China Part II

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July 9th, the feast of Sts. Augustine Zhao Rong and companions. These are Chinese martyrs who died in the past 150 years or so. This includes those who died during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976. Mao Zedong is believed to be the biggest force behind the Revolution. He wanted to eradicate anything and all things that were seen as threats to the Communist party. This included all religions. So many Christians were martyred during these years. We visited the graves of 14 Christian martyrs from the rural parish we were staying at. Seven priests and Seven sisters were martyred for their belief in the Christian God. It was special to be able to pray at the graves of these Chinese martyrs on the day that the Church recognizes the Chinese saint martyrs.

That evening we took the bus from Shenyang to Changchun. There we met Fr. Li who is the Diocesan administrator for the diocese of Jilin. There bishop died a year ago and they are now finally preparing to elect another. Remember that in China the official Church elects there bishops and hopefully they are faithful to Rome and ask to be recognized by the Holy See. Fr. Li studied in Rome so we communicated to him in Italian. Its crazy to think that we would be speaking in Italian in China, that that would be our language of communication, but there were about four priests total who studied in Rome so we communicated in Italian because they knew very little English and we knew no Chinese.

The following morning, July 10th, we took the bus to Yanji where we spent three nights with Fr. Tom Egan who is a retired Maryknoll priest from Pennsylvania. He is in Yanji because they have a large number of Koreans living there and he spent 14 years in Korea as a pastor. He teaches English now unofficially and has a few bible studies and covers the local parishes every once in awhile. He his technically a tourist and has to "tag up" every three months. This means he just has to go through immigration and then he is allowed to go back in. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you ask me. During our time in Yanji we visited the parish there and and a number of parishes in the area. Almost every parish offers masses in both Chinese and Korean. We also had the opportunity to go to the North Korean and Russian borders. There is a spot close to the Sea of Japan where China, Russia, and North Korea meet. It was quite remarkable to see three of the most isolated countries in the world at once like that. There is very little traffic back and forth from China to North Korea. China puts forth great effort to ensure that North Koreans are not sneaking across the border into China. For most of the border between the two countries, it is the Tumen River which separates the two.

Again the priests in this area were so generous. One priest, who had a van drove us all around the area, showing us the various parishes and was the one who took us to the border.

Also, during our time in Yanji, we visited the Yanbian Hospice. It is run by St. John of God brothers. This is a good example of how the Church works with the Government. The Government owns the land, they own all the land in China, and the people lease it. Therefore, they can take it back whenever. The St. John of God community paid for the construction of the hospice and pay for its operations. They are not allowed to do anything religious related. No prayers with the patients, no crucifixes in the rooms. If one of the patients is Catholic, they have to have an outside priest come and anoint the patient. The craziest thing is that the communist party appoints some doctor from their party to be in charge. Now, this communist doctor like the heads of all other sorts of organizations doesn't do much at all. In fact, he rarely comes around. But his job is to check on things and make sure that they aren't doing anything they aren't supposed to. So this means that the hospice must have their own doctor who actually does work around there. These doctors are considered co-presidents of the hospice. The worst part is that the brothers are forced to pay for this communist party doctor to be the overseer of their work. This is one of the ways that the party keeps control of things. They do the same thing with schools. The school will have an active principle who actually cares about the school and the kids and they will be forced to pay for another principle from the communist party who has control and veto power over the operations of the place.

On July 12th, we went back to Jilin City where we were to fly out in the morning back to Hong Kong. Life was much different in Northern China. It was much cooler, 70's and the sun rose much earlier as I pointed out in my previous post.

So on July 13th, we arrived back in Hong Kong where we briefly said hi to Martin and Jun, the other NAC seminarians who were basically switching places with us. They were going North and we are going to spend time in the southern part of China and Taiwan.

Our time in North East China was great. Fengxiang was our photographer while we were in Beijing. She is Wongwei's friend. She was always taking pictures. I am grateful to her for helping me rember the time through her photos. Wongwei, (Wrong Way! haha) Fr. Brian Barrons' secretary was so good to us. She is fluent in both Chinese and English and she knew everywhere to go and what to do. I couldn't imagine a better way to travel China. She got us everywhere we needed to be. We were so blessed. So I am so very grateful to her.


Praise God!