China - at it again.

Two Catholic priests in China's "underground" church have been detained for over a month after trying to join a pilgrimage, an overseas group said, as the government seeks to quell protest threats before the Olympics.
Zhang Jianlin and Zhang Li, priests from near Zhangjiakou city in Hebei province, next to Beijing, sought to join thousands of other Catholics on the annual pilgrimage on May 24 to the Our Lady of Sheshan shrine near Shanghai, the Connecticut-based Cardinal Kung Foundation said in an email on Monday.
"Both priests disappeared while they were in the hands of Chinese authorities," said the Foundation, which is highly critical of Chinese state restrictions on religion. "There has been no news on these two priests since their arrests."
China is preparing to host the Beijing Olympic Games that start on August 8. The government says citizens can practice religion in state-registered settings and has vowed Games visitors will be free to worship.
But wary authorities have also been seeking to stamp out signs of unrest, including dissent from religious believers critical of state controls.
China's 8 to 12 million Catholics are divided between a state-sanctioned church and an underground church that rejects government ties.
Members of the state-approved church also honour the Pope as a spiritual authority, but the government restricts formal contacts with Rome, which has had no diplomatic ties with Beijing since 1951.
Hebei, where the two missing priests come from, is an epicentre of the underground church. The two men were going to Sheshan, where the popular pilgrimage was this year restricted by strict police checks.
Police and government offices in Xuanhua District, Zhangjiakou, where the priests come from, refused to answer questions about them or said they had no knowledge of the case.
"Nobody would be detained unless they were suspected of violating the law," said an officer from the district public security office. She refused to give her name.
Pope Benedict, who has made improving relations with China a main goal of his pontificate, has said the Beijing Olympics would be "of great value to humanity".
He will send a Hong Kong bishop to represent the Church at the Olympics opening ceremony but no diplomatic breakthrough with China is imminent, a senior Vatican official said last week.

www.cotn.co.uk

It's officially official - no more "Husband and Wife Lung Slice" - yum yum!

BEIJING (Reuters) - It's official. Hungry foreign hordes craving a fix of diced chicken fried with chili and peanuts during the Beijing Olympics will be able to shout "kung pao chicken!" and have some hope of getting just that. As it readies for an influx of visitors for the August Games, the Chinese capital has offered restaurants an official English translation of local dishes whose exotic names and alarming translations can leave foreign visitors frustrated and famished.
If officials have their way, local newspapers reported on Wednesday, English-speaking visitors will be able to order "beef and ox tripe in chili sauce," an appetizer, rather than "husband and wife's lung slice." Other favorites have also received a linguistic makeover. "Bean curd made by a pock-marked woman," as the Beijing Youth Daily rendered the spicy Sichuanese dish, is now "Mapo tofu." And "chicken without sexual life" becomes mere "steamed pullet."
According to one widely repeated story, the Chinese name of "kung pao chicken" comes from the name of an imperial official who was fed the dish during an inspection tour. With the Beijing Olympics 51 days away, a notice on the city tourism bureau website ( http://www.bjta.gov.cn/ ) told restaurants to come and pick up a book with the suggested translations.

(makes you wonder what other chinese food names for food we eat every day are called?!)

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Nanjing, China, becomes Bible printing capital of the world!

Thirty years ago the Bible was banned there, but now China has one of the biggest Bible factories in the world.
A new, expanded printing facility is soon to make China’s ancient capital, Nanjing, the Bible centre of the world.
The Amity Printing Company – a joint venture with the Bible Societies – will be producing 23 Bibles every minute to keep up with growing demand for the Bible in China.
The new press will greatly increase the number of Bibles Amity can produce each year. In 2007 it printed six million Bibles. When the new press opens on 19 May that will leap to a potential 12 million – most of which will be distributed throughout China.

It’s a major step in the history of the printing centre. The People’s Liberation Army printed some of the first Bibles in China after the Cultural Revolution, including three million that were printed on presses of the Red Army. Amity Press – now one of the world’s largest Bible printers – began production in 1987. Last December its 50 millionth Bible was produced.
About 55,000 churches distribute the Bibles that come off Amity’s production lines. The new press was needed to help keep up with demand in a country where, until 30 years ago, Christianity was banned and Bibles were confiscated.
"We got to the point where the volume of work was so great we hadn’t got enough room to store the books in stages of binding and all the paper," said Peter Dean, the Bible Societies’ consultant in Nanjing. "It was everywhere."
According to Peter, there is "a really increasing interest in Christianity" in a country where an estimated seven per cent of the one billion population are believers.
"There are differing views on how many Christians there are," he admitted. "But everyone agrees there is a great interest and a lot of growth in the Christian Church.
"What excites me is our aim is to serve the Church in China. All of this new production capability is available 'first call' for the mainland Chinese Church. If they want to print 12 million Bibles a year, they’ve got it."
Since its inception in the 80s, Amity Press has printed 54 million Bibles – 43 million of which have gone to the churches in China. Some are free and all are made affordable. A pocket edition of the Bible costs about 68p and Chinese Christians can receive the full-size Bible at a subsidised cost of £1.16.

Bible Society plays a key role. "We feel really supported by faithful people who’ve raised funds to buy paper here," Peter explained. "If you want to help place a Bible in China, then giving money to buy paper is the best thing to do."
This is making it possible for the Church to distribute Bibles into rural areas and to provide them for people on low incomes. Amity Press prints in eight Chinese minority languages – as well as Braille Bible. With the move to a bigger press, it will be able to expand its range of books and Bibles.
"Young people need more than just the traditional printed Bible," said Rev Deng Fu Cun, a senior leader in the China Christian Council/Three Self Patriotic Movement, publishers of the Bibles. "So we’re planning to produce the Bible in various digital formats."
They aim to produce the Bible as downloadable audio books – so young people can listen to it on their MP3 players. "And we’re also focusing on the quality and variety of Bibles available. We need both large and small Bibles, Braille Bibles and luxury Bibles that can be given as gifts," he added.
Now with their new 48,000 sq m home, the Amity team can confidently take on large projects like producing Bibles for the Olympics in Beijing. Thanks to their new press, such initiatives won’t be a marathon task.

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Chinese Christians

Check out this article called Christianity Finds a Fulcrum in Asia. The author puts forth a number of stunning claims and predictions, including . . .
10,000 Chinese become Christians every day.
Chinese may comprise the world’s largest concentration of Christians by 2050.
China feels an enormous spiritual hunger caused in large measure by its new-found prosperity.
The massive migration of Chinese from the countryside to the large cities contributes to their openness to the gospel.
There are now more than 100 million Christians. That number could double by 2050.
Islam will have no answer when China Christians take the gospel “back to Jerusalem.”
The house church movement is the fastest growing part of the church in China.
Chinese Christians, having suffered enormous persecution, evangelize with passionate fervor.
Freedom of worship is the first precondition for democracy.
China’s house churches may become the leaven of democracy.
Time will tell about the accuracy of these predictions, but no one can deny that God is up to something big in China. One year from now the Summer Olympics will be underway in Beijing and the eyes of the world will be on China as never before. Would you join me in praying for the spread of the gospel in China, for the strengthening of the Chinese churches, and for those who are giving themselves to take the Good News to the world’s largest nation?