As we were milling around the old Orthodox Church in Harbin on Sunday, an older Chinese woman came out of the church with a small bag of cookies in her hand. She came over to where we were standing and offered some to us. “It’s been12 years since our last priest passed away,” she said. […]
A Russian Bell in Harbin
We spotted the bell in the tower from the street on Saturday as we walked around the church. It was locked up tight and looked like it had been locked up tight for decades. We trained our telephoto lenses on the bell, snapping at a distance, figuring that was as close as we were likely […]
A Catholic Bell in Tianjin
“Why are you so interested in bells?” asked Father Z, the priest at Xikai Catholic Church in Tianjin. “There’s nothing especially interesting about bells.” Until that point I had let my Chinese friend do all the talking, explaining to him that this foreigner from Beijing was doing research on old church bells. This, however, was […]
Tianjin Churches
I and a few friends spent yesterday afternoon traipsing around the city of Tianjin looking for old church bells. Why Tianjin, you may ask? First of all, with the high speed train that runs every ten minutes between Beijing and Tianjin, it’s an easy ‘day trip’ destination. In our case, it was just an afternoon […]
The Bells of St. Paul’s Church
As Amy and I slipped quietly into the church pew at the old St. Paul’s Church in Qingdao (now known simply as Guanxiang Road Church) one of the ushers spotted us, smiled, and came over to where we sat. “Aren’t you the two ladies who were here yesterday asking about the old church bell?” he […]
Bells. Found.
We worshipped this morning in a Romanesque style church that was designed by a Russian; built in a Chinese city under Japanese occupation; and has a bell that was cast in Germany in 1883. How did a bell made in 1883 in Germany end up in a church in China in 1938? How did […]
