Chan's Personal Blog

Well, I'm signed up to go to the Merge 2004 in Abbotsford, Nov 5-7. It's a youth convention for young adults, and it should be pretty fun, enlightening, and refreshing. The organization that puts this on is called History Maker. I've been to two previous youth conventions in Kamloops, which was presented by History Maker, and they were amazing.

The production value of their events is amazing. As a geek, I drool at all the sound/light and computer gear they use to put on one these events. The multimedia presentations they use is amazing as well.

Here's the opening movie to youth convention in Kamloops this year. Pretty cool video all set to the soothing music of the Kill Bill Soundtrack . The song is entitled "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" by Tomoyasu Hotei. (Click on the history maker image below for the movie)



The company that made the movie also has pictures and more pictures of all the behind the scenes hardware that is used to make it all possible. I'd love to do something like this as a job. It combines lights, sound, stage craft, computers, music, and video all into one job.

Another thing I really like about History Maker's conventions is that they offer a Christian experience that is with the times. Some of you may know what I'm talking about. For example, they have DJs spinning Christian electronic music at some of these events which I love. You don't see too much of that in mainstream churches these days.

If anyone's interested in going to the Merge, you may be able to tag along with my youth group. We should still have a few spaces available. Contact me, and I can hook you up.

Today we had a missionary speak at my church. He works as an English teacher in China for more than 10 years now. The first interesting point that he brought up was that China is a restricted access nation, which means you need permission before entering the country. He entered the country as an English teacher, whereas in reality, he is a missionary. It's unlikely missionaries can enter China because of its religion repression.

They're Watching You Neo

What he said next was very bizzarre to me, and it's like something out of science fiction. He was saying how the government was always spying on its citizens. All the mail he received was always opened because the government would read the contents. Every phone line is tapped by the government. The government monitors everything he does on the Internet, and reads every piece of e-mail.

He told us about one of his friends that encrypted his e-mails. The government couldn't break the encryption, so they sent the police to the guy's house to question him. They asked why he was encrypting his e-mail and what he had to hide. After they finished questioning him, they told him they'd block his internet access if he kept encrypting his messages. After the incident, the guy had the secret police follow him around.

These kind of stories remind me of science fiction novels that talk about authoritarian governments... but my goodness, this is real life! This makes me value the freedoms we enjoy in the West quite a bit more.

The Underground Church

The missionary also said that churches as we know it don't exist because they're banned from the government. Thus, the church is an underground movement that meets in people's houses. Bibles have to be smuggled into the country.

Another story he told us was that the government is always trying to uproot the underground church. They send spies to infiltrate the underground church, and the spies stick around in the congregation for a few months collecting intelligence. In those months, they try to figure out how the Bibles are coming into the country, and they identify who the leaders of the group are. Once they have enough information, the secret police shows up at a church meeting and arrests all the leaders and break up the church group.

Despite all their hardships, the underground reports that they get 20,000 to 40,000 new believers every single day. That to me is very amazing.

I think this exposes a dark side of the repressive communist regime in China that we don't see too often in the media these days. Whenever I see China in the news, they usually show an industrious nation who's becoming a rising political/military/economic power in Asia. They portray China as a modern nation with great economic prosperity, a nation that will host the next Olympics. Despite all this, they're fairly backwards in many respects.

Long live the underground...