海龟浮上海面

Christmas to many Chinese is seen more as a whistle blowing signal indicating that the year is coming almost to a close than a symbol of Christianity. This sentiment is further manipulated by local retailors' significant price-drop of their off-seasoned produce, hence is being directed into a "holy" shopping spree.

But it is certainly not for the growing number of local Christians.

Since late 1970s, following the central rulers' adoption to a more pragmatic approach to run their country, there's no question that religion has made a strong comeback. Protestantism and Catholicism have rebounded.

Even by officially released figures, about 5 million Catholics pray in nearly 5,000 officially registered venues. Protestants are said officially to number around 16-17 million. Researchers suggest the real figure is more likely to be around 50-70 million, and Catholics about 12 million. The add-up unfortunately exceeds the total number of communist members.

However, Catholicism in China is a paradox, because it is allowed only in China's appointed churches, but allegiance to the Pope is not. Beijing severed relations with the Vatican soon after 1949. The Vatican and Beijing appoint rival bishops to their rival churches.

Thus, to a larger extent than Chinese believers of most other religions, Catholics have formed underground churches. But it seems that regardless of Beijing's attitude, the floodgates to religion have opened and Chinese people are embracing Christianity. And, with the doors to China open, it is not easy to control the details.

The entire structure of the church in China, which is smothered by state-run organizations like the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the Three-Self Church (San Zi Jiao Hui) is the real sticking point between Beijing and the Vatican, which has operated from a base in Taiwan since its church leaders were expelled from China in 1951.

Through a series of quiet contacts, Beijing has insisted on two things: Vatican recognition of the People's Republic of China, instead of Taiwan and non-interference in China's internal affairs.

The first point seems less volatile, as many believe the Pope is eager to add a China visit to his legacy. The question of control, or allegiance, is more complicated.

It really doesn't matter to most in China what happens between the Vatican and Beijing. Official or unofficial, they pray to the same God.

Merry X'mas to you, ALL!


Further Reading:

1. Three-Self Patriotic Movement
   
2. An Amazing Tale of Christianity in China
   
3. The East is Praying
   
4. Christians: Worshipers in a Dark Place
5. Chinese Churches Face Challenges of Growth
   
6. Bold Congregations Risk Official Wrath
   
7. Catholics in China, the unofficial story (Update: Jan 8)
   
8. Marxism and Religion: Opiate of the People? (Update: Jan 9)

I've met with Mister President at a crossroads one late evening.

It's a misty night. I saw him staring at a crow who stayed tranquilly up on a lamppost and stared him back. The scene's like an expressionist painting on canvas - a black crow's witnessing a lonely soul who's saying a prayer in a gloomy pebble alley.

The bird has shit on him. I clearly saw a flake of succus lying on his right shoulder when I came close to him. I offered him my handkerchief. That's how we got to know each other.

He bought me some drinks that night in the city's red-light district. I introduced a couple of friends to him in return. They became very closely acquainted afterwards. Mister President told me sometime later that they have helped open his eyes.

That night, we talked causally outside a bar. People were pouring out from the inside spreading unevenly on the pedestrian walkway. We're in the middle of a collective ritual - warming concurrently the glass or bottle in our hands.

He told me he's stuck in a dilemma. He just couldn't simply replace all corrupted managers. Afterall, they've helped to optimize the business structure of his Corporation. They're important contributors to the group's prosperity, and still are.

However, structural change has given rise to new interest groups. There's no immediate steelyard to balance things out. He's desperate in need of innovative inputs as to create a new mechanism that could accommodate all sort of interests.

He complained that it's really difficult to run an enterprise during a transitional period.

I got nothing to offer him but listen. While we're running dry in our conversation, a friend joined in.

He's a revolutionary by profession. He's just back from Africa. He said that the working classes have lost their class consciousness. Most of them found to be materialists and conformists. Mister President was enlightened by his sermonette.

Later on, another friend inserted himself into the conversation. He's a French (or Algerian) philosophical activist or millitant philospher who strangled his wife to death not long ago. He wasn't tried and is still under psychological treatment.

I soon found myself wordless in the quartet and quietly pulled out. I've emptied my stomach besides the same lamppost before heading home.

About a month later, I heard that my two arm's length friends have joined Mister President's group as non-executive directors. They've made a lot of noise in the media.

Up till now, Mister President still owes me a handkerchief.

It was a chance of meeting with a female friend I have not seen for years. I had forgotten her. Yet, here we are chatting. In such encounters it is inevitable the conversation runs dry. There is nothing left to talk about. Then she mentioned times while we jog somewhere sometimes ago. I have wonderful memories then, but I almost skip that part.

