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The Jesuits were OK with veneration of ancestors, but other Catholic missionaries objected and got the pope to forbid it. Pius XII finally loosened the rules.

This piece basically equates Christianity with Protestantism. The Jesuits first arrived in the 1500s. A friend of my father's was a Catholic missionary in China in the 1930s.

There is a wonderful movie called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness about a young Englishwoman who goes to China as a missionary, starring Ingrid Bergman. It's in the pre-WWII period--at the very end she is taking her orphan children to safety to get away from Japanese attacks. I don't know how closely it is based on a real missionary.

In Việt Nam Catholicism made its peace with Ancestor veneration. Actually with only a small change in orientation it fits well in the "Communion of Saints." Those ancestors who are saints, who are in Heaven, can be prayed to to intercede with the Father. The change is that the souls of the ancestors have no direct effect on present people. They are not gods or "spirits." Catholic household shrines look similar to Buddhist household shrines but there are no offerings to the Ancestors on them and the significance is different. Discomfort with the Communion of Saints has limited Protestant reach in a culture that sees each generation as continuous with the generations that preceded it and that will follow it.