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BEIJING-Seven days a week,the machines at the Nanjing Amity Printing Company churn out copies of what some claim is one of China's best-selling books-the Bible.Forty-three million Bibles have been printed legally in Communist China since 1987.Once a banned book,today some 3 million copies are printed and distributed each year across the country.And this year,Chinese Christian leaders are hoping to print a special edition of the Bible to make available to the hundreds of thousands of athletes and visitors expected to attend next year's Olympic Games.Dr. Cao Shengjie of China Christian council oversees the printing of Bibles in China.He said, "And so for this very important occasion,we hope we can print a special edition,maybe the four Gospels in English and Chinese, bilingual."Lui Bainian, a top leader of China's officially sanctioned Catholic organization,wants to take it a step further and place these Bibles in some of the major hotels in Beijing."I want our visitors to know that we have religious freedom here and this is a small step to meet their religious needs during the Olympic,"Bainian said.The Chinese capital has hundreds of hotels.One of the biggest in town,the Minzu hotel,is entertaining the idea of making the Bibles available to Olympic guests."We are doing our preparations and once we know where our guests are coming from,we will be ready to meet their spiritual needs,"Minzu Hotel General Manager Chen Guoyao said.The Beijing Olympic Committee is also getting religious. It plans to provide Buddhist,Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim services.I think the needs of various religious groups will be taken into consideration and as a matter of fact, for example, inside the Olympic Village, we are going to set up a religious service center,"Sun Weide,deputy director of communications for the Beijing Olympic committee said.Shengjie says it is important for people outside of China, especially Christians, to know the real situation of Christianity in China."I think the Olympics is a good opportunity because so many people will come from all over the world. And so they can come and see with their own eyes," he said.And what they will see is a China that's experiencing unprecedented religious fervor. When athletes and visitors arrive in Beijing next year for the Olympic Games, they will find a city and a nation in the middle of what some are calling a spiritual awakening.Despite the government's official doctrine of atheism, millions of Chinese are turning to religion...
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