Joining the Church, Joining the Community

Speaking Hakka

Hakka language is one of the most important symbols of Hakka identity, at least among the older people of Shung Him Tong. To the younger church members it is far less important, and a declining number of youth make an effort to speak it. But as yet, it remains an important feature of Shung Him Tong identity. While I was in Shung Him Tong, one older man began to teach a Hakka language class one evening a week. Enrollment was not overwhelming; it included five young women and one of their mothers, all of whom hoped to improve their Hakka reading and writing skills. The teacher taught the Hakka "church dialect," which was different from his own native Meixian dialect, and he used the Hakka Bible as his text. As he explained, the church language is more like Baoan Hakka, because that is where the Basel missionaries went first. It "is a beautiful language" that is more easily understood by Hakka from many regions. The teacher was very proud when one of his young students soon gained enough confidence from the class to volunteer to translate the Sunday sermons.

Shung Him Church, many members say, is the only place they can go to speak Hakka. Many who live several miles away say this is why they continue to commute to Shung Him Tong on Sundays. Some, especially the older church members, lament the shift to include a Cantonese translation of the sermon, which they consider regrettable but necessary for the growth of the congregation. When I asked one elder why he had read the announcements from the Sunday service in Hakka, he answered in an exasperated tone of voice, "There must always besome Hakka!" Explaining the reason for the translation of the sermon, he continued, "Only the oldest women do not understand Cantonese; more of the young people don't understand Hakka. They learn Cantonese at school, they speak it with their friends, they want it in Cantonese." Another older man explained to me that he had resigned himself to the idea that there must be more Cantonese: "If it is in Cantonese, the young people can bring their friends along."

"The young people no longer speak Hakka." "The young people don't want to speak Hakka." "The young people don't understand Hakka." "They speak Cantonese at school, they don't want to speak Hakka." I commonly heard these sentiments expressed with various degrees of remorse. Some church members, and especially the chairman of the board at the time, stood firm and insisted on keeping at least part of every service in Hakka. "This is a Hakka church!" one board member said emphatically when I asked him if he thought the service should be in Hakka or Cantonese. Another board member, representing the more popular view among the younger set, said, "Hakka is a thing of the

past. We've got to be practical about these things." His emphasis was more on attracting new members than on preserving the Hakka character of the church, an example of the growing tension between Hakka and Christian identity in the church community.

Today in all Hong Kong schools the language medium is Cantonese with the exception of some English-language schools. From primary school on, students are required to learn English. In the past few years there has been more discussion of requiring students to learn Mandarin, the official language of the People's Republic of China, rather than English. Considering the number of years that most students study English, the standard is remarkably poor. Hakka was once the main language of instruction at Chung Him School but today all classes there are taught in Cantonese.

Certain occupations are stereotypically Hakka. As one man put it, "One place you can be almost certain to hear people speaking Hakka is at construction sites." In most work places, however, there is no question but that people speak Cantonese, with a few using some English. It is not uncommon, as one young factory worker said, to have worked with someone for years before realizing that they also speak Hakka. In the home and among family members, many Shung Him Tong people still speak Hakka, including many with one Cantonese parent. The pastor's family and many of the Pangs, Cheungs, and Lings speak Hakka at home and among themselves. At the teahouse or at the market the older Shung Him Tong women often speak in Hakka, and a few of them speak only Hakka. As mentioned above, many non-Hakka who learn to speak Hakka are referred to as "honorary Hakka."

Weekly family worship visitations are conducted in Hakka unless, as is rarely the case, there is someone present who does not speak it. The pastor, originally from Meixian, is far more comfortable speaking Hakka than Cantonese. Although he has lived in Hong Kong for over twenty years, his attempts to speak Cantonese are clumsy and difficult to understand, and often elicit giggles from the young people. Even though people speak Hakka at home and hear it at church on Sundays, the general impression among most people in Shung Him Tong is that Hakka language is slowly fading away because the young people are increasingly reluctant to speak it. Most of the young people I met in Shung Him Tong can understand and speak Hakka, but they may be reluctant to speak it. A lack of interest in the language, however, does not necessarily correlate to a weakening of Hakka identity.

