ABSTRACT
Christmas carols floats through the chilly December air in the remote village of Cizhong, on the Yunnan border with Tibet. The Christmas Eve Mass signals the start of a two-day festivity that includes communal dancing, feasting, drinking, and other forms of merry-making. Tibetans comprise the majority of the Cizhong Catholic community, while the Naxi, Nu, and Han make up the rest. The Mass tonight is attended not only by the locals; in the church are around twenty domestic and foreign tourists, and a number of officials from the Diqing Prefecture’s Cultural Bureau. Some of these visitors are walking through the church to find good vantage points for taking pictures, while others mingle with the villagers seated at the pews listening to the priest’s sermon. The priest celebrating this year’s Christmas Eve Mass is from the church in city of Dali which belongs to the ‘official’ Patriotic Church. However, the Tibetan priest who often visits Cizhong and neighbouring villages is not present. He does not belong to any state-recognised diocese, and neither does he acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of Kunming since the latter’s consecration has not been approved by the Vatican. Most villagers do not really care about the distinction between the ‘official’ and ‘underground’ church. What is most important is that they are allowed to practice their faith in their everyday life, a faith which was first brought to this part of China by French and Swiss missionaries toward the end of the nineteenth century. Many villagers are happy that a priest is there to celebrate Mass in their century-old church on Christmas Eve. And as the priest holds up the Eucharist, Cizhong Catholics focus their attention on the wafer that is the Body of Christ, at that particular moment in unison of devotion with millions of Catholics throughout China and other parts of the world.
