Games organizers confirm that Lin Miaoke, who performed “Ode to the Motherland” as China’s flag was paraded Friday into Beijing’s National Stadium, was not singing at all.

Lin was lip-syncing to the sound of another girl, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, who was heard but not seen, apparently because she was deemed not cute enough.

source: CNN

Unfortunately, we Christians often make the same sort of erroneous value judgements based on our imperfect ideas of what is worthwhile, valuable and strategic.

We too quickly forget that God often chooses the ‘underdog‘ to accomplish big things (this ensures He gets the credit and it keeps us from thinking we have things figured out!)

Yueyang is not a particularly beautiful, influential or strategic place in China.  Very few Christians are even willing to “waste their time” in a place like this.  However, it is a place exactly like Yueyang where God’s Holy Spirit is going to be poured out and a whole city is going to be transformed.

Please pray that He comes quickly and that many in Yueyang will hear of the hope found only through Jesus Christ.  Ask that as the people of Yueyang come to know the Creator, they will share this good news with others with passion and excitement!

Pray that a great movement of God would begin in an unlikely place and with unlikely people – Yueyang, China.

August is a HUGE month for China as the 2008 Summer Olympics get started on August 8th (at 8pm)! The number “8″ represents wealth for Chinese…

Please be in prayer over the Olympics and everything that is happening in this country as a result.

This month, as many people from all over the world focus attention on China, we challenge Christians everywhere to spend some time in thought and prayer for the people of Yueyang, China.

In addition to the prayer requests found on this blog and the prayer calendar, be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit as you spend a minute or two in prayer every day for the people of Yueyang.

Prayer makes a difference. Will you be involved?

Athletes, officials, spectators and tourists can pick up the Bible or just the New Testament for free during the Olympic Games next month. Tens of thousands of copies of the Bible, the New Testament and booklets with just the four Gospels (according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) have been printed for the purpose, say officials of China’s Christian society. Rev Xu Xiaohong, an official of the Shanghai-based China Christian Council in charge of publishing, says 50,000 bilingual (Chinese and English) editions of the Gospel booklets had already been printed by June. They are on way to six cities hosting the Olympic events in the mainland.

Several months ago, rumors were started (most likely in a mud slinging effort by China haters) that China had ‘banned’ the Bible in the Olympic Village. Despite the fact there were no reliable sources for the story, it was spread by alot of bloggers and well-meaning, but mis-guided, Christians. It was not, nor has it ever been true.

I don’t doubt that the Bible distribution by the Chinese government at the Olympics is motivated by an effort to control the public perception more so than a true desire to put Bible’s in the hands of people at the Olympics. However, I believe the Bible is the Word of God, it is powerful, and despite the motivation of the giver, it will go out and it will accomplish it’s purpose!

Let’s just pray that some, many, most of these end up in the hands of Chinese who have more ‘limited access’ to the Bible than the tourists and athletes who come from other countries.

The 13.8 kilometer (8.6 mile) Yueyang relay, run by 168 torchbearers, started from Yueyang Tower and passed Yueyang Viewing Gate, Dongting North Road, Dongting Lake Rim, Yueyang Avenue, City Government Square, City Stadium and South Lake Square.

Banners in support of earthquake victims greeted the torch relay in Yueyang.

Yuan Longping, the 77-year-old “father of the hybrid rice,” started the run at Yueyang Tower on the banks of Dongting Lake.

Originally built in the Tang Dynasty, the tower became famous during the Northern Song Dynasty (960 to 1127) when it was rebuilt and counselor Fan Zhongyan wrote a poem about it.

The poem contains the famous line: “One should be the first to bear hardship, and the last to enjoy comfort.”

The line has been written on many banners lining the route of the relay in reference to the rebuilding efforts that are taking place in the quake-hit regions.

In the afternoon, the torch will go to Miluo, a county under Yueyang’s administration, about 68 miles away.

Miluo is the birth place of the Dragon Boat Festival for the Chinese, celebrated each year on the fifth day of the fifth month according to the lunar calendar.

The festival is to commemorate Qu Yuan (340-278 BC), minister of the State of Chu and one of China’s earliest poets.

Qu plunged into the Miluo River, clasping his arms around a large stone, after his proposal to defend the state was turned down and eventually conquered.

The main Olympic flame began its three-month trek through China on Sunday after a global torch relay.

The flame reached the top of the world Thursday morning, carried to the summit of Mount Everest by climbers wearing oxygen masks to breathe in the thin air of the earth’s highest point.

The climbers, braving gusty winds and freezing windchill, relayed the flame — ignited from the main Olympic flame, now making a course across China en route to host city Beijing — to the summit by 9:15 a.m. (9:15 p.m. ET Wednesday), about two hours ahead of schedule.

Two groups climbed to the summit: a 12-person team of torchbearers and a supplemental seven-person pickup team, officials said. The team of about 50 includes 31 climbers along with coaches, advisers and other support staff members.

The flame is burning in a lantern designed to protect it from low-oxygen conditions of the high altitude.

