INTRODUCTION

For the location of provinces and cities mentioned in this report and earlier ones, see the map accompanying this study. There is no adequate general history of ancient or modern China that fully rises to the challenges of the subject matter. What has been selected are from works that are available and suit the purposes that serve the subject of these entries, mainly how the country and culture were prepared for the restoration.  This PART, No. 11,  will take the study up to about 1928.  Except for Hong Kong and Macau, the preparation is not complete enough or the Church would be in mainland China now.  Literacy is one of the main requirements.  Freedom of religion is another.  Access to the Bible is most important,  another is financial means.  Going to mainland China will be no little undertaking.  But things seems to be accelerating. The Political climate is the great obstacle at present.  China is a vast country and has a complex history. 

China is a country of many dialects. the population speaks mainly  Mandarin Chinese, Yue, Wu, Minbei, Minnan and Xiang and others. Chinese is perhaps the oldest continuously spoken language in the world. Before 1949 few Chinese spoke anything but their local dialect, of which there were eight major variants, all pretty well mutually unintelligible. Under Mao the Communists, seeing this as an obstacle to effective administration, required the use of Mandarin as a lingua franca. It is, in many ways, simpler. Not long after words  the Chinese developed a prodigious enthusiasm for English. (Thorne p. 585) The American Bible Society has been engaged for many decades in translating the Bible into Chinese and the numerous dialects, mainly because of the sheer numbers who speak such languages in more remote parts of China. As noted a great deal of the population is traditional Confucian, with a variety of at least 52 Buddhist splinters, several varieties of Taoism, along with the usual atheists. Nearly 40 million are Muslim, probably the largest population of Muslims in the world.  Today there is the curious development  of the Chinese Christian meetings and the proliferation of assembly groups, an expanding movement that creates concern by the political leaders. (See page 2 of PART 10)  In the summer of 2013 a new cadre of political leaders were installed, any modifications of existing restrictions will not be known for a while.  But it will happen someday.

EARLY MORMON  MIISSIONARIES TO CHINA

The Church's interest in China goes back a long time ago. Brigham Young discussed the possibilities of sending missionaries to China as early as 1849, and by late 1852 three brethren, Hosea Stout,  James Lewis, and Chapman Duncan, had accepted calls to serve there. They sailed from San Francisco on March 9, 1853. One of my great-grand fathers had arrived in the Salt Lake Valley the year before. The three  arrived in Hong Kong  on 28 April, 1853.  (Church Almanac 2013 p. 459)

For centuries, and even today in many places,  it was family fidelity and honor that ruled; produce male offspring and continue the family line. For centuries these Qing Laws prevailed. After the Imperial City fell to the Chinese in 1644, the Manchus arrived as saviors, within 35 years they revealed their true colors by forcing the Chinese into submission, wearing their hair in pigtails that became a symbol of Chinese citizens even today, and adopting Manchu dress styles. All of China was under their control.  The Qing, or Manchus were very heavy fisted and frequently lost touch with existing realities and a progressing world.

In 1689, after a short territorial war with the Russians, the Chinese negotiated their first treaty with a foreign power, and revised it 40 years later to allow Russians to set up a trade office, a legation and a church. Small Foreign enclaves had been allowed for centuries because they paid tribute to the  Imperial Court.  But times were changing and the Chinese didn't even notice. The Foreign Powers, however, had a different idea of what the treaties meant. To them it represented diplomatic equality and trade opportunity among equals.  The Chinese, of course, didn't believe  any culture was equal to theirs. For a century they were able to keep the foreign elements in their place.  (Harris p. 11) They still have a problem with that today.

THE BIRTH OF SUN YAT-SEN-CHINESE TRADE IN LIQUID MERCURY

The Chinese restricted the contacts of foreigners to trade only through Guangshou (Canton) on the Pearl River. The Birthplace of Sun Yat-sen. (Thorne p. 1289)  They were allowed to trade at only predetermined times and only through officially sanctioned wholesalers. They sold the westerners porcelain, tea and silk, from most of them they imported nothing. (Harris pp. 10-11)  They did trade and pay gold to the Russians for seal skins obtained in Alaska, and traded liquid mercury to the Spanish in California for beef hides and tallow, this trade had been going on since before 1550, when the newly conquered New World silver and gold mines came into production. " Mining has been the most important source of wealth of Mexico since the time of Cortez." (Southworth  p. 5)  "The Spaniards began mining as early as 1526 and worked mines beyond 1700."  (Southworth p. 26)  The recovery of gold and silver was by the use of liquid mercury in the amalgamation process,  (Fay p. 80),  which the Spanish  continued to acquire from China until about 1854. Mercury (Cinnabar ) Liquid mercury, when worked into pulverized rocks containing silver and gold, using slaves in the patio process by pouring liquid mercury on crushed high grade gold silver ore and having slaves trample the mercury into the ore to dissolve the gold and silver. Mercury will selectively dissolve only the silver and gold, none of the rock. The mercury becomes so saturated with gold and silver it could be cut with a knife. They then retort (vaporize)  off the mercury, leaving an ingot of gold and silver. (Southworth pp. 53-54) Stuff the Pirates preferred.         

Western gold and silver  "poured into China, seemingly never to return." (Harris p. 11)  It was the British who figured out how to reverse the drain.  They began selling opium from India to the Chinese. It was a disaster for China. The hard money began to flow out of China, and its citizens became helplessly addicted. (Harris p. 11) During the 1840s and 1850s Great Britain and France used a limited application of force to open China to unrestricted foreign trade through a number of specially designated ports. China regarded itself as the universal suzerain and other nations as vassals. The subsequent treaties were treated with audacity and considered "unequal treaties," but one of the important aspects of the settlements reached was that Western powers obliged China to permit Christian missionaries to live and make converts in the interior of the country. China also acquiesced to many other terms because they realized that the foreign powers were not aiming at territorial conquest, therefore it was safe to give in and to try to ensure that these powerful outsiders had an interest in maintaining stability.  (Blunden p. 148) Their purposes were achieved by an accommodation that best served China. China did not become free from most of the accumulated fetters until they severed their relationship with Russia in 1956.  Left to their own devices they suffered through a terrible century and while much progress has been made religious tolerance has a long way to go and economic and other factors remain problematic.  They have bent in many directions but still maintain a political stance that prevents the achievement of many goals.  The limitations they have are of their own making and will persist as long as they have the system of government they have, even though that government and social interpretation of their goals is slowly changing.

