Mei Ling

A final memorable conversation from 2009.

Mei and Ling are actually two separate people. I put the names together because the two parts sound nice one after the other. Perhaps I have unconsciously stolen the name from a famous Chinese person. Mei and Ling, both middle-aged women of Chinese descent, were followers of Falun Gong. I confess to not knowing much about the tenets of Falun Gong, apart from that it derives from Buddhist and Daoist teachings. There is a strong emphasis on consciousness and hence meditation and tai-chi. Politically, they are strong dissenters against the Communist Party China, which is seen as quite oppressive.

To digress a little, my first encounter with Falun Gong was several years ago. My grandmother was going through a tai-chi fad. She soon discovered fellowship with some Falun Gong members, drawn to their anti-Beijing stance. My grandmother was one of many Chinese-Vietnamese 'petit bourgeoisie' in Saigon, having fled the country near the end of the Vietnam War, leaving behind the vast majority of what 3 generations of her family had built up. Hence she has long held a grudge against anything red. It is not difficult to see why a not insignificant portion of older Chinese immigrants to Australia, perhaps from Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, (colloquially "non-mainlanders") may have similar sentiments. It provides a way for Falun Gong to get a foot in the door to people's sympathies.

In any case, on this particular day, I was doing walk-up with a friend from law school. We were quite good friends and I knew her not only through study, but also from doing a lot of activities with the on-campus Christian group. There was a local festival on this day (strangely named after an apple) and my friend's church had a stall on the main walkway. I had agreed to come help out a little and do some walk-up evangelism with her. The suburb was particularly "Asian", and I say this without any sort of discriminatory intention, for I myself am an ABC (Australian born Chinese), if you haven't already noticed. The partnership was exceptionally useful, as my friend spoke fluent Mandarin, and I spoke quasi-fluent Cantonese. So when we encountered who did not speak English, we generally had both sides covered.

It was a lucky day. We were a little anxious starting out, but the first couple we approached were very willing to listen to what we had to share and talk about their experienced. The man recalled his experiences at youth group and the lady discussed her experiences teaching at a Catholic school and attending mass. My friend did the 2WTL presentation and we gave them some tracts for reading. It was too awkward to swap contact details, though I had ventured the question. It frustrated me that there was no real way of following them up. Though we referred them to my friend's church, her church was a Chinese congregation, and the couple we met, were not Chinese.

We met some other people throughout the day, though the conversations were not long, and I felt the outing had fallen into the lull period. Though I enjoyed parading around in my new blue 'Jesus: All About Life' shirt, in the back of my mind I had resorted to telling myself that at least we were giving the church a 'presence' in the community and getting ourselves out there. A common excuse for unenthusiasm.

Later on we met Mei and Ling. They spoke Cantonese, which was disappointing. I enjoyed when the person we approached spoke Mandarin, that way my friend could do all the talking and I could just stand there and look pretty (figuratively speaking). Though I am conversationally fluent in Cantonese, I always have difficulty evangelising in the language. The trouble is that I don't always know the official phrase/word for 'salvation' and 'grace' (instead I might incorrectly use 'saving' and 'generosity/love'). Other words like 'monotheism', well, I simply do not know how to articulate in Chinese. I tried hard, though it was hard to be clear or challenging without a full arsenal of words.

Mei was the meek one. Ling was the assertive one. At first Ling tried to 'reverse-evangelise' us. This is somewhat common amongst Falun Gong and has happened to me several times. I at resolved at the outset of the day that if this happened, I wouldn't get sucked into a conversation that led nowhere and should be able to end the conversation politely. But Ling just kept talking and being the polite person that I am (sarcasm), I couldn't just walk away. She told me how she once was Buddhist. She developed a form of cancer of the stomach, which could not be treated with conventional medicine. She went to a Buddhist temple to ask for advice, but they gave her no cure. Eventually she started discovered practicing tai-chi and meditation, which miraculously healed her. In response I decided to talk about endurance through suffering and trusting God's will as something that was part of the Christian faith, though it did not go down so well.

Ling spoke again about how Falun Gong recognised polytheism, how that even as a Christian I could join Falun Gong (which she claimed was not a belief-system, nor a faith). She said something complicated in Chinese, which I did not really understand, but I think she said that they recognised many paths to achieving something that resembled Enlightenment (though expressed in a 7-step program). To this I commented on the fact that several faiths contradict one another, and there is no way that this is mutually compatible (a common argument against polytheism). But that didn't go down too well either.

Ling then finally made the comment that as collective Chinese people, we should support Falun Gong to bring justice and end the oppression against Falun Gong members in China. To this point I was more sympathetic, though it was not the time or the place to start a political discussion.

Mei, in contrast, was less "hard-core". She talked about how her husband was (or still is) a Christian, in that he went to church. She once went along with him, but felt as though the sermon was a way for the pastor to indoctrinate the congregation. Accept and do not question. This was not helped by the church's constant urges to the congregation to make monetary offerings. This she said she could accept, but the straw that broke the camel's back was that though her husband would go to church, she saw no real improvement in how good a person he was. He was still lazy and ungenerous.

It was hard for me to respond to so many issues. I tried to address the issues with the church by saying that a church should encourage its congregation to read the Bible for themselves and encourage thought and discussion in order to learn. The emphasis should not be on tithing. To her husband's behaviour, I explained that though genuine faith leads us to strive and become more like Jesus (often expressed in outworking of good deeds), we are still sinful people by very nature and a lot of the time hypocrites. Hence why we constantly confess and seek forgiveness through Jesus. Yet salvation is not measured by how good we are nor how many good deeds we have done.

Mei's final comment was that she was surprised by the conviction we had in our beliefs. There is a phrase she used. Literally translated it means 'true heart'. To hear this I was encouraged. Though saddened also, as she said it in such a way to imply that she could never have the same unwavering conviction as us. Perhaps she thought we were naive, but I like to think that her opinion of Christians had however minutely elevated.

By this stage, the conversation was not going anywhere, so I ended it. We left them with some tracts in Chinese, though Ling said it was a waste of our resources. But I had more hoped that Mei might read it at some point. I can only hope that the seed has been planted in their minds.

The day went on, though I have no recollection of conversations subsequent. It was hot and I was quite tired. We met up with another Christian law school colleague who came to help evangelise as well. Luckily for me he spoke Cantonese. When the three of us encountered a young Cantonese student, our colleague told me that I should talk to the student, since I was the most fluent in Canto. But I off-loaded the student back to him, claiming that it would be good practice. I confess now, that it was actually because I was absolutely tired.

The three amigos disbanded shortly thereafter.

As for my grandmother, years in Australia (dare I say in a democratic socialist country) have gradually moved her politics leftwards. Perhaps it was more to do with having to start life again in the working class as a social-nobody immigrant. She tells me she has never voted Liberal (capital L) in her life. She is generally ambivalent towards the Chinese government today.

Grandma is also a strong believer of Sing Tao. Sing Tao is one of the main Chinese language newspapers in Australia, based in Hong Kong. Though she complains the paper has gone downhill ever since Hong-Kong reunification with China (it is too pro-Beijing now she protests), she still believes everything that newspaper says. I have drunk many a bitter herbal tea recipe from that newspaper. So when Sing Tao came out with revelations of the cult-like practices of Falun Gong, that was the end of that. She has moved onto origami folding, Chinese operatic singing and fellowship with her school alumni.