I was on a hike with several young women, members of the older and middle youth groups, on a hot summer afternoon. As we meandered across the spine of Dragon Mountain, past shelters that some said were built to hide from the Japanese, I asked my companions why they did not speak to one another in Hakka. They pointed to two young women, "Ming Lee," who worked in

a factory and had only belonged to the church for a few years, and "May," a nurse from an older church family, and said accusingly, "Because of them." Ming Lee adamantly defended herself and explained that although she does not know how to speak Hakka she can understand it. She insisted that her mother was Hakka and her father half Hakka, much to the surprise and doubt of her friends. May was not so defensive but merely explained to me that she does not like to speak Hakka, although her parents and her sisters often do, and that she still considers herself Hakka. As a well-established member of the church, she did not feel the same need as Ming Lee to defend her Hakka identity.

In general, the younger its members, the less likely a church group is to conduct its meetings in Hakka. Hakka-speaking seminary students are also becoming increasingly difficult to find for summer internships. While I conducted my research, three theology student evangelists worked for the church. One was a summer visitor who spoke no Hakka; the second was the woman evangelist mentioned above, who had been there several years and who spoke some Hakka. Her parents, she thought, may have been part Hakka, though the language was never spoken in her home when she was growing up in urban Hong Kong. She was surprised to find that people in Shung Him Tong all spoke Hakka. When she went to Canada to continue her studies, another young Hakka woman replaced her. This third intern had come to Hong Kong to study, and her family in Malaysia still spoke Hakka at home. "We are lucky to have her," one older board member told me. "She is Hakka." He explained that the board, when hiring, tries to find a Hakka speaker first, and then opens the candidacy to qualified nonspeakers. Qualified Hakka speakers are getting harder to find and are consequently in great demand.^[2] Hakka ministers from other Tsung Tsin churches and elsewhere often say that they enjoy visiting Shung Him Tong because there they have the opportunity to speak Hakka.

In the wider Hong Kong context, Hakka language is far less prevalent than Cantonese. At school, at work, and on television and radio, people hear mostly Cantonese, though some also listen to English and Mandarin programs. Hong Kong has experienced nothing like the 1989 Hakka demonstration in Taiwan to demand Hakka-language television programming that marked the beginning of a Hakka movement (Martin 1992). Hong Kong Hakka have not actively demanded Hakka programs or equal time for Hakka language. The church and home are two of the few remaining contexts in which Hakka is spoken.

Recruiting Converts

Translating the sermon into Cantonese, improving the playground and church facilities, opening a nursery school, and offering extra evening classes and social activities are all efforts to attract new members to the church. Two evenings a week I taught English conversation classes. Fifteen children attended, many

of them encouraged by their parents to bring their English homework assignments, and one evening a week four to eight adults attended. The church board hoped that these classes, like the new larger playground constructed in back of the church, would attract new churchgoers. Judging from the English classes, however, a vast majority of the students were already church members, and those who were not were Hakka from Lung Yeuk Tau or Luen Wo market who showed no intention of joining. Some non-church members attended the class just until their English examinations were finished or until they had succeeded in their English-language job interviews.

Twice a week the pastor, the evangelist, and usually two or three other church members go on family visitations. In the evening, as they approach the house that is being visited, they can be heard singing hymns while the pastor plays his accordion. Each family who belongs to the church is visited at least once a year. These families are urged to invite extended family members, friends, and neighbors to attend the visitation—especially those who do not already belong to the church. During the visit, everyone prays, sings hymns, and listens to a short sermon before sharing refreshments and informal conversation.

