I've been thinking about that lady praying in "Up the Yangtze"...

...mostly because she sounded so lovely chanting her prayers. She also reminded me of my mentor, who is an elderly and devoutly Catholic Chinese woman who gives me pamphlets about saying the rosary and tells me about the blessings the Holy Mother will give me for saying it every day. <3

Anyway, our discussion in class prompted me to do a bit of research on Christianity in China. From what I have read, it appears Christianity is particularly popular. The BBC reports that "the [Chinese] government says 25 million, 18 million Protestants and six million Catholics... [but] independent estimates all agree this is a vast underestimate... [and] a conservative figure is 60 million" (Christians in China: Is the country in spiritual crisis?). However, persons are not permitted to participate in churches which have not been sanctioned by the state (of which there are many). The idea behind forbidding this is that when the church is not controlled by the state then the church will be controlling persons through its own power without regulation by the state's agenda.

The same BBC article says of state-sanctioned churches: "They report to the State Administration for Religious Affairs. They are forbidden to take part in any religious activity outside their places of worship and sign up to the slogan, 'Love the country - love your religion.'" If we apply representation to this, we could say that state-sanctioned religion does not represent the religion of the people, but the religion of the state. If the 45 million Christians suspected to exist by outsiders but not accounted for by the government are those who participate in non-state-sanctioned "house churches", they are 45 million people not being represented. If the government is failing to account for them because they don't want to represent those not under their power to the outside world, then the government effectively erases their existence.

I don't know if this is the case at all; I'm just making speculative jumps based on the information I found in this article and this account I suspect of being sensationalized: China's Christians suffer for their faith. Note it's several years older than the other article, as well. However, if this is the case, maybe the woman's at-home shrine with her cross and prayer mat was something Chang included to represent another unrepresented party. Maybe this woman's interests are not represented in the spirituality she finds in state-sanctioned churches, and her existence as a religious deviant is not represented by the Chinese government, and that was why Chang included her.

Again, I'm pretty much making big speculative jumps, but I would like to point out that apparently although Christianity is a major religion in China, one has three types of very distinct Christianities to choose from and everything else is apparently carried out under the radar. For instance, as one of those BBC articles points out, Catholics who invest too much power in the pope are not part of the state's Catholicism, which appoints its own bishops independent of the Vatican, etc.