Mass-a-palooza

Christmas Eve I was asked to come to Nantou Church after lunch to go over the Gospel readings in English. On Holy Days when there might be a possibility of having foreign guests, Father likes to be able to read the Gospel in Chinese and English as his way of being hospitable. He wanted me to review his pronunciation for all three Gospel readings he would be using: Vigil Mass, Mass at Midnight, and Mass during the day. Needless to say, he was quite relieved when I told him it would be okay for him to omit the genealogy part of the Matthew reading when he read the English.

While I was there, the church grounds were unusually busy. I mean, certainly for a feast day like Christmas we would expect there to be people at the church decorating. But there seemed to be additional things going on that I didn't expect, like the ladies moving all of the merchandise out of the little rosary store into display cabinets in the courtyard. And even when I was in Father's office, his phone would not stop ringing with people looking for Mass times and directions.

I have linked before to another blogger who wrote about the Christmas Masses being seen in China by non-Christians as something of a spectacle, something that needs to be seen. It isn't that I didn't believe it, but it seemed to me that a little church like Nantou's St. Paul might be spared the pressing crowds I would have expected in a larger, easier to find parish like St. Anthony in Futian district, right next to the Sam's Club.

I was so wrong.

Arriving in Nantou, just in time for Mass, we were amazed at the number of people heading up the alley to the church. There seemed to be people everywhere. And then when we got to the church, it didn't just seem that people were everywhere; they actually were everywhere. Hundreds more people that we normally would expect on any given Sunday milled about. No, these weren't hundreds of additional Christians. These were mostly curious onlookers.


I can't even describe an equivalent experience we would have in the US, though Randy did say it felt more like we were at a rock concert than at Mass at times. Bad traffic made us almost-late. Instead of sitting up in the pews with our better-prepared fellow parishioners, we were with a lot of people who sometimes watched the Mass, sometimes talked on the phone, and sometimes left their seats to wonder around. And those who wanted something of a souvenir....well those ladies knew what they were doing when they set up shop in the afternoon. They probably have to do this every year. They were selling out of all the less-expensive crucifixes and pictures of Jesus.


And no matter how many times I read other bloggers and journalists like James Fallows write about how their foreignness is not much cause for added attention in China, this is still not true for us. I think the main difference is that Fallows doesn't travel around with small children. While Fallows can marvel that in China he feels treated as a person, that is so far from Myles' experience here. People, adults and children alike, treat him as a thing. He gets pointed at and touched frequently, though last night was the absolute worst it has been since we first arrived here. At one point after communion I was separated briefly from Randy and the kids. When I found them, a circle of Chinese people, mostly children but some adults, in places two and three people deep, surrounded them. No one spoke and just stared at them. The kids would reach out and poke Myles with one finger. And then sometimes an adult would. And then the adult would poke at Brigid. Anytime we tried to move into a different spot to get away, people would follow and stare and poke some more.

After Mass I asked one of my Chinese friends why all these people came. Of course, she, like everyone else at the parish, are used to the spectators at Christmas Mass, but she understood where I was coming from. She told me that a lot of Chinese people who aren't Christian know that Christmas is a time when people go to church. So they seek out the closest church and watch what they do for Christmas. Another American friend's ayi also noted that a lot of people know that the Christian churches have parties for Christmas. They know Christmas is a big deal, but they don't know exactly why.