In terms of broader evangelical efforts, many members of Shung Him Tong are actively involved or at least contribute money to overseas missionary work geared specifically toward attracting Hakka converts. In 1987 several young people from Shung Him Tong, including the evangelist, attended a conference of the Chinese Christian Organization for World Evangelism, which was held in Taiwan. One session that was organized by members of the World Hakka Evangelical Association focused on the question of attracting more Hakka converts worldwide.

Evangelism is encouraged among the youth groups more now than it was a decade ago. Members of the youth group go out in groups large and small and sometimes join members of other Fanling churches to pass out religious leaflets at nearby housing estates and in shopping malls. They are not reluctant to make a Christian spectacle of themselves in public. Once, I was invited for a hike and picnic with several youth group members. When we reached our destination, the young women picked a scenic but crowded spot in the park that was surrounded by clusters of other people who were out to enjoy the fresh air and, I presumed, the peace and quiet. As soon as we unloaded our packs, my seven companions unselfconsciously pulled out their songbooks and began to sing hymns and read out loud from the Bible, pleased to draw attention to themselves and their cause. On other, more formal occasions, leaflets are brought along and people are individually approached.

Non-Christian Hakka in the neighboring villages sometimes invite the pastor to say a prayer and lead a hymn at the funeral of a Hakka non-Christian. I have never heard of one of the Punti families making such a request. The pas-

tor and a small entourage from the church say they are pleased to attend these funerals because they present a good opportunity to attract new members to the church, although they suspect these Hakka non-Christians just "want all the blessings they can get." In some regards these Hakka non-Christian neighbors are in a good situation. As fellow Hakka, they can easily activate their connections with the Hakka church, but as non-Christians they have better relations with Punti than the Hakka Christians.

Baptism and confirmation records from Shung Him Tong indicate that the number of new members has dropped considerably since 1981. Between 1947 and 1970 the number of baptisms averaged over fifty per year, while between 1981 and 1986 the average dropped to twenty-five (see fig. 1). Board members, youth group members, and a few ordinary church members are concerned about this downward trend. They consider it their duty to bring in new church members, but for a number of reasons they have had limited success.

One reason is that between 1980 and 1986 the number of churches within a two-mile radius of Shung Him Tong has increased from four to six (G. Law Ward 1982:63). These include another Lutheran church, a Baptist church, an Assemblies of God church, a Catholic church, and a new Chinese Evangelical church run by a friend and classmate of the Shung Him Tong evangelist. Cantonese is exclusively spoken in these churches. People from Shung Him Tong who have visited other churches have gone to either the currently popular Assemblies of God church or the new Chinese Evangelical church.

Although some people who move from the village no longer attend church, or choose to join a different church, many continue to return to Shung Him Tong, at least on occasion. Shung Him Tong has not lost a significant number of its members to the other nearby churches, but the church leaders are concerned that potential new members—especially young ones—prefer other churches over Shung Him Tong. Young people consider Shung Him Tong a "village church" and some think it is "too old-fashioned" in contrast to the other churches, which have larger youth groups, many more social activities, and "rock and roll hymns," and which are generally considered "more modern, more lively and more fun for young people." Indeed, Shung Him Tong—as it is imagined by the older members—in some ways maintains the older Basel mission tradition of South German Pietism.

Unlike many of the nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon Protestant missions, which emphasized a liberal view of "progress and democratization" in their vision of "modernization," the South German Pietists were concerned with the maintenance of "traditional village patterns and village life and the idealization of the village community" (Jenkins 1982:88). The same might be said of the traditional core of values of Shung Him Tong.^[3] As one woman in her mid-thirties explained, during her youth many of her friends' parents would

Figure 1.
Baptisms at Shung Him Tong, 1916–86.

not allow their children to go to the cinema; even Christian films were prohibited, as were dances. Today, it is still hard to imagine a Shung Him Tong youth group organizing a dance or singing rock and roll hymns as is done at the nearby Assemblies of God church, run by American missionaries.

