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Reflections on a Wandering Life.....

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Undercover Missionaries Revisited 

Got an email from a university professor in the United States who read my post responding to the article in the Global Times by Eric Fish.

I don't have comments open on my blog, mainly, I guess, because I am afraid it would take a lot of time to monitor comments, and because most comments I read on the Internet seem to be rather mindless and trivial. But Carolyn's email was informative and fair, so with her permission, I am going to put her comments here:
Thanks for your interesting blog; I got caught up in it after reading your review of Mao's Last Dancer.

I read quickly so forgive if I haven't quite gotten your Eric Fish point. i just want to leave a quick message about a memory from my time teaching English at Renda in 1993.

In the "Foreign Expert" building where many of us teachers lived, we had at least two and probably more who were teaching as well as holding evening parties for their students . I knew and enjoyed talking to the (very pleasant) woman most known for her parties. The parties had Christian themes, and three or four of our mutual students often attended. One of my homesick students found the message of Christian hope comforting to her life and was drawn to the parties. I don't remember too much about how other students reacted to those evenings, but I do remember that they considered the talk to be overtly aimed toward religious persuasion and that they believed the government would not approve of these sessions.

And actually, a younger colleague of that woman disappeared from our building (and from his class), so students claimed, having been sent home from China. The conviction among them was that the government had probably known about the "subterfuge" of the ostensibly fun parties (held, obviously by some of those hired to teach English), and that the young man had been kicked out of the country on a trumped-up charge but actually for being an underground religious proselytizer.

Now, backwards to be sure, I'll reread your blog.

Carolyn Ericksen Hill
Thanks, Carolyn

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