A weekly roundup of news and analysis to help you follow key developments in China and the Chinese church.
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Chinese City With a Russian Past Struggles to Preserve Its Legacy (June 4, 2017, The New York Times)
The making of Harbin is like no other Chinese city. In 1898, Russian engineers and workers from both Russia and China came to build the Chinese Eastern Railway. They were soon followed by Russian Jews fleeing pogroms, and then aristocrats driven out by the Bolshevik Revolution and White Russian troops seeking refuge after defeat in civil war.
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While the rest of the world tries to “kill email,” in China, it’s always been dead (May 28, 2017, Quartz)
In many parts of the world, email remains deathless—a relic of the desktop-era internet, before mobile and social media were on the landscape. It’s a convention: You can’t not have an email address. In China however, email never reached the ubiquity it has in other countries. Most Chinese consumers, if they have an email address, seldom use it. Chat, instead, remains the preferred method of communication–between friends, families, colleagues, business partners, and even strangers.
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What I Learned From Two Years Traveling China's Belt And Road (May 22, 2017, Forbes)
The markets of Europe and Asia are being drawn more closely together via an array of enhanced land and sea trade routes that are part of a multinational, multi-faceted development that has been vaguely dubbed the New Silk Road.
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How Chinese Couples Became Wedded to the Perfect Picture (May 11, 2017, Sixth Tone)
Known in Chinese as hunsha zhao, which literally translates as “bridal dress photographs,” this style of wedding photography in China generally does not take place at the wedding itself, where there is usually a cheaper run-of-the-mill photographer arranged by the venue or the wedding planner. In the case of Qian and Pan, the real wedding photos were taken a whole six months before the ceremony.
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Sing the national anthem, says China - but only at this speed (May 9, 2017, Sky News)
China has already banned its national anthem from being belted out at weddings and funerals – but now, even more restrictions are on the way. A law is being prepared to set the tempo at which the ballad should be played and sung, with consequences for those who put the anthem in a "damaging situation".
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Green Train Blues (April 30, 2017, The World of Chinese)
Gubeikou is just 140 kilometers northeast of Beijing, but we’ve been on the road since 9 in the morning. That’s an average speed of 25 kilometers an hour, one-fourteenth the speed of the Chinese rail system’s showpiece high-speed rail. Dubbed “green-skin trains” (绿皮火车) for their iconic forest green livery and yellow trim, trains like 4471 are, unsurprisingly, living on borrowed time in a country for which rail infrastructure has long been a matter of national pride.
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Ten Questions That EVERY Expat (or Repat) Parent Should Ask About Their Kids (April 20, 2017, The Culture Blend)
I love what my kids are getting out of this experience. I love what is being built into them. I love who they are becoming . . . but I’m not an idiot. This is hard. It’s hard for us and it’s hard for them. So as a parent I want to be in touch with the realities — the specific realities, good and bad — of who my kids are and what they are going through.
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American students lose interest in China studies (April 15, 2017, Nikkei Asian Review)
Though China looms ever larger in U.S. economic and security concerns, American universities are experiencing a decline in the enrollment in Chinese language courses and study abroad programs. The growing sense that work opportunities in China are harder to come by is compounding worries about pollution and other living conditions.
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Why Chinese Scientists Are More Worried Than Ever About Bird Flu (April 11, 2017, NPR)
This lab at Hong Kong University is at the world's forefront of our understanding of H7N9, a deadly strain of the bird flu that has killed more people this season — 162 from September up to March 1 — than in any single season since when it was first discovered in humans four years ago. That worries lab director Guan Yi. But what disturbs him more is how fast this strain is evolving. "We're trying our best, but we still can't control this virus," says Guan. "It's too late for us to eradicate it."
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Finding My Roots Deep in Rural China (March 31, 2017, Sixth Tone)
Although I was born in China, I have been molded by the United States. The country gave me the chance to think and feel like an American. Here, I was taught to be curious; I learned that asking questions is often more fulfilling than knowing all the answers. Here, I fell in and out of love for the first time. And here, I became a person with two identies. Yes, I was “Americanized,” but I was also very attached to my Chinese roots.
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Young, Restless, and Reformed in China (March 27, 2017, The Gospel Coalition)
Chinese church leaders are writing books of church order. They’re organizing into networks. They’re starting Christian grade schools and seminaries. They’re reading everything they can get their hands on, buying out Reformed authors at bookstores and heading to Reformed websites. And some are also stumbling, passing quick judgment on those who aren’t five-pointers. Some are proud. A number are splitting up congregations. In many ways, Reformed theology in China looks like a newborn colt attempting that first walk—eager, stumbling, up and down and up again.
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Alienation 101 (April/May, 2017, 1843 Magazine)
The Chinese population is so large that it forms a separate world. Many Chinese speak only Mandarin, study only with other Chinese, attend only Chinese-organised events – and show off luxury cars in Chinese-only auto clubs. The Chinese government and Christian groups may vie for their hearts and minds. But few others show much interest, and most Chinese students end up floating in a bubble disconnected from the very educational realms they had hoped to inhabit. “It takes a lot of courage to go out of your comfort zone,” Sophie says. “And a lot of students on both sides never even try.”