Another factor that serves to alienate rather than draw potential converts is an air of superiority among the Hakka Christians that may also stem in part from the Pietist tradition. As Jenkins has written, the Pietists believed that they were living a higher life than their neighbors, and they often seemed to be "looking down" on their neighbors (1989:3). In Shung Him Tong there is little tolerance of other religious practices and ways of life. Many non-Christians feel no desire to join the church because such a move would mean a change of life-style and would alienate them from friends and relatives who might go to bars or discos, gamble, play mahjong or card games, or attend horse races—all activities openly condemned by Shung Him Tong Christians.

The issue of attracting new converts also points to the growing tension between Hakka and Christian identities. Many younger church members believe Shung Him Tong will never appeal to young people as long as it remains a "Hakka church." There are few if any young people who think of themselves as Hakka in such a way that they would consciously join the church because it is Hakka, as in earlier times. Many who already belong to Shung Him Tong, however, feel more at home there than at other churches, and the fact that it is Hakka—a place where their mother tongue is spoken—may be more important in contributing to this feeling than they consciously realize. Non-Hakka, especially Punti, are likely to steer clear of the church because of its strong Hakka reputation. Some church members are optimistic that, as the

youth group grows and becomes more active under the leadership of the energetic new youth group director and evangelist, new young people will be attracted to the church regardless of its Hakka character. Others believe it is the character of the church that must change.

While some people will not join Shung Him Tong because they consider it too old-fashioned, others merely lose interest and stop attending. This is more often the case for people who move out of the village; for those who remain in the village, social pressure is brought to bear. One young woman who grew up as a member of the church moved away many years ago and now attends only on occasion, for the sake of her father. Acquaintances in the village speculate that the church no longer suits her life-style and her career in the police force. Certainly, her diverse circle of friends and her interests are far removed from those of many of the church's young people.

Other explanations I was given for the decreasing membership were the lower birthrate and continuing emigration from the area. When On Lok village was torn down to make way for a new industrial estate during the mid-1980s, many of On Lok's residents, including a growing number of Hakka Christians who had lived there since the 1940s, were relocated into nearby high-rise housing estates. They sent their children to the more convenient estate schools and day-care centers, and enrollment at Shung Him Kindergarten and Chung Him School dropped. Most church members from On Lok continue to come to church, but there is no longer a growing neighboring community from which to attract new members.

Unlike On Lok, the Lung Yeuk Tau villages to the east of Shung Him Tong are composed of a much greater proportion of Punti villagers who reject Christianity. They are considered "more resistant" because they are already integrated into communities with their own ancestral halls, temples, and shrines. Hakka non-Christians in those areas are often influenced by a desire to remain neutral or to maintain good relations with their Punti and non-Christian neighbors—something that might be more difficult if they were Christian. As the people of Shung Him Tong are quick to point out, most of the church members are relative newcomers to the area. Many of the more recent members immigrated to the area from China in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s; they are overwhelmingly Hakka, and many were already Basel mission converts when they arrived in Hong Kong.

Today there are few ethnic tensions between Hakka and Punti in Lung Yeuk Tau and the surrounding areas, especially as compared with the first three or four decades of this century. For this reason, by the late 1940s Luen Wo Tong faded out of existence and church members no longer felt the need to play as much of a role in local leadership as did Pang Lok Sam and other early residents. Non-Christian Hakka from surrounding communities have less ur-

gent reasons to join the church or to ally themselves with Hakka Christians. The benefits they might receive from closer interpersonal relations with more affluent or powerful church members do not provide enough incentive to join the church. Yet as potential Hakka converts they are welcomed and feel free to attend church functions and to enroll their children in the church school. My Hakka landlady's teenage daughter, for example, attended church on Christmas for the "treats" (a little bag of edible sweets) that are handed out and for the merriment, but shrugged off the invitation to join the church or any regular youth group activities, which she considered boring. Her extended family also felt free to invite the pastor to bless funerals and marriages as a peripheral part of the ceremonies, but they had no intention of converting and claimed to have "no religion."

