Joann Pittman is Vice President of Partnership and China Engagement and editor of ZGBriefs.
Prior to joining ChinaSource, Joann spent 28 years working in China, as an English teacher, language student, program director, and cross-cultural trainer for organizations and businesses engaged in China. She has also taught Chinese at the University of Northwestern-St. Paul (MN), and Chinese Culture and Communication at Wheaton College (IL) and Taylor University (IN).
Joann has a BA in Social Sciences from the University of Northwestern-St. Paul (MN), and an MA in teaching from the University of St. Thomas (MN).
She is the author of Survival Chinese Lessons and The Bells Are Not Silent: Stories of Church Bells in China.
Her personal blog, Outside-In can be found at joannpittman.com, where she writes on China, Minnesota, traveling, and issues related to "living well where you don't belong."
You can find her on Twitter @jkpittman.com and on Facebook at @authorjoannpittman.
She makes her home in New Brighton, Minnesota.
This book contains 15 short lessons designed to give you just enough language learning to help you function in very basic situations. This is a must for travelers or those who are going to live in China and are looking for a way to get some of the basics.
That's a question I hear quite a bit whenever I speak on China. People want to know about the availability of Bibles in China. Unfortunately many people still believe that owning a Bible is illegal in China, something that hasn't been true for decades. But as with most things in China, the issue of Bible availability is complicated.
A month or so ago I was having a lovely outdoor dinner with group of friends, one of whom was a high school kid from Beijing studying at a school here in the Twin Cities and living with an American host family.
On November 1, 2014, The Economist published an excellent article about the church in China, titled "Cracks in the Atheist Edifice." Written by veteran correspondent Rob Gifford (author of China Road), the article gives an overview of how the church (and individual Christians) in China are stepping out of the shadows, and the various ways in which the government is being forced to deal with this growing and more visible church.
In July, I wrote a post titled "Ten Lessons from the Church in China" in which I highlighted ten responses by foreign Christians in China to the question "what specific lessons can the church in the West learn from the church in China?"
In the mid-1990s, while studying Chinese, I stumbled across a Chinese expression that was a "key" to helping me understand what was going on. I was working through a textbook called Speaking of Chinese Culture that taught about key Chinese cultural rules and values. One chapter was on this Chinese concept called nei wai you bie (内外有别), which means "insiders and outsiders are different."
Contrary to what many think, getting ahold of legally published Christian books in China is quite easy. In addition to Christian bookstores, which exist in most major cities, China's e-commerce site Taobao is a great source of Christian material.
When trying to understand the church in China, it's easy to let predetermined narratives drive our interpretation of the things we observe. A recent article in the Huffington Post is a clear example of this.
Anyone serving in China knows that one of the more vexing issues to deal with is "security." How public can / should I be about my faith? How public can/should I be about the faith and values that undergird my ministry?
On October 1, the Cornerstone Blog of The Religious Freedom Project at The Berkeley Center published two helpful posts on religious liberty in China.
On September 30, Austin Hill, host of the Austin Hill in the Morning program on Faith Radio, interviewed Brent Fulton about the situation in Hong Kong.
Earlier this month, William Wan wrote an excellent article in the Washington Post, title "Prophet or Judas? Son of China Church Founder Tackles Thorny Legacy." The article introduces us to YT Wu, the man who, in the 1950s founded the Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee that became the umbrella organization for Protestant Churches in China. The article is specifically about Wu's son's attempts to access his father's personal diaries, which remain in the hands of the government.