On May 23, 2018, the church in Yongshun County, Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan, took back its estate - Gospel Church, a historical and cultural site protected at the county level. The church whose main part remains still solid can be put into use after interior decoration.
In 1988, the local government announced the church building to be a county-level cultural relics protection unit that was located in Furong Town, an old famous town with a history of over 2,000 years. The Xizhou Copper Pillar set as a war covenant in the ancient time was placed inside it. Now the town has over ten Christians but no place of assembly.
Brother Wang Jinde, head of the downtown church in Yongshun County, said that the building covered an area of 300 or 400 square meters (0.074 or 0.098 acres) and the maintenance fee might reach 10,000 to 20,000 yuan. However, the restoration project wouldn't begin until the downtown church had adequate funding, who only had less than 10,000 yuan this moment.
In 1909, a foreign missionary whose Chinese name was Mei Xianchun from the Finnish Missionary Society brought the gospel from Zhangjiajie, a northwestern part of Hunan Province, into Yongshun. Currently, there ae over 200 Christians in the county.
- Translated by Karen Luo
