In 1896, Hong Kong was a British colony and an important missionary base for Catholic and Protestant activity in East and Southeast Asia. The Catholic Church had been established there since the mid-nineteenth century, administered under the Prefecture Apostolic of Hong Kong, and closely connected with European missionary societies such as the Paris Foreign Missions (MEP) and the Milan Foreign Mission (PIME). By the late nineteenth century, Hong Kong had developed a sophisticated printing infrastructure, with presses operated by both missionaries and Chinese Catholics. The colony’s legal stability, relative freedom of publication, and access to imported materials made it a favored site for printing religious texts intended for circulation across southern China. The 1896 Hong Kong edition of the Sheng Lu Shan Gong reflects this environment: a product of an international missionary hub where European devotional forms met Chinese linguistic expression. Its careful typography and bilingual features illustrate the early stages of Catholic text localization, when translation, pedagogy, and evangelization were deeply intertwined in the colonial print sphere.

In the early 20th century, China under the Nationalist government was marked by political fragmentation, foreign pressures, and cultural transformation. Although officially unified under the Republic of China, regions like Fuzhou and Hong Kong represented vastly different geopolitical realities — one a treaty port under Chinese administration with heavy missionary presence, the other a British colony governed under imperial law.

Fuzhou, though deeply entangled with Western missions since the 19th century, remained within Chinese territory and thus subject to the shifting tides of nationalist politics, rising anti-foreign sentiment, and the Vatican’s efforts to promote indigenous clergy. Catholic publishing in such cities had to navigate linguistic diversity, local piety, and political suspicion.

Hong Kong, by contrast, was outside Chinese jurisdiction — a British colony since 1842 — and thus offered Catholic institutions relative freedom from Nationalist oversight or censorship. Its religious publications reflected a more structured colonial ecclesiastical system, with fewer constraints on printing, distribution, or foreign oversight.

The two prayer books — one produced in Fuzhou, the other in Hong Kong — emerged from these distinct ecosystems. Their comparison reflects not just liturgical difference, but the layered historical geography of Catholicism in Republican-era China: a Church negotiating between empire, nation, and indigenous expression.

The Sheng Lu Shan Gong survives in multiple editions, each shaped by its own historical and regional context. In this section, we turn from broader background history to a focused comparison of the texts themselves — especially the 1896 Hong Kong edition and the 1932 Fuzhou edition.

Though separated by several decades, the two versions embody distinct expressions of Chinese Catholic life at the turn of the century and in the early Republic. Their differences in typography, textual arrangement, and devotional emphasis reflect not only their pastoral intentions but also the ecclesiastical and political conditions in which they were produced.

The Hong Kong edition, printed under British colonial rule, carries the marks of structured missionary authority and relatively free religious publishing. The Fuzhou edition, on the other hand, was published in a Chinese-administered treaty port during a time of growing nationalism and ecclesial indigenization.

By comparing these texts side by side, we begin to see how a single prayerbook could take on divergent regional forms — shaped by the contours of empire, faith, and cultural mediation — yet still resonate with a shared devotional core.