July 1st is CanadaChinese Communist Party Day! And what could be more appropriate than a little translated propaganda? It just so happens that the most galling bit of propaganda I’ve ever seen in our few years in China coincides with the CCP’s 90th birthday. After reading it, you’ll lose control of your adjectives, too.

Below is my abridged version of this English translation of this Chinese article from the official CCC/TSPM website.

I so wish I was making this up. As if helping the police bully detained worshipers wasn’t enough…

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Beijing Municipal Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee and China Christian Council Hold a Praise Concert to Celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party
北京市基督教两会举办庆祝建党90周年音乐赞美会

On June 11, the Beijing Municipal Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee and the China Christian Council held a praise concert at the Century Theatre called “One Heart, One Direction” in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the [Chinese Communist] Party.
[...]
Before the performance started, Cai Kui, chairman of the Beijing Municipal Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee, made these remarks on behalf of the many pastors and lay leaders in the capital. He said: “In the past 90 years, the Chinese Communist Party, while closely uniting people of various nationalities and various walks of life in China, has never stopped caring about and helping Chinese Christianity. Especially since the beginning of the new period [i.e. period of Communist Party rule], with the generous help of the Party and the government, churches have been built everywhere across China and great efforts have been made in training clergymen who actively engage in social work and walk a path compatible with socialism. At the same time that the living and working conditions of the vast number of clergymen have greatly improved, their social status and political treatment have also risen without interruption. Facts have proven that the Chinese Communist Party is sincere in its treatment of and support for the development of Chinese Christianity. And Chinese Christianity has already formed a constant and changeless relationship of co-dependency and mutual aid with the Chinese Communist Party and the Central People’s Government and will always be of one heart and on the same path with the Party and the government. As long as we adhere to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party as we always have, adhere to serving the overall interests of the Party and the government, adhere to the policy of independence and autonomy in religion, adhere to being of one heart with and on the same path as the Party and the government and firmly abide by the Three-Self policy in the road ahead, then we will certainly create a more brilliant tomorrow for China.”
[...]
“Picking a Camellia Flower to Give to the Party” movingly expressed the gratitude of Christians toward the Party and the government for the many years of care and help they have given to Christianity…

The entire performance included both Christian hymns and revolutionary songs praising the Party … all the believers responded with round after round of enthusiastic applause. When the famous singer Liu Bingyi sang, “I Produce Petroleum for the Motherland,” his passionate song not only brought the whole concert to its climax, it also greatly inspired the audience’s love for the Party and the country.
[...]
The theme that was unfurled in this praise concert was that when everything is well with the Communist Party and the state, then everything will be well with the church. [The concert] once again demonstrated the Christians’ true feelings of support for the Party, love for the country and love of their religion, and expressed the eternal theme that Chinese Christianity has always been of one heart with and on the same path as the Chinese Communist Party and the Central People’s Government. In particular, the inscription by Pastor Yu Xinli on the title page of the program all the more expressed the deep gratitude of the many Christians on this 90th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party: “The Chinese Communist Party and the people of China have been of one heart and on the same path for 90 years, and the Party has led us from victory to victory, has brought about the revival of the Chinese nation and our lives are becoming better and better. May God bless our motherland and its people!”
[...]
[The concert] is a profound embodiment of the support of Beijing Christians for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and their firm adherence to the path of loving their country and loving their religion. It is also a vivid portrayal of the support for and allegiance to the Party and the government on the part of the many Beijing Christians. … This will surely inspire all the Christian clergy of Beijing in their enthusiastic and indefatigable efforts in the construction of a “harmonious society!”

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I’m not the kind of person who takes a hardline black-and-white stance regarding Three-Self churches. And it’s possible this whole event isn’t meant to be taken literally; it could just be a big kowtow, a scripted sop that church leaders put up to please and appease their overlords, a big exercise in obligatory face-giving hierarchy-affirmation, similar to the relationship between illegal migrant street vendors and chéngguǎn (城管), that they are especially obligated to perform right now given the on-going weekly public standoff in Beijing between the authorities and a big TSPM-rejecting church. But with the prime criticism of China’s Three Self churches being that they are politically compromised tools of the explicitly and aggressively atheistic government, this kind of stuff isn’t helping.

Of course, we need to understand this outpouring of religious allegiance to the CCP in the context of what else happening in Beijing right now, i.e. the aforementioned unprecedented weekly showdown between the authorities and a large unregistered church that refuses to join the Three Self and refuses to stop meeting in public. You can catch up on that on-going story here:

• Happy Easter, China [Update #4] — Treatment of detainees deteriorates, shift in interrogation tactics
• Happy Easter, China [Update #3] — Formal petition calls Beijing out
• Happy Easter, China [Update #2]
• Happy Easter, China

You can see all our propaganda-themed stuff here. (Note: the word “propaganda” does not carry negative overtones in Chinese.) And if the original article link breaks, you can download the text and photos here: Chinese Communist Party Worship Service.doc.

In the interests of at least attempting to enter the 21st century, ChinaHopeLive.net is now Facebookified and Twitterized… I think. You can follow, subscribe, like, or do whatever it is called that people do by clicking the pretty boxes below or in the right sidebar. Let me know if something doesn’t work!

Thanks for reading!

You can stop wondering what the story of Ruth would be like if performed as a Beijing Opera, because there’s pictures and video here: Whithersoever Thou Goest… Even to China:
The Story of Ruth Meets Beijing Opera

Ladies and gentlemen… 看哪！

(Mouseover the underlined Chinese characters once the page has stopped loading.)