THE OPIUM WARS

Myths have grown up around opium introduced in quantity by the British from India. The Wars of Diplomatic recognition, or the Opium Wars of 1839-42, and of 1856-60 were not fought to resist British enforcement of the import and use of opium.  As early as 1600 Chinese ship masters had brought back opium,  not to use as narcotic, but as a painkiller, as it was used in Victorian England until the coming  of aspirin.  In some circles in China it did become an addictive substance in the 17th century and spread through China as the habit of lacing tabacco with the drug, leading to the first decree against growing or trading in opium in1729.  Traders illegally were running Indian opium to the Dutch East Indies.  In 1800 again the traffic in opium was officially banded, the state was most interested in getting rid of domestic production which seems to have been on a larger sale than had been realized. It was not, as some believed, to retain or conserve their silver resources which involved the government's  adulteration and depreciation of the copper currency at that time, and the exchange rate of copper coins against silver. Silver was an import from the New World and continued for a long time. (Blunden p. 148)

Certainly, there are deadly concentrates of the drug, but the straight opium was only moderately bad for health, its worst effect being constipation. The  opium mixture given to Alvin Smith, Joseph's brother killed him. Chinese railway worker in the United States, without which the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad  may have been greatly delayed if not even achieved, consumed a great deal of opium and those who took it competed more than adequately against Irish emigrants addicted to whisky.  It was, like all addictions, costly to family and individual budgets, not a basic cause of war, only an irritant in Sino-foreign relations, which had been exaggerated. (Blunden p. 149)

REBELLIONS AND CALAMITIES AFTER THE I850S

From the early 1850s until the middle of the 1870s the  empire was afflicted by a number of largely unconnected rebellions. Most were eventually subdued by regional or local armies on behalf of the central government, aided by the use of firearms imported from the West or  imitations made in China. During that same time China was rocked by a series of natural calamities of unprecedented proportions, including droughts, famines and floods. The ruling Manchu dynasty did little to relieve the wide spread misery caused by these events which they later greatly regretted. It was this never ending neglect of the peasantry that would lead to communism and prevent democracy from getting a firm hold on the county. The inflamed popular resentment against the government resulted in the largest uprising in modern Chinese history and the bloodiest civil war the world has ever known-the TAIPING REBELLION.

THE TAIPING REBELLION

The Taiping rebels were led by Hong Xiuquan, a failed civil service examination candidate who claimed he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ.  In 1851 Hong launched an uprising in the Guizhou province in southern China, where he proclaimed the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (or Taiping Tianguo), with himself as king. Two years later the rebels captured the old imperial capital of Nanjing. Hong's new order was founded on a mixture of some Christian beliefs along with an utopian tradition drawn from Chinese sources in which the peasantry owned and tilled the land in common. This vision won Hong many supporters among China's poorest classes, the bulk of the population of China. (Blunden p. 149)  In 1927 Mao Zedong would see the same potential for a peasant revolution, he would capitalize on it and this time it would succeed. (Kagan p. 321)

The revolt held sway across a large swath of southern and central china.  Soon, however, the movement's leaders found themselves in a net of internal feuds, defections, and corruption. British and French forces came to the assistance of the Manchu government once they realized the rebellion might affect foreign trade, but the suppression of the Taipings ultimately depended on the Chinese provincial officials, whose armies rallied to the government's aid. Well over 25 million people were reportedly killed as a result of the Taiping Rebellion. The Manchu government did nothing, so the War Lords continued extortion and carnage. (See p. 5) Like rebellions elsewhere there was a surge of immigration to the United States. (Kagan p. 283)  The Chinese name for the United States was Gold Mountain. (See p. xvii)  They came to mine for gold and to build railroads.

The three missionaries sent by Brigham Young found China in the midst of the Taiping Rebellion making it unsafe for them to Labor beyond Hong Kong.  They also  struggled  to learn the language. The trio barely only had the means to sustain themselves and could not afford language tutors. Negative articles in the press and a chilly reception from the small English-speaking population also impeded their efforts. So they left.  It was not time yet for missionary work in China. They sailed from Hong Kong on the 22 June 1852, about two months after their arrival.  For the rest of the century the Church made no further effort to do missionary work in China. While it was not the right time for mainland china,  they had opened the door in Hong Kong.  Today, in Hong Kong, with a population of more than 7,100,000, there are nearly 24, 000 members, about l member per 305.  They have 4 stakes, 23 wards, l branch and the Temple.  (Church Almanac 2013 p. 460) Their influence on the mainland cannot be calculated.  All part of the preparation of China for the restoration.  

The Taiping movement prefigured the Chinese Communist movement. There was a new ideology, claimed to be divinely revealed, promising personal salvation and a better social order.  This was based on a blend of Confucianism of the Rituals of the Zhou, the Old Testament acquired by Hong from a missionary tract, to develop around a theocratic collectivism with most things held in common; a New Testament tenet.  (Blunden p. 149)  But it failed. 

THE REFORMERS -- SUN  YAT-SEN

One key figure was Sun Yat-Sen, was born November 12, 1866, at Tsuiheng near Guangzhou (Canton,) and  brought up by his elder brother in Hawaii, graduated in medicine at Hong Kong in 1892, practicing at Macao and Canton.  While in Honolulu in 1894  he founded his first political organization, the Hsin Chung Hui (New China Party) becoming one of China's great revolutionaries. (Thorne  p. 1289)   After his first abortive uprising against the Manchus in Canton in 1895, he lived in Japan, America and Britain. In London in1896 he was kidnapped and imprisoned in the Chinese legation but was saved from certain death by smuggling out a letter to his former medical tutor,  Sir Edward Cantlie, the  surgeon, who through the  British Foreign Office got him released. He would try fourteen more times, most of his efforts  would fail.

Guangzhou,(Canton)  probably among the first places missionaries will be sent, when they are, is the most important industrial and foreign trade center in southern China. Since the early sixteenth century the city has been a trading center with the West, first with the Portuguese, then the Spanish, Dutch, British, French, Japanese and Americans. In recent years Guangzhhou has become the most prosperous city under China's  open-to-the outside-world policy.  Most of the immigrants to California in the 1800s came from this region. I have spent  a little less than three years in the Far East, and was in Canton in 1981.  We were very impressed by the great memorial and  mausoleum to Sun Yat-sen constructed according to his will on the southern slopes of Tsechin (Zijin) Mountains in the eastern suburbs of Nanking. We climbed the 392 steps of Soochow granite to the domed circular hall where stands a white statue of Sun.  At the beginning of the steps there was an arch with the inscription  Bo Ai (universal love), at the middle arch it reads Tianxia Wei Gong, (The world belongs to everyone) Other inscriptions at the vault engraved in golden inscriptions in black marble, are his program and platform, including his three Principles in his attempt to lead China into a new age. The vault contains a coffin, 15 feet below his statue, with his ashes brought there from Peking in 1929 after the monument was completed. Everything set off and enhanced by beautiful blue tile. (de Keijzer p. 134; Haring  p. 222)  Sun had spent more than 40 years of his life trying to set up a Nationalist  Government. The Chinese respected him for what he had tried to do but never succeed in doing.                                          

The French conquest of Annam in the 1880s and Japan's swift defeat of China in the war of 1894-95 prompted an increasing flow of proposals for institutional reforms. Reformers wanted  a codified law, selected local officials, consultative assemblies, national parliament and more freedom of the press. (Blunden p. 152)  Anti-Manchuism, was kept alive, since the 17th century in the ritualistic Ming revivalism of secret societies such as the Triads, and revived by the Taipins. Sun Yat-sen gained  a further lease on life in the 1890's, one of his associates was tortured to death by the authorities before Sun Yat-sen's unsuccessful rising in 1895. He was lucky to remain alive to try again fifteen years later.  After more than 130 years the Chinese still do not have most of the freedoms the people desire. But in the 1890s the complex amalgam of modern Chinese nationalism began to take shape.  This stratum was overlaid by a deep growing concern with international survival.

