Just checking to see who is home....

Despite the reputation (and official stance of communist atheism), churches are not uncommon in China. Some are semi-official, although with some limitations. For example, despite the fact that the Catholic Church is established within the People's Republic, it is not fully recognized. The government will not allow any truly independent organizations, and the Vatican won't countenance being told by the state whom they must choose as bishops. If you would like some additional perspective on Catholicism within China, I refer you to the excellent blog Shanghai Scrap, whose author Adam Minter often comments on the subject.

Unofficially, so-called "house churches" are said to be widespread in China, although there is no way to know how many of those there are. For those of us who are expatriates, however, the rules change entirely. The government has no problem with expat churches, so long as there are no Chinese citizens invited, and no proselytizing.

And that brings me to this little story. Last Sunday evening, we hosted a "fireside", a gathering of youth from church, in our home. There is a sizable LDS (Mormon) branch in Suzhou, and the membership is quite varied, including families from a handful of Asian nations.

Before I go any farther, I need to make a digression. All of the apartment compounds here have guards at the gates. It is often rather questionable as to exactly what their purpose is, as they typically don't actually stop anyone. At least, they usually don't stop people at other apartment compounds. Here at ours, they usually do. Our theory has been that our apartment complex is quite small, and therefore they have a better sense of who actually lives here. Just this week, a second (and compatible) theory came up, because we learned that there are many local government officials living in our compound. For some time, it has also been noticeable that Asians are stopped at the gate far more consistently than Westerners. This includes our apartment agent, hired workers, and friends (as a digression within a digression, our friend Elvina, who is Chinese-American, born and raised in New York City, gives some poignant perspective on this in her own blog entry about the confusion with which the locals, including our gate guards, treat her).

With all that as context, let me get back to my story. Over 20 people, a mixed group of Westerners and non-Chinese Asians, nicely attired in dresses and suits, came to our apartment. That isn't exactly a normal sight around here, and this wasn't the first time. We have joked together that the guards must be completely baffled.

Some time after the the gathering was over and everyone had left, the doorbell rang. I answered to find one of our familiar young guards there. He looked somewhat uncomfortable, and he didn't seem to know quite what to say at first (although maybe that was just searching for words that he hoped I would understand). He finally asked me, in Chinese, if there were any Chinese people here.

I told him that there were not, and he left. The brief exchange represented the limits of my rudimentary Chinese anyway, so there wasn't much to talk about.

The point is, why did he come?

We are not naive, and despite the fact that I joked above about our guards being baffled, we know that any insightful observer is going to eventually realize the obvious.... that all of these people could only be gathering for a church meeting of some kind. As I said, the congregation represents a mix of nationalities, and while those who are from other Asian countries are under the "foreigner rules" when it comes to churches, they are not, of course, easily distinguishable from Chinese (and even ethnic Chinese are exempt from the restrictions on churches if they hold foreign passports). Proceeding then, from the assumption that our guard was there to make sure no Chinese citizens were being included in our little gathering, a long list of other questions comes up. For example:

Are the local gate guards actually integrated into the police force? In the U.S., of course, they would not be.

Is it already within the mandate of even the lowly local gate guards to keep an eye out for renegade church meetings? That question very much intrigues me, whether or not they have standing orders to be on the lookout for such things. If so, did they sit down there in their guard booth together discussing a course of action and reading their manual or something?

Did he make this check on his own initiative, or did someone tell him to? Did he have to call in and ask for orders? Or to report his findings?

Did someone have to spy or search to figure out which apartment they were going to? This wouldn't take much. There are other Westerners in our compound, but we are pretty conspicuous, and we do get a lot of visitors, but still....

All very fascinating.


P.S. This post has become the first time I have had signficant blog readership outside family and friends, so suddenly I'm feeling like I need to be more careful in my explanations. Based on the one person who commented, there is a confusion that I can clear up. It is probably bad form to quote myself, but here is what I say in my own comment:

" Actually, the Chinese can have churches, they just can't mingle with expat churches. This incident wasn't about making sure that the Chinese don't go to church, it was about making sure that they weren't going to church with us. That is not to say that they have freedom of religion as we would concieve of it, but I will leave it to people who know more than me to elaborate on that."