Géohistoire du christianisme en Chine: le cas du village tibétain catholique de Cizhong et de son vignoble (Yunnan septentrional) (I)
Geohistory of Christianity in China: the case of the Tibetan Catholic village of Cizhong and its vineyard (Northern Yunnan) (I)

Summary/Abstract: A number of publications have been devoted to the history of Christianity in China (Jacques Gernet, 1982). One of the main sources of information on the history of Catholicism in China is the Agence d’information des Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP), Églises d’Asie (Paris Foreign Missions Information Agency), Churches of Asia. Unusually, the approach in the present study is intended to be different, both hybrid and interdisciplinary: it relates to religious history, development economics, historical geography and agrarian geography, and in particular wine study; it also includes elements of cultural geopolitics. This study is presented in two complementary parts. Part I represents a general perspective on the specific modalities of diffusion of Christianity in China since the origins. Part II presents a case study centered on the Tibetan Catholic village of Cizhong (茨中; Cízhōng, Tsé-Tchong or Tse-Zhong, Tsedro, ཊསེ་ཌྲོ, in Tibetan) based on field surveys carried out in August 2016. Thus, Part I traces the eclipsed history of Christianity (mainly Catholicism) in China from the origins to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Divided into four periods (Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modern era and 19th -20th centuries), it provides a convenient synthesis and long-term contextualization of the particular case of Cizhong. It helps explain the singular and surprising presence of a Catholic church in a very mountainous and isolated area of interior China and in an ethnically Tibetan, traditionally Buddhist territory.

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