Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong (review)

124 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. ?, Spring 1996 Nicole Constable. Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits: A Hakka Community in Hong Kong. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. XV, 233 pp. Hardcover $37.00, isbn 0-520-08384-9. In China one can still hear the phrase, "One more Christian, one less Chinese." Yet, Christianity has become in the twentieth century an international religion, with indigenous sects and independent churches in Africa and Asia and with Latin American, Asian, and African Christians sponsoring their own missionaries at home and abroad. As Nicole Constable argues in Christian Souls and Chinese Spirits, Christianity, under certain circumstances, can even help to define a sense ofcommunity and ethnic identity. Such developments do not mean that memories of "cultural aggression" by Western missionaries have been totally erased; previous experiences characterized by inequality continue to inform relations between Western denominations and those in Asia, necessitating sensitivity and tolerance by Christian workers from both worlds. Nor does Constable see the reconciling of contradictions between Chinese and Christian beliefs and practices as an easy process. Rather, she points out: "The constant need to segregate, define, and redefine boundaries and to rationalize the two belief systems reflects . . . the tension that exists between them. ... A similar problem exists in attempts to reconcile the Christian and Chinese facets ofidentity" (p. 100). "Hakka Christians express their Chinese identity within a constrained framework of acceptable behavior. . . . Christians attempt to create a Chinese identity divorced from Chinese religious beliefs and practices, and thus they are constantly in a position ofhaving to rationalize and clarify the ambiguities—to draw and redraw boundaries between Christian and Chinese funeral practices, between Ching Ming and Easter, between the aesthetic and the superstitious elements offeng-shui" (pp. 125-126). In this monograph on a Hakka Christian community in the 1980s, Constable does not offer a simplistic picture; rather, she presents a thoughtful, nuanced analysis enriched by the insights of anthropological concepts and by realities based on fieldwork. The focus of Constable's study is the small community of Shung Him Tong, or "Humble Worship Village," founded in the New Territories in the early twentieth century. Though hardly a typical village, since it is set in the midst ofhighrise apartments, shopping plazas, and other residences, the 1,300 inhabitants as of 1987 did constitute a definable community in that over 90 percent were Hakka© 1996 by University Christians and the Protestant church was the center of both social life and reliofHawai 'i Pressgious activity. Many ofthe families settling there, furthermore, had chosen Shung Him Tong specifically because of its identity as a Hakka Christian enclave. Intermarriage with Hakka Christians was preferred over village exogamy. Constable Reviews 125 discovered, in addition, that the Hakka Protestants ofShung Him Tong were more willing to acknowledge and discuss their Hakka identity and were more reflective about their Hakka identity than other Hakka of Hong Kong. To understand the reason why, Constable found a residence on the edge ofthe community and spent the year 1986 conducting research at Shung Him Tong. She taught English in order to make contacts, interviewed elders and church members, participated in their festivities and family events, and asked questions. Many of the Hakka themselves offered an essentialist portrayal oftheir ethnic identity, emphasizing those practices that set them apart from other groups. In doing so, they quite naturally transformed traits perceived by others as negative into positive ones. Stinginess became frugality, for example; a closed society became a tightly knit group with a spirit of cooperation and mutual support; the employment ofwomen in heavy manual labor out in society was taken to indicate that Hakka women enjoyed greater freedom and independence than other Han women. Without denying the typicality ofmany of these characteristics, however interpreted, Constable has preferred Fredrik Barfh's ascriptive definition of ethnicity; that is, the identification of the ethnic group is by the members themselves and is derived to a considerable extent from interaction with other groups and from the setting ofboundaries. The origins of the Hakka Protestant church can be traced to the arrival of representatives ofthe Basel Evangelical Missionary Society in China in 1847. These missionaries and their Chinese associates propagandized among Hakka...