“Pastor!” “Pastor!” “Canada!” “Canada!”
Our luggage had just been deposited in our room on the 11th floor of Ningbo's ultramodern 28 storey World Hotel. We heard insistent cries coming from the elevator. Two representatives of the local Three Self Movement were trying to locate foreigners; guests referred to them from Shanghai headquarters. We caught up with them, went downstairs to the lobby and boarded a church van waiting for us. We were about to be reconnected with my missionary past in China.
Ningbo, a city of 1.25 million, is the capital of Zhejiang province. Wide boulevards, modern skyscrapers, even a transplanted University of Nottingham, mark this innovative and prosperous city on the coast of central China, a half hour's plane ride south of Shanghai. Ningbo was the closest city to my grandparents' missionary post at Ninghai.
Ningbo was the city to which my grandfather came in 1897 as a 26-year-old raw missionary recruit from the Hebrides whose first language was Gaelic. Ningbo's British consulate was where he was married to an American (who lost her citizenship as a result) four years later. Ningbo was where my father was born. And 20 years later, having left Ningbo a healthy 50-year-old the night before, it was to Ningbo he returned in the final hours of his unsuccessful fight with cholera. Ningbo was where his funeral was held, and in Ningbo Foreign Cemetery he was buried.
All of this was swirling through my mind as we were driven to the Century Three-Self Church. There, in a hospitality room with red damask tapestry, treated to cups of steaming tea, my wife and I, and a friend who had grown up with me in China, were greeted with great ceremony. Church representatives were even gracious about my fractured and fragmentary language, neglected since my Chinese childhood over 50 years ago.
I showed pictures that told our family's story better than I could. There was one of my grandparents' wedding day, another of my grandfather and his evangelists, still others of my father and his three sisters as children. Then I produced a series of photos, taken from an old album, faded after all the years, of the home my grandfather had built for his fiancée in 1900 as he was preparing to marry. The China Inland Mission demanded of its amorous language school students two mandatory years of separation (in opposite parts of the country) before they were allowed to wed.
Suddenly, there was a collective gasp of recognition and delight. Each photo of my ancestral home was taken to the light, details shared and discussed. They were particularly attracted to a view down a narrow defile to a house. Puzzled, I asked why such excitement. They replied with great emotion: “We will take you there. It's still the same house. Nothing has changed.”
The mandatory feast at one of Ningbo's finest restaurants delayed our visit for several hours. Eventually we were whisked down a motorway to Ninghai. A trip that took my grandparents 14 hours, and which finally cost my grandfather his life his final night while en route on a sampan, was made in 40 minutes. We paid our toll at the booth, stopped by at another thriving church which had once been a mission outstation, and in 10 minutes, passing through Ninghai's wide and bustling modern boulevards, we were deposited at a narrow and ancient laneway. Climbing a steep ascent we were finally beckoned to turn left.
And then it happened. Clutching the photo I saw the identical view before me: a narrow defile leading over the wall to a modest western-style home. Two storeys high, only the latticework on the upper balcony altered, ancient photographs suddenly came alive. Our party soon summoned all the neighbours, the photos were passed around, hurried trips to scanners and photocopying shops were made. The smaller homes around the compound — where single missionaries, Bible women and pastors had lived — are now occupied by squatters. The government has recently returned our family home to the church and the first floor is the church's social centre. The upstairs has two apartments where two old elders without family are housed. There were general apologies all round for the state of housekeeping as our guides showed us my father's and his sisters' bedrooms. On the balcony outside, again with ancient photos for comparison, the silhouette of distant hills remained unchanged. In a China where everything is being torn down to make room for the new and the modern, it was an astonishing discovery.
A pastor who was accompanying us said, “We are a church that has lost its history. Our records were all destroyed. We don't know who brought Christianity to us or how and when our church started. Write something about your grandfather, have it translated, and send it to us. We want to learn more about our roots.”
By now a crowd had gathered, noisy chatter everywhere, fingers pointing at us and at photographs, questions addressed to me in Chinese that I could barely understand. We were summoned to walk over to the church, about 100 metres away. Built in 1905 by my grandfather, since 1980 when it reopened, it has been extended front and back. The elders gathered and at the communion table we held an impromptu service.
My childhood friend and I mustered all the Chinese choruses we could remember and the crowd that had gathered joined in, singing along with us, the words binding us together in a common faith. After five or six of them I started the old gospel song, “Coming home, Lord, I'm coming home.” As we sang in Chinese a great wave of emotion swept over all of us. One of the older men turned to me and said simply: “You have indeed come home.”
Today in Ninghai, we were told, there are 20,000 believers in a population of 60,000. In addition to several services in the mother church, there are other places of worship. Frequent conversions and baptisms after careful instruction are the norm; sharing one's faith a joyful response to the spiritual emptiness created by China's new material prosperity and disillusionment with the past. Growth is simply the consequence of a vibrant faith community. Travelling in three provinces of China and worshipping with Christians, we heard Jesus-centred preaching and witnessed transformed lives.
Not that every province is as promising as Zhejiang. In my parents' old mission station in Shandong, where we spent a weekend, the entire missionary compound of 25 or more buildings — a vocational institute, a Bible school, a chapel, a theological seminary, missionary residences, student dormitories, an orphanage — was completely destroyed in 1946/7. Only the hospital remains as a mute witness to the missionary presence. Elsewhere many Chinese medical institutions are belatedly, but now proudly, acknowledging their Christian origins.
Even in south Shandong, the church I was taken to as a youngster on Sunday mornings, has hundreds of believers filling the building. The choir, which my mother once led, sings old traditional hymns that have gone out of style in North America. Indeed, one young believer turned to me and said, “We hear that many of your churches are almost empty in Canada. We need to come and re-evangelize your country as missionaries, returning the favour 100 years ago you did for us.” Perhaps he's on to something.
