Beijing, China
By Brandon and Tyler
Introduction
New York is the city that never sleeps. Having spent time in New York, I (Brandon), can attest that it is true. When I arrived in NYC at 11pm during my Sophomore year of high school i was amazed to find Pizza parlors filled, street vendors hawking their goods, and taxis swarming the streets taking countless individuals to their night time engagements. Yes it is true, New York is the city that never sleeps, but only now am I realizing that far away, on the other side of the world is a country that never sleeps. This country is China. There is never a moment in time when the symphony of city sounds is muffled by the silence of night. Workers driven by the unstoppable force of modernization take their positions on street corners, in skyscrapers, and random roads through the night to finish the jobs as quickly as possible; and the smell of glue, concrete, and freshly cut steel hangs in the air at all times. This is the country that greeted us on the first part of our journey.
Upon arrival in China, our hopes and plans of visiting an orphanage in northeastern China quickly changed due to the H1N1 virus—the orphanage did not want us to come. To the Chinese, every foreigner entering the country is a possible carrier of swine flu. Many foreigners who live here believe the China’s overreaction to swine flu is driven by memory of China’s failure during the SARS epidemic. So where does it leave us? It leaves us in China for three weeks of unplanned freedom.
For three weeks we did things hoped would keeps us busy. We have climbed the great wall, rode bikes around Beijing, saw the Forbidden City, wandered aimlessly through Beijing and Shanghai, and played in the rain in Hong Kong during a Typhoon level 3 warning. We ate chicken feet, fish heads, whole eels, chicken stomach and intestine, octopus balls, liver, and who knows what else.
Rather than give you a day to day account of what we have been up to, we would like to share with you some short anecdotes and reflections that represent some our experiences. The first thing that we would love to share with you is the ways in which we have felt God’s blessing and presence in China. The first story comes from Tyler:
The Flight
“As with most big trips, the first day started with difficulty. After leaving SLO at 2 A.M., I got to the downtown LA greyhound station at 8:00. My planes departure time was set for 11:20, I was on the wrong side of downtown LA, international check in, supposed to be about 2 hours early, whoops. Anyways, I got mixed up in the complex public transit system of Los Angeles.
Finally, after several bus rides and phone calls to my sister, I got to LAX around 10. Not quite good timing, the lines for check in were about an hour long, which would put me at the counter too late to check my baggage (45 minute cut-off to check in before your flight time). So I started to stress out, and pray, usually we wait until we realize we don’t have control to start praying, its funny that we are not conscious of our lack of control over our lives, so when we do realize it we start doing things right, like praying and thinking hard. Anyways, I asked a lady standing at a kiosk near the head of one of the lines, ‘so what happens if I don’t make the cut-off for checking my baggage?’
‘Well you will miss your flight and we put you on the next one, let me see your ticket information.’
I showed her my itinerary and she told me to cut in front of everyone over at the e-ticket check in, and to tell them that Monica had sent me over. People who have waited in a 1-2 hour long line don’t take kindly to being cut in front of by some young kid. So I went back and she escorted me over and had a very nice lady check me in, and I was off to my plane in a few minutes. Things like that don’t happen by chance, Monica didn’t have to help me, at all. But she did. She was the only reason why I was able to make my flight in LAX. God had already started working on my heart, and in my life even at the outset of my travels, while I was still in the States.”
Arrival
A second blessing was God provision for housing. Since we did not really expect to be freelancing in China for 3 weeks, we did not really account for those expenses; as most of you may know, this is a tight budgeted trip. But God provided–God provided the Santana Family. I (Brandon) know the Santana family through meeting Diana Santana during college at Westmont. After telling Dana about the trip, she enthusiastically volunteered to help find some lodging in China. So, after Tyler and I discovered that we were unable to go up to the orphanage, we received an email from Taylor and Corrina, Diana’s brother and sister. Taylor lives in Beijing while Corrina lives in Shanghai. All we can say is that our time there was blessed. We spent three nights with Taylor in Beijing and a week with Corrina and her husband Tom Vansling in Shanghai.
Beijing
Upon arriving at Taylor’s house, we were introduced to a man named Jianguo who was staying with Taylor for a week. Jianguo is a Uyghur from the Xinjiang providence in China. Xinjiang is the part of China that has been in the news recently because of the violence over the last month. This violence is due to riots between the Uyghur people and the Han Chinese. The Uyghurs are an ethnic minority who claim the Xinjiang providence as their homeland; they have a culture and language that is completely apart from that of the Chinese. Rather than looking Chinese, Uyghurs look like they are from the Middle East. Jianguo came to Beijing in order to take the TOEFL test, which is an English test that all Chinese citizens must take if they wish to study abroad in America. After arriving in Beijing, Jianguo was denied a place to stay in every hotel simply because his ID card showed that he is an Uyghur from the Xinjiang providence.
From Jianguo we learned about the horrible racism that occurs within China and why he hates the Chinese so much. Since moving on from Beijing we tried to email Jianguo to hear how his test went, but we recently learned that all email in the Xinjiang province is blocked by the government to try to control the media coverage.