The May calendar is available, have you downloaded it yet? Please take a minute to download this month’s calendar and to print it out and post somewhere where you will be reminded daily to pray for the people of Yueyang!

As May arrives, so does the beginning of summer in Yueyang.  This summer is unlike any other summer in China, why?  Because in August the summer Olympics will be held in Beijing!  Please be in prayer over the Olympics and everything that is happening in this country as a result.

This month we challenge Christians everywhere to spend some time in thought and prayer for the people of Yueyang. In addition to the prayer requests found on this blog and in the prayer calendar, be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit as you spend a minute or two in prayer every day for the people of Yueyang.

Prayer makes a difference. Will you be involved?

“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.

BEIJING, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) — China Thursday rebuked reports that the it would ban foreign athletes from bringing Bibles to the Olympic village during the Beijing Olympic Games next year, dismissing them as “sheer rumors”.”We have taken note of the reports and checked with the relevant authorities. The facts prove that the reports are sheer rumors,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a routine press conference.The Catholic News Agency published a report in November citing the Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport and Spanish daily La Razon as saying that Bibles were on a list of “prohibited objects” in the Olympic village.

“The Chinese government has never ever issued such a rule, nor any such statement,” Liu said. “China’s religious affairs authorities and the Beijing Olympic organizing committee have not – and could not – issue a rule banning the Bible in the Olympic village.”

China has always respected and protected the religious freedom of foreigners living in China in line with laws and regulations, he said.

According to the Provisions on the Administration of Religious Activities of Aliens Within the Territory of the People’s Republic of China, foreigners are allowed to bring in religious publications, audio-video materials or other objects for personal use, Liu said.

“We are suspicious of the ultimate motivations of those who spread such rumors. They should be responsible, and not do things that are not beneficial for themselves and undermine mutual understanding between China and the world,” he added.

A temporary church will be set up in the Olympic Village during the 2008 Games for Catholic athletes, and all churches in Beijing will be open to Catholic tourists, a senior official has said.  The Beijing diocese is training priests fluent in foreign languages to celebrate Mass during the upcoming Games, said Liu Bainian, vice-president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.”All will be arranged in accordance with the practices adopted by other Olympics host cities,” he said.

According to Games organizers, a religious service center will be set up in the Olympic Village with professional religious personnel providing services to meet the needs of athletes from various religious convictions.

Athletes and those who accompany them can enjoy different dishes specially made in accordance with their religious beliefs, the organizers said.

Religious services and information will be available in Beijing as well as the six other co-host cities.

A total of 60 volunteers from the five major religions in China – Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity and Catholicism – recently attended a three-day training session organized by the Beijing municipal administration of religious affairs for providing religious services during the Games.

Anyone else getting the impression that China is REALLY trying to put forth an image of religious tolerance during their time on the world stage of the Beijing 2008 Olympics?

Hotels in Beijing should provide Bibles for foreign visitors during the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games, a Chinese political adviser said.

“The majority of the foreign visitors expected during the 2008 Games have religious beliefs, and we should cater to their needs,” said Liu Bainian, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Liu, vice-president of the China Patriotic Catholic Association, said on Thursday the service could also help clear up foreigners’ misunderstandings about China in terms of religion.

He added that the Bible is a must at hotel rooms in foreign countries, especially in Europe.

Beijing is expected to receive about 500,000 to 550,000 overseas visitors during the 29th Summer Olympiad, which opens on August 8, 2008 and will run until August 24.

Liu said authorities should encourage local Christians to donate Bibles for temporary use during the Games, after which they would be returned.

“The China Patriotic Catholic Association could also help collect Bibles,” he said.

Zhang Liwei, vice-secretary of the Christian Amity Foundation, which operates the country’s sole Bible printing house, told China Daily that his foundation would try its best to meet demand.

According to Zhang, the Bible is published in Chinese and English in China, as well as in eight ethnic minority languages including Miao and Korean.

At least 40 million copies of the Bible have been distributed across the Chinese mainland since 1980, said Cao Shengjie, president of the China Christian Council. Around 2.5 million copies of the Bible have been published in China annually over the past decade, said Cao.

The Bible first arrived in China 1,500 years ago, while the first Chinese-language edition appeared in the early 19th century.

The Protestant church on the Chinese mainland is one of the fastest growing in the world today, with the number of Christians having reached more than 16 million and still growing fast.

The country also has more than 5 million Catholics.

The Chinese capital currently has over 700 star-rated hotels and the number is expected to reach 800, with 130,000 rooms, before the Olympics, tourism authorities said.

Besides star-rated hotels, Beijing has more than 4,000 non-rated ones that can be upgraded.

This story creates many different emotions as I read it. It helps to put it into context and realize this is propaganda. There is truth in the article, there are also some lies as well as several deceptive statements designed at promoting a false image. I’ll withhold my personal commentary on this and just put it out there for you to read and discern for yourself.

If you have a specific question about this story (or anything related) leave a comment and one of us will reply!