It was a surprise to me to learn that one of my ‘foreign editor’ colleagues was a Franciscan brother, on a long leash from what he called his ‘mother house’ in Maine. I was even more surprised to learn that there was both a Catholic and a Protestant Church in such a remote Chinese city. I hadn’t realised that western religions were tolerated, but fact there are more than 12,000 church buildings open for public worship and some 25,000 groups of Protestant Christians meet in private homes.

From an early age I found churches fascinating, so it was of my own accord that I slipped into the dim, incense-fragrant porch of ‘English Martyrs’ and kissed the foot of Jesus on Ash Wednesdays, appreciated the story-telling and stick-in pictures at Emanuel Sunday school and joined in the hymns at Moor Park Methodists. My favourite of all was the Monday night children’s’ service at the Shepherd Street mission, sitting on a bench and flinging my arms as I did the actions to ‘Deep and Wide’. I had collected quite a few attendance-prize books by the time I was twelve.


Since my childhood fervour had waned I was not a churchgoer, except for carol concerts. A weekly church service, I decided, might be an interesting way to meet local people as well as improving my Chinese. Three months into my stay in Tonghua, I was beginning to despair of ever getting a Chinese tutor. It was a secular motive, but I also looked forward to hearing hymns whose tunes, if not words, were familiar to me from childhood.

Joseph pointed out the Protestant church to me on one of our weekly trips to the shops. It was at the bottom of a shabby side street near the smelly public convenience in the main shopping street leading off from a canal-side walkway. The tall concrete façade had a steep roof topped with a cross. The street itself was lined with shabby old two-storey dwellings with rusty balustrades and at the bottom, towards the church; peasants were selling vegetables from carts attached to bicycles. Some old people were sitting around on kerbs, smoking and gossiping or playing a kind of chess with stones and lines marked in the pavement. ‘Your fellow-worshippers,’ said Joseph, laughing. For a very generous and kind-hearted man, he sometimes had a caustic tongue.

On the first Sunday I arrived late - it had begun to snow as I left the company house on the outskirts of town and I went back for an umbrella. I was practically shoehorned into a pew by one of the middle-aged lady ushers, the church already full to bursting and the service about to begin. Lusty hymn-singing was already under way, choir and congregation joining in. A lively Chinese woman in a yellow smock and red tie with a swinging pony-tail alternately waved her hands, nodding and smiling, over choir and congregation. They didn’t need encouragement – the noise was loud and enthusiastic, Chinese words to a familiar tune which I identified as ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’. Considering the thin layer of snow that was settling outside, it didn’t seem very appropriate.

I was astonished to see there were about three hundred people of all ages - all, as far as I could see, Chinese, as were the officiators on the platform at the front .The church was plain with white walls and pews made of light-coloured wood. The Chinese characters for ‘Love’ and ‘Peace’ were painted the wall behind a simple altar that was really no more than a wooden table with a white cloth and a two-foot high gold cross. Two men in long robes were sitting on high-backed chairs at either side. I could see all this, although I was behind a pillar and had what in the theatre would be termed ‘a partially obscured view’. This didn’t seem to bother my neighbours, who sang lustily, only pausing to chide fidgety children. One in front of me, in a traditional red silk jacket with a mandarin collar turned round and then shrank aghast into his mother’s side, until she nudged him and whispered reassurance before glancing apologetically at me.

I was pleased it was crowded because it meant I had been able to slip in relatively unobserved. I still had uncomfortable memories of attending a Chinese Opera performance in Shanghai where I had a third row seat and everyone in the front two rows turned round to stare, and continued to stare, until the performance started.

Looking around, I noticed the most obvious difference between this congregation and ones I remembered from my childhood, apart from the lusty voices, was the dress code. All wore clean jackets and coats, but they were of the everyday kind, made of thick cloth or quilted, ski-jacket style, no hint of ‘Sunday best’. Only the children and teenagers wore new clothes. Men’s hair was slicked down, unless it were of the untamable bottle-brush texture, sticking straight out, that was common in Tonghua.

I was disappointed not to have a hymn book and a prayer book. The service seemed to be very interactive and would have been a very good opportunity for me to practise my Chinese by joining in with the rest. I was saved by my neighbours in the pew on either side, two elderly women who were very keen to share and point out the places for me when the gospel reading began.

The audience had no problems with staying alert during the sermon, especially those at the front, because the vicar would expound in a loud voice, make a dramatic pause, and suddenly bark out a question, to which he expected a shouted ‘Dui!’(Yes) or ‘Bu dui!’(No) answer. I think his text was ‘The Good Samaritan’, as I recognized words like ‘clothes’, ‘road-side’ and ‘neighbour’. He really thundered at them if they got the answer wrong:

‘Was the priest right to cross on the other side?’ he suddenly shouted. After a pause came a hesitant, ‘Ye-es!’.
‘BU DUI!’ the vicar yelled at them, slapping his hand on the lectern,
and they repeated after him, ‘Bu dui!’ as if that is what they had really meant all along.

Despite all the shouting, towards the end of the sermon the people around me at the back became restive and one young man in the pew directly in front was holding his mobile phone to his ear. Some one on my right fell asleep. It’s a good thing we were well hidden from view behind the pillar. Next time I should arrive early enough to get a seat in the central part of the church, plus a bible and hymn book.

After the sermon the vicar stood behind a lectern and began to open envelopes, each of which contained a piece of paper and bank notes. The papers requested prayers or gave thanks for benefits to named individuals and, I suppose, took the place of a collection. The service ended with a communal prayer session. The vicar invited the congregation to stand and express their individual thanks and prayers, which they did with some fervour and speed, the noise of individually muttered prayers rising to a crescendo, until he brought it all to a close by starting to sing, using a microphone. Of course, this is already a bit emotional for me, as I had been remembering my family and friends at home in England. ‘Auld Lang Syne’ sung by the vicar, even in Chinese, was the last straw and I was soon looking for tissues in my bag.

When I left the church, I was directed to an upstairs room where I bought a bible and hymn book at what seemed a very reasonable rate. In true Chinese fashion, the friendly sales woman in charge of the bookstall persuaded me to buy a slightly larger hymnbook than I intended pointing out that the print was ‘da de dou’ – much larger.

Earlier, clapping to a chant of ‘Xie-xie, xie-xie, Jesu’ (Thank you, thank you, Jesus’) whilst the clergy filed out, it seemed to me that the Tonghua service was more akin to the Shepherd Street Mission meetings of my childhood than the staid proceedings of most English churchgoing. Certainly English vicars could have learned a lot from their Tonghua counterpart about how liven up a sermon.