The choice of good inspectors jiangong is

The choice of good inspectors (jiangong 监工) is crucial. The missionary will chose one or two Christians of his parish and will be very attentive to their temper (piqi 脾气). “It is important that inspectors deal tactfully with their people, do not rush the workers and do not make them unnecessarily loose their face, but remain firm in their demands. Without these precautions: mind sabotage!” (p. 12). Inspectors will be rewarded with money, not with pious objects such as a crucifix. They will also focus on negligence and theft, which are common occurrences (p. 13, 64). Workers with no or less experience in Western building techniques should be controlled more and coached by experienced workers. Curious, skilled and patient workers would enter in a learning process and progress rapidly, contrary to stubborn, lazy and negligent ones. The building traditions and the cultural background of the Chinese worker would not incline him to change his habits. “He will instinctively make opposition: it buy zip is new” (p. 35). For example, he would not understand why Western builders dislike blue bricks and would think: “One must be ‘yang jenn’ (European = fool) for requiring red bricks” (p. 21). For a Chinese, a building must be good-looking (hao kan 好看) rather than solid (p. 23, 31, 41, 51 and 61). The handbook’s conclusion stresses the need of maintaining buildings, which is not part of the Chinese tradition: “Unfortunately nothing seems more repugnant to the Chinese temperament than maintenance, whether it be a dress, a machine or a building (…) Ancient public buildings, city walls, bridges, roads etc. are ruinous; may churches not become so” (p. 66).
The issue of style: Western Gothic or inculturated Chinese? The handbook was published in the 1920s, a time foreign domination was contested in China. After the May 4th movement (1919), both the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party criticized more and more Western imperialism and Christianity. In this context, the Catholic Church understood the urgency to inculturate China’s church. This movement of “inculturation” – or “indigenization”, or “localization”, all terms that did not exist in the 1920s – aimed to root and integrate Christian faith with specific culture. Based on the papal encyclical letters Maximum Illud (1919) and Rerum Ecclesiae (1926), inculturation was meant to change the too imperialistic perception of the Catholic Church by the native cultures: “Chinese clergy and missionaries were to have equal rights, Chinese was to be the primary language, Chinese customs were not to be criticized, education in schools and universities was affirmed, etc”. Archbishop Celso Costantini, the Apostolic Delegate to China from 1922 to 1933, promoted this revitalization of the mission. Milestones were the first Catholic council of Shanghai (15 May to 12 June 1924), the creation of new church provinces (1924–1926) and of the Catholic University of Peking 辅大学 (1926), and the consecration of the first six Chinese bishops by Pope Pius XI (28 October 1926). Several bishops, however, and many missionaries, especially French ones, resisted the new vision for Catholic China and boycotted Costantini. Anonymous or pseudonymous publications contributed to inflame the debate. For example, the French Lazarist Jean-Marie Planchet published in Paris under a pseudonym a book about the glorious history of the Beijing mission, ending with severe criticism about the last developments. Costantini complained to the Vatican, denouncing the old school of missionaries and their feudal ideas. Archbishop Costantini radically condemned Gothic and other Western styles and promoted a Christian style that would be rooted in Chinese art and culture: “Western art in China is an error of style. It is an error to import European styles, Romanesque and Gothic, in China”. This “Sino-Christian style” would re-express the Christian heritage in Chinese forms by Chinese artists, for architecture, painting, furniture and other liturgical arts.