Pastor Hsi’s Legacy 97
Chapter 6 Pastor Hsi’s Legacy A Local Christian Community in South Shanxi
Yi Liu
One hundred years after the Boxer Movement of 1900, the churches in Linfen of Shanxi Province attracted the attention of the Christian world again.1 While 100 years ago, the local Christians were seen as agents of foreign missionaries and even imperialism, one reason of the current conflict is because of their connection with a counter-China association based in US – the China Aid. When the missionaries interpreted their work is to liberate the locals from superstitions and backwardness, this new association claims that they come to “aid” the people both materially and spiritually. However, whether liberation or aid, the outcome is the tragedy focusing on the local Christians. While the outsiders who also sacrificed or suffered, they also won their reputation in the global world; but for the local Christians, they suffer just as suffering. From the foundation of the People’s Republic of China to the Reform and Opening Up under Mr. Deng Xiaoping, Shanxi is a relatively neglected place, economically, politically and culturally. When the people are impressed by the corrupted coal mine owners, they nearly forget it used to be a historical and civilizational place for thousand years, since the Neolithic age to the Jin State during the Spring and Autumn as well as the Warring States periods, and to the founders of the great Tang Dynasty, as well as the bankers in Ming and Qing. From a religious perspective, Shanxi also has a lower performance, though it had a rich resource of Buddhism and Taoism, such as the Yungang cave sculp- tures, the Wutai Mountain, the temple of General Guan (Guan Gong) and Lü
* This research is supported by the project of China’s National Foundation for Social Sciences: “Global Pentecostalism and Christianity in Contemporary China” (11CZJ009). ** Yi Liu, Ph.D, is Associate Professor of History of Shanghai University, and Chinese Director of Confucius Institute at Boğaziçi University. E-mail: [email protected] 1 This is an event happened in 2009 that a house church in Fushan Country of Linfen Prefecture was destroyed by the local government. Some Christian lawyers involved then which made the issue more complicated. A special website is set, see:
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004350694_007 98 Liu
Dongbin, and the temple of Emperor Yao and the Pagoda tree for ancestor worship.2 Shanxi also has a Christian legacy. It has one of the earliest Catholic com- munities. Till now, there are still two pilgrim places around the capital city of Taiyuan. In the modern times, Shanxi University under the direction of Richard Timothy and Oberlin Shansi Memorial School founded by Kong Xiangxi are symbols of the Protestant missionary enterprise.3 However, to discuss Christianity itself, Pastor Hsi (Xi Shengmo) in the 19th century is the incompa- rable figure. The indigenous model of preaching and worship he created not only cultivated the rich, vivid Christian life in a particular locality, but also pro- vides cues to the problems the Chinese churches face today. Here, the author would like to give a specific example for reflection. The main part is based on field work with a historical survey in advance.4
Historical Background
The history of Christianity in Shanxi can be traced back to the 17th century. An early convert is Han Lin (1596-1649), who won the first place in the imperial exam of Shanxi Province; he connected with Xu Guangqi (1562-1633, one of “the three pillars of Catholicism in China”) during his office in Beijing. In 1620, he together with a local squire invited the Italian Jesuit missionary Jules Aleni (1582-1649) to his hometown, which led to the conversion of his two brothers and a few others. In 1624, the first Catholic church was built in Shanxi by Nicolas Trigault (1577-1629). The following year, Alfonso Vagnoni (1566-1640) arrived; with the support of the local magistrate, he baptized 200 persons, including 80 Confucian scholars. Five years later, the local believers extended to 2000. In the famine of 1634, more than 1500 people converted within one
2 Feng Baozhi, Sanjin wenhua [Culture of Shanxi] (Shenyang: Liaoning Education Press, 1991). As an internal province of China, Shanxi lagged behind since the modern period, which is reflected in an intellectual’s diary in later Qing Dynasty. See: Henrietta Harrison, The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man’s Life in a North China Village 1857-1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). 3 Zhang Zirong, “Shanxi Jidujiao shehui shiye shulue” [The Christian Enterprise in Shanxi], Sanjin wenhua yanjiu luncong [Collection of Essays on Shanxi Culture], Vol. 3 (Taiyuan: Shanxi People’s Press, 1997), pp. 218-256. 4 The field work was done from January of 2012 to February of 2013. In addition to the author, Mr. Li Hui helped some survey in the downtown of Linfen. Our main approach is participant observation with about 20 in-depth interviews. To keep the records, we wrote field journal every day.