BEIJING - Eleanor Liu never misses church on Sundays, even though she's 92 and lives half a world away from her hometown.

The woman, originally from the United States, married a Chinese man 51 years ago and moved to Beijing in 1986. With the husband and son both devout Christians, church is an indispensable part of the family's life.

When she first came to Beijing, Liu went to the Young Men's Christian Association in the Dongdan region on Sundays, but in the late 1980s she started going to Chongwenmen Church, and liked it there.

"It's a church with a long history," she said.

As one of the oldest churches in Beijing, Chongwenmen Church was built by the United Methodist Church in 1870. Every Sunday, the church is crowded, with many foreign diplomats and embassy staff members attending regularly.

Former US presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey, and famous US evangelist Billy Graham have all visited the church.

All the sermons preached from its pulpit are based on the Bible, and the hymns are the same as those in the US, Liu said.

"When I'm here in Beijing, I go to church every Sunday," said Liu, who usually spends half the year in the US.

Apart from a few details, church life in Beijing is almost the same as it is in Australia, said John Vickers, an Australian who works as a senior corporate training consultant in Beijing.

In Australia, sermons usually last for 15 minutes, but here they sometimes go for an hour, Vickers said.

The serving of the Eucharist also differs, as in Beijing it is only available on a monthly basis, he said, while in Australia it is provided every week.

About 5,000 people are baptized every year in Beijing, a city that has more than 70,000 baptized Christians.

Beijing has been renovating old churches and building new ones over the past 10 years. The city now has 21 large Christian churches.

The Beijing Haidian Christian Church was originally built in 1933, but the number of attendees increased so dramatically that it was demolished and a new, larger church was built in 2007 in Zhongguancun, also known as China's Silicon Valley.

The new church, covering 3,900 square meters, is near two of China's top universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.

Every Sunday, there is an English service at the church that draws about 1,100 to 1,400 Christians, including up to 100 foreigners.