MAO TSE-TUNG  

In Hunan, in 1893, a peasant farmer had a son to whom he gave the name Mao.  Later that son was called Mao Tse-Tung.  He would become a rival and nemesis of Sun Yat-sen.  Mao was educated at Changsha, the capital of Hunan. In 1918 he was attending the University of Peking, where as a library assistant he studied the works of Marx and others. He became anchored in communism, but with ideas of his own. (Thorne p. 882) He followed closely the horrible events taking place in Russia.  Stirred by the disparity between the peasants and the metropolitan elites, he helped found the Communist Party. Three years later he attended the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai and participated in the united front announced in 1923, between Chinese nationalists and communists. (Kagan p. 218)  The beautiful Aiwan Pavilion located on Yuela Hill in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, one of the great agricultural areas of China, bears a tablet of MAO ZEDONG'S writing.  This area was the haunt of the Chinese leader during his youth. (Harris  p. 124)  Mao's thoughts and pithy statements were widely circulated as MAO'S LITTLE RED BOOK.

KANG YOUWEI AND THE BOXER REBELLION

Kang Youwei, was a junior official in the wake of China's defeat by Japan during the mass protests by the CIVIL EXAMINATION CANDIDATES.  Together with Wen Tingshi, started the Society for Studying How to Grow Strong, leading to wide spread study- societies, the          forerunners of modern political parties.  In 1898 Kang became the special adviser to the emperor but embarked with inexperienced enthusiasm of numerous ill-conceived reforms.  After slightly more than three months Kang and his associates were driven from power by a conservative coup led by the Empress-Dowager, Cixi,  and her confidant, Ronglu, and an eminent official, general Yuan Shikai, who controlled an army near the capital. This led to the Boxer Uprising of 1899-1900, whose popular roots were in the fusion of two anti-Christian  movements and xenophobic allergy to everything not Chinese. They accused the Christian churches have having put a stop to the workings of Heaven making the gods angry.  The main base was on Martial Arts, theatrical aura of traditional religion, spirit possession and clams to invulnerability, with most of their recruits and supporters teenagers.  The uprising was restricted to a limited area in the northern reaches of the Grand Canal, discussed earlier in this series, which was then under severe economic recession and full of displaced and dispossessed people. The uprising was also supported by ultra-conservatives who had never approved of compromising with foreigners. But there was no real capable leadership, it took on the aspects of a political saturnalia; officials were ignored, abused, maltreated and even murdered. At the time a nearly ten year program of railroad building was under way. Their motto was to "pull up the railway lines! Smash the steamships!" (Blunden pp. 152-54)  Roll back the future to the distant past.

THE REVOLUTIONARY ALLIANCE & THE BOXER REBELLION

The Boxer movement was a  progrom intended to kill those whom it saw as a source of ill-fortune. Their beliefs were almost exactly the same as the Ghost Dancers of the Paiute Indians in North America. (Harris p. 12) On January1, 1889, Wovoka (the Woodcutter) , working in a Nevada Mine, during an eclipse went into a trance and re-invoked the Ghost Dance, a ceremonial round dance joined hand to hand and stepping sideways lasting as long as two days, fasting and dancing; they drop from exhaustions falling into trances, claiming they visited ancestors in the stars.  They were merely trying to stop foreign annexation of their territory. They created a buckskin shirt with symbols on it that they believed made them impervious to bullets, (Page pp. 324-427) like the boxers. For the Indians it led to the massacre at Wounded Knee and the end of the Ghost Dance. (Page p. 327)  The Boxers killed the German Ambassador in Beijing, so an International army marched on the city, debunking the myth of Boxer invulnerability.  The Empress had taken the young Emperor and in disguise left the city. Thus , in 1900 the Boxer rebellion ended in failure. The Empress returned in1902.

The events  revealed with exceptional clarity the brutal aspects of Chinese political behavior that surfaced again and again, exhibiting its worst character during the ten year Cultural Revolution of the coming century, when hatred became the basis for mass mobilization and scapegoats for suffering were invented and murdered. Stalin had employed the same methods to the enth degree. But Hitler had up-man-shipped all  of them.  By 1903 most educated Chinese were convinced that some sort of general political and social reform was necessary.  A former disciple of Kang,  Liang Qichao,  summed it up best in his THEORY OF A NEW CITIZENRY, he was perhaps the most influential publicist in Chinese history. (Bluenden p. 155)  It was a move towards Democracy with its principles and ideals. But  just a tiny step. There was an extreme group in Tokyo under Sun Yat-sen,  He had tried ten more times to engineer uprisings from abroad, but was unsuccessful. Now he formed The Revolutionary Alliance , which advocated not only the abolition of the monarchy, but also measures of economic collectivism, in an effort to establish the Chinese Republic, but initially they had little influence.  Most important were the technical and institutional changes that altered the course and nature of the political arena, but these advances were concentrated in the 40 great urban centers, the leading ports, and areas where there were different degrees of outside influence.  China was obsessed about not being contaminated by foreigners. But their impact was and continues to influence China.

A NEW CENTURY

At the end of the old century, the Russians extracted Chinese territory in northern Manchuria and the Japanese took Korea from under Chinese influence. The Chinese were powerless to stop either of them because China had refused to modernize its military. Westernization had never been in the Chinese scheme of things, much to their detriment.  

World War l removed much European competition and between 1928 and 1936 there were intermittent times of comparative peace and unity under the national government. However, the geographical distribution of growth was grotesquely skewed laying the foundation for the takeover of the country by the Communists in 1949. (Blunden p. 155)  In China four different economic worlds had to be dealt with. The most striking case of effective transfer of technology anywhere in the world was Shanghai. Chinese made machine tools were first exported overseas from Shanghai during World War l. The ascendency of China was on its way- slow, but it would get there by the end of the century. 

