By analyzing A Paper on Chinese Music (1907) by Mary Martin Richard (1843-1903), a Scottish Baptist missionary in late Qing China who uncharacteristically adapted “un-Westernized” local Chinese musics for devotional purposes, this paper presents a case study that, I argue, shows clear evidence of a sympathetic attitude and open-minded approach towards Chinese musics and their practitioners from the perspective of a Christian-European expatriate in the age of high Western imperialism and “scientific” racism. Unsurprisingly, Eurocentrically culturalist and/or racist ideas and attitudes are commonly found in late 19^th and early 20^th century European texts on Chinese music, such as J.A. Van Aalst's Chinese Music (1884). I show how A Paper on Chinese Music differs from similar texts in one crucial aspect: while the author does not completely dispense with the commonly held idea of “civilized vs. barbarous,” she at times reflexively relativizes and, thus, de-Eurocentricizes it. This is clearly shown in her discussion of the lack of harmony in Chinese music: after pointing out that European harmony, typically regarded as an emblem of European musical superiority then, “is said to have come from Northern barbarous hordes,” she claims, in an as-a-matter-of-fact manner, that “doubtless [the Chinese] think [our harmony] barbarous” (17). I further suggest that her problematization of Euro-supremacism and Euro-exceptionalism was ideationally grounded in a Christian-universalist worldview. Theoretically, I hope to shed some light on the complex and not always harmonious relations between Eurocentrism(s) and Universalism(s), which tend to be lumped together in discussions within contemporary Anglophone music studies.