ABSTRACT
Li Jiubiao has taken care to distinguish his fellow Christians from outsiders. Several of the leading Christians mentioned in the Diary must have been huizhang , heads of the Christian lay associations that constituted the basic form of religious organization. In addition, some of them probably also were active as catechists, that is, Christian literati who had been trained to fulfil various religious tasks in the absence of a priest. The dichotomy suggested by this passage is significant. In the Diary people find no trace of the “untitled nobility,” the urban upper class of wealthy merchants with their exuberant life-style. Like so many other converts who figure in the Diary , the Li brothers definitely belonged to the host of “capped and gowned gentlemen” caught in the treadmill of the examination system. The Li brothers had been educated in a strictly Confucian family tradition.