There are different ideas among the people of Shung Him Tong regarding the reasons why people convert to Christianity. Many of them were raised as Christians and have never questioned their faith. Several church members voice the opinion that people must be "down and out" before they will consider becoming Christian. In the words of one man: "The time to convert someone to Christianity is when they've just lost the shirt off their back at the horse races. If you approach a man who's just won, he'll say 'why?' But when people are unhappy or poor they will accept Christ…. A rich man won't become a Christian like a poor man will. That's the time to approach them."

Serious misfortune is the most frequently cited reason for the "questioning" of one's faith, both in the biographies and testimonials of the early Basel mission converts and at present. For example, one nineteenth-century convert, Wong En Kau, whose biography is recorded in the Basel Mission Archives, had a younger brother who was killed by a tiger. This incident made him question the power of the traditional deities. As he recounted to a Swiss Basel missionary, "After two years of doubt about the deities, two Christian preachers arrived at … my uncle's village." He heard them preach about salvation and eternal life: "I told them of my doubts concerning the traditional deities and of the bad fortune my family had suffered—the death of my brother, economic misery because of my father's gambling. At home I told my mother about Christianity. She was happy to be given fresh hope" (Basel Mission Archives 1874). He and his mother decided to

ban all heathen ritual objects from the house and to destroy them. The relatives were very angry with us and didn't understand why we should oppose the traditional religion. Even my wife opposed me. But the holy ghost helped me to ignore the hostility around me. On March 22, 1868, my mother, my uncle, and I were baptized by Missionary Lechler. Soon after she was baptized, my mother died and my relatives' hatred reemerged. They treated me

as though I was a leper. The Christians … helped me to bury my mother. To my surprise, my wife finally made her way back to me and her ears were open to the gospel.…  The relationship with my relatives and the rest of the village worsened and my wife and I had to leave (Basel Mission Archives 1874).

Wong also benefited in material ways from his association with the missionaries:

Two months later Missionary Lechler employed me as a teacher for the primary school.…  During the day I taught, and in the evening I worked as a translator of the Bible. In 1870 my wife was baptized and since that moment my household has been a member of the Christian community. At the age of thirty-two, I was allowed to enter the school in Lilang to become an evangelist, and after two years at the school I became one. I am aware that I am incapable of the task, but with the help of the Lord, I shall succeed (Basel Mission Archives 1874).

In a letter to the home mission in Basel in 1868, missionary Charles Piton wrote from Nyenhang of three new converts whom he believed would make good Christians. One had asked to be baptized previously, but Piton suspected "only economic motives"—that is, a desire to be employed as a teacher—so he delayed his baptism. The second convert was a blind man with a tragic story: once wealthy, his family had been plagued with opium use, gambling, prostitution, and three cases of fratricide. The convert had a bad reputation, but his illness, which resulted in blindness, "changed his life," and he converted to Christianity. The third was hired by Piton to do construction work on the new chapel. He learned about the gospel, and after two years, when Piton was "sure of his intentions," he was baptized (Basel Mission Archives 1868b).

In Shung Him Tong today, it is still said that some old people join the church to "receive blessings" or to gain the benefit of burial in the church cemetery, where their graves will be tended and they will not be forgotten. Young people in particular are critical of men and women who are baptized just before marrying a Christian so the ceremony can be held in the church but who then do not become regular members.

As one younger board member explained, there are many people who come to the church for material help: "They are less educated and less literate and they want to improve their lives." Reflecting on the past, many third or fourth generation Christians unabashedly imagine the scenarios leading up to their own families' conversions: "People were poor and they needed help. So they approached the missionaries for help and they received education and jobs." Such economic motives for converting gave rise to the common perception of Chinese Christians as "rice Christians." One difference between

Chinese Christians and other Christians, according to Francis Hsu, is not that the Chinese alone have practical motives for converting but that only the Chinese are frank in admitting their pragmatism about religion (1981:273). Still, the people of Shung Him Tong find such pragmatism far more acceptable in their own forebears than in their contemporaries.

