Celebrating the Joys-Sorrows of Lijiang in the light of Holy Week

My sojourn in Lijiang, Yunnan, Southern China, from March 24 till May 6, 2026, has led me, a Malaysian overseas Chinese and a disciple of Jesus, to a deepening of my personal experience of a profound sense of humility and gratitude in this 5000 year old ancient civilization of China, and the ancestral homeland of the Chang, Nu, Lisu, Bai, Naxi, Miao indigenous communities out of the 25 tribes (the Han Chinese is counted as the 26th tribe) in Yunnan. This ancient civilization dates back to the Kunlun Era that boasts of an earliest matrilineal society. From this Kun Lun Era, the inhabitants of the Central Plain of Hebei, Henan, Kwantung, the Zun Hua People, from whom all the 26 tribes of China descended and migrated south to Sichuan and Yunnan as a result of inter-community-conflict.

My ancestors in China are the Hakka people. These ancestors counted amongst the southward migratory people as they arrived in Guangdong and then Yunnan provinces. Most delightful of all, my Hakka ancestors arrived in Yunnan, intermarried with the Bai and the Miao indigenous peoples, to the extent that there is a Bai indigenous community that bears my Fung/Hong family surname, located in Sin Tuan Sin district, namely in the adjacent villages of Fung Jia and Sou Sin. The Fung Clan built a Buddhist Temple known as the Tung San Miao or East Mountain Temple in the Fung Jia Village in honor of our ancestor Chu Yuan Chuan and the Goddess Guan Yin. This temple truly marked the Fung collective migratory memory of moving South to Yunnan  and from the former kingdom of Dali to Lijiang.

As Holy Week approached, I was praying to understand the meaning of Holy Week for a sojourner like me who is at the same time the son of Inigo (St. Ignatius of Loyola), related to a honorable Jesuit ancestor known in the Universal Church as a pioneer of inculturation in China by the name of Mateo Ricci SJ.

Come Holy Thursday, April 2, 2026, I experienced the graces of humility, awakening to a deeper mind-heart-fulness that in this ancient homeland, Christianity is just a drop of water in the civilizational ocean of China/Asia in which all of us are regarded as the elegant lotuses. We need to build a “common fraternity” with the Buddhists, the Hindus and the Muslim majority, including the minority indigenous peoples of the primal religions in Asia.

On Good Friday, April 3, 2026, I experienced the graces of total self-giving in terms of 100/100% in my preferential option/solidarity with the indigenous communities and the wounded Earth. I was inspired and humbled by a 85 year local medical doctor, Mr. Mu Ban who gave himself totally his whole to the healing of the sick horses, cows, pigs, dogs & cats in the Junliang village of his Naxi tribal village in the Laxi district, Lijiang, Yunnan.

On Easter Saturday, April 4, 2026, I experienced the graces of Communion with the Goddess Quan Yin, Ancestor Chu Yuan Chang in the Tung San Miao (East Mountain

Temple) and the Fung Clan of the Bai indigenous Communities as they celebrated “Quingming” in honor of the ancestors & the dead. Contemplating on the divine resurrectonal power that raised Jesus from the dead, leaving the tomb emptied of a corpse, I was struck by the resurrectional power in Jesus which breaks me/us/earth/ cosmos free of all constraints, doubts, fears, oppression. Just when I hesitated whether I should light the joss-sticks/incense, kneel before the Goddess Guan Yin and the venerable Ancestor Chu Yuan Chang, the Risen Lord breaks me free of my hesitation, and I found myself kneeling before them, rendering to them and the Creator-Sustainer-God my utmost praise and gratitude for leading me to cross this religiocultural threshold which my Jesuit ancestors et al, Mateo Ricci has crossed centuries before me.

On Easter Sunday, April 4, 2026, when the Church Universal celebrated Mary Magalene and the apostles’ visit to the empty tomb, God’s Spirit led me to deepen my Easter-experience of “Quingming” by an onsite ancestral rite at the cemetery of Prof He Jin Song who is a Naxi intellectual at the Yunnan Academy of Social sciences. I joined his extended family to cleared the undergrowth around the tombs in three separate sites. After the clearing, incense, flowers, willow leaves, wine and home-cooked food were offered first to the Spirit of the mountain/land/Earth, led by an elder, culminating in deep bow on our knees & 3 kow-tow, with our forehead touching Mother Earth, signifying that the earth is part of us and we are part of the earth.

I came away from my experience of living the Naxi homeland in Lijaiing with a deep sense that the Resurrection is an everyday experience amidst the Buddhist communities of the Naxi indigenous communities in Yunnan, Southern Yunnan. This divine and sacred experience of the Resurrection led me to a deep experience, fully convinced that the Triune God overflows the liturgical celebration of Christianity in the churches, criss-crosses and shatters all the religiocultural boundaries. In this way, I find myself celebrating and rejoicing in the cosmic presence of the Triune God who has become one with our Cosmos and Earth through the incarnation, becoming a local Nazarene in the Middle East. Yet, at the resurrection, the local Nazarene breaks out of the local Nazarene Jesus, becomes a cosmic Christ, rendering the experience of the God of creation possible. In this way, the Creator-Sustainer-God, the Risen Lord and God’s Spirit, are truly in all, over all, through all and all in all.