In February, China will celebrate “Spring Festival”, also known as “Chinese New Year (正月.)”   The Chinese New Year is determined by the lunar calendar, and almost always falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice. This year, it just happens that Chinese New Year’s Day falls on Valentine’s Day! February 14, 2010, will usher in the Year of the Tiger (虎.)

In the weeks prior to the holiday, people who are from Yueyang who live and work all over China (mostly in southern China) will battle the huge crowds of people and stand in line for hours at train and bus ticket counters, hoping to find affordable tickets to return home to Yueyang before they are all sold out. (There are some who crowd into Yueyang’s various transportation hubs in order to go other places, but the general tide of people is definitely flowing INTO Yueyang, not away from it.)  Getting home to share a special meal with family on Chinese New Year is the goal of almost every Chinese person.

Traditionally, the New Year holiday lasts for 15 days, with the 15th day being the Lantern Festival (元宵节) . Shops are often closed for st least the first three days of the holiday – often longer. Schools are closed for a month, or more, at this time of year.

The numerous traditions associated with the festival all have a special significance or superstition attached to them. Although modern Chinese will be quick to tell you that they do not believe all these superstitions to be truth, they nonetheless carry on the traditions as part of their Chinese culture; it also keeps their childhood memories alive as they pass them down to younger generations.

Many Chinese people work far from home, with only one opportunity to see their extended family members during the year, on Chinese New Year. For Chinese people who have become Christians during the previous year, Chinese New Year affords them their first opportunity to return to their hometowns, talk to their families about their new faith, and share with childhood friends. For new believers, this can be both joyful and stressful. In a country closed to the Gospel, their news of salvation is not always met with enthusiasm or acceptance.

Many young adults in China have grueling work hours with no free time; they work 16 hours a day, seven days a week; they live at the factories where they work. Chinese New Year is one of the few times during the year that they are able to mingle with people outside their workplace. Chinese New Year is an opportune time for many of them to freely interact with those who can share the Gospel with them.

For some Chinese, appeasing the “kitchen god,” praying in a temple, and scaring away evil spirits by setting off firecrackers are very important rituals. For these people, the holidays are a time of fear, stress and bondage to evil spirits.

• Pray for new Christians who are returning to Yueyang and who will be facing family and friends for the first time since becoming a Christian.  Ask that they would have boldness to share the hope that now is within them!
• Pray for the lost of Yueyang who may encounter the Gospel over the New Year holiday, ask that they would have soft hearts and that those sharing with them will share with clarity and compassion.

If keeping track of the Pray4Yueyang blog is not very convenient for you, and you’d prefer to receive prayer updates delivered to your Email inbox, you can subscribe by giving us your Email address (use the box on the right hand column of this blog’s main page.) If you have any questions, just ask.

Prayer makes a difference. Thanks for being involved!

The Winter Solstice Festival (Chinese: 冬至 Pinyin: Dōng zhì), is one of the most important festivals celebrated by the Chinese and other East Asians during the dongzhi solar term when sunshine is weakest and daylight shortest.

The origins of this festival can be traced back to the yin and yang philosophy of balance and harmony in the cosmos. After this celebration, there will be days with longer daylight hours and therefore an increase in positive energy flowing in.

The philosophical significance of this is symbolized by the character 復 (fù – “Returning”). Traditionally, the Dongzhi Festival is also a time for the family to get together. One activity that occurs during these get togethers is the making and eating of Tangyuan (湯圓, as pronounced in Mandarin Pinyin: Tāng Yuán) or balls of glutinous rice, which symbolize reunion.

I know that for most of you living in the West, today is not special in any way, it’s just another Tuesday. However, for the people of Yueyang, China, today has significance.

Much of today’s celebrations will be benign and harmless with no spiritual or demonic elements whatsoever. However, the philosophy behind today’s holiday reflect a flawed world view that blinds and confuses many Chinese who seek truth.

Would you remember the people of Yueyang today as they celebrate “Dōng zhì” today (December 22) Ask that as families get together to celebrate and to eat “Tang Yuan” that conversations will turn to eternal things. Pray for Christian family members to be courageous and bold to share the Good News with their families. Pray for those families with no witness, ask that someone will be obedient to share the gospel with them so that they might “return” to their creator who loves them and desperately desires to have a relationship with them!