Now everywhere on the blog you see underlined Chinese characters, you can mouseover them and get these cool tooltips. No more squinting at tiny print in those annoyingly small yellow rectangles! This is possible thanks to a new, free WordPress plugin from John at Sinosplice.com and Andy at techni-orchid.com called Sinosplice Tooltips.

Since this is such a 超酷 plugin, I’m going to celebrate by sharing a bit from my daughter’s (extensive) collection of Chinese-edition Dr. Seuss:

忽然有这么一天，光肚史尼奇们正像往常一样在沙滩上呆着，无精打采地做着肚皮上冒出颗星的白日梦，一个陌生人驾驶着一辆奇怪的车呼啸而来。

Back-translated overly-literal English:

Suddenly one day, the Bare-Belly Sneetches just like the same as always are staying on the beach, depressingly making bellytop-emerge-a-star daydreams, a stranger driving a strange car whizzes up.

Original English:

Then ONE day, it seems…while the Plain-Belly Sneetches
Where moping and doping alone on the beaches,
Just sitting there wishing their bellies had stars…
A stranger zipped up in the strangest of cars!

If blogging is a little slow for the next little while, here’s why:

Lilia Eden was born 7 weeks early at 9:21pm on May 23! She’s 4lbs 10.5oz, 18.5 inches. Jessica is doing great, despite the unexpected emergency surgery, and Lilia is in the NICU getting stronger every day. If you’re Facebook friends with either of us, then you can see photos.

We’re aiming to move back to China in September, but blogging will be less frequent (but not totally absent) until then.

P.S. – Chinese name suggestions most welcome! But we make no promises. Her family name is 陆。

P.P.S. – As tempting as it is, we wont be turning this into a baby photo blog. We’ll keep writing China stuff here, and just make a different blog for the baby photos! :)

Someone entered us in the 2008 China Blog Awards. Voting ends on the 31st and the holidays are coming, so now’s about the last change to give us a boost! Please go here and click the little plus (+) sign.

And if you really like clicking plus signs and are feeling particularly magnanimous, you can also vote for these nice people with good China blogs:

• Xinjiang: Far West China
• Frog in a Well wasn’t entered, but they’re good, too.

Stupid blog stuff
The blog’s been down a lot the last few days. So 烦得死去活来！ I don’t have time or know-how to fix it, but thankfully we have friends here who are smarter than me. Hopefully we’ll do all the upgrades and maintenance and stuff that I’ve successfully(?) avoided so far out of fear of messing everything up, and things will go back to normal — I guess this thing just couldn’t stay in 2003 forever. For now it’s limping along; if you get a blank page with a weird error message, that’s why.

Photos!
From today – of all the $0.50 fried noodles in Tianjin, her’s are my favourite:

From Sunday before last – a bit of colour in the morning commute:

Riding that close to all the cars is normal.

[June 11] As you can see, our blog is having “issues.” Our friend and my former computer genius of a roommate Greg (formerly my roommate, still currently a computer genius) is working on getting our Chinese characters back and getting rid of that error message at the top. Once he does, I’m afraid you’ll get daily posts for at least a week or two, along with a few photo galleries. This server move has made our blog a little constipated.

If you’re sick of checking back here all the time and seeing this same dumb post and NO new photos, then look down on the left hand column and put your e-mail in the little box and hit “Subscribe.” That way you don’t have to check here every day and you’ll get an e-mail when something new is posted… assuming that subscription thing still works, of course. Hopefully we’ll be back in business soon!

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There’s been some fun and interesting stuff the last couple days, but we’re in the middle of changing web hosts. I’m waiting to post until it’s finished… hopefully done today or tomorrow. Greg is actually doing it for us, since I’m 有一点笨 when it comes to stuff like that. If we disappear for a bit, that’s why.

We camp on the Great Wall this weekend!

In case you didn’t notice, CHL is now publicly accessible. Please link and e-mail all you want.

Here’s the one important part: We do not want to be accidentally mistaken as potentially troublesome by people of consequence. Our intentions are explicitly apolitical. In order to not be misunderstood, it is important that people don’t associate our names or url with potentially troublesome terminology. So please link to us, but keep all that in mind. And please don’t use our last names. If you have any questions about all this, you can send us an e-mail.

So yeah, no more logging in. Happy? If you experience any issues with leaving comments or whatever, please let me know.

Tomorrow we take the kids (Koreans and Taiwanese) downtown for some sightseeing at Stanley park. Tough job…

Made it back just in time for Julia’s graduation. Here’s a photo with her date to the grad banquet/cruise/breakfast that the school does as an alternative to prom. Brian’s a Korean guy who was on her South Africa trip.

It’s Canada day, so the paper is filled with things that are supposed to make Canada look good and distinct, like this quote from Jane Fonda (yes, that’s right),

When I go to Canada, I feel this what the world should be like.

Toques, Tim Horton’s donuts, and polar bears made the top 5 “Reasons to Love Canada” list. Wayne Gretzky was #9 – right above salmon. I’ll refrain from facetious comments regarding national identity crises and inferiority complexes.

We really do like it here. The weather is sunny but not sweaty, it’s all green and tree’d, quiet, spacious… and I’m talking about Surrey, B.C. The locals disagree, but perspective is very relative: driving into Surrey from the airport I thought, “Geez, this place is so… undeveloped!” It looked like frontier territory or something, compared to Yonghe. We’ve been hanging out with extended family that’s here for Julia’s grad, nice and relaxing before the craziness of the ESL program starts on Monday.

In other news, CHL will soon go public – meaning no more annoying logging in and all that. I just have to clean up a few more things and make sure I don’t accidentally mess it all up in the process.