Off the Grid
By June Cheng
The Chinese Christian school movement doesn’t officially exist, and
parents make great sacrifices to join it—but it’s growing quickly.
IN
A RESIDENTIAL AREA on the outskirts of a
large city, children in navy blazers and khaki
skirts push open a bright yellow wrought iron gate. Inside
sits a Christian school with classrooms displaying alphabet
letters, caterpillar crafts, bean bag chairs, and Bible verses.
Some kindergarten and elementary-age students squeal
while grabbing their pint-sized red-and-white choir robes
from student lockers for Monday morning chapel.
Not an unusual sight in the United States, right? But
it’s an amazing sight in China, where 300-500 Christian
schools, most newly formed, officially do not exist. As these
children practice speaking English with American teach-
ers, read Chinese books in their well-stocked libraries, and
learn traditional Chinese tea etiquette, in the government’s
eyes it’s as though they never stepped inside a classroom.
The wooden jungle gym, the tire swings dangling from
rafters, the father who leads a house church on Sundays
and clips bamboo trees in the courtyard, the classrooms
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with colorful verses in Chinese characters (“So now faith,
hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these
is love”) are all suspect because the school is unlicensed
and church-run. Unless rules change, its graduates will not
be allowed to take the gaokao, China’s nationwide college
entrance exam.
While such a future is unthinkable for most Chinese
parents who value degrees and university prestige, the
demand is growing—often faster than the supply of quali-
fied, sustainable schools—for schools like this one that
teach education based in biblical truth.
For a country with more than 68 million Christians,
a few hundred Christian schools with fewer than 60
students each is barely a drop in the Yangtze River. Yet,
unlike the missionary-started Christian schools in
China’s past, this time local Chinese are understanding
the need for Christian education and seeking to provide
it for the next generation.