Surpised by Joy
The Hebei countryside is not pretty. A seasonal covering of snow might help but we are deprived of even this consolation. Hebei Winters are very dry and the bitter cold withers the few bits of greenery that survive the harvest. We are left with an earthen landscape that seems to have given up the ghost and decided to wait for spring before making any effort to titivate itself for the occasional tourists. The villages provide not relief. There are no Cotswoldian chocolate box stone cottages with associated tea shops. Instead there are collections of homesteads grouped together in an approximation of order. Each home is a veritable castle, protected by such high walls and forbidding gates that the overall impression is very unwelcoming. These villages were never more than home to poor farmers and little or nothing of visual interest ever emerged in them. The word quaint can be safely dropped from one descriptive vocabulary when applied to the landscape of this corner of China’s northern plateau.
Hebei is, however, China’s Catholic heartland and spires emerge, Chartes-like from the dusty plain with relative frequency. Most of the churches are, however, visually disappointing. A rash of church building in the late ‘80’s and 90’s has dotted the landscape with dust covered brick boxes fronted by poor imitations of Notre Dame’s twin spires. Pious villagers, when given permission, wanted only to replace that which had been destroyed. However, dim recollections of the originals and meager resources have given these grimy icons of enduring faith an unfortunate sameness which fails to evoke the love and sacrifice that went into their construction.
I would have preferred, on a bitterly cold day after Christmas, to be snuggled up with a good book Instead, I had to endure a two hour, hair-raising journey along the motorway, followed by a bumpy one on the minor roads. My destination, Bazhi village looked as if it had been prompted down on the Hebei plains sometime in the period since liberation. It had a Commune feel to it, often absent in other places. I am guessing, but it must have been rebuilt as a model village of some kind since the houses, though still fortress-like, were all built to a more modern plan than is typical. One could discern a regular grid of streets and, what in a city might be grandly called, an avenue cutting through the center.
“Notre Dame de Bazhi” is not situated on this main drag, but is confined to one of the side streets. Stepping out of the priest’s tiny unheated car, I went to make the conventional, but not quite insincere, Visit to the church. The interior, as box-like as I predicted, did little to lift the Spirit. A single individual praying before the crib drew my attention in that direction. Suddenly I was enveloped in a moment of pure and unexpected joy. Looking at the country crib’s simple figures, the Word made Flesh penetrated the layers of ennui and the Child within leapt for joy at the sound. For a time, I was not a bored consultant praying reluctantly in a freezing church in dreary Hebei, but rather an excited Shepherd paying homage to my Lord in the stable at Bethlehem. The moment didn’t last, (they never do, in my experience) but I came away blissfully chastened for my attitude. It’s hard to cling so resolutely to one’s world-weariness when one has stumbled into Bethlehem on the dusty plains of northern China.
‘What good is it that Christ was born in a stable if he is not born now in your heart?
Meister Eckhart