Christians in Beiwan - China - Cover Story

Christian Century, April 19, 1995 by Todd Crowell

TRUCKS FILLED with pigs or bags of cement zoom north along National Highway 107 toward Hunan Province. As they pass our bus, they raise a cloud of red dust. Every kilometer or so we catch a glimpse of a local "tea house," with two or three girls sitting on the stoop. These are farm girls from the poorer northern province who have come south to work as prostitutes for the truck drivers.

We are traveling in Guangdong, one of the richest provinces in China since the country opened to the outside world and began reforming the economy 16 years ago. Qingyuan, an administrative center and crossroads, is situated at the northern limit of this arc of prosperity. A few years ago it was mostly a collection of brick houses hugging the North River. Now office buildings have sprouted on the south side, and the construction brings a profusion of construction cranes and cement mixers that one sees everywhere in the Pearl River Delta.

North of Qingyuan, however, we leave the bustle of Guangdong's special economic zones. The bus pulls off the highway and makes its way along a winding dirt road. In this region a million people still live in poverty. A 1992 survey estimated the annual per capita income here at less than $30.

Soon the lower reaches of the Lingnan mountain range appear. The mountains are mostly made of porous limestone, and their sides are badly scarred from quarrying; the limestone feeds the cement plants that are the main industry here.

The inhabitants scratch out a living by farming in the valleys and midranges. The soil is too poor for rice or cash crops, so the peasants mainly cultivate corn and sweet potatoes. A water buffalo would have considerable trouble turning around in one of the small plots. The villagers eat sweet potatoes, taroroot and, on good days, some rice and vegetables or a slice of chicken.

The bus descends into a valley and we enter Beiwan township, a cluster of two dozen villages. Although Beiwan means "white bay," the community is far from any seacoast. We arrive at the village Protestant church, a structure made of mud and white plaster. A large group of Christians has assembled to greet us. At the head is Chen Gexing, secretary of the local Communist Party. He stands in the courtyard with a big smile, pumping everybody's hand and inviting us into the church.

We are members of churches in Hong Kong who have come as guests of the Guangdong Christian Council to visit the Beiwan school. Founded as a church-run elementary school, it was confiscated by the government shortly after the communist revolution, along with all churches and private schools. Now, for the first time, the authorities want to give a primary school back to a church. The villagers appealed to Christians in Hong Kong for help in repairing and running it.

Many of the 2,500 Beiwan villagers are Christians. They were converted in the early 1930s through the efforts of several Chinese and one foreign evangelist from Qingyuan. The missionaries, who spent several years here, founded a Bible school on one of Hong Kong's outlying islands.

"I was one of the first seven to be baptized in our community," recalls Li Yuansu, spiritual leader of Beiwan's Christians. "By the end of 1936 more than 200 had been baptized, at one time more than 90." Ordained pastors are rare, and only in recent years have schools been turning out trained preachers. Without committed lay leaders, the church would never have survived under the communists.

By the end of the 1940s, there were about 600 Christians in Beiwan. In 1949 the primary school next to the church was taken over and run jointly by the four communes that make up the township. Then followed the Cultural Revolution (Li calls it the "Great Catastrophe")--a time of great hardship. The church was turned into a barn.

In 1979 Wendell Karsen of the Hong Kong Christian Council visited Beiwan. He had a hard time finding a single church. Those he did find had broken windows or were filled with coal. It was dangerous to be known as a Christian or to speak to strangers. "I remember meeting one man who dared to talk with a foreigner," says Karsen. "I told him I was a Christian pastor, and he replied, 'I'm a Christian too. We meet in our homes and whisper the hymns."'

When Beijing adopted a policy of religious toleration in the early 1980s, the government began returning churches, temples and mosques to their previous owners. Beiwan church finally reopened in 1986 and has 350 members now, only 70 of whom converted before the revolution. Many are children. "Now," Li says, "the township government has approached us to see if we can run the school."

The church leaders choose their words carefully. None of them suggest that anything so crude as a confiscation of church property ever took place. For their part, the authorities say they are turning the school over to "private management," as if it were merely another step in the official development of market socialism.

The government is returning the school to the church because it has no choice. Village authorities can't afford to run the school any more. Only about 80 children attend school; the parents of the other 300 children can't afford the $25 annual tuition. Another 180 attend a literacy class run by the church. Local authorities are under pressure to do something. The factories in Qingyuan and further south beckon the underemployed youth of the village, but factories won't hire those who can't read or write. Even in a shoe factory, one of the main businesses of Guangdong Province, illiterate workers can foul things up if they can't stamp the proper labels and sizes on boxes or sew labels rightside up. By returning the school to the church the authorities gain a pipeline into a wealthier community.