China Experience

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CHINA

JUNE – DECEMBER 2016

The Oblate Community and English Classes in Beijing I have just returned from staying for six months in Beijing with a community of Oblate Priests (OMI) who occupy two apartments in four story blocks. The community consists of an Italian - Giovanni, a Mauritian of Chinese parentage - Luc, and a young Madagascan - Johnnie. They made me very welcome.

Before getting my visa I had to write a statement saying I wouldn’t engage in religious activity. As a result we kept a low profile not acknowledging we were priests to strangers. My main activity was giving one to one classes to eight children aged between nine and fifteen and two adults.

Most of them were very keen to learn English arriving early for class and wanting to stay beyond the allotted time. Because of the one child policy only one of the eight children I taught had a sibling. Until recently those who had more than one child were heavily fined. The lessons were supervised by a Chinese lady called, Sunny. Born in 1963 she told me that between 1966 and 1976, the period of the Cultural Revolution, the only schooling she got was to learn quotations from The Thoughts of Chairman Mao. Later however she worked for Siemens in Germany.

My students: Butterfly↑

Sabrina↑

Sunny with Fr. Giovanni holding the company logo.

I was also helping three religious Sisters: Chinese, Italian and Argentinean improve their English. In October Giovanni asked me to give some lessons to a young Chinese man who wishes to join the Oblates. It was a very interesting experience for me especially during my visits to other cities outside Beijing.

A Trip with Handicapped Orphan Children to Shanghai In the housing estate there were six Catholic couples who were fostering handicapped children.

Because of their physical or mental conditions these children were abandoned by their parents soon after birth. In July the Oblates hired a bus to take these families to Shanghai, about twenty hours drive away. I decided to go with them. I wasn’t looking forward to the experience as I expected the children to be complaining throughout the journey and, as several of them were incontinent, I expected there to be an awful smell.

In the event they were very well behaved and there was no smell at all.

The trip turned out to be great fun. In Shanghai we visited the Sheshen shrine on top of a hill.

I was very impressed by the way the older more able boys carried the others up the many steps to the shrine itself.

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With one of the foster families, Johnnie and Marie, an Australian lady, at the Sheshen shrine. The “father”, sitting at the front, is also in a wheel chair, a victim of polio as a child. ←

We also took a boat trip on the Huangpu River. For that trip I was asked to look after an eight year old boy with a missing nostril, Lung Lung . Despite his deformity he was full of self confidence. To such an extent that I felt that Lung Lung was in practice looking after me!

From Shanghai we also visited two other cities Suzhou and Hangzhou before returning to Beijing .

Xian and Zhozhi In September I visited Xian where the ancient capital of China Chang’an was situated. It is famous for its Terra Cotta warriors. They are three thousand life sized models of soldiers produced and placed there to guard the tomb of the first Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi. That emperor died in 210 B.C. Peasants digging a well discovered these soldiers in 1974. .

We also visited a Marian Shrine near Xian. It is in a very prominent situation overlooking the plain where Xian is situated and with a range of mountains behind. A great deal of building work was going on as they were in the process of building a large hostel behind the church to provide accommodation for pilgrims. ← While in the area we visited the house of the Bishop Joseph Wu Quinjing. He made us very welcome providing us with coffee and fruit. He spoke English well because as a priest he had studied in America for five years. After returning to China the Vatican appointed him Bishop of Zhozhi, a neighbouring diocese to Xian, but he did not get government approval. He was ordained secretly in 2005. The government found out about his ordination the following year and he was put under house arrest. He remained in such a situation for nine years. He was allowed to take up full pastoral ministry in his diocese again only last year. He asked us to pray for him and his diocese several times.

While in Xian, for three nights, we stayed in the apartment of the parents of a girl who had had what is called, “a crisis pregnancy”. She had fallen pregnant outside marriage but did not want to have an abortion. She went to a home for helping such women run by an American and two Korean Good Shepherd Sisters here in Beijing. After birth her baby was taken for adoption. I, a Singaporean lady and one of the Korean Sisters, stayed in the apartment illegally as foreigners are not supposed to stay in Chinese homes without police permission.

Handan In October I visited another city in an area where the Catholic Church is strong called, Handan

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A very small lady called Joy, aged thirty, staying in this estate, but from Handan, came with me acting as my guide and interpreter. While there everything was provided for by the local diocese including transport and accommodation for three of the four nights in a posh hotel. When we arrived I jokingly introduced Joy to the priest, who met us at the station saying, “This is my little daughter. She is very small but she will grow.”

