's history and legends. The most illustrative of them were descriptions of the structure of Chinese society and occupations of its representatives (boyars, melkie lyudi, torgovye, kutufta). The source reflects the fact of formation, competition of forms of choronyms (Kitayskaya zemlya, Kitai, Kitay), ethnonyms (kitayskie lyudi, kitayane, kitaytsy), primary exploration of Chinese names (Kanbalyk/Kambalyk, Pezhin about Beijing), other exoticisms (bogdokhan / bugdykhan, mandaryni), a regular correlation of foreign cultural facts with known elements of one's own world (laby po ikh vere, a porusski popy; kitayskiy boyarin askanama). A distinct personality in the representation of China and the Chinese was expressed through envoys' selective attention to certain areas of the new world, details of its marking, methods and means of nomination. Thus, Petlin pays particular attention to the military sphere and weapons of the Chinese (lyudi ne voinskie, boy u nikh ognyanoy), Baykov to characteristics and numbers of ethnic groups, the appearance of foreigners (mungal'tsov < ... > net de i desyatoy doli, kitaytsev de mnogoe mnozhestvo, platye nosyat korotko), Spathari-Milescu to public administration, court etiquette (verkhovnaya duma, kolai chestnee srodnikov). From testimonial to testimonial, there is a decreasing interest in the obvious external exoticism of the appearance of a foreign culture's representative and an increasing attention to more abstract characteristics, such as language, character, traditions and rituals. At the same time, an emotional representation of a foreign land (chudo neizrechennoe, strakh izymet) typical for Petlin and Baikov's direct indications of the lack of knowledge and information (neznamo chto) are replaced by detailed, multidimensional representations of the described realities in Spathari-Milescu's report (astrologiyskiy prikaz, vassal relations between nations and ethnoses).
