Yunnan Province's Uneven Evangelization

— By Wesley Kawato

Yunnan Province is a land of rugged mountain peaks and jungle river valleys. Unlike other parts of China, the rivers flow south, not east. The mighty Mekong River has its source in the high mountains of Yunnan. Located in southern China, this province is geographically isolated from the rest of the country. That isolation has bred customs different from the rest of China. There are historical reasons why the peoples there are different from the Han Chinese. Let us look into the history and see why.

The History of Yunnan
For centuries one Chinese dynasty after another has rightly considered the people of Yunnan to be "foreign." When the Chinese invaded what is now northern China in 3000 B.C., they displaced various people groups living in the Yellow River Valley. A series of wars pushed these people groups south into what is now Yunnan Province. These ethnic groups formed the Nan Chao Kingdom, whose borders were roughly the same as current-day Yunnan Province. In the isolated river valleys of that land, these races subdivided even further, as languages diverged.

In A.D.1253 Mongol invaders conquered most of China. But Genghis Khan, their leader, saw no need to risk his army against Nan Chao, a nation that was poor in resources. So the Mongols bypassed Nan Chao, which became a safe haven for people groups fleeing the Mongol conquest. These refugees pushed out people who'd settled there earlier. The Vietnamese, Lao and the some of the Thai groups left the region for points further south. The last few kings of Nan Chao paid tribute to the Mongol Empire in order to be left alone. A century later, the Ming Dynasty overthrew the Mongols and invaded Yunnan, annexing the Nan Chao Kingdom.

The 14th century saw the first large influx of Han Chinese settlers. But the Ming emperors considered Yunnan to be a distant outpost of their empire, one they could only loosely control. They never tried very hard to assimilate the ethnic groups of that region into the Han Chinese cultures. Because of this lax control, Muslim Arab traders became influential in Yunnan's capital, Kunming. By the 14th century Yunnan became a regular caravan stop on the Silk Road connecting China with the Middle East. Muslim missionaries soon followed the Arab merchants, but they never strayed far from the Silk Road. Muslims made little attempt to convert the various minority groups living in the river valleys far from Kunming, so almost all of their converts were Han Chinese. A small minority of the Chinese in Yunnan became Islamic. Today Muslims make up only 1.5 percent of in this province.

The Arrival of the Europeans
By the time Europeans arrived in force in China, Yunnan had become an isolated backwater, thanks to the collapse of the Silk Road trade network. The arrival of European merchant ships in various Chinese ports put many Arab traders out of business now that the major European powers could buy Chinese silk directly, without the aid of a middleman. Many Silk Road caravan stops such as Kunming sank into poverty as a result.

During the 19th century, China's growing foreign debt opened the door for the European economic take-over of large parts of the nation. China's army was no match for the British invaders, and the resulting peace treaty gave Great Britain control of several Chinese ports, including Hong Kong and Shanghai. The treaty also gave Britain economic control of a large part of Central China.

The British economic take-over of Central China alarmed the French, who feared for the safety of her Indochina colony directly to the south. During the 1860s Napoleon III invaded southern China. Once again the Chinese army was no match for European invaders. The resulting peace treaty forced China to give up economic control of several provinces to France. Yunnan was one of those provinces. The French allowed missionaries into this area, but the major spiritual breakthroughs began in the early 20th century.

Mission Work in the 20th Century
Twenty-six people group clusters live in Yunnan, many of them divided into subgroups speaking mutually unintelligible languages. Some of these people groups also live in neighboring Guizhou Province. The Flowery Miao are one such group. By 1907, J.R. Adams and Curtis Waters, serving with the China Inland Mission (CIM), led many Flowery Miao in Guizhou to the Lord. News of that breakthrough created an interest among the Flowery Miao in Yunnan. Soon people from Yunnan regularly visited the preaching stations set up by Adams and Waters in Guizhou, often walking miles to hear the gospel. Conversions soon followed.

The two missionaries reported this spiritual breakthrough to their superiors. CIM gave Adams and Waters permission to plant churches in Yunnan, but advised them to concentrate on reaching Guizhou. The newly planted Miao churches in Yunnan were placed under the spiritual care of the American Baptist Mission.

The American Baptist Mission had been active in neighboring Myanmar and had just expanded their outreach efforts across the border into Yunnan in 1907. That year Rev. William Young felt called to evangelize the tribes living on the Yunnan side of what is now the Yunnan/Myanmar border. The Rev. Young faced very different challenges than Adams and Waters. While the Flowery Miao were half civilized, many of the border tribes Young contacted such as the Wa, were headhunters. The Wa language also lacked a written script.

By 1912 Young had learned enough of the Wa language to preach a sermon to Buddhist Wa chiefs. That created great interest within this people group and led to the conversion of 70 people. That same year Young bought land from a Wa chief and started building a church and a school. Local workers helped with the construction project and 80 of them received the Lord. Some of the workers came from the neighboring Lahu tribe, which spoke a related language. There were converts among the Lahu, a group that is highly evangelized today.

By 1915 Young felt ready to reach out to the tribes that were neighbors of the Wa and Lahu peoples. He organized his converts into outreach teams. They planted churches among four other tribes, but the gospel would spread no further. Young didn't realize he'd hit a people group boundary. The Wa language family consisted of six languages that were so similar to each other that a person fluent in one of them could understand some of the others. But all the neighboring peoples speak languages that are unrelated.

The CIM missionaries experienced similar problems. Outreach teams of Flowery Miao believers found they couldn't communicate even with nearby Miao tribes. The various languages of the Miao language family weren't very similar, and the outreach teams didn't have translators.

As the CIM and the American Baptist Mission struggled to revive their stalled outreaches, world events changed everything. In 1937, Japan invaded China from her base in Manchuria. At first most of the fighting was confined to northern China and didn't affect Yunnan. In 1941 Japan invaded French Indochina. In 1943 Japan invaded Yunnan from her base in what is now Vietnam. As Nationalist Chinese armies tried to hold back the Japanese invaders, missionaries fled for their lives. Communist guerillas were also active in some parts of Yunnan, complicating an already messy situation.

World War II ended in 1945, and many missionaries returned to Yunnan, joining the brave few who'd remained behind. They struggled to resume the ministries, but in 1949, communists took control of China and quickly expelled all Christian missionaries. The Christians among the Flowery Miao were forced to go underground almost immediately. By 1959 the Wa church was also forced to go underground. Many subgroups were never reached with the gospel.

Today there are 26 ethnic group clusters in Yunnan, and many of them have dozens or hundreds of subgroups, each speaking a unique dialect. Some of these people groups have over 100,000 Christians among them, but such numbers could be deceiving. The Yi are a good example. There are a total of 250,000 Christians among the Yi, but all of them come from only 10 out of the 130 Yi subgroups. The work in Yunnan is still far from finished.

Let's Pray!
Pray that God would raise up faithful workers to finish the task of reaching all of Yunnan's peoples for the Lord.

Pray for an end to tobacco farming in Yunnan. Lung cancer and heart disease have become serious problems in that province. Pray for an end to the drug trade. Yunnan is part of the Golden Triangle, one of the world's major opium growing regions. Drug addiction is becoming a serious problem in that province. May God open doors for those involved in rehabilitation ministries to serve in Yunnan. Pray that a refreshing move of the Holy Spirit will turn the peoples of Yunnan to productive work that will be a testimony of God's goodness to the peoples of China.