Being a Sunday, the only thing on my agenda today was finding a church to worship. Finding a Catholic church to attend Mass was easier than I had thought. Keep in mind that the Communist government in China upholds an atheistic ideology. Working Communist Party officials are prohibited from belonging to a religious organization. Recently, the government also decreed that retired party officials cannot belong to a religious group. The Catholic Church under the authority of the Pope has not been recognized by the Chinese Communist government since 1949. The government did not want the Pope to exercise any control over Catholics in China. In 1957, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association was founded by the Religious Affairs Bureau of the government. This created a schism in the Catholic Church and many of the Catholics who refused to align with the state-sanctioned church went underground. Underground Catholics continue to worship and there are tensions between them and the CPCA. Officially, Rome recognizes the Underground Catholics and not the CPCA.

My presence in China is not for any political or religious reasons and I am not about to throw myself into this conflict. I just wanted a place to worship because it is Sunday. The Catholic Mass directory and Google identified St. Joseph Cathedral in Wangfujing in the Dongcheng district of Beijing as the closest place with a Catholic Mass. Unfortunately, it is a CPCA church. It is a 21-minute walk from my hotel. The Cathedral is really beautiful. The building is a 1905 Romanesque Revival style structure. It has a big courtyard and lots of tourists and locals were lurking around it. Inside the church are flat screen monitors to display the wordings of songs, readings, and Mass parts. There is a 4 PM Sunday Mass in English and an earlier Mass in Mandarin. The church was full but it seems like they were a lot of tourists at Mass. Many came late and left early. Plan on a lot of distractions with the movements. Mass lasted an hour. The priest returned from the altar to the sacristy and so visitors did not get a chance to say hello to him. The Mass was similar to what is obtainable in other Catholic Churches around the world, so do not expect any surprises. Knowing how restrictive faith is here, I have a better appreciation of my faith and the freedom to practice it.

One last thing! T-Mobile’s international roaming sucks. In Beijing, you roam on China mobile and the speeds are super slow. After much frustrations with not being able to get much done with the data, I had to get a local SIM card. I was surprised by how expensive the data packages are here. 100 minutes and 1gb of 4G data cost 380 Yuan (about $58 US). I persuaded the attendant to give me 1.5gb of data at the same price. I could have upgraded the T-Mobile free international roaming data to the paid high-speed data but some people wrote online that even after upgrading, they still got the slow 2g speeds. So I was safer just getting a local sim.

Tomorrow, I head to the Great Wall and the Ming tomb.