It is mid-morning on a Monday and 900 people are packed into one of the biggest Protestant churches in the northeast, built by a Presbyterian missionary over a century ago.
'The God of the Dongguan church loves you,' they sing in Shenyang, Liaoning , clapping and waving their hands. 'China had a long march, through trials and tribulations. Now China is full of hope.' The singing is boisterous and the congregation full of joy and passion.
In a pew at the back is Frances Thompson, 65, who travelled on the trans-Siberian railway with a friend to visit the mainland - to trace the steps of her father, Colin Corkey, who worked here as a missionary of the Irish Presbyterian church. It evangelised the three northeastern provinces for nearly a century until 1950.
'Because everything was so different, I found it difficult to imagine Dad there,' she said. 'But, when I looked at the walls of the church and saw the light coming through the round windows, it was easier. I was looking at the actual things Dad would have seen.'
Corkey arrived in 1936, at the age of 25, expecting to spend the rest of his life in China. He left in 1941, on his first furlough. After the war, he planned to return, but the new Communist government expelled foreign missionaries from the mainland.
In 2000, Thompson published a book of letters that Corkey wrote from Manchuria - which spans Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning - to his parents in Ireland, painting a vivid picture of his life and the places where he lived and worked.
