William Young first set foot in a Lahu hill village on the China–Burma frontier in late 1904 and was astonished by what he saw. Every household he entered kept a wooden altar about four feet high, and on each altar’s plank sat two small bowls, one brimming with cooked rice and the other with fresh water, as offerings for the unseen spirits. Below them hung a clay jar of smoldering incense sticks, tended daily. Beeswax candles, lit during rituals, dripped beside the rice and water. At the village center stood a communal shrine, a thatched temple where the Lahu worshipped their supreme deity: G’ui sha. When a village agreed to embrace Christianity, the headman would ceremonially “change the ritual.” With William’s help, families dismantled their household altars and cut the “threads of blessing” from their wrists. They tore down the old spirit shrine. In its place, they raised a bright new chape. The headman now prayed aloud in a new way, using words rather than the customary offerings of incense and wax. Yet in this prayer he still addressed G’ui sha, the supreme God of the Lahu, asking for protection and blessing over the village.