THE EMPRESS TZU HSI AND HER COMPLICITY WITH THE BOXER REBELLION

For the first few years of the twentieth century the central government was still under the adaptable empress-dowager until her death in 1908.  She had dismantled much of the old social and political order with astonishing speed.  The emperor died in 1875 without an heir. His three year old nephew, Kwang-su,  became his successor, but when he actually took the throne in1899, both he and the government where under the control of the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi who had become regent. She was born in 1834. At that time there was considerable turmoil over the defeats to Japan and Russia, for centuries they and other surrounding countries were considered among the lowest of the barbarians and it was devastating that they could beat China in a war. (Thorne p. 11350)  Her advisors warned China was in danger of becoming a European colony as many of her neighbors had. So she had many of them executed. When a secret society known as the Boxers rebelled against foreigners the Empress recruited them to join her armies in driving them out. The outcome of the Boxer Rebellion was disappointing. (Harris p. 12)   But the Empress did make changes until her death in 1908. The 1300 year old  Civil Service was modernized, as was the army.  A chamber of commerce was introduced, assemblies for self-government were improving, and in 1910  a proto-parliament,  half indirectly elected the others appointed.  It was a start but did not go far enough. Communication across the vast land was one of the great inhibiting handicaps and still is even today. The US had the pony express, two years later about 1861, the telegraph linked up the US, but in China, communications were deficient. The Empress was convinced that nothing had changed in China and therefore not in the world. She was wrong.  Her role retarded China's progress for nearly 100 years. 

SUN YAT-SEN AND THE NATIONALIST PEOPLE'S PARTY

The  first trade unions were established, foreign goods were boycotted; the spread of education for women and the creation of a national language were all in the wind. (Blunden pp. 155-157)  The Tibetan problem was unresolved, and remains so today. In 1904 the Dalai Lama flees to Urgu after the arrival of British in Lhasa Tibet.  After the death of the Empress, regent Zaifeng, held the reins of power in the Manchu court.  In late 1910 he turned abruptly  against the republican revolution that kicked off the following year.  The revolution of 1911 was not organized by Sun,  he was in Denver, Colorado, and was surprised when it broke out.  The revolution was entirely an urban phenomenon, only  in Guangzhou was there a clearly rural component.  He returns to China and Sun Yat-sen founds the Guomindang  (Nationalist People's Party), this time he succeeds. Sun was educated abroad in the Anglican traditions but with no background in Confucian thought.  His new republic did not last long.  In 1912 he is proclaimed provisional president of the Republic. But the motley group that called itself the Alliance was made of a disparate mixture of incompatibles that once the theory putting the blame for everything on the Manchus was found to be wrong, the alliance fell apart. You can build a revolution on nonsense, but its longevity is restricted.  The imperial powers had collapsed almost overnight in three -quarters of China, in most places without much bloodshe.   The government was taken over by a succession of War Lords. (Harris p. 12)

YUAN SHIKAI THE NORTHERN GENERAL

To prevent foreign interests capitalizing on the situation, the revolutionaries negotiated and  Sun Yat-sen stepped aside and made way by a settlement with the northern general, Yuan Shikai, who was called out of retirement. It was a big mistake. Yuan agreed to jettison the Manchus and to set up a republic, but with him as the first president.  Once in Power, Yuan  deliberately sabotaged the new democratic institutions, using decrees, terror, murder, military force, and by 1914 had destroyed all vestiges of democratic hope. He tried to make himself emperor. He found little support in that effort, and became loathed for having deprived China of its expectations. An insurrection by the army forced him to relinquish his claims. He died in 1916. (Blunden pp. 157-158)

CHAING KAI-SHEK, THE MAN WHO WILL LOSE CHINA

In 1911 when Sun Yat-sen was elected the provisional president of the Chinese Republic he appointed Chaing Kai-sheck as his military adviser.  By 1912  The republic of China was established , and Sun Yat-sen founded the  Guomindang (National People's Party)  But the momentum of change was too great. It was not to last.  Sun Yat-sen had stepped aside for the Northern general, Yuan Shih-kai who had forced the emperor's abdication, but then as president Yuan sought to make himself dictator. Sun, opposing him from the South, was defeated and found himself again in exile. But the fortunes of Chaing Kai-Shek were to change.

THE CHURCH TAKES ANOTHER LOOK AT CHINA

In 1910 Alma O. Taylor, then president of the Japanese Mission, was assigned to visit China to investigate the prospect of again sending missionaries. With Frederick A. Caine, they visited and observed conditions in Beijing, Shanghai, and other places, and recommended against engaging in missionary activity at that time because of unstable political conditions, which culminated a short time later in the collapse of the Ching (Imperial) Dynasty.  (Church Almanac 2013, 459) 

MONGOLIA A SPIN OFF FROM CHINA

During Sun Yat-sen's presidency China granted Mongolia independence. As a result Mongolia with a parliamentary type of government, permitted missionaries access to its small nation of more than 3 Million. Some 96 % of the population is Tibetan Buddhist Lamaism. In the south,..  Muslim, Shamanism and  Christian make up 4 %.  The Church made unexpected progress. Today Mongolia has more than 10,300 members, l mission, l Stake, 6 Wards, 2 districts and 17 branches, which will all become wards in due time. In Mongolia there is one Mormon for each 360 of the population.  While Hong Kong and Mongolia have progressed forward, China had missed the boat.

MACAU- OPPOSITE THE PEARL RIVER BAY FROM HONG KONG

In June 1950  Hilton A. Robertson and Henry Aki of the Chinese Mission, headquartered in Hong Kong, visited Macau to explore the prospects for initiating missionary work in the Portuguese colony. They found that the Catholic Church was the only Christian religion operating there and decided that it was not the right time to try to establish a Latter day Saint presence.  Then in 1964 President Jay A. Quealy of the southern Far East Mission and Elder Gordon B. Hinckley of the Council of the Twelve made a similar visit in April. On 2 July 1964 the first two missionaries,  Darryl Thomander and Gilbert Montano, arrived. The first person to be baptized was Steven Lau on 10 August 1964.  More people were converted and they began holding Sunday School and priesthood meetings.  However, all meetings were suspended in December 1964 because the Church lacked a license from the Portuguese government to conduct religious activities. Some activity continued until 1966.  Four full time missionaries returned to Macau on 6 September 1976. A constitutional amendment had been passed allowing religions to hold meetings, teach and preach.  One year later there were up to 400 persons attending  Church  meetings. The Macau Branch was organized on l Jan 1977 and by 1993 there were 640 members in Macau.  By 1998 there was a Cantonese speaking branch and an English speaking branch. In 1999 Macau reverted back to the Chinese.  In 2004 there were l067 members and by 2006 there were l,l50 and growing. (Church Almanac 2013)

SUN YAT-SEN PRESIDENT OF CHINA AGAIN-AND THER RISE OF COMMUNISM 

The short lived revolution of 1911  was perhaps the greatest tragedy of modern China, not because of any bloodshed, of which there was remarkably little, but because it wiped out for several generations China's peaceful  and organized progress towards a modern and democratic future.  There were brave and idealistic men, but there were more opposition by imperial opponents, selfish politicals and outright scoundrels. It opened wide, the door for Communism. It brought about a collapse of political authority, hence an internal chaos for which there was no remedy except strong arm methods. The War Lords saw to that.  With the death of Yuan, two military subordinates, Feng Ghozhang and Duan Qirui, fought each other for the next four years. Feng won. Then another War Lord, Wu Peifu took over and lasted until his power was broken by Zhang Zolin, the ex-bandit military boss of Manchuria.  Feng Yuxiang, the Christian General, was challenged, Finally, it was Kiang Kiesh (Chiang Kai-shek) who was to reunite  Inner China  in 1924, only to became the man who lost China. No one could read the signs of the times.  Zaifeng was warned by many conservative voices in late 1910 it would be fatal to try to slow down the movement for a constitution that almost every politically aware Chinese regarded as vital for the nation's welfare. But it wasn't to be. Sun Yat-sen's presidency was short lived again.