On Communism
The People’s Republic of China’s action of blocking all email to Xinjiang is among one of the many ways that we felt communism. The first tastes of communism that we felt upon arrival occurred when we jumped on the internet. Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs are all blocked by the government. After the Chinese government noted the key role those three sites played in the information distribution in Iran during the election riots, they decided that the best way to avoid that from happening in China was to block the sites. Aside from the internet, Communism can be felt when traveling. During our train ride from Beijing to Nanjing, Nanjing to Shanghai, and Shanghai to Hong Kong, effects from the cultural revolution are seen in the smaller villages and on the outskirts of the bigger towns–these effects are seen in the massive cookie cutter style housing complexes that the government built for the people. The buildings commonly dwarf the rest of the town, shooting up 20 or 30 stories. There will usually be three or four in a group, sometimes only one or two are complete, but they all look exactly the same. Work never seems to stop in the construction sites of China; once one shift of workers sets down their tools another one rolls in to work through the night. This mindset of constant progress and massive public works projects is ever present in China. As mentioned in the intro, the whole of China is constantly undergoing massive public works projects. In Shanghai, the city is preparing for the world expo, ripping down old housing to make way for the brand new subway lines or exhibition halls. Lastly, we felt communism in the absence of old churches though we did see a few.
The Christian Church in China
Market in downtown Shanghai
Despite the fact that there was an absence of Church buildings in China, we did feel Christianity at every turn. As mentioned above, the first way in which we felt Christianity was through the hospitality of other Christian’s abroad, but we also felt Christianity in China as we learned about the Churches of China. Prior to our visit to China our view of Christianity was limited to underground churches and using code words to speak about God, Christ, and anything relating to Salvation. But, our view on this subject quickly expanded. Our first lesson came from a man named Mr. Pegonanni. During one of our days in Shanghai we decided to spend the day in People’s Park reading and hanging out. After around thirty minutes, we were greeted by a small Chinese man sporting a pink shirt and a big white smile. He invited us to grab a drink because he loved practicing his English. Though we were a bit hesitant–for safety sake–we accepted.
We talked to Mr. Pegonanni for six hours in an underground coffee shop. Our conversation ranged from singing Christmas carols, which he knew a lot of and loved to sing, to discussing his experiences during the Cultural Revolution while growing up and his numerous encounters with Christian ministries. We were a bit surprised with the openness that he shared his thoughts on Christianity. He has been witnessed to multiple times and owns quite a few Bibles himself. He admires many values that Christians bring to China; unfortunately, we did not get the impression that he was a practicing Christian.
Later that night we conversed with Tom Vansling, Corrina’s husband about the Church in China. The state Christian church in China is called the Three Self Church. Back during the time when communism was gaining strength, the leaders of the three self church saw what was coming and decided the best way to continue the gospel in China was to submit to the party’s authority. While the Three Self Church is technically under the communist party, if we were to visit the church it would feel, smell, and taste just like any church in the state with one exception; the Three Self Church cannot use the Bible to speak out against the practices of the communist party. While there is the state church in China, there is also the presence of underground churches in China. From Toms’ point of view, these underground churches may be more vital in the inner province of China were there is not as much western influence. Tom has a few friends who led some underground churches and as long as they are not drawing too much attention to themselves by making a lot of noise or meeting more than three times a week, the local authorities are usually okay with the meetings. One of Tom’s friends actually had the local police call and ask the house church to not meet four times a week because it drew too much attention to the church. We wish that we had the opportunity to speak with some missionaries from the inner provinces to hear a different perspective.
Perhaps the best taste of Christianity that we received came when we visited Tom and Corrina’s home church, Shanghai Christian Fellowship (SCF). SCF is a big, non-denominational, and international church located in the French Quarter of Shanghai. Having been on the road for a few weeks, it was so refreshing to experience worship through song with a huge body of believers. Looking out over the faces of the congregation we could see people from India, Europe, other parts of Asia, and the Middle East. It was a strange phenomenon to see so many different ethnicities worshiping in the same place. Despite the fact that some people did could not fully understand English and stood during worship, we believe we experienced a slight bit of what heavenly worship will be like one day. Since the experience of worshiping in a big Church in China clashed with our previous conceptions of Christianity we had to keep reminding ourselves “you’re in China, this is special.” Initial impressions before arriving in China began to give way to the reality of the situation—grateful to have been able to live that experience and to relate it to others. Unfortunately, people with a Chinese passport cannot attend SCF, they even check passports at the door sometimes. I guess that is another interesting aspect of church in China, they split up the foreign Christians and the Chinese Christians.
In the Shanghai Metro
Later in that evening we went to a place called the Restoration house. It is a small center where homeless migrant workers can go to get a shower, do laundry, and be loved. We met a guy from Texas named Jimmy who has helped develop the ministry there, and he took some time to explain to us the purpose, plan, and goals of the restoration house. He enjoys connecting with the guys that come in, sitting down with them inside the small front room around a table and chatting over Chinese tea. Eventually, he hopes to expand the services offered to include job placement. By meeting basic needs they are able to develop connections with the men they serve, showing them the Love of Christ. Most volunteers that work there are local Chinese Christians. We chatted with a young girl who was queuing up the guys for showers, she handles the paperwork that allows them to keep track of the regular’s usage, and progress. She talked about her work at the center, and told us that she attended a local Chinese Three Self Church with no complaints about the authenticity of the service.
With our friend, Xue, in Shangai
Another wonderful connection we made in China was with a nice young Chinese girl who is good friends with Tom and Corrina. She treated us to some authentic home cooked Chinese meals, which included trips to the local wet market to purchase the eel, fish head, and vegetables. Praying before meals and discussing Christianity with her over fried eel and fish head soup we felt like we developed a deeper connection with Christianity in China and developed the toughness of our bellies.
Well, if you did read all of that we applaud you. Thank you so much for keeping us in your prayers and supporting us.
Here are a few more prayer requests:
• Pray for Jianguo as he tries to find a job and work through the discrimination that he faces
• Pray us as we travel to Indonesia tomorrow to work on the land mass of Papua
• Pray that we would continue to be patient with one another
• Pray that we would continue to be challenged in the ways in which we approach global concepts
God Bless!
Brandon and Tyler
***Please note names may have been changed in this blog post***
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