There is so much we forgot, packed away in the rush to adulthood and responsibilities. We were friends once, but now have little in common. Yet there were those sunshine days she recalled. Both of us remembered the laughs and faded memories still vivid and treasured.

Most of the time, I still feel like a teenager with the actuality of being in my early twenties. It is a complexity of feeling while recalling my childhood, the sunshine, the breezee, those grass-green mountains, those wishy-washy happiness and clueless melancholy.

How could it be without noticing that my younghood is taken away?

We were born to die. We die a little bit of ourselves everyday. Writing blog seems like writing one's will. I suddenly find a meaning for it.

Have you bumped into an old friend and recalled a piece of your nearly forgotten went-by lately?

Write it down before you forget.

A foreigner devoted to the Chinese revolution was jailed twice by Stalin and Mao respectively. The following is what he recalled during his last 'visit' in the Qincheng prison some thirty years ago.

"The time I did was all solitary. Solitary time is different. The first year, with no light, I stopped worrying about whether I would be shot. That was not the issue; my sanity was the issue. You ask the most basic questions: Has your life mattered? What is happiness, opposed to mere animal pleasures?

"To survive you need a clear purpose. If your life is aimless, you won't survive solitary darkness. You have to train yourself. There are a whole series of little battles to fight and win. At one point something unusual happened which I can't stop thinking about even 30 years later.

"Getting out seemed like a less than 50-50 chance. I wasn't allowed to speak. I started to feel that if I ever did get out I would never be normal. I felt despair, betrayal by ... the communists I had given so much to. But ... a little voice startled me. It asked me when I began to feel such fear? Finally I realized there was no one point when the fear began. I felt it but could not say precisely why or when. The minute I saw this the fear went away. I began to wonder, where does this voice come from?

"I have begun to feel there is some moral nature in man, and that at some deep level this moral element performs a kind of Google function - to find more resources inside us.

"For example, I remembered clearly a poem by Edwin Markham that my aunt and sister had me read when I was sick back in South Carolina, and that helped me:

He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!

"One morning across the prison courtyard, I heard the dulcet tones of Jiang Qing [Mao's wife, Gang of Four leader, and main perpetuator of the Cultural Revolution]. I heard her voice and I was very happy. I knew that if she is coming in - then I am soon going out."

Chen Duxiu, - the first party secretary of the Chinese Communist Party - after his release from the Beijing warload's prison in the early 1920s, said that there were two places that one could realize the truth of humanity, one was at research studio, another was at prison. The best case scenario would be to experience both.

In the course of China's capitalist transition, many Chinese may have lost their souls, but this Chinese senior citizen doesn't, even after years of imprisoment. He is An American Who Lived the History of Mao's Rise and Fall.

I've met with a peasant friend yesterday. He lives in the outskirts of Beijing, about an hour drive from downtown. He considers himself pretty well-off. He has quite recently built a second floor on top of his old house. It is a normal practice in his neighbourhood. They use to incrementally build up their home whilst they have extra cash. The additional floor is for his youngest son, who has just passed his seven years old birthday. We had a wonderful party with a lot of Laowais at his son's brithday-gift floor a week ago.

He grows Chinese cabbages (or celery
cabbages). He has a good harvest this year because of apropos weather. His cabbages grew beautifully both in shape and in size. But he might not be well-off this time. Comparing to last year, his cabbages' retail price drops from 60 cents (RMB) to 16 cents per kilo because of over supply. Early this year, the countryside of Beijing had added an additional 80,000 mu (1 mu=667 sq.m.) of land for cabbage plantation.

Most of the households in Beijing use to store a lot of cabbages during winter time. The storage lasts until next April. I wish they could eat more this winter.

While I was sitting with him in the courtyard, he asked if I had time to go with him to Pingding Shan, a city in Henan province two days later. He said he could get a better price there. He had previousely made a dozen of calls. He knows that I like travelling and am now roving and doing nothing in the city. He needs a free co-driver.

I have asked his opinion about blessedness, while he drove me back to the city center with his pickup. He said while he was hungry and I was eating a bowl of noddles, then I was blessed. Or, while he had a loose bowels and I was engaging the only hole in the toilet, then he was not blessed. And, if he could lay off all those damned cabbages, then he was blessed. He said it was not about money, but his responsibilty to the cabbages. He has to find homes for them.

That night, we had a lot of beers in my dormi.

Update: All cabbages were dumped at a price of 12 cents per kilo to a local distributor. He said it was a silly idea to go to PDS.