WORLD WAR 1 

After the turmoil of six years, in 1916 China's New Cultural movement began: western-educated Chinese scholars argued for modernization. Sun Yat-sen tries again, in 1917 he starts the Republic of  China military government in Guangzhou, (Canton), his home town,  opposing the Beijing government.  Sun is defeated again and found himself back in exile. But the tumult in Europe in progress for three years was  sucking the entire world into its whirlpool  of death.  China declares war on Germany and Austria that same year. Two years later in 1919  the horror and sickness of war is over but the Chinese demonstrate against the signing of the Versailles Treaty.  It is part of the New Cultural Movement, combining Western ideas with Chinese national identity which started in 1916. (Kagan p.  316)

THE CHURCH TRIES AGAIN

A great Calamity struck China, the start of many natural disasters that would hit China. In 1920 an earthquake struck Gansu province killing 200,000. (Kagan 318)  David  O. McKay, then serving in the First Presidency, with Hugh J. Cannon, visited China in January 1921, as part of a world tour. But nothing would be done in China for another 28 years. (Church Almanac 2013, p. 459)

THE BIRTH OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY IN CHINA

There was great enthusiasm ignited in China by the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. It led to the reorganization of the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) a movement that had been created by Sun Yat-sen as a successor to the old Revolutionary alliance that had not succeeded. The restructuring was done on broadly Bolshevik lines, with the help of Soviet Russian advisers who were trying to carry their movement worldwide.  Borodin was one of these advisers. The same enthusiasm also led to the founding of a Chinese Communist Party by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. In the shadows was  Mao Tse-Tung.  Its official year of birth is given as 1921, it would guarantee the misery of China for the next 100 years.  Scattered groups had been in existence before this time, now they were coming together.  Because they were the most aggressive and assertive, the Nationalist and Communist parties were now acquiring the most influence. The two parties soon entered into an alliance. The far less numerous Communists join the Nationalist Party its individuals quickly coming to dominate many key positions.  (Blunden p. 159)  A well planned ploy.

The allied parties exploited, and in some measure helped to create, the great movements of the 1920s in China.  The first successes of these movements raised the acute problem of whether there was or was not, going to be a thorough going social revolution. The right and the center of the Nationalist who were being led by Jiang Jieshi, turned against the left wing and against Communists, murdering as many of them as he could,  and driving the residue of the Communist party underground, he had reduced the ranks by 90 %.  The conflicts were between revolutionary labor organizations, under Communist influence, and those of a reformist or welfare orientation.  The secret  Brief History of the Communist Party, prepared in 1926, was quite frank about the workers' fear of being exploited for political ends: the laboring masses regarded the party's actions as dangerous and radical. And they were. Labor movements should stay within legal limits. They didn't. The fiery actions of the Communists turned the laborers against them, charging them as being instruments of capitalists or propagandists for Sun Yat-Sen.  The workers,  justifiably, feared they would be utilized by others as instruments of violent struggle. And they were. There was much radicalization. The climax of events came with the killing of a worker in a Japanese factory, and the subsequent shooting of demonstrators by the British  police of the International Settlement leading to strikes in Guanghou and Hong Kong, one objective being to end foreign interests in China. The killings led to the economic boycott of Hong Kong for over a year.  By 1926 the strike committee in Canton turned into a miniature government, with its own courts, armed force, schools and so forth. More ambitious was their effort to set up a workers government under communist control,  in Shanghai in early 1927, but the War Lord, Sun Chuahfang crushed it. Their heads were severed by swordsmen, then displayed on poles and platters and paraded through the street, creating a veritable reign of terror.

THE RISE OF MAO 

Another attempt was led by Zhou Elai, setting up provisional municipal government, it lasted almost three weeks.  It collapsed because its leaders, as members of the Communist International, obeyed Stalin's instructions not to fight against Jiang Jieshi. The Chinese came to resent Russian influence. And where were the peasants all this time? In 1927 a leading military commander was not allowed to defect to the Communist side, Jiang and his soldiers disguised as workers, and in collaboration with a local secret society, called the Green Gang, massacred the revolutionaries. The Shanghai Massacre occured when Nationalists troops betray their Communist Allies and slaughter them. In 1928 Nationalists take Beijing, having set up a government in Nanjing. (Kagan pp. 318, 321)  In 1927 Mao tried to get in on the action, his Autumn Harvest uprising is defeated, but Mao begins to see potential for a peasant revolution in China. Of  China's 3.7 million square miles of extreme terrain only about 10 % is arable. (Danforth p. 6) The peasants are concentrated there. The peasant resentment was never class resentment, it was outrage at the absence of equity and fairness with the accelerated framework of social relationships.  They only wanted equity, social respectability and economic security.  Was that too much?  At that time it was.  And at that time is was peasants struggling  against economic exploitation, and the professional revolutionaries and elites who strove to exploit them politically, seize power on the basis of their discontent, and then transform society. But the peasants were going to have their day.

