Christians in China border valley keep sweet faith

GONGSHAN, China, May 30 (Reuters) When China's communist army razed his church, Jesse's grandfather climbed into the forests stacked up above his valley and carved a hole in the trunk of a tree to hide his bible.

Half a century later the wilderness is retreating but his grandson, sitting in front of the church and scripture school rebuilt from scratch, no longer needs it.

His unusual Protestant faith -- which bans smoking and drinking, celebrates the most sacred communion ritual with honey instead of wine and calls followers to five singing and dancing services a week -- is spreading fast.

''I heard the music when I was walking past the church, it drew me in,'' says weatherbeaten farmer He Chunhua, a recent convert and the only Christian in his family.

''I could not understand the words, but the singing still touched me,'' added He, one of the few believers who do not belong to the Lisu ethnic minority that dominates the valley near the Myanmar border.

The number of church-goers in Jesse's sparsely populated and poor home county in southwestern Yunnan province has roughly tripled since a decade ago to around a modest 6,000.

Each summer, after the snow thaws and remote valleys become accessible again, the school trains around 50 believers to help strengthen their own churches and spread the faith.

Students pay around 150 yuan (20 dollars) a month for food, board and tuition, studying in an area a long day's travel and a world away from the wealthy, largely atheist cities of the east coast.

Gongshan is tucked into one of the remotest corners of China, where steep hillsides dotted with huge fronds of bamboo and traditional wooden Lisu houses plunge down to the raging torrents of the Nu River, whose name means angry in Chinese.

FIRM ROOTS Christianity had firm roots in the region and it was a missionary, James Fraser, who first developed a written version of the Lisu language.

He was one of a string of Catholics and Protestants who headed up the valley to preach from the late 19th century -- and the Lisu's strict but musical faith likely reflects the teetotal culture of many evangelist groups at the time.

But after Mao Zedong's 1949 civil war victory, the valley's churches were destroyed, bibles burnt or hidden and believers like Jesse's grandfather had to worship alone for fear of persecution by the Communist, and officially atheist, government.

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