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Abstract

This article examines a memorial service held in Xiamen in 2010 for an American missionary who died and was buried there in 1910. The missionary, accused of association with imperialism under Mao, had been largely forgotten by the locals until this event. During the ceremony, all charges against the missionary were unofficially dropped and his service was highly commended. By attempting to explain what sociocultural mechanisms enabled Xiamen citizens to counter official amnesia and demolish the state’s domination of discourse on missionaries, I argue that the official manipulation of missionary discourse is not always effective; the reconstruction of missionary history in today’s China is an ongoing, dynamic process of negotiation in which all parties involved remake the past to suit their own interests.