If you’ve been to China you have probably noticed that it is a society of walls. There are walls around schools, factories, and housing estates. Sometimes the entities within these walls are huge, covering many city blocks. In an attempt to alleviate congestion and open up more through ways through the cities, the Chinese government in February issued a new regulation calling for walled communities to open up their roads and streets to through passage. In other words, they want the walls to come down. In this article, originally published in the mainland online journal Territory, the writer uses this new regulation as a starting point for a discussion of the walls that we build in our hearts and how only through the cross can we tear them down.
ChinaSource Team
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April 12, 2016
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Ideas
One of my favorite China books is The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History, by Joanna Waley-Cohen. In it she chronicles China’s historical interactions with the outside world, arguing that China has never been as isolationist as historians have suggested. What the West often perceived as isolationist policies or attitudes were instead China’s insistence that authority must never be surrendered to outsiders.
Joann Pittman
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April 11, 2016
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Ideas
Last week we interviewed Kerry Schottelkorb, Director of Advancement for Christian Action Asia, about his organizations work with disabled orphans in China. Here is the story of one of the orphans they have cared for.
ChinaSource Team
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April 8, 2016
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Stories
The China Partnership website recently carried the story of an urban pastor who planted 16 churches in a major Chinese city. The article profiles the transformation in this pastor’s thinking concerning the nature and purpose of the church.
Brent Fulton
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April 6, 2016
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Stories
Over the years, many stories have come out of China about believers who, having no access to the printed Word, painstakingly write out the Scriptures by hand. The 21st century has put a new spin on that practice—copying out the Bible by hand not because of its unavailability but in order to break an addiction to online games! This story, from the Gospel Times, tells of a man in China who has decided to write out by hand a chapter per day.
ChinaSource Team
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April 5, 2016
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Stories
My first visit to Wuhan was in January of 1984. I was travelling with a group of 17 teachers on a boat trip down the Yangtze River from Chongqing to Wuhan. We disembarked in Wuhan three days before Spring Festival, and set out to acquire 17 train tickets to Guangzhou. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.
Joann Pittman
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April 4, 2016
Today we are launching our first-ever online training course titled "Serving Well in China" for people working in China or preparing to work in China.
Joann Pittman
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April 1, 2016
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Stories
Brent Fulton, president of ChinaSource, talks with Joann Pittman, senior vice president of ChinaSource, and Amy Young, author of Looming Transitions: Starting and Finishing Well in Cross-Cultural Service about five essential keys for adjusting well to the cultural challanges of China. They also introduce ChinaSource Institute and its first on-line course "China: Serving Well Where You Don't Belong," taught by Joann and Amy.
ChinaSource Team
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March 31, 2016
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Ideas
In many ways our worldview can be thought of as our operating system—the way in which we process and organize information and make sense of the world. For westerners, our worldview is built on legal frameworks such as guilt and innocence; however, most non-western cultures process the world based on honor and shame.
Joann Pittman
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March 30, 2016
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Resources
Earlier this month, the mainland publication Church China published a long article examining the importance of solid theological preparation for Chinese involved in the Great Commission. Last week we translated portions of the article. In part two, we continue with the translated portions, followed by short summaries and observations by the translator (in italics).
ChinaSource Team
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March 29, 2016
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Ideas
A ChinaSource 3 Questions interview with Kerry Schottelkorb, Director of Advancement for Christian Action Asia (CAA).
Brent Fulton
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March 28, 2016
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Stories
On Thursday night my landlady called and asked if she could come over to see me because she had some translation questions for me. Anyone who's been in China for a while knows the fear and dread that well up inside at the sound of someone asking for help with translation work. "Just read it over. It won't take long." Those words always precede hours of painful and laborious mental gymnastics trying to translate phrases, like the one in the title of this post, from what we call "Chinglish" to English.
Joann Pittman
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March 25, 2016
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Stories