Book Release: Selected Cantonese Publications by Western Missionaries in China (1828-1927)

The cover of a new book "Selected Cantonese Publications by Western Missionaries in China (1828-1927)"
The cover of a new book "Selected Cantonese Publications by Western Missionaries in China (1828-1927)" (photo: Chinese Christian Studies)
By Li ShiguangDecember 9th, 2022

The book Selected Cantonese Publications by Western Missionaries in China (1828-1927) was published, including some representative works written or translated into Cantonese by Western missionaries preaching the gospel in Guangdong province.

Co-authored by Kataoka Shin and Li Yanping, this book was published in Hong Kong in October of this year.

After the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Nanjing in Nanjing in 1842, ceding Hong Kong Island to Britain and opening five ports to foreign trade. After that, many European and American Christian missions began to send missionaries to China. As early as 1757, when the Qing government decreed Guangzhou as the only foreign trade port, Catholic missionaries preached in Guangzhou and the nearby Lingnan area.

Morrison, a missionary of the London Missionary Society, came to Macau, China in 1807, becoming the first missionary from the West to evangelize in Lingnan. As Western missionaries, including Morrison, learned Cantonese to do their mission work, they began in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China to compile learning materials and dictionaries in Cantonese, as well as all kinds of Cantonese Christian literature.

- Translated by Abigail Wu

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