God Is Red (11 page)

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bove the Great West Door to Westminster Abbey in central London stand ten statues recognizing Christian martyrs of the twentieth century from around the globe. One of those statues is of Wang Zhiming, who lived and preached in Wuding County in China's Yunnan province and served the ethnic Miao. Arrested in 1969 for his religious work, he was executed in 1973. He was sixty-six years old. Wang Zhiming's story was well known within the Christian community in Yunnan, but outside the circle most Chinese have never heard of him. His family members, many of whom have continued his cause, rarely talk to the mainstream media.

I first heard of Wang Zhiming in December 2005, when I was traveling in Yunnan with Dr. Sun, who was an acquaintance of Wang Zhiming's son, a well-known Christian leader. I tracked him down in January 2007.

The church in Xiachangchong Village, Gaoqiao Township, is an impeccable white, with a pink roof, and reminded me of a magic castle against the backdrop of high mountains. Leading to it are raised muddy paths, along one of which a local villager led Dr. Sun and me. We followed him up and down hills and through gullies of bush and vine. Near the village entrance stood Wang Zisheng, the son of Wang Zhiming. He had been tipped off about our arrival and greeted us like long-lost brothers, shaking hands, patting shoulders.

Wang Zisheng, born in 1940, had just turned sixty-seven. He was short, sturdy, like a tree stump, with a big cotton hat. We followed another path that snaked around the village before reaching his courtyard house, a chaotic “farm” with pigs, dogs, and chickens all about and the pungent smell of their doings assailing my nose. When Wang Zisheng opened the door to let us into the house, a mother hen and a dozen chicks slipped between our feet and vanished inside.

The first interview, taking place inside the house, lasted four hours. After we bid him good-bye and walked out of his courtyard, Wang's wife caught up with us, tucking some oven-baked buckwheat cakes into our hands. I never felt so hungry and gobbled them up right away.

Six months later, as I was transcribing the interview, I noticed that half of Wang's stories had been accidentally erased from the tape. I examined the machine back and forth, banging my head against a wall. During the previous ten years, I had done more than two hundred interviews. That was my first accident.

Out of desperation, I phoned Dr. Sun, begging him to arrange a second interview. So on August 5, 2007, I traveled to Kunming and met up with Dr. Sun.

The mishap with Wang Zisheng's tape was only the beginning of a series of misfortunes. On the way to Kunming's bus terminal, I left my bag on the backseat of the taxi. The bag contained some of my most prized possessions—a flute that had followed me for many years, a camera, a new tape recorder, my notebook, and some of my favorite music CDs. Visiting the police station and phoning the taxi dispatcher produced nothing. I had to press on with my task. I reorganized myself, purchased a new tape recorder, and returned to the bus station only to find it jammed with people on their way to a nearby festival.

The whole world seemed to have risen up against me, and while Dr. Sun suggested we go another time, I stubbornly refused. We finally persuaded a truck driver to take us. As we sat in traffic jams due to a harrowing accident, I bowed my head and prayed like a Christian, asking God if he was testing my patience and confidence. Before dusk, as our truck was approaching the white church building with the pink roof outside Wang Zisheng's village, my heart was filled with gratitude.

Wang was tending crops in the field. He looked a little confused when he saw us. As we slowly walked to his house, the sun was disappearing behind the mountains. Then two rainbows suddenly emerged in the sky, forming a colorful cross. For a few minutes, I became distracted by the unique natural phenomenon.

The lightbulbs glowed weakly inside Wang's cavernous room, so we all sat on the porch outside. Amid the attacks of swarms of post-summer-rain mosquitoes, our second interview started. I checked and rechecked my tape recorder. It was working.

By nine o'clock, I finally completed my mission and felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Fortunately, erasing an interview from the tape could be made up with the help of devoted friends like Dr. Sun. But what if we, as a nation, collectively lose our memory of our past?

Liao Yiwu:
Why is it that Christianity has become widely accepted in the Miao villages?

Wang Zisheng:
Christianity was first introduced to the Miao villages around 1906 with the arrival of two Christian ministers, one from Australia—his Chinese name was Guo Xiufeng; one of my relatives who reads English says his name is Arthur G. Nicholls—the other, an Englishman. I only know his Chinese name: Shi Mingqing. They belonged to the China Inland Mission and came here from Kunming on donkeys. They had traveled for three or four days, and when they finally reached the Miao villages, the two caused quite a stir. The Miao people had never seen anyone with blond hair, green eyes, and a big crooked nose. Both ministers were very tall, much taller than the Miao. They attracted lots of attention.

Since ancient times, the Miao people have lived in the mountains—farming, hunting, raising silkworms. We were quite primitive, no better than those birds flying in the sky or animals running on the ground. Throughout history, the central government has tried to conquer the Miao tribes.

The Miao people worshipped all sorts of spirits and ghosts and held to many traditions and customs. Each time we planned an event, big or small, good or bad, we would first burn incense to worship and seek protection from various gods and deities. For weddings and funerals, we had to invite Taoist priests or a shaman to our homes, paying them to perform all sorts of rituals, such as playing gongs, dancing, and chanting to drive away any evil spirits. Families here were as poor as the rats living inside the field burrows, but they all had to put on extravagant shows. If a person passed away, his family would slaughter pigs and goats, inviting everyone in the village to a wake that would last a whole week. At the same time, the family had to provide food and drinks to every visitor. People couldn't bury their dead right away. They went through rituals to show other villages that they had fulfilled their filial obligations. They also worried that if they didn't, retribution would come to them later. As a result, a dead person often ended up lying in the casket for ten to twenty days before the burial. Oftentimes, the corpse began to stink and decay.

The year the foreign Christian ministers arrived, the region was experiencing a terrible disaster, the worst in years—a pandemic. Within a ten-mile radius, there wasn't a single family that was well-off. There were dilapidated houses everywhere. After a heavy rainstorm, when people's houses collapsed, they didn't have money to do the repairs. Humans and animals lived in close quarters under the same roof. When you were poor, you didn't have the luxury to care about things like personal hygiene. As a consequence, bubonic plague and typhus swept through villages like the wind. People dropped dead soon after they were infected. There wasn't enough time to bury the dead. Sometimes, three or four bodies would be dumped in one hole. Even so, there were bodies everywhere.

The two foreigners on donkeys went to dangerous places from where others were running away. As long as someone was still breathing, the ministers would feed them medicines. For those who couldn't be saved, they would squat beside the dying villagers, bow their heads, and say a prayer for them.

The Christian ministers also helped people rebuild their houses and restore their lives. They taught locals to segregate the living quarters between animals and humans. They taught everyone how to protect their water sources and pay attention to personal hygiene. They also helped people see through the deceptive tricks of the local sorcerers. Many survivors abandoned their practices of spirit or ghost worshipping and became Christians. As people changed their old ways of living, the ministers began to teach them how to read the Bible and how to pray. In the end, they decided to make Sapushan the base for their missionary work. They built a church, the first in Yunnan province.

People found spiritual support in the church. Every Sunday, people of different ethnicities—the