PENG PAI AND THE RUDIMENTS OF A PEASANT REVOLUTIONARY ARM

In 1921  the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party takes place in Shanghai. (Kagan p. 31; Blunden pp. 160-161)  Into the restless and complex milieu came Peng Pai, a young man destined to show the Chinese communist Party how to arouse the countryside. Son of a powerful local lineage, educated in Japan, his view was that : "The world belonged to all, and must be shared equally by all." He got that quote from Sun Yat-sen, it was engraved on the middle arch of the monument to him. Agitation among the students got Peng nowhere, so in 1922 he formed a Peasants Union, but in making the enormous personal effort to "be like the peasants"  he came too wield to much authority, taking his orders from the people was really new. The Union was a protection and welfare organization that spread rapidly taking over remnants of the old Flag Net works. Peng was sucked into the provincial arena, he joined the Communists in 1923, set up the Peasant Movement Training Institute in Guangzhou in 1924 with Nationalist backing, and began to set up the first rudiments of a peasant revolutionary arm. Mao Zedong taught for a time at the Institute and drew his ideas and inspiration for his future peasant revolution largely from Peng.  But the Union moved away from limited welfare objectives towards a class struggle, which was not welcome to its rank and file. (Blunden p. 163)  Then the horrible transformation of Peng Pai began.  Much of the tragedy in the Chinese revolution may be seen in the personal transformation of Peng Pai. Initially he was selfless and sincere, and his humanitarian idealism, even impressed his adversaries.  But by 1928, having had  most of his friends and supporters killed, he become an enthusiastic practitioner of mass murder. He even taught youngsters in mass meetings how to cut off the head of an enemy with a knife. What happened in Haifeng was not typical of China, but for all practical purposes it was. The conviction that blood-letting was an indispensable part of social transformation  would result in 75 years of severe bloody horror.  (Blunden p. 16) 

Until 1928 a complex civil war raged with conflicts at the national, provincial and local levels.  As one side or the other gained the upper hand, both began to practice terror.  One of the big problems was the status of  land. "the whole world knew that at least three mou were required to sustain a single life," (See p. 3) let alone a family. One miserable mou would not do. There was simply not enough agricultural land to make the division Peng wanted.  In Hunan the land was tenured,  giving up their lands and dividing them was out of the question. Peng Pai announced that "mercilessly killing landlords, interested only in money, is right." Trials in 1926 resulted in execution of landowners, "Finally the order was given to kill all those in any way officially serving the old authorities. Mass meetings were being held, revenge went both directions,  victims were disfigured, tortured, then killed.  Both sides were answering in kind. It was almost a mirror image of what was going on Russia and to some extent in Germany.  Under Union rule until 1928, there was spying, sabotage, Christianity was attached, Pagodas were destroyed, monasteries cleared out, temples taken over, anything painted red was sanctioned, otherwise it was destroyed. To save something, anything, paint it red. Children were indoctrinated to denounce  parents. Brothels, concubinage, buying and selling of human beings, opium, smoking, gambling were all fair game to be eliminated.  In late 1927 Peng Pai announced: "the destruction of the system of private property,  land was to be distributed according to his system."  Even a secret police was set up.  I wonder if the Gestapo 10 years later got some of their ideas from what happened in China?  Stalin probably got his extremes from his own heinous mind. Factories were to be given to the workers. Books were to be burned, libraries and private collections were to be destroyed.  It was a total mixture of elemental morality and elemental barbarism, part modern, part medieval.  But the Nationalist forces with superior weapons nearly wiped out the Communist (Soviets) in 1928. (Blunden p. 162)

THE WOMEN OF CHINA-QIU JIN AND FEMALE EMANCIPATION

And then there were those who were speaking up for the women. The pioneer of female  emancipation in China, Qiu Jin, born in 1875, was influenced by the antecedents of the women's movement of poets, writers, and educators, and the female counterparts of the Boxers active in Tianjin in 1900, resulting in the Suffrage Alliance of 1912.  Qiu had rode horseback, used a sword, drank heavily and wrote verses. She engaged in revolutionary activities, practiced making bombs, and taught girls military drills and initiated the Chinese Women's Journal.  But equal political and  social rights for women would linger and be delayed because of the lack of a mass basis. The women of China had been so subordinated for centuries they were unable to rise to the opportunity they had at that time. They split between social revolutionary ideals and strictly feminist ideals and romantics believing in free love and individual happiness. Most peasants had bought their wives,  mothers-in-laws did not want to give up the service an extra hand provided. Women would not support the peasant movements if they wanted a divorce and couldn't get one.  The women's movement was eventually to become a real power and had its greatest impact on the future starting in 1922 in Haifeng and Lefeng, two  scenically spectacular counties in eastern Guangdong, not far from Hong Kong. It was also there, over the next six years, that most of the characteristic forms of the Chinese Revolution were to crystallize.

SUN YAT-SEN TRIES AGAIN THE LAST TIME-THE RISE OF CHIANG KAI-SCHEK

In 1921 Sun Yatsen is back into politics. In 1923 he is back in Canton and is elected president of the Southern Republic.  Lu Husun, publishes in 1923 his powerful collection of short stories, NA HAN,  calling for the Chinese to unite and save China. It doesn't  happen. With the expert help of the Russians, Sun reorganizes the Kuomintang . He establishes the Whampoa Military Academy under Chiang Kai-schek. Sun had been elevated to Generalissimo of the Guomindang Party, his goal was spreading its influence to the north from its base at Guangzhou.  But, while on a conciliatory conference with other Chinese political leaders he dies of cancer in Peking, March 12, 1925.  (Thorne p. 1289-1290) As a medical doctor, Sun couldn't see it coming.  Mongolia had split away and declares itself a Peoples Republic becoming the world's second communist state.  Sun had joined the fledgling Communist Part in calling for reform along socialistic lines. Chiang Kaishek was his successor. Chiang found Russian advisors in his midst reorganizing his armies. The Goumindang's  military successes took them as far north as the Yangtze River. They moved their capital to Nanjing in 1928. But then the Communist and Nationalists had come to a parting of the ways. Chiang's armies took Shanghai in 1927, he chose to curry favor among the capitalists there and executed the Russian advisors and about 5,000 Communist sympathizers. Among the leaders who escaped his purge was Mao Zedong, who went into hiding in the mountains straddling Hunan and Kiangsi. (Harris p. 12) Mao and Chiang were now mortal enemies. This personal struggle would last 50 years, until Mao died in1976. Because of them China's misery would extend to the present, because the Communist had gained the upper hand.

THE END AND THE BEGINNING OF MAO ZEDONG

In 1927  Mao Zedong's Autumn Harvest uprising is defeated, but Mao sees the potential for a peasant revolution in China. (Kagan p. 320)  He had followed the failed policies of Lenin in Russia who was building on a workers base.  In China it was clear it would have to be on a peasant base.  The position of a serf, especially prior to 1861, was different than in China. The Russian word for serf or peasant was rab, meaning in fact 'slave'.  There were some 36 million in Russia being classed as peasants of which 34 million were serfs. (Conquest pp. 14-15) In Russia, the years 1921 to 1927 were a stalemate. Lenin had grappled with similar problems for three years, but he died January 12, 1924.  His testament had provided that Stalin be eliminated from the party, but Stalin, after six cruel murderous years, established his supremacy, then initiated a land reform policy and a purge that was a total disaster and during the next several years millions of 'serfs' were to die. The failures in Russia were not lost on Mao, while he did not repeat the mistakes of Russian Communism, Mao instigated his own brand of reform, and it wasn't any more successful than the pattern Russia tried to impose on China. The Russian, Soviet Communist party had, over a four year period struck a double blow at the peasantry : de-kulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, collectivization, effective abolition of private property in land and the concentration of the remaining peasantry in collective farms under party control. The Soviet way was a disaster of huge proportions with millions of deaths, the China way with a different set of goals, not always much different, was equally not successful. In Russia the de-kulakization of the peasantry killed not less than 14.5 million. (Conquest p. 306) This does not count the Gulag people grinder that consumed up to 60 million that started in1933 and lasted until Stalin died under somewhat mysterious circumstances in1953. (Throne p. p. 1260)  A Kulak was a small property owner. Most Russian peasants were therefore Kulaks, and they had to go. Period!  But China also had a long way to go. One of the longest and horrific bloodletting civil war was then in progress.

