You may think that my interest in Chinese church bells is waning. If so, you are mistaken I'm heading out again this weekend with a friend to check out some church bells in the coastal city of Qingdao. There are two old churches there, (1 Protestant and 1 Catholic) which have bells. Here's what one […]
The Flying Lutherans
While doing research in preparation for the Esther Expedition that I did with Noel in March, I read a book called “Mission Impossible,” by Ralph Covell. It is a history of the work of a particular Baptist group in Sichuan in the late 1940’s. Among the more interesting stories he tells in the book, one […]
Esther Expedition Follow-up
It’s late Monday night and I find myself back in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, looking for evidence of Esther Nelson. When Noel and I were here in March, we learned that an institution in town has an extensive archive of pre-1949 mission agency documents. A friend of a friend of a friend has […]
Buckeye Bell Foundry
In my continued quest for more specific information on the bells we found in Sichuan and for more general information on church bells in China, I’ve been doing some research on the Buckeye Bell Foundry in Cincinnati. Apparantly, the foundry was owned by the E.W. Van Duzen Company, another name that we also found engraved […]
1907 – The Bell Begins its Journey
Even though we are now on opposite sides of the ocean, Noel and I are busily trying to track down more information about the church bells we found in Sichuan Province last month. Because of the fairly detailed inscription on the Yibin bell, it has yielded more leads. As I wrote in a previous post, […]
Big Screen Bells
Yesterday morning I attended the English service at the Haidian Christian Church in Beijing. It’s a fairly modern structure that sits in the middle of Zhongguancun, Beijing’s high-tech zone (locals call it China’s Silocon Valley). Even though the current building was opened in 2007 (just in time for the Olympics), the church itself dates back […]