China needs to adjust its one-child family planning policy to fight a worsening gender imbalance and an aging population with too few children, experts said.

China has 33.31 million more men than women among the population born during 1980-2000. The ratio of males to females at birth has kept rising since the 1980s. The normal range worldwide is 103 to 107 males born for every 100 females born. In China, that ratio reached 120.56 last year, Yuan said.
Only Tibet has a normal male/female birth ratio. The ration in all other provinces and regions is skewed, and is most serious in Jiangxi, Anhui and Shaanxi provinces, he said.

“This gender gap is unprecedented in the history of the populous countries in the world, and will continue to widen in the short term,” he said.

China launched its nationwide, one-child family planning policy in the 1970s. Though it prevented 400 million births, it has been criticized for leading to gender imbalance, a large elderly population and a scarcity of working-age people.

“The country has successfully achieved the goal to prevent its population from growing too fast, which was set in its first population policy advocating ‘one child for one couple’,” Hu Angang, one of China’s leading policy advisers, said in an article he published on the Economic Information Daily on Thursday.

“From now on, we should launch a new population policy advocating ‘two children for one couple’, with the objective of preventing a rapidly aging population with too few children in the future.”

Zhai Zhenwu, director of population and sociological studies at Renmin University in Beijing, agreed that the 30-year-old policy needs adjustment. The central government has already begun researching and drafting a new population policy, he said.

Source: China Daily

General Tso Tsung-t’ang (in Mandarin – Zuo Zongtang, 左宗棠), was a formidable 19th-century general who served with distinction during China’s most important (and the world’s largest) civil war, the 14 year long Taiping Rebellion, in which it is estimated 20 million people died.

His family — five generations later — is still in WenJiaLong (a rural village in Yueyang’s countryside.) They actually have a whole section of the village named after them “The Zuo Family Section.”

I’m sad to say though, there is no General Tso’s chicken in WenJiaLong or anywhere in Yueyang, but they still think fondly of his military exploits.

The Hunanese have a strong military tradition, and Tso is one of their best-known historical figures.  In America, General Tso, like Colonel Sanders, is known for chicken and not war. In China, however, he is known for war and not chicken.

Would you please take a moment to pray for the people of Yueyang, many of whom know war stories of General Tso and the bloody civil war he helped to fight, but have no idea of the blood that was shed on their behalf by Jesus Christ.

Make it a habit – every time you are in a Chinese restaurant and you see “General Tso’s Chicken” on the menu – say a prayer for Yueyang!

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese officials announced Monday that the country’s strict one-child policy will make some exceptions for certain families affected by the devastating earthquake two weeks ago.

Families with a child who was killed, severely injured or disabled in the quake can obtain a certificate to have another child, the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in the capital of hard-hit Sichuan province said.

This relates to missions as well (or should I say “especially”!)

When in another culture, whether it’s for a week or a summer or for a few years, we don’t have the cultural insights that locals do, so it is imperative that we defer to their judgment in matters of security and cultural sensitivity.

If we are going to effectively communicate the gospel to the people of Yueyang, we must strive to remove Western cultural distinctives from the message and present the simple truth of the gospel. Quite often, we approach the task of spreading the gospel with the best of intentions, but when we don’t take care to avoid our tendencies for ethnocentrism, we sometimes do more harm than good!

“I tried to write a letter at the end of last year to be a volunteer for the games but they said they prefer students from the universities in Beijing,” says 23-year-old Xiao Wei (not her real name) who hails from a farming community about an hour outside Changsha. She is the first of her clan to attend college but says volunteer positions at the Olympics only go to students of top universities, not from smaller schools like hers. “We know many big preparations are happening in Beijing through the TV and newspaper,” says Wei. “It is not a popular or common topic of conversation among the students because we cannot do anything for it and it just seems kind of far from us.”

Her classmate, Wu Yaqiang, 22, who also comes from a farming family in rural Hunan agrees. “As you know, a lot of students like me come from remote places so the Olympics seem like something we can only talk about but cannot take part in. The heart is willing but the flesh is weak.”