THE PRODUCTION AND TRANSLATION OF BIBLES 

There are more than  6,900 known, living languages in the world.  Of these, to date, about 2,379 have all or a portion of God's Word, or a Bible translation of some sort;  generally the King James Version.   There were about 627 Native American languages when the western hemisphere was discovered by Columbus.  More than 100 have totally disappeared   along with those who could speak them. There are several today that are in the hands of only a few elderly women, when they die, the tribal identification will die with them, there are those hastening to preserve and record such critical languages. The American Bible Society in conjunction with the World Bible Society and in association with many other Bible Societies, has an  ongoing urgency to translate and publish bibles and portions of the Bible. One the most recent translation activities began in 1958 in Brazil.  Two dedicated and selfless nondenominational missionaries, Carlos Krieger and his wife, Wanda , went into the remote areas  of Brazil and met the Xerente people, a tribe then of only 435, that had been decimated by diseases. The Krieger's began studying the culture, and sharing what they knew of the gospel, educating these remote peoples and teaching them about healthcare.

In 1967, the Krieger's also began working to provide the Xerente people with their the greatest gift of all, God's Word in their own heart (personal) language.  For 40 years, they painstakingly translated the New Testament into the Xerente native tongue. The American Bible Society was enlisted to help through publishing, printing and editorial coordination.  In 2013, some 181 Xerentes received a copy of scripture in their own language. The Xerente are now an indigenous nation of five clans whose total number has grown to more than 3,000, living in 40 settlements.  (West p. 2) The problem now is literacy development so more can read the results of a life time of effort.  Are these people intended to receive the restored gospel?  Aren't they children who were once nurtured by a heavenly mother and father?  Will missionaries eventually provide the  gospel to such remote members of Father's family?  Whether here or in the spirit world they will be taught.  The picture that I have shows about 50 men, women and children behind a ten foot long banner expressing thanks in their language for the translation now available. Those who receive and read about the First Witness of the Christ will be prepared and ready for the Second Witness, the Book of Mormon and they will have the expectation of eternal life. 

A NEW BIIBLE PRODUCTION PLANT IN CHINA

Several years ago, when Fang Xiaodong's wife obtained her bible and began to learn about Jesus Christ, he could have cared less. He wasn't interested in his wife's newly discovered God. When she tried to talk to him about God, Xiaodong ignored her or shrugged it off. When she invited people  over to their home to share the Gospel with him, he refused to participate.

"I did not want to believe," Xiaodong said." I would try to debate with them about religion."  But, as in so many like cases, Xiaodong couldn't help but notice the tremendous change in his wife. Then he got sick. Access to medical attention is not the best in China, like the early pioneers, someone wanted to pray for him. They know nothing about the laying on of hands and priesthood blessings.  But pray, they could for God hears all prayers and answers accordingly.  "A Christian colleague prayed for me and I was healed. It was then that I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior," Xiadonog said. "At first, I was full of faith but as time passed I began  to doubt my conversion. "  Without feeding early faith, doubt can slay a heartfelt intent.  That is when he turned to reading the scriptures for strength.  Those who do so with sincere intent will get the help they need.

Now, in 2013, for Xiaodong , " Life is different now, than before. All I have to do is pray and read the Bible, then I will experience joy in place of stress."  Imagine how it will be if he ever finds the gospel of the restoration.  (West p. 3) Xiaodong has joined the increasingly vast number of China Churches developing throughout China.  They are nondenominational. They are small and large assemblies  of readers of the scriptures.  Why learn about Xiaodong?  Today, he supervises work on a new bible production plant in China, and his faith guides everything he does. (West p. 3)  The picture I have shows stacks of bibles in the new printing plant, the stacks are shoulder high.  Another bible printing press, Amity Printing Company , the former printing press of the Nanking region, is now the largest producer of bibles in the world, this spring they celebrated their 100 millionth bible.  (West 2013 p.  l) Of these Bibles, 60 % are retained in China, the rest have been exported. They are now one of the largest exporters of bibles in the world.  All of this has happened in just less than four years!  Is it the hand of God preparing China and other Asiatic nations for the time the restored gospel will be taken to them?

The American Bible Society and others like it, are placing God's Word in the hands of new converts to the Bible teachings, to give them the encouragement and knowledge they need to live in faith until they hear the gospel of the restoration, here, or on the other side.

THE BIBLE A MONTH PROJECT 

In the Henan Province of China, a remote area where bibles are scarce, Yanqiu Yang had heard about Jesus Christ,  enough to believe in him. She said: "I have believed in Jesus Christ for 20 years with no Bible." For far too many the thought of being without a bible that long is unthinkable. Sadly because Bibles are so scarce, especially in such remote areas, this is a way of life for many believers like Yanqiu. "I was always eager to learn about heaven and God.  But I couldn't  do it, getting my first  Bible was like getting a key to many locks. It was a very precious treasure." 

Yanqiu's words rang true during many touching moments that 71 year old Yu Soon Sing experienced as she joined one of the many a Bible distribution trips generated by Amity Press, across the Yunnan's mountainous area of China. Describing her journey, Yu says every stop gave "a glimpse of the extent of longing for the Word of God. At Panhe Church [or assembly of believers] the congregation was waiting patiently for us. Local ladies, dressed in traditional  Miao costumes, cheerfully stood waiting in the rain to welcome us. (The MIAO, found in three south China provinces as well as in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, are a tribal mountain dwelling people whose customs and dialects survive. (Danforth  p. 367)  As we began to distribute Bibles, everyone received their copy with a beaming smile--some even shed tears of joy."  (Smith p. 25) The Translation of the Bible into Miao had taken 70 years and was completed in 2011and briefly mentioned in an earlier entry.  While other congregations did have some Bibles, Yu saw just how cherished they are. "In Yongshan County, we participated in the Sunday worship. We saw an old, black leather bound Bible on a seat. The pages were old and the print was faded, bearing witness to the many times the pages were flipped and read over the ages. The trip was a journey of grace, and very touching for me to witness.  The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest."  (West 2012 p. 1) The picture I have is Yanqiu Yang getting her first Bible.  Someday the true messengers and laborers will be sent to China to harvest those that are coming to love the Lord. 

