Chinese New Hymnal

The Chinese New Hymnal was published during the early 1980s and is the predominantly most used hymn book at the worship of the Protestant churches in the present-day China.

Chinese New Hymnal

The Chinese New Hymnal was bugun being edited in 1980 when the religious persecution during the Cultural Revolution, especially against Christianity, subsided and the Christian worship re-started, with the intention to collect both domestic and overseas hymns. Its "Simple notation version," using the musical notation called the numbered musical notation system, where musical notes are written as 1, 2, 3, etc., corresponding to do, re, mi, etc., was published in 1983 and " version" 1985. The former version is predominantly used in the present-day China.

The Chinese New Hymnal includes 400 hymns, with the addendum of 40 "Short Songs." In addition to the songs from Europe and the Americas, special effort was made to collect the songs written by the Chinese people. It was printed by and published by China Christian Council. "The English-Chinese Bilingual New Hymnal" was later published, in 1998, but is hard to obtain..

The Protestant churches in the present-day China almost exclusively select the worship songs from this hymn book. Some of the Chinese-written songs have been adopted by the hymnals of other countries.

Protestant Worship in China

The Chinese Union Version of the Bible, the Chinese New Hymnal, the Lord's Prayer as it is written in the Chinese Union Version and the Apostles' Creed are usually used in the Protestant worship in China.