Protestant missionary Jack Weir recalls his time spent spreading the word of

JACK WEIR'S bed in Northern Ireland is covered by a yellow silk cover embroidered with a dragon, said to be that of the last Chinese emperor, Pu Yi, which he bought from a street vendor in Shenyang in 1947. It is a fitting symbol of Mr Weir's lifetime commitment to Christianity in China where he, his parents and two aunts worked as missionaries for half a century until he was expelled by the communists in August 1950.

Mr Weir, 79, is one of the few surviving representatives of an 83-year missionary effort by the Irish and Scottish Presbyterians to northeast China. After the communist takeover, they were cut off for more than 30 years from their comrades in faith but now are witnessing a religious revival.

Official figures show China has 10 million Protestants and four million Catholics, 14 times as many as in 1949.

'We played our part, we laid the ground,' said Mr Weir at his Belfast retirement home surrounded by Chinese paintings and sipping Wu Long tea. 'But the revival was not because we were there but due to the Chinese.' He played a video of his most recent visit, in October 1996, when he visited Protestant congregations in cities in northeast China and a seminary in Shenyang which his church established in 1899. Everywhere he saw evidence of the revival, attending crowded services and prayer meetings, with an estimated 850,000 Protestants in three provinces.

'I went against the advice of my doctors, but nothing could stop me going. It was a very emotional visit. I was born in China and lived there as a child for 12 years. It's my second home,' he said.

In 1945, he returned to work as a teacher and missionary in Sichuan and Shenyang and after his expulsion, Mr Weir maintained a keen interest in China, as the Irish representative of a China-watching religious group in London. He was a member of a party led by the archbishop of Canterbury to China in 1983, the first foreign Christian group admitted since 1949.