Notes » July 2008

Nothing New Under the Sun

I've been handed a lot of tracts in my time here, but never by a taxi driver and never one titled:

The Religious Belief of Mr. Sun Yixian, The Father of China

That's Sun Yat-sen to you.

And they left out a word; Sun was known as the Father of Modern China. Evidently the publishers felt Sun deserved an elevation in status, seeing as he was Christian.

As tracts go, this one was weak: it fabricates a tenuous connection between Sun's deliverance from imprisonment by the Qing authorities and the acceptance of Jesus Christ, the ultimate goal of all evangelistic groups. Too bad they missed the typo mentioning that his trouble transpired in 1986, which is rather embarrassing considering that they pointed out his death occurred in 1925 (although the Chinese text was correct).

I don't know why the cabbie decided I'd be receptive; perhaps it was because I was polite. I'm just glad he wasn't a Mormon, because then there would have been two of them in the front seat, and they wouldn't have let me out until I agreed to visit their church.

Better to get a tract with my receipt than having him proselytise.

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