Jehovah's translators

[dalaowai]

So I've been back in Canada with my Chinese wife for about 3 months or so. I rented an apartment and I was just at home studying when my buzzer rang. I answered and a Chinese girl asks, "我能不能上来？” or something and I'm like “你是谁？” unfortunately for me, my buzzer goes through my cell phone which has bad reception. There were two girls talking about I'm not sure what. So I tell them to wait for me downstairs and I went to check it out.

To my surprise, at the door was a Chinese girl and a Caucasian girl waiting there. I had never seen them before, so I opened the door and said “你们刚才打电话吗？” to both of their surprise. The Caucasian girl whips out religious pamphlets and starts talking to me about God in Mandarin.

I ask the girl how long she had lived in China and she said that she had never been there. Just learning Mandarin to spread the word of God. They even had the pamphlets in traditional and simplified Chinese.

I then noticed that both my name and my wife's name were on the front door's name board, along with our buzz code. That's why they assumed it was a Chinese household.

她们真的让我目瞪口呆！

[Quest]

I had the same experience last week. I opened the door, they had Chinese pamphlets ready to hand to me. I said hi, then they started speaking to me in Mandarin (tones all wrong), I replied in English, and they continued to speak Mandarin. Jehovah's witnesses, I think. They meant well so I took the pamphlets.

[Luobot]

There’s nothing new about religious zealots knocking on doors to save the souls of the occupants inside. I guess what you were stunned by was the fact that they were going to extraordinary lengths to target Chinese. This doesn’t surprise me. Also, that one was white doesn’t imply any racial snobbery or sense of superiority.

A former colleague of mine, who happens to be a black African from Nigeria, is Christian born-again or evangelist of one type or another and has been trying to save my white ass soul for years. To paraphrase Quest, above, he means well, and I actually enjoy his enthusiasm … um, in small doses. He always wants to know about my trips to China and asks questions indicating his interest in bringing the good word there.

If you’re in the soul saving business, then the Chinese emergence from “godless communism” without even an indigenous religion to get in the way, presents a market of a billion lost souls just dying to be saved. Even the Pope appears willing to compromise with the CCP in order to compete, so to speak, in the China soul saving market. As we know, learning Mandarin is not easy, so you might wonder to what extent are these zealots willing to go?

The true believer knows no boundaries, whether it’s learning the hardest language on the planet and handing out pamphlets at an hourly wage of zero – to the other extreme of holding a gun to your head. I feel a certain respect for every religion, even though they all fail to appeal to me, personally, as long as they mean well and do no harm. Like Quest, I just accept their pamphlets and later put them in the recycle bin. Perhaps my soul isn’t ready to be saved, so the least I can do is save a tree. Maybe the Tree-God will put in a good word for me somewhere down the line.