The all-white building looks like an exhibition studio than a religious institution, with long white beams encircling the structure. A tall white cross stands in the covered stairway to the entrance to the church, while a sign on top says “Christian Church”. Off to the side is a tall bell tower, also in white.

Beijing Haidian Christian Church, was originally built in 1933, but the number of attendees grew so much that it was knocked down and a new church was put into use on May 31 this year in Zhongguancun, also known as China’s Silicon Valley.

It’s also close to China’s top learning institutes, like the Tsinghua University and Peking University, and situated among grand commercial buildings for China’s leading IT companies, like Sina.com. As a result, most of the churchgoers are young people, explains Wu.

An open Bible

Church visitors appreciate the design of the church a lot. A middle-aged migrant worker surnamed Zhao said the church looked beautiful. He turned to Christianity in 1997 when he worked as a farmer in his hometown in North China’s Hebei Province. Now he works in a furniture factory in suburban Beijing and needs to ask for a leave on weekends to go to the church. “It normally takes me two hours to come here by bus, but I go to other churches too,” said Zhao with gray hairs and a thin face.

However, not everyone admires the new church and thinks the original one should have remained standing.

Liu Yang, an expert in church studies from Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace) Administration, said, “It’s a pity to see the old church demolished. With a history of 70 years, the old church should have been preserved and protected as a relic. “

But in an exclusive interview with China Daily Website, Wu explained that the old church was deteriorating in a dirty and noisy street, and it was becoming too dangerous to hold services in it. He added that the original church was too small to hold the increasing number of Christians attending services there.

“The old church didn’t suit the development and the surrounding commercial buildings,” he said. “The style of old church was neither baroque nor Roman, and it wasn’t like a church,” explained Wu.

Church administrators welcomed architect firms to submit designs for the new church, and German company GMP International GmbH came up with the all-white structure. Wu said the church made clear its interior and exterior requirements, including ways to cut operating costs.

“I am 150 percent satisfied with the new church’s design, and the placement of cross, bell tower and the appearance are beyond my expectations,” said Wu with a smile. “The church appears like an open Bible and the ascending stairs make people feel the sense of being a Christian.”

When asked about building costs, Wu said the new structure was of no cost to the church, but that 5 million yuan was spent on interior decoration. Rooms in the church are rented out, and the money covers water, heat and electricity bills, according to Wu.

Helga Reimund, an architect with GMP International, said in an email interview that the new church “distinguishes it from the surrounding commercial buildings. At the same time it creates exiting spaces to the surrounding buildings.” She also said that “the facade columns give the church a homogeneous shell allowing natural lighting of the interior.”

A variety of materials were used to build the church, including cherry wood paneling, visible concrete beams with sound absorbing suspended panels, and concrete columns with thermal insulation and plaster for the facade.

A harmonious society

Wu, who is also the deputy chairman of the Beijing Christian Council and member of Beijing People’s Congress, has led this church since 2001. At the opening ceremony of the church in late May, he said, “The new church provides the new start point for us to return Jesus’ love to the people and contribute to the efforts of building a harmonious society.”

Besides managing the church, Wu had a busy schedule everyday, especially on Sunday. “We have English services on Sunday, and some 50 foreigners usually came to the church.” In total over 4,000 people attend weekend services.

More people become to believe in Christianity because of China’s growing involvement into world community and other social, economical or spiritual reasons, said Wu.

Located about a two-and-a-half hour bus ride outside of Beijing, the hiking is challenging enough to thin the ranks of tourists down a bit, though you’ll still find persistent vendors posted in each tower, hawking T-shirts and overpriced water bottles, which you just may end up needing. The wall in this area isn’t exactly stroller-friendly, and while you don’t quite need to be a lean, mean, fighting machine to make the hike, you’ll want to think long and hard if you can’t see yourself scaling rubble-strewn, gecko-infested, near-vertical staircases that re-acquaint you with each and every one of those thigh muscles you hadn’t spoken with in such a long time. You’ll also find yourself making the occasional leap from a tower down onto the wall, or the scramble up, since the wall and the towers aren’t exactly peanut butter and jelly in this area, the result of being constructed in different eras.

The hike took me a bit more than an hour to complete when I made the journey with classmates last month; some of the slower members of my group members needed three hours to finish up. After crossing a suspension bridge, we arrived at an intersection of the wall and a dirt road, which we followed a little ways to a small village of about 100 people, where we spent the night in modest guest rooms (I won’t spoil the surprise for you by defining “modest,” but I’ll give you a two-word hint about the lavatory facilities: open roofed). We were up at 3:30 a.m. and scaled the highest peak on the wall to watch the sunrise, another physically challenging experience that proved well worth the effort.

Luckily, our bus driver had driven round closer to the village so we didn’t have to make the long hike back to get home. And, there was a zip line and boat ride available to the parking lot for 30 RMB; thrill seekers might as well refrain, however, as the zip line’s speed ranks somewhere between the pace of rush hour traffic downtown and the haste with which Beijing residents are embracing the concept of queuing up, in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games.