A Study On Catholicism In The Hulan Region In The Late Qing Dynasty

The spread of Catholicism in China had experienced three climax. In general, this evolution consists of three main phases, namely atmosphere of freedom, prohibition of communication, and severe sanctions, so it was really difficult to spread their creeds in China for Catholicn. The situation continued until the Qing government signed a series of unfair treaties with western invaders, the Catholicism finally began the best time of development, because in these treaties, the western invaders were allowed to spread the Catholicism, build church, and master the property right, which lead to rapidly enlarging of distribution range of Catholicism. Even in Hulan, which is a really remote city of Heilongjiang, there were also footprints of Catholic. They didn’t only build churches, spread their creeds, but also receive local residents to take part in them. According to the statistics, at the end of Qing dynasty, there were nearly thousands of believers in Hulan. Furthermore, many of them donated money to build churches. However, not all people showed willing to accept the new doctrine and western civilization, instead of this, they appeared the panic and resentful to western invaders. In the end, many large-scale conflicts were broken out between local residents and western invaders. As we all know today, the shooting case of Conraux priest and burning case of church, were both broken out in this time. So we can conclude that at the end of Qing Dynasty, the western invaders destroyed the political system of Qing, but they also attacked the local religion and culture. For this reason, local residents of Hulan began to wake up, and they heavily beat the Russian invaders to defend their hometown, rather than surrender to violence.