February 6, 2008

China Notes 21

Dear Friends,

As you have no doubt seen on the news, this has been an unusually cold and difficult winter here in China. While we have seen unprecedented snow in the region around Nanjing were we live, the bigger problem is in southern inland provinces like Hunan and Guizhou, where weeks of freezing rain have shut down roads, closed airports and train stations, and downed power lines. While the government is going all out to deal with the problems, and the weather has now improved in at least some of the affected areas, some areas are still cut off from supplies and power.

We saw the problems in Guizhou firsthand because Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, happened to be the site for the 2008 Amity Teacher conference, which Wei Hong and I attended on behalf of the PC(USA). Originally, the conference was to have included visits to rural development projects, but even before we arrived in Guizhou many of the highways and other roads had been shut down because freezing rain made travel too dangerous, and eventually the project visits simply had to be cancelled.

Despite the slick roads, however, we were able to find a taxi driver willing to drive us out to the Bible school—officially called the Guizhou Christian Theology Course—about 10 kilometers outside Guiyang. There we received a warm welcome (albeit in a rather cold room) from faculty members Wang Yiru, Ning Zaiqun, and Mr. Yang. Long-time readers of China Notes may remember that we visited and wrote about this school in 2004. By way of a quick review, this school began in 1993 as a training course set up in the rural prefecture of Liu Pan Shui by the Rev. Tang Rongtao, who is both a doctor and a pastor, and financed from the proceeds of his clinic. In 2003, the school moved into a new building outside Guiyang (built partly with financial assistance from Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, who have been especially active in support of the church in Guizhou).

The school offers a three-year program, and also has a one-year preparatory course for prospective students who need additional study before applying for admission to the program. The school takes in one class of 30 students a year, so there are usually about 90 students in the regular program, as well as approximately 35 more in the preparatory program.

Most students are from poor rural areas, and many have only had a junior high school education before entering the program. Most are also quite poor, and upon graduation they will serve in villages where churches cannot afford to pay them a salary. (Rural church workers in Guizhou often support themselves financially by farming or taking other jobs.) The school does not charge tuition, but it still costs each student approximately 1,600 yuan (about $215) a year for food and other expenses.

Guizhou is a province with a large ethnic minority population (i.e. non-Han Chinese), so it comes as no surprise that most of the school’s students come from ethnic minority backgrounds. About 70 percent of the students are Miao (Hmong), but there are also students from Yi, Buyi, Bai, and Han backgrounds. There are currently 12 teachers at the seminary, all of whom are graduates of theological schools in China (although only five have the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree). Most of the teachers are either Han Chinese or Miao.

The school is still officially considered a training course, but continues its efforts to be “promoted” to the status of Guizhou Bible School. In order to be promoted, and more generally improve the quality of its program, one challenge the school faces is improving the educational backgrounds of its faculty; another is increasing the size of its library holdings. (Wei Hong is currently in conversation with the school about finding ways to help deal with the second of these two concerns.)

A larger challenge faced by the school and by the Guizhou church as a whole is poverty, in particular, the inability of rural churches to support church workers financially. Graduates enter the school knowing that their future financial support will have to come from themselves rather than their churches, so they are mentally prepared to work for their living in addition to caring for their churches. The problem is that it is increasingly difficult in Guizhou to support a family on what can be made from farming, and rural families now tend to send able-bodied young people to work in factories in the eastern coastal cities where they can make more money. Understandably, even young church workers who have a heart to serve their churches and who are willing to support themselves financially find it hard to stay the course after they marry and face the costs of supporting a family, especially when their peers are making considerably more by taking factory jobs in other provinces. So far, the school does not have an answer to this particular problem, but it is a concern they are actively praying and thinking about.

The other side of the coin is that there is much to be thankful for. In particular, we should rejoice in the way the vision and commitment of one faithful servant of the church has resulted in the establishment of a school that graduates 30 newly trained church workers each year. Rev. Tang, the founder of the school, is now quite old, and his health is poor. However, his legacy lives on not only in the school itself, but also in hundreds of men and women serving the church throughout Guizhou province.

God’s peace,

Don and Wei Hong

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 99