“It is something that only the people in cities around Beijing care about,” says Wu Lei, a 22-year-old university student in northern Hunan’s Zhangjiajie City. “People from Hunan and other far away places, we don’t really feel very excited about it and I don’t feel a personal connection to it.” His sentiments are common among young people here. It seems that instead of uniting the country behind a common goal, the Olympics have only widened the gap between interior China and its eastern seaboard. Most young people here never felt a connection with Beijing to begin with; now they have one more reason to feel left out of the picture.

Not everyone in Hunan feels so distanced from Beijing. Yang XiXi, 21, is a university sophomore from the remote city of Jishou in the far northwest corner of the province. She spent last summer in Beijing at an intensive private English school and is enrolled in a selective exchange program in Jishou that will let her spend her senior year in England. “Hunan is in the south of China but distance doesn’t mean anything,” says XiXi. “Take me for example: I am an English major so I think my ability to speak English and to listen and interpret will be useful for helping this great party. I’ll go to Beijing in 2008. I need this chance to do a favor for my motherland. Maybe in some ways she needs my help.”

Most of the young people interviewed seem acutely aware of the fact that their government has spent vast sums of money preparing for the games. It’s always the first thing mentioned when the topic of the Olympics comes up. They readily accept that holding the Olympic Games in Beijing will help the economy and enhance the international image of China. But there is also resentment towards Beijing and a fear that the games’ positive effects will be limited to that city and its neighbors. The fear is that the financial incentives for holding the Olympics will never trickle down to the inner provinces. “The bad thing is that the gaps between the rich and the poor, the big cities and small cities, will broaden,” says Wu Yaqiang. “As you know after all, the Olympics can only affect a very small part China. The rest will be left behind.”

“If foreigners only stay in Beijing and other mega-cities, they won’t know very much about China,” says Wu Lei. “They will only feel the air of the big city’s richness instead of the air of the backwater’s poverty. If they could go to the deep countryside they would find that there are still many, many problems in China.”

Most young people in Beijing or Shanghai are aware of what exists in the interior of their country but for many that awareness doesn’t go beyond what they see on TV. In places like Changsha people take pride in their tough lives. A punk rocker who just returned from a trip to Shanghai dismisses that city as full of “foreigners, yuppies and office ladies.” To him it’s “not really China.” Changsha, he says with a grin, in English, is “more hardcore.”

There is, however, a feeling that the truth, however ugly, can only help China. Chen Yu is a gifted 26-year-old graduate student from an upper middle class family in southern Hunan’s Shaoyang City. He agrees that Beijing has spent too much money on the upcoming games but hopes that above all, the world will be allowed to see China for what it truly is. “They will report, good or bad, but at least they will report the reality of China and let others know about my country,” says Yu. “I don’t need them to report only good things. Most foreigners know nothing about my country. 2008 will give them a chance to gain a stronger point of view.”

Wu Yaqiang is not as hopeful as Chen Yu. “Since most of the focus will be on the big, representative cities I bet foreign countries will think highly of China,” says Yaqiang. “A long-term price will be paid if China leaves them with a bad impression. As a Chinese, I feel responsible to participate in it but the doors are shut for me. We can only learn of its progress by means of the media.”

On a recent Saturday night, thousands of people stroll up and down the central shopping street of Changsha. One of the few stores licensed to sell Olympic paraphernalia is open. It shares a storefront with a boutique selling specialty chopsticks. The shop is dwarfed by the massive video arcade that glows next door, with oversized statues of Batman and Superman standing guard at its entrance. There are only three people in the Olympics store browsing through the overpriced pens and coffee mugs. The chopsticks have twice as many admirers.

Since 9 is the highest odd digit, double nine has come to signify longevity. On this day, people will pay respects to the elderly. This day is also China’s official day for the elderly. The people will also visit the graves of their ancestors to clean the gravesite and offer sacrifices to help their ancestors in the afterlife.

This day has a third meaning too. It is the kite festival. Legend has it that there was a man named Han Shin who was very short. He constructed a kite made of wood that he rode in the air to spy on the enemy. Because of his ingenuity, his country won the battle. On this date, kites fill the sky from morning to night. Many people will have clever additions to their kite, to show it’s superiority.