As one Shung Him Tong man, a retired accountant, explained, "The more prosperous the church, the more people it will attract." As the Basel mission opened more schools and hospitals, he said, the numbers of converts increased:

A hundred and forty years ago the Basel mission came and they built a school in China. They educated a lot of good people. The other counties in Guangdong were not as educated as Meixian. Because of Christianity there were better schools and better work. The schools were first for Christian children and then second for those who were not yet Christian—but our children came first. The Christians made better profit and made progress faster than non-Christian Hakka. There was already an idea of the importance of hard work and education, but the church provided the means for this education. At first not many people went to the church. The missionaries were rich though, and from a powerful foreign country, so when they started paying people to go to school and then later hiring them in their schools and hospitals and churches, people got more interested. People were sometimes sent overseas for more education and bit by bit the church became prosperous and the church members brought more prosperity to the church…. When they got this education from the mission schools, the Hakka people could start to go anywhere they wanted in the world and get jobs there. They were often hired by the government so they worked hard and they struggled for power. At first it was not easy to get the Hakka people to be Christian. They aren't easy to convert. But as the missionaries realized how important schools and hospitals are to the people, they were more and more successful. As the church becomes more prosperous, more people will come to become Christian. It's a better way to find a better life and a better job.

One younger European Basel missionary criticized the Chinese churches in Hong Kong for often "using social welfare to buy members." In the 1960s, for example, when foreign churches donated food for the poor, Chinese churches—including the Tsung Tsin mission—often insisted that people be baptized before they receive food. To many Chinese Christians, this must have been the logical order of events: if churches provided food to non-Christians, what would be the incentive for people to join the church?

Among young people recently converted or born into Christian families, I heard no explicitly expressed practical or material explanations for being "born again." Instead of focusing on the benefits that come from joining the church, they emphasize the conversion experience and the personal crises that precipitate it. Certainly no younger member would admit to material motives for joining.

Ming Lee is a recent convert. She became Christian several years ago after she was seriously injured at the factory where she worked. Several schoolmates from the youth group came to visit her in the hospital. They prayed for her and urged her to do the same. When she recovered she joined the church. She was living near Luen Wo market at the time; her brother was "wild" and her family was not happy or well off. Later, by chance, her family moved to the edge of Shung Him Tong. Her father, a construction worker, had agreed to build a house for a Catholic man who lived on the outskirts of the village in exchange for the use of some land where he could also build himself a small house. After they lived there for a few years, Ming Lee convinced her mother to attend the church. Now she is quite eager for people from the church to know that her mother is Hakka and her father, despite the fact that he rarely comes to church, is half Hakka, making her three-quarters Hakka. Before she became a member, this young woman had never thought of herself as Hakka. To her, this is an important factor in "fitting in" with other church members. Another young woman joined when she was unhappy and lonely; and several others explained that when they were away from home for the first time, although they were already Christian, their faith was strengthened and renewed.

Today, the church does not offer the same material incentives for members that it once did. People do not need the physical protection of the church community; nor do they need the church leaders to back them up in claims to build houses or send their children to school. Wealthy church members no longer serve as patrons to young non-Christians, providing tuition and moral guidance in hopes of their eventual conversion. Although many young converts like Ming Lee are from fairly poor families, they receive no immediate economic benefits by joining. Young people are occasionally employed as teachers or secretaries at the church, which better qualifies them to later find jobs outside, but these positions are rare and are normally filled by qualified people from outside (in the case of teachers), or young people whose families have long been members of the community (in the case of church assistants). Ming Lee did attend the English class in the hopes of eventually improving her job prospects, but so did the non-Christians who attended.

