Abstract
Zhou’s family disintegrated in the sudden storm of her mother’s arrest due to the government crackdown on a folk religion. This shaped her mental capacity for pessimism, expecting more looming tragedies around her. She excelled in academic studies but lost a sense of grounding direction in life. Zhou had multiple exposures to the Christian message before she came to the faith. She describes this journey as God’s providence. As a young adult, Zhou’s desires for emotional intimacy were fulfilled by reliable friendships from Christian believers. It was liberating for Zhou that her conversion enabled her to look back and name her mother’s experiences as an injustice. At church, Zhou wrestled with a Christian complementarianism that discouraged women from working as professionals.
Narration by Zhou (age thirty three, lawyer)
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Notes
- 1.
See note 1 in Chap. 6.
- 2.
Falun Gong is a Chinese religious practice originated in the early 1990s which combines meditation and qigong exercises with a universalist moral philosophy. (In traditional Chinese culture, qigong is a practice to balance “life energy” through a combination of martial arts, philosophy and Chinese medicine.) In July 1999, the Chinese government initiated a nationwide crackdown to eradicate Falun Gong practices.
- 3.
David Palmer, Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
- 4.
David Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
- 5.
Xinhua News, “China Bans Falun Gong,” People’s Daily, July 22, 1999. http://en.people.cn/special/fagong/1999072200A101.html Dean Peerman, “China Syndrome: The Persecution of Falun Gong,” Christian Century, August 10, 2004. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2004-08/china-syndrome
- 6.
About the theological trend of complementarianism, see Li Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism in China’s Urban House Churches: The Rise and Fall of Early Rain Reformed Presbyterian Church (London: Routledge, 2019), 88–90.
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Ma, L. (2019). Looming Tragedy. In: Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_9
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