ABSTRACT
Zhang Yunfa, like his relative Xu Fuguang, made and sold baskets and sieves in the Niankeng region.) Although he participated in church services in Xu's home as early as 1854, he himself indicates that concern over veneration of the ancestors and an auspicious grave site led to a long period of doubt and resistance. Only after repeated exhortations by Zhang Fuxing did he finally accept Christianity with its proscriptions. Heinrich Bender, who was stationed at Zhangcun, requested Zhang Yunfa in 1868 to write down the story of his conversion and Bender sent a translation to Basel. Though the narrative was written a decade after Zhang's conversion and from a Christian point of view, Zhang does convey quite vividly the many and varied deterrents to a public commitment to Christianity.
