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As in many of China’s other provinces, Christianity is the fastest-growing religion and the Christian population has more than trebled since 1985, bringing the number of believers to about 800,000. The Yunnan CCC Chairman and the TSPM Vice- Chairman – Rev Yu Wen Liang and Jiang Zhulin respectively– work together to serve the province’s Christian population – a complicated task due to the vast number of languages. It is not surprising, therefore, that Bible translation forms a large part of their work. Eight language groups already have their own Scriptures: the whole Bible is available in four languages, and four have the New Testament. There is also ongoing Bible translation work on the Wa, Yi, Miao and Lisu languages. UBS supports this work “There are many challenges in our province, where so many different languages are spoken,” says Jiang Zhulin, who is responsible for overseeing Yunnan’s Bible translation work. “Many minority languages have a spoken language but no script, so when deciding on translation projects we give priority to languages that have a written script and that are spoken by large numbers of people. In addition, we need to have someone with theological training who speaks that language as well as another language in which the Bible is already available. And in our province, like in many other Chinese provinces, we have a shortage of trained pastors – there are only 106.” The Yunnan Theological Seminary is working hard to provide the trained church leaders that are so desperately needed. As well as offering a threeyear course of study and turning out 30 graduates a year, it also runs more than 20 Bible training centres across the province, some offering courses specifically designed for Christians from ethnic minority groups.
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