Sydney
24 August 2003
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Readers open their hearts to students
Solomon Islands: What can the Church do?
Readers open their hearts to students
The Chinese tour group at St Declan’s School, Penshurst
By Chris Lindsay
Readers of The Catholic Weekly have offered Sydney hospitality to a group of 22 Chinese students and two teachers brought to Australia by Fr John Wotherspoon, an Australian priest working in China.
Fr John, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate who teaches English at the Canadian-American boarding school in Zhao Qing, about four hours by train or boat from Hong Kong, says the group has been having a wonderful time.
“It is not only a chance for them to see Australia but also the Christian side of Australia,” he said. “None of them are Christians, but they have been to Mass and to Catholic schools and churches.
“The Little Sisters of the Poor in Randwick saw the story in The Catholic Weekly and invited us over.
“The Catholic Chinese community in Parramatta invited us to Mass.
“A Chinese Catholic family that lives near the Koala Park had us to lunch for a beautiful meal. It is a very happy family with three grown children, and they told the students that their happiness was based in their faith.
“This contact with Christianity is very low key from my point of view; I treat it very circumspectly.
“If the school thought I was running a pilgrimage they would not like it.”
Fr John said he was taking photos every day and putting them on his website.
“The parents in China log on and see how happy their children are and what a good time they are having,” he said.
“Hundreds of people in China are seeking these photos and following the trip. The parents ring their children on mobile phones and tell them they are falling in love with Australia from thousands of kilometres away.”
Fr John worked in Hong Kong from 1982 to 2001, mainly visiting prisons and working with Vietnamese in refugee camps. Then he went to Zhao Qing to teach the mainly well-off students, but his preference is to work with the poor.
“I always wanted to get to the Chinese mainland,” he said. “I wanted to work with those who have least contact with Christianity, those least touched by the Gospel.
“Working at the school allows me to do this in my own time.
“This is all done in public; there is nothing secretive about it. I walk about in my own clothes and wear my cross, but I don’t openly evangelise.
“The school is a financial base. It provides free accommodation and board, and a reasonable salary that allows me to get about and meet people. I speak fairly fluent Cantonese and can get by in Mandarin.
“I have set up a centre to teach English to poor people at night. The school sends me out at weekend to recruit new students, so I get to meet more people that way.”
Fr John says “many doors” have opened for him since he began at the school.
“I have a segment on the local radio station which is called One Minute English and runs six times a day,” he says. “It is just one minute of English conversation and at Christmas one segment was about wishing Christ a happy birthday.
“There are about 300,000 people in Zhao Qing and most of them know about One Minute English.”
He says the Canadian-American school is desperately in need of teachers for next semester, which was only weeks away. As well as full board and lodging plus about $500 a month, teachers receive a return airfare to Australia each year.
“People do not need to be trained teachers or be able to speak Chinese,” he says. “They just need to be ableto run English conversation classes.”
Fr John can be reached on his website www.china8.org