China’s quiet Christians

 Beijing

A strong coffee always perks me up on a smoggy day, especially when I can drink it somewhere clandestine — like an ‘illegal’ church. Seek, and you shall find — but when it comes to Christianity in China, you’re likely to get a bit lost. Without being told where it was, I could have spent a lifetime walking past the anonymous, seemingly empty office block, never knowing that inside it was abuzz with religious activity. A discreet sign in the lobby is the only indication that a Sunday service is in progress. In other parts of the world, a church announces itself to the faithful with a cross on a steeple. The absence of this is one reason you can’t find Chinese churches — though the Zion Protestant Church is one of the most prominent, albeit unregistered, churches in Beijing. Zion may not resemble a traditional church on the outside, but it’s not exactly ‘underground’ either — along with coffee, you can buy little bears wearing ‘Jesus loves me’ T-shirts in its bustling café. By 10 a.m. the central hall is packed out for the second Chinese service of the day (there are also services held in Korean and English). A few hundred people were singing along to hymns played by a live band on a stage. Some had their arms in the air and part of me hoped it would turn into Sister Act. But the congregation remained very earnest, much like the clean-cut young women who approach me on the streets after dark and ask if I want to learn about Jesus. The words ‘I am willing to preach the Gospel’ flash up on multiple plasma screens across the room. There are officially recognised churches in China, in which both the building and its pastor have been state-sanctioned, the latter trained in schools where teaching is aligned with Communist party ideology.