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China Gospel Distribution Event My name is Martin Lee, and on July 14th I was in the town of Dongguan, China (latitude N23.0465, longitude E113.7360) to distribute Christian Bible Tracts (brochures). This was my first time in China. I had asked a person earlier in the day, at lunch, where the busiest spot in town was and they wrote the name of a large department store on a piece of paper for me, in Chinese. I then asked at my hotel desk for a cab and the cab driver, after seeing the paper, dropped me off at the front of the department store. I had in my backpack about 1,500 tracts in the Chinese language, and a few English language tracts. At this point I started walking the sidewalk and offering the tracts to anyone that was with in my reach. This distribution trip started when my son asked if I would like to travel with him to China, and I said yes. My son works, as an engineer, for a company that has some of their products built in China and Taiwan. His company agreed to let me go with him and made the extra reservations needed for the ground transportation and hotels, I would pay my own room board and air fare. The trip was to start on July 9th and end on Monday July 17th at the San Francisco airport. The trip was to have two stops in Taiwan, Taipei and Hsinchu, and two stops in China, Dongguan and Shenzhen. The trip went as planned. In Taiwan, Taipei and Hsinchu, I distributed
tracts
in the Chinese Language (traditional version), and the reception was
similar to a busy spot in the USA, maybe 30 to 70 per hour. Returning to the event on the Friday afternoon in Dongguan China: I had been walking the sidewalks of the streets that crossed at the department store, and had distributed tracts now for about 2 hours or so when a police car, sort of an extended jeep with open sides and with 5 or 6 officers, was parked in front of me blocking the crosswalk. I proceeded to give them all a tract, which they all accepted. Next one of them got out and asked if I spoke Chinese, I told him no. He gave me a book of Chinese law (written in Chinese and English) and indicated to me that he was the officer in charge of religious affairs and also indicated that he wanted me to read the book starting at page 80, so I did. As I read the book I eventually came to page 87, Article 17, Chapter (7) "distributing religious promotion materials;" and I told him, this law was the closest I was doing. I also tried to explain that the tracts are informational in content, not promotional. Next I was taken inside the fast food restaurant on the same street corner, and waited for a police interpreter to arrive. All this time several of the police were reading the tract (in Chinese). When the interpreter arrived, I was asked
questions for about 1 hour. Next I was told that I had violated their law and
must stop doing this activity. So I said I would stop. Then the officer
in charge of religious affairs said that I need to sign
a statement that
I would not do this any more and I said that I would, and also I need to
give them all my tracts, and I agreed to this also. As it turned out I
ended up writing the statement which they approved and then took me to
my hotel where they made a copy of the statement for me, and took all my
tracts, including the one in my shirt pocket. The following day my son
and I left
to Shenzhen, the last stop of our trip. Here is a list of the items referenced in this report:
1) China copyright law (This item was not referenced
above, but shows that
the China copyright law is not applicable to "laws and
regulations ". See Article 5.)
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