This is one of the churches that I write about in my book The Bells Are Not Silent: Stories of Church Bells in China. The Xishiku Catholic Church was founded in 1703 and was originally christened The Church of Our Savior. My fellow bell-hunters and I somehow convinced the priest to let his assistant take […]
Catholic or Christian?
When I first went to China, I was bombarded with many questions that seemed rather odd: can you use chopsticks? How much money do you make? Why do American parents kick their children out of the house at age 18? On and on they went. But the oddest question I encountered was, “what’s the difference […]
Manchurian Catholics
In the course of my research on church bells in Beijing, I have been learning a lot about the history of the Catholic churches here. One thing I have learned is that, even though the Jesuits had favor at the imperial court and were often on friendly terms with the emperor and his family, who […]
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 […]
