My Impressions of Christianity in Mainland China

I am married to a beautiful Chinese woman, now a Canadian citizen and US permanent resident. She grew up in Shenyang, China, very north, very east. I visited for 3 weeks last year and saw only 3 white people the whole time I was there, and they were together, and lost (businessmen, I suppose). The only English I heard was from my wife and some very nice girls at a Starbuck's who enjoyed the opportunity to practice words like "coffee," "thank you," "you're welcome," etc.

There is no English TV in Shenyang. I took a shortwave radio with me (Grundig G8) and for the first few days in Shenyang I tuned up and down each band at different times of the day.[1] I heard no English. As you might expect, I did hear quite a bit Russian, Korean, and Chinese.

I say this only to set the scene: I was as far from home as you can get and smack dab in the heart of Communist China.

During that short time, I saw:

• In Shenyang: A man witnessing to another man from a bible in the middle of a shopping mall. I can't say with 100% certainty it was a bible, but I have seen many Chinese bibles, and I know the body language that accompanies this type of encounter, and I believe I saw a Christian man witnessing to another man (who was, BTW, only intermittently interested).

Could he have been Mormon or Jehovah's Witness? Sure, but as far as the Chinese government is concerned, there's no difference.

• Outside Shenyang: A Christian section in a cemetery.

Below is the grave of a wealthy Christian Chinese person; there is space yet for a spouse. It is the largest headstone in the Christian section.

To the right of that is a picture of the same grave with a large globe and cross behind it; that large globe and cross mark the top of the Christian section of the cemetery. The section is still rather small and appears new; there were only a few dozen graves there.[2]

 

Many Christians are buried throughout the rest of the cemetery as well. The red cross indicates the deceased was a Christian. My father-in-law, Shuyao Zhao (shoo-yow dzow), converted late in life and while ill. My wife, Jinghong, was the first Christian in the family. Since then, her father and mother and a sister (IIRC) have converted. The others have not.

Below Left: The grave of my father-in-law, Shuyao Zhao.
Below Right: My wife Jinghong Zhao, in the foreground, and her sisters, at their father's grave.



Below: A lit cigarette left as offering by my oldest brother-in-law at his father's grave.

Below Left: An interesting statue at the center of the cemetery outside Shenyang.
Below Right: My oldest brother-in-law and my wife, Jinghong.

• Beijing: Christian children's programming on TV in a "Western" hotel.

A Western hotel has hot and cold running water, 120V outlets, and a government-run English news TV channel. They often provide fresh towels and soap and other things Westerners expect each day.

You might say, "But it's a Western hotel, of course you're going to see Western programming."

The programs were in Chinese.

Final Thoughts

• My wife Jinghong, who remembers as a little girl wearing pictures of Chairman Mao on her school uniform, and carrying Mao's "little red book" of quotations, says she was able to worship freely and openly in small home churches. Large groups in dedicated buildings were not allowed, but not really desired, either.

Jing longs for the home church environment to this day. Chinese home church Christians do not trust the "government church," by which they mean the Catholic Church in China (which is a whole nuther topic; if you're Catholic, you might not trust the Catholic Church in China either).

• I don't know how Christianity is treated elsewhere in China; there are vast undeveloped stretches between metropolitan areas that no doubt are very different.

• I remember Beijing as clean and delightfully friendly, but a friend who is married to a Chinese girl who also spent some time in Beijing said it was dirty and full of pestering beggars. We traveled after Beijing had been prepared for the Olympics; he and his wife traveled before. We saw a very different Beijing, a very nice one, in fact.

You only know what you know.

c0

An unrelated aside: Guess what, the Chinese don't hate us. They go to work every day so they can eat and stay warm and dry and buy a few nice things.

Go figger.

c0

[1]
I thought I would find shortwave programming up and down the dial and shortwave radios for sale in every store. Quite the opposite. The portable radio section of the biggest mall I've ever been in - inside our outside China - looked like this:

There was no interest in shortwave or radio at all. (Lots of 2-way radios for buses, taxis, etc. They wondered why I wanted one and why I was so particular about it; they didn't understand I needed a license to use the Wouxun 2m/70cm ham radio I brought back with me.)

The Internet has made radio in China nearly irrelevant. TV is largely ignored from what I could see.

[2]
The Chinese (at least in this cemetery) cremate their dead and enclose the ashes in small concrete vaults. The vaults sit above ground and have what you might consider a traditional Western-style headstone.

Started: 2012-09-12

c0