We visited Joy’s family home. It was a large house in a country village very different from where we stay in Beijing. Her parents, devout Catholics, made me very welcome. Despite the one child policy they had had four children, all girls.

With my little daughter ↑ Joy

With Joy her parents, one of her sisters and the sister’s children. →

Handan has two bishops. One of them is Bishop Joseph now aged ninety six. As a priest during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) he was imprisoned and tortured. However in 1996 the Vatican, with government approval, appointed him Bishop of Handan. More recently the Vatican appointed a younger man bishop but without government approval. He was ordained secretly. The priests then tried to organise a public welcoming for him to the diocese. The government then sent the army to surround the village where the ceremony was to take place to prevent people from elsewhere attending. The young bishop is still free but he cannot represent the diocese or function as a bishop on official occasions. The ordination ceremony of two transitory deacons was held while I was there. The young bishop was not allowed to do it.

Instead the Vicar General presided at Mass and preached while the old bishop sat behind the altar dressed in his full episcopal regalia. Two priests physically brought him forward to read out the words of the Rite of Ordination. His voice was so indistinct that Joy said she couldn’t hear what he was saying. After Mass a priest introduced him to me. I thought he was speaking to me in Chinese but the priest pointed out that he was actually speaking in Latin!

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A few weeks after I visited Handan the same old bishop ordained several priests.

This is a photo of the congregation at that ordination here in Communist China. �

I had quite a long talk with the Vicar General who asked me to speak to about thirty priests who had attended the ordination about my Society, the Mill Hill Missionaries and Missionary work. During my talk I compared the situation when Herbert Vaughan founded Mill Hill, one hundred and fifty years ago, to the situation with regards to China today as well as the ecclesiastical situation in Britain then and the ecclesiastical situation in China today. In 1867 Britain was a super power from which many people were going overseas to do business or trade. The same situation pertains to China today. At that time the Church in Britain was emerging from a period of persecution. Today the Church in China, we hope, is emerging from a period of persecution.

With government approval, even though it took a long time to acquire, they are building a big new cathedral, bishop’s house and diocesan offices.

They hope to open it in 2018. � Design for new Handan cathedral.

Handan is a city of about three million people. There is even a tourist site which we visited, an ancient castle in its central park. However during the four days I was there, except for a Polish priest giving a course to a community of Sisters, I did not see a single foreigner (nonChinese) anywhere.

A Complex Situation.

Before I came to China I got the impression, from reading Catholic periodicals, that there were two Catholic Churches in China. One was the Underground Church where the bishops are approved by the Vatican and not by the government. The other was the schismatic Patriotic Church where the bishops are approved by the government and not by the Vatican. I read that in the Underground Church priests celebrate Masses in secret in Catholic homes; while the Patriotic Church controls the church buildings where its priests celebrate public Masses. Since I have been here I have come to realise that things are infinitely more complex than that. The above description is an oversimplification of the real situation. As far as I know all the priests and bishops I have met technically belong to the Patriotic Church.

However, many of them have studied at Catholic institutions overseas. Though it is true that some of their bishops are approved by the government and not by the Vatican, others are approved by the Vatican and not by the government. The Bishop of Beijing, as are many

5 others, is approved by both. Foreign Catholic priests celebrate Masses in English and Italian in his cathedral.

Our Situation as Foreign Priests.

In this community in Beijing the foreign priests behaved more like the Underground Church.

There were four apartments where we celebrated daily Mass in English on a rotational basis.

Fr. Luc was getting a bit worried as, even though we were legally allowed to say Mass for foreigners, quite a number of local Chinese were also attending. It is illegal for us to have religious celebrations with Chinese nationals.

If you know anyone interested in spending six months in China helping with English teaching please let me know. Or contact Fr. Giovanni Zevola directly at: gzevola@hotmail.com. The best time to arrive would be either mid-February or mid-August. The Oblates provide food and accommodation but do not pay the air fare unless the applicant is a qualified teacher.

As well as one to one classes which I was teaching, other volunteers were giving evening classes to children in groups. There were also activities for children and youth at a centre in a more traditional Chinese village where most of the inhabitants were migrants from other parts of China.

John Melhuish