Today, education is readily available in Hong Kong and is not limited to mission schools. Though the church runs a nursery school, most toddlers of church members attend other schools. Today many church members send

their children to the most prestigious schools they can afford—English-speaking nursery schools and private schools whose graduates are accepted at the best primary schools. The church nursery school is cheaper than many; it is smaller and does not have a reputation for attracting teachers as good as those found at wealthier urban schools, and the students are mainly from nearby villages. Many of its pupils come from non-Christian families who consider the church nursery school convenient and inexpensive although not of the highest quality. Education, medical care, and social welfare are provided by the government, and although the Tsung Tsin mission and other churches contribute to such programs, it is not necessary to be Christian to receive benefits. Thus, most church members today refer to the benefits of being Christian in terms of the spiritual and emotional enrichment of their lives rather than the material benefits that they say prompted previous generations to convert. This is not to say that recent Christian converts do not expect their lives to "improve" in a variety of ways once they have made the decision to be a "better" person.

One Sunday a visiting seminary student delivered a sermon in which he read a section from "The Parable of the Great Banquet" (Luke 14:16–23). Comparing the church with the banquet, he urged the congregation to invite more people, pointing emphatically at empty spaces in the pews. The sermon evoked a strong response from "Tin," a church member and schoolteacher in his forties, who told me that the speaker was "right in theory but not in practice." When I asked him to explain, he said, "In theory everyone wants to bring in new members, but in their hearts they do not." There are many new member drives, special programs, and gospel meetings, but new people come two or three times, he said, and then "they stop coming because they feel excluded—like outsiders" because they are not "members of the big families who control the church."

At the root of the problem in attracting new members is the very fact that first attracted and now binds together the older members: it is a Hakka church. The members of the church are torn between wanting to attract new members and keeping Shung Him Tong a Hakka church. As one older male board member said, "It goes against the teachings of Jesus Christ to conduct the services in Hakka and thereby exclude other people who might want to join our church." But the same man, on a different occasion, revealed his ambivalence by stating with pride, "Ours is not like other churches; ours is a Hakka church." Many church members, especially among those of age forty or over, say that they attend the church in Shung Him Tong village because their friends are there and because it is Hakka, even though some of them live far away. The very distinction of the church as Hakka is what makes it attractive to many present members, but it is also what people like Tin think makes it unattractive to potential new members.^[4]

Focusing their efforts on recruiting non-Christian Hakka into the church would appear to be one solution. But church members seem reluctant to define their conversion goals so narrowly and "therefore exclude non-Hakka." Furthermore, few non-Christian Hakka in the region are as interested in joining the church as they were in earlier decades. Some seem to identify more with their non-Christian neighbors—regardless of whether or not they are Hakka—than with Shung Him Tong Hakka Christians. Others identify with the people of Shung Him Tong as fellow Hakka, but not with their Christianity. One Hakka neighbor who was forever exhorting me to "speak Hakka, not Cantonese!" told me that, despite his habit of decorating his house with lights at Christmastime, he had absolutely no interest in becoming Christian—though if he did, the church he joined would be Shung Him Tong. Decreasing material incentives and a decreasing interest in Hakka identity throughout the Lung Yeuk Tau and Fanling regions are both factors that help explain why greater numbers of local Hakka do not join the church, and why some members leave both village and church.

Many people of Shung Him Tong are somewhat resigned toward the direction the church must take away from its Hakka origins. Although the older church members insist that parts of the service remain in Hakka language, they sense that the Hakka character of the church will inevitably diminish. Of the thirteen Tsung Tsin mission churches, Shung Him Tong is one of only two in which the sermon is still delivered primarily in Hakka. The other eleven churches are urban and conduct services in Cantonese, although two of the larger churches conduct two services each Sunday, one in Hakka and one in Cantonese.

