A Chinese welcome
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Email03.10.2011
Fr Kinne’s introduction to China and the new friends who welcomed him to mission.
In the beginning
I came to China 14 years ago, settled into Beijing to learn Mandarin for three years and then came to Shanghai.
Mrs Cecilia Tao Bei Ling, whom I met about 20 years ago in Manila where she was studying to improve her English had suggested that I might be able to help her translate books at Guang Qi Press.
Along with our friendship, two practical matters influenced my decision: my need to find a way of being on mission in China and perhaps Cecilia’s need for someone who might check the accuracy of her translations or at the least explain what the English meant. I began going to her office each day and with the help of Chinese friends I gradually found my way into other jobs.
Four churches in Shanghai now have Masses for the English speaking community and I help out with these Masses in two places. As is the custom with many priests, I greet worshippers at the church door after Mass and through such contacts I have made a few friends who have helped me move deeper into my missionary commitment in a variety of ways, beginning with a concern for the life of the Church itself. I see it as an ongoing dialogue with the local Church.
I’ve taught a bishop, priests and sisters the English language and I am ready to help in the translation of documents or in polishing up English translations. I do what I can to help in the pastoral care of the large and scattered expatriate Catholic community in Shanghai. I have a good relationship with Bishop Jin who was born in 1916 and who has supported me in my life here.
Lecturing at Fudan university
During my second year in Shanghai, Cecilia spoke to Evelyn and Jim Whitehead about me. They are consultants in education and ministry who serve university programs and other institutions throughout the United States and internationally - and they spoke to the Fudan University authorities in the school of philosophy.
The University sent out Rachel Zhu Xiao Hong to see whether I was worth talking to. I then met Professor Zhang Ying Xiong who invited me to teach a course the following semester. I have taught there for nine years but my contract to teach a philosophy course to post-graduate students each semester has come to an end. I have had a better than average tenure. It is one of the top universities in China with an enrolment of around 50,000 students.
The comments and questions of the students often allow me to introduce ideas and perspectives quite unfamiliar to them. In one paper a student wrote: “Those who lived in the Age of Enlightenment gradually cut the doctrines of Christianity out of their brains. They then filled them with scientific knowledge." In response I remarked that, “Such an imbalance led to the greatest slaughter of human beings in the 20th century wars and revolutions”, which of course prompted a lively discussion.
On the topic of religious faith and science, one student wrote: “Just as science give us the eyes to perceive the physical realm, faith grants us the eyes to discern the spiritual realm.
Science and faith are not mutually exclusive."
This is a position that flies in the face of so much of what they have been taught and what has coloured all their formal education in this communist context, although one must always add, “with Chinese characteristics."
On the topic of Jesus of Nazareth, the thoughts expressed in student papers are many and varied: “The deed of Jesus reminds me of those Communist Party members and warriors who died in wars for a new China. Just like Jesus, in order to make people have a happy life, they sacrificed their precious lives."
Friendship
Rachel, the university’s scout who first contacted me became much more than a fleeting one-time encounter. We were teaching in the same department, got to know each other and became friends. The whole family has in fact become Catholic. Then, once it was clear to them that I intended to remain in China for some years they invited me to be godfather of the younger son.
On returning from study in the USA where their second son was born they had a hard time in the university due to their breach of the one child policy, but that has passed and I generally have dinner with the family once a week.
About five years ago I was talking to friends about the difficult lives of internal migrants in this city of 20 million inhabitants, 6 to 7 million of whom are migrants. By “internal migration” I mean people who have moved to the big cities but were born and brought up elsewhere in one of the 32 Provinces outside Shanghai Province.
You Dao Foundation
With a concerned group of Catholics, both expatriates and Chinese, I began to put some practical shape on our shared concern and eventually the You Dao Foundation was formed.
We felt we were responding to a need that no government, individual or organisation would be able to solve alone. Every day each one of us saw migrants sleeping rough on the street or on building sites and in makeshift shanties. We researched the matter professionally with the help of Audrey Leung, a well qualified business executive with a Kellogg’s MBA and also an attorney-at-law, who came onto our Board. We formed an NGO, which we then registered in Hong Kong.
We would prefer to register in mainland China as it would permit us to regularise our way of working and so make many things easier. However, few charities have been able to do so as the government is slow to allow what it does not fully control.
An observer may wonder why we put so much effort into doing so little in the face of such a massive challenge, such as the injustices suffered by the millions of migrants in Shanghai.
My response can be summed up in the saying: “Better to light a candle than a curse the darkness!” the origin of which is uncertain but some maintain that it is derived from a Chinese proverb.
Fr Warren Kinne is chiefly engaged with the work of the You Dao foundation at the present time.
Read more from The Far East, October 2011
