| April 23, 2004
China Notes #10
Greetings to you all, and our apologies for letting so many months
go by without writing. As many of you know, we were in the United
States from July 2003 until January 2004 on an interpretation
assignment. From our base at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary we
were able to visit many churches, especially in the Northeast,
and were happy to have the chance to see many of you during this
time.
We returned to China in February, and are now living and working
in the city of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, in eastern
China. Don teaches graduate students in the English Department
of Nanjing University, one of China’s top universities and
also an institution which the Presbyterian Church had a hand in
founding over a century ago. Wei Hong is serving as a volunteer
at the library of Jinling Theological Seminary, assisting them
in the process of computer cataloging their holdings. We live
at Nanjing University, and our new contact information is:
Don and Wei Hong Snow
English Department, Nanjing University
Nanjing, Jiangsu 210093, P. R. China
For the moment our phone number is (86-25) 8359-6469, and our
email address is correct on our home page, which you can get to
by clicking here.
Since returning to China, we have been quite busy with our new
jobs, not to mention the process of settling into life in a new
city, but we have also had a few chances to get to know people
and projects you are supporting, so below we would like to introduce
one of these, the Nanjing Counseling Center.
The story begins some years ago with a couple, Wang Xuefu and
Sun Wen, who were living and teaching at Xiamen University in
southeastern China. Wang had originally graduated from Jinling
Theological Seminary in Nanjing, but then went on to get a doctorate
in English Literature from Nanjing University, and it was literature
he was teaching in Xiamen. However, both Wang and Sun also became
involved as volunteers at a counseling center started in Xiamen
by Singaporeans, and gradually came to feel that counseling was
an area where there was great need in China. China’s rapid
changes had generated a host of new problems, such as higher divorce
rates and unemployment, which faced urban Chinese with new kinds
of pressures for which traditional answers and sources of support
(family, hometown friends) were not always adequate. As a result,
Wang and Sun began to feel this was the area in which they were
called to work.
Thus began a fairly long process of education and struggle. Wang
went to Andover-Newton in Boston to do a degree in counseling,
while Sun returned to Nanjing to work at a student counseling
center at Nanjing University. When Wang completed his program,
he and Sun scraped together enough support (from friends and also
from North American Mennonites) to set up a small counseling center
in Nanjing. Eventually, the Amity Foundation became aware of their
project and undertook to support it over a three-year period,
with financial assistance from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
This meant the project could move into a suite of offices at the
Amity Business Center in Nanjing and hire two administrative staff
members to work along with Wang and Sun.
In their new home, the Nanjing Counseling Center has been able
to expand its work dramatically, and is now involved in quite
a range of efforts:
- Over the last year, the Center has provided basic counseling
training to approximately 40 interested individuals, many of
who now serve as volunteers staffing a counseling hotline operated
by the Center. The Center also sponsors an ongoing “salon”
for the volunteers one night a week where invited speakers talk
about a variety of topics related to counseling and social issues.
- Wang now teaches pastoral counseling courses at Jinling Seminary
(which is happily right across the street from the Center).
This makes Jinling the first Chinese seminary to regularly offer
courses in counseling, an area where pastors face ever-increasing
challenges. Additionally, Wang and Sun give talks on counseling
at churches in the area.
- Wang is also involved in writing and translating materials
related to counseling, both general and pastoral.
- And on top of all this, Wang and Sun continue to provide professional
counseling services, partly as a service to the community and
also as way to generate some of the funding for the project.
(For those who want to know more, the Center has a Web site at:
www.CHINANCC.net. While
the main site is in Chinese, there is also an abbreviated English
version.)
The significance of all this lies not only in the services provided
by the Center, but perhaps even more importantly the pioneering
of an area of service which has so far been relatively neglected.
Through their work, Wang and Sun help China—and more specifically
Chinese Christians—explore an area of service that is ever
more important in a rapidly changing society.
God’s peace,
Don and Wei Hong
The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
86 |