Village Residence and Church Membership

During the first month of my research, as I met people at the church or walking through the village, I was repeatedly told that "everyone in the village is Christian" or "everyone in Shung Him Tong village belongs to the church." Before long, it became obvious to me that these statements were overgeneralizations, harmless exaggerations, or even wishful thinking. It was not until I was several months into my fieldwork that I learned that such overgeneralizations represented a particular view of the social reality of Shung Him Tong.

As we were walking through the village, on our way to the teahouse in Luen Wo market, my companion a young schoolteacher, mentioned an upcoming wedding to which "the whole village is invited—everyone will be there."

I pointed to the nearby house of some recent arrivals to the village and said, "Will they be there?"

"No, no, not them," she answered.

As we continued to walk through the village, I pointed to another small house and said, "What about the people who rent that house?" Again she answered no. Frustrated, I then pressed my companion to explain exactly who would be at the wedding—who comprised this "everyone"? She said that all the members of the "old" established Christian families in the village were invited. To Yee Ling, herself a descendant of one of the first families, "everyone" signified those in her own social category: relatives of the Lings, Tsuis, Cheungs, Pangs, and others who were active members of the church.

Recent arrivals and tenants in Shung Him Tong do not automatically become members of the community, but through a variety of avenues they can eventually be numbered among those who are respected members of the church, if not descendants of the founders. Such avenues include marriage to a respected church member, service in a church office, and exemplary behavior, all of which were factors in the acceptance of the three brothers mentioned earlier. Thus, for the most part, "everyone who is anyone" in Shung Him Tong is Christian and belongs to the church.

Not all who attend church are considered full-fledged members of the community, but members of the community are almost always members of the church. Community members need not live in Shung Him Tong, but as discussed above they must have a legitimate claim through kinship ties to a founding family or by model behavior—which usually means success and moral uprightness as well as contributions of time and money to the church. There is one interesting exception to the church membership requirement, however, with regard to the Catholic families in the village.

Catholics, to the people of Shung Him Tong, are not considered "Christians" at all but rather, as one young woman explained, little better than "idol worshipers."^[5] Yet, in certain social situations like weddings, there are two Catholic families who are considered to be members of the community. Both are Hakka, originally from Meixian; both are descended from old Shung Him Tong families; and both have members considered eminent in wider Hong Kong circles. The Tsuis were related to the first Basel mission convert in Wuhua and belonged to a Basel mission church. They were also related by marriage to Pang Lok Sam; Pang's wife was named Tsui, and her famous brother was the founder of Wah Yan College in Hong Kong (see Tsui Dou Leung in Appendix 2). Another prominent member of the Tsui family, Paul Tsui, was a district officer and also the first Chinese person in Hong Kong to hold the post of secretary for Chinese affairs. One branch of the Tsui family still belongs to Shung Him Church; the Catholic branch retains honorary membership in the community for certain occasions, and its members are cited as examples of educated and successful Hakka.

The people most frequently held up as model members of church and community, although they are not related by blood to the old families, are the three brothers on the board of directors. In contrast to members of the old set, these brothers had to work their way up to respected positions in the church. Indeed, the story is told like a fairy tale, complete with the eldest son's marriage to a woman who was both the granddaughter of one of the first village pastors and the daughter of a most respected church elder. Informants told of the parents of the three brothers, Hakka refugees from China who were forced to borrow money from their neighbors to plant the sweet potatoes they hawked in the market. They discovered Christianity, joined the Shung Him Church, and continued to work hard to put their children through school. All attained a college education—one daughter became a minister, one son attained a high position in Hong Kong's department of social services, and the other sons are in equally successful professions. All three men married women from old Shung Him Tong families, and they are looked up to as the future leaders of the church. Education, economic success, and model Christian behavior are considered the key elements of their high status in the community.

Another factor should not be neglected in the acceptance of these men as worthy members of the community. They are Hakka. Church members readily identify them as Hakka and even say that they display important Hakka traits of determination and hard work. Unlike Ming Lee, they do not need to announce or defend their Hakka identity in order to fit in; it is understood.