The rainbow never sets

around when we didn't want them. But there was nothing. It was still raining and muddy, and our spirits were low. We tried to hail some cars to hitch a ride, but no one would stop. Finally we decided to take a bus back to the station and hire a taxi from there to our third choice, the Shuixiu Hotel. The taxi took about half an hour, a long way out, but we were glad to arrive, and gladder still when we were able to get a room for our usual 75 yuan.

After this experience we decided, we would always take a taxi to our hotel in a new town. The Shuixiu was outside the city right on the shore of Lake Taihu. We managed to go for a walk along the gardens in the afternoon in fair weather, but other than that we could see the lake only through thick fog. The food at the hotel was delicious, so the day ended on a good note.

In spite of the fog we took a ferry ride to Sanshan Island the next day, but the fog never lifted and all we could see was fog. We sat next to a young man who spoke no English, but with the help of the Berlitz conversation book we managed to get some information across the language barrier. As we walked past some more pagodas and temples on our way home, we came past a building which looked like a tea house Ñ the appropriate architecture and very pretty. Just what we needed. But what disappointment when this building turned out to be no more than an elaborate toilet.

The express train to Nanjing took about three and a half hours. This time we travelled hard class and by talking to a young couple from Hong Kong we heard that they had paid just half the fare from ours. Was that Chinese economic justice?

The weather in Nanjing was warm and sunny, at last we had escaped the fog and rain!

The Nanjing Seminary is the most famous in China. I had met Bishop Ting in Canberra, and hoped to meet him here again. But he was abroad. The Associate Dean of Students and lecturer, Professor Mo Ruxi, gave us a wonderful tour around the college and answered a lot of questions. She too said that the reason for the rapid growth in membership was due to the fact that the church had become indigenous after Liberation. The leaders promoted the Three Self Movement: self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. This dramatically changed the image of the church. After the Cultural Revolution people had re-discovered the spiritual aspect of life and had found an answer to their searching in christianity. Another reason was that Christians stood out at their workplaces as 'model workers'. When they were asked, what had made them so, they would simply answer: 'We are Christians'. Some cadre leaders acknowledged quite openly, that there is no trouble with Christians and that they don't cause any problems. They are usually honest, reliable and trustworthy.

In the rural areas the record had been even more startling. A certain

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