Going north out of Jinan our second morning to the countryside, it seemed that the city was going on forever. As we drove on along really good roads with curbs and gutters and plantings, however, it became clear we were in new suburbs. Glimpsed behind the rows of houses were fields. And then we were in the countryside, still on a good road for a bit, raised up above the fields, with trees planted along the margins, and then the road got bumpy, so that the couple sitting in the rear of the van whom we had picked up at the city church offices were severely bounced a couple of times. There were fields on each side, a regular pattern of narrow strips of green. Wheat just coming up. In the near distance was red-gray of the walls of a village. Then we turned off onto what seemed like the a graveled top of a dike, it was so high above the fields and narrow, with spindly new trees being planted along the margins, and barely space for us to pass the bicycle wagons used to haul them. And then we turned again, onto another dike road, and just to our left, sitting on its own pedestal of dirt surrounded by the fields and with no other buildings within a mile was a church and walled compound.
We were invited into a gracious reception room on one side of the courtyard. Tea was served, and fruit and nuts. Two elders from neighboring church joined us. A young woman came in, and was introduced as the choir leader, Chen Xian Yan. Another young woman joined us, Yu Zhang Lao. We had seen her the afternoon before when we met the students at the provincial seminary in Jinan. She is already an elder and was now in charge of the preaching for this church.
The man who had been riding with us began to talk about where we were. Rev. Wang SanYuan was had just recently been made vice chairman of the Jinan Christian Council. But until then he had been the pastor of this church and leader of the work of the churches in this region. He had built that church in 1992 on the site of a much smaller one that had been destroyed along with the village around it during the cultural revolution. Just recently a group of men who at that time had been part of those persecuting the Christians had joined the church, he said. They were affected by how the Christians, once they were gathered again into strong communities, did not turn against them.
The present site of the church had been where his family home had been. When he finally left home during the years of the cultural revolution there were only three houses, in such bad repair he said that rain came in and ran down in rivlets on the mud brick walls, and mushrooms grew on the rafters. There is something strange about the site, he said. He had a dream even as he left that he would return and build a church there. And when the houses were pulled down, and fruit trees planted on the site, they withered. When corn was planted, it grew up without making any ears. So the land being no good was not incorporated into the communal fields, but lay separated from them. So when times changed, it was there to be reclaimed and could be the site of the church.
We had come to hear songs of the countryside. We were in Jinan area for five days so that Anne could pursue her research into the songs of the common people of the churches. We were disappointed, in a way, to find that we were not going to be sitting around with some of the old timers, as they reminisced and sang the songs of their past. Instead, after a hour?s conversation, we were taken across the courtyard to the church. It was not full either of old people, but sitting up toward the front were rows of robed choir members, most of them young. We took our seats in the very front, and they filed up to the chancel area, up on risers, at least fifty. The young choir director stood up on a podium, and began to conduct a choir concert, for us only, of a sampling of their music. Gorgeous voices, four parts, deep bases, tenors, altos and sopranos. Beautifully kept robes. Strong and sweet songs. Some very familiar hymns. Some Chinese. They ended with the Ode to Joy. And then sat down.
What does it tell you about the church in the countryside that it can produce 50 choir members who gather in a quite handsome building in the middle of the wheat, to sing with verve and joy? These are young peasants, we were told. Most have not had much education beyond primary school. They have trained in singing, as they have in other parts of the Christian life of that community. There are 70 registered churches or meeting points and another 270 unregistered meeting points in that region. This is the mother church, or regional? church. It was not clear to me if these were all members of this church, or if we had a combined choir from at least a few nearby churches. But other meeting points have their own choirs and own directors, who have been trained by the church. In this regional church for 10 years every winter there has been a 20-day training course. Four courses are taught. Three to five hundred persons come for that, at least one from every church and meeting point. Over a period of years they get 50 different courses, through these getting the basics of what they could get at more depth if they could go to seminary. In the summer there is a week-long course on music, with many different courses, from basic singing to choir leading. There are also some other practical courses on managing the church.
Wang San Yuan, the pastor who was our host, had built this whole system in the last fifteen years or so. His own formal training had been one year at Nanjing Seminary in the late 1980s. But he was now writing some of the curriculum for these training programs himself. Remarkable man. The tradition behind these churches is an indigenous one, called the Jesus Family, that emphasizes the behavior of Christians, that they treat one another as sister and brother. I don?t know if they are pacifist, but they feel like what I understand the Church of the Brethren or the Mennonites to have been like - people with a very clear sense of a way of life that they are called to, who live separated in a way from the rest of their communities, but are not focused on their opposition to the lives of other people like some sects, but on the discipline that they have accepted as their own.
When the choir had finished their program and sat down, the pastor got up, spoke a bit to them and to us, and then with some word from Anne, they began to sing less formal songs, he leading some, the choir director others, and some choir members coming forward to volunteer a song.
It became time for lunch. The church has the capability of sleeping and feeding those who come to the annual trainings. We got a tour of other rooms in the compound. More than 300 can sleep, stacked in bunks and on wood platforms on the floors of dorms we were shown. The kitchen was staffed that day. We were taken into a dining room for an elegant meal. We hoped the kitchen was working not just for us, but also for the choir. We did not ask. The extent of the hospitality being given us seemed too much to contemplate. Regularly the choir comes on Saturday afternoons to rehearse. So maybe they got celebrated as well as us with a special meal.
After lunch we got back in the van with Rev. Wang, his wife, and the Rev. Jiang Yu Min, a professor from the provincial seminary in Jinan and the organizer of the visits Anne was making, and were joined by the choir leader, Chen Xian Yan, and elderYu Zhang Lao. We bounced north half an hour, past several other villages, to the one with a meeting point we were to visit, Qiao Nan. Elder Yu Zhang Lao had come from this community. The meeting point was in a home owned by her father, also one of the few other church elders in the region. He met us, and we gathered with him around a small table set up in the middle of the worship space, again with fruit and nuts and tea. We got talking about early days. After a little, Anne asked if there were songs they sang then. Wang San Yuan began to sing, and Chen Xian Yan with him. His voice is strong, and so is that of the choir leader, and they sang with passion, sad and happy, quiet and stirring songs. It indeed seemed to be what we had come for. Those two had the beautiful voices, but Anne pointed out, everyone was singing, even if they did not have the good voices, Wang's wife, Yu Zhang Lao, her father, even another elder from that village who had a cold was mouthing the words.
The soul-satisfying pleasure they find in their singing speaks to a way life that surely could attract, even in competition with the offerings of a world becoming more affluent, for it seems emotionally rich and grounded. So Anne got some oral songs, but not just words and tunes, but what she expects to find in them, doorways to the heart of a distinctive and attractive life in the Chinese church.