Suzanne Rowe has recently returned to Australia from a twelve year period teaching English in Shanxi, China. Her book contains 40 short chapters of reflections on her experiences there. Some chapters tell us about her adjustment to living in a country very different from Australia, and others describe the challenges involved in learning to speak a language in which Can I ask you? all-too-easily becomes Can I kiss you? with one tiny change of tone.
She also puts herself in the place of the people she is meeting, and describes how we come across with our strange ways. In Foreigners came to our school today she writes about a visit from some Christian English teachers from the point of view of one of the school staff, which helps us to see the many hurdles that we need to jump if we are to do cross-cultural ministry successfully.
Coping with distortions of Christian teaching which have become accepted by new believers in China is the focus of the chapter Those who have never heard. It tells of a woman who is a Christian, but who fervently hopes her family do not hear the gospel because she is sure they would reject it. She is confident that her father, who recently died is now safe in the arms of Jesus, because in God's mercy he never got to hear the message! This misunderstanding of Romans 2 is as popular in Australia as in China. (I once heard someone expounding it in a large Christian bookshop.) Suzanne makes us see its dangers, and how it is opposed to the command to go into all the world and preach the message of God's forgiveness for those who trust in Jesus' death for them.
This book would be especially enjoyed by people with an interest in language, and contains a number of descriptions of how some Chinese words portray an ancient belief in God through the way the pictograms have been assembled. It would also be a useful book for anyone contemplating working for Christ in an alien culture. Suzanne points out that Chinese people are eager to learn English and that a qualification as an English teacher is a great asset for anyone willing to share their knowledge in this country in which many are coming to faith in him, but where millions more have not yet heard his name.