In rural and urban communities alike, the Chinese people's churches are overflowing as the number of believers continues to multiply. And while this is great news, it's left countless new Christians desperate for Bibles.  It is the hope and prayers of  the ABS that someday, no believer will ever be without a Bible.  The ABS generates a lot of Bible distributions in Chinese areas. Recently one of their first stops in such a distribution activity, was at a "cave church" about an hour out of Cheng Cheng. To get there the team drove slowly up a mountainous road dodging deep potholes. After the road ended, it was another half mile up a steep mountain trail. The team was met along the way by locals who greeted them like celebrities. The locals smiled from ear to ear holding team members' hands thanking them for visiting their gathering. At the top of the trail was a small door. It was cut into the side of the mountain covered by a blanket. That was where they worshiped--inside a cave.  The team could hear the singing coming from within. And when the blanket was pulled back, they were welcomed into a small, very cold chamber of the cave. Inside, people were seated on wooden benches, heavily dressed for the cold, waiting for their arrival. After a formal greeting and a few songs, Bibles were distributed to all.

In China, the literacy rate in rural areas is significantly lower than in the cities. This will pose a problem for future missionaries. Many of such congregations cannot read, but they knew the Bible was important. They realized it was God's Word, and it was in their language, even if they couldn't  read it for themselves. Fortunately the majority had someone in their family who could read for them. That was the case for a 65 year old grandmother the team met. She had recently lost both her husband and son in the same year. She told them her grief was so bad she could barely stand the pain. But as a believer in Christ, she knew she would find comfort in the Bible. Now, every day, she walks several miles with her new bible to visit her grandson. He reads to her, helping her find comfort in God's Word.  That day, in a dark, candle lit, cold cave, God's light shone bright thanks to a program called Bible a Month  of ABS, where people have pledged amounts of $25 per month for twenty five bibles to be distributed.  I have participated  in this program for a number of years.  At each stop of the team making the distribution of Bibles this program provided, it was the same, old and young, Christians in China are crying out for Scripture. (Birdsall p. 2-3) The scripture that they are getting  is the First Witness.  In time, somewhere someday, they will be introduced to the Second Witness, the Book of Mormon and the Restored Gospel.  They will be ready.  The picture I have is of a group of men, women and children standing, holding their new Bibles. 

THE CHURCH PRESECE - INDIRECTLY- IN CHINA

Early in the 1980s a handful of BYU professors, their spouses, and others, began teaching English to students at Chinese universities and other educational institutions. In 1988 the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies at Brigham Young University under the direction of Ray C. Hilam, formed the China teachers program to facilitate placement of latter day saint teachers throughout China. In 1989 , the first group of 21 teachers arrived there. Since 1995, an average of over 60 teachers have participated in the program each year. Teachers were assigned, in 2013, to universities in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Jinan, Nanjing and Xi'an.  (Church Almanac p. 459)

MORMON TEACHERS FOR CHINA

The following was taken from the Church News, Week of December 30, 2012:  In December 20, 2012, the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies at BYU, announced it was seeking qualified couples and individuals to teach at highly respected universities in the People's Republic of China during the 2013-2014 academic year.

Although most teachers are hired to teach oral and written English, there is an increasing need for professionals with experience in the fields of linguistics, business, law, economics, science, culture and literature.  Expanding the fields where experienced persons could be effective and using their skills.

While formal teaching experience is recommended, it is not required for placement, nor are Chinese language skills--all classes are taught in English. Applicants must be active members of the church, have university degrees, be in a secure financial situation, have excellent emotional and physical health, be age 65 or younger and have no childcare responsibilities. Mid-career professionals in a position to take a sabbatical are encouraged to apply.

Teaching in China is an academic service activity and teaches are expected to exemplify high moral values, professionalism and integrity. Assignments are for 11 months beginning August 2013 and include an intensive two-week orientation at BYU. Chinese universities provide teachers with adequate housing and a small living stipend. Airfare is also provided for the participants.

Applicants were to apply before Friday Feb 15, 2013.  Kennedy Center teacher nominees would have had their name sent to Chinese universities around March l.  Those who applied and were accepted are already in China.  Another call for teachers will be made periodically. Those selected participate in a mandator y two week, 100-hour TEFL training program at the Kennedy Center prior to leaving for China. They will also attend a mid-year, in-service conference in Hong Kong where teaching materials will be exchanged and the progress of each teacher will be assessed.

Participants will have a rare opportunity to teach Chinese university students, experience a year living in China, absorb the ancient and modern culture of Asia and contribute to building a relationship of trust between two great nations. their conscientious service benefits Chinese students, host universities and the teachers themselves.

Teachers are currently placed at 19 partner-universities in nine cities in China. More than 1,300 people will have participated in the program since 1989.  For information one may write to China Teachers International Studies, Brigham Young University , 220 HRCB, Provo, Utah 84604 or (801-422-5321; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or online at kennedy.byu.edu/chinateachers.

By their example, these teachers are effective missionaries.

                                                            BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALMANAC, CHURCH, 2013

BLUNDEN, Caroline, & Mark Elvin, Cultural Atlas of China, Facts on File Inc.,  New York, N.Y., 1983

CONQUEST, Robert, Harvest of Sorrow, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986 de KEIJZER, Arne J., & Fredric M. Kaplan, JAL Guide to the People's Republic of China, Eurasia Press, Fair Lawn, New Jersey 1978

DANFORTH,  Kenneth C., Ed.,  Journey into China, National Geographic Society, D.C. 1982

FAY, Albert H., A Glossary of the Mining and Mineral Industry, U.S Government Printing           Office, Washington , 1947

KUAN, Petra Haring, Yu Chien Kuan, Magnificent China, China Books & Periodicals, Inc, San   Francisco, 1988

HARRIS, Bill, China, Land of Eternity,  Arch Cape Press, New York, 1989

KAGAN, Neil, Concise History of the World, Nation al Geographic, Washington DC,  2006

PAGE, Jake, In the Hands of the Great Spirit, Free Press, Simon and Schuster, Inc., N.Y. 2003

SANDERS, Catharine, Chris Stewart & Rhonda Evans, The Rough Guide to China, Routledge &  Kegan Paul, New York, 1987                    

SEE, Lisa,  On Gold Mountain,  St. Martin's Press, New York, 1995

SINCLAIR, Kevin, Over China, The Knapp Press, Los Angles, California, 1988

SMITH, Liz, Miao and Later, The Record, American Bible Society, Washington D.C., Spring      2011

SOUTHWORTH,  J. R., The Mines of Mexico-Illustrated, Vol. 1X, Blake and Mackenzie, Liverpool, London, 1905

THORNE,  J. O., Chambers Biographical Dictionary, H. R. Chambers, Ltd., Edinburgh, England, 1986

WEST,  R. Lamar, Good News, Rain in a Dry Land,  American Bible Society, New York, 2013 ______ Good News, April/May vol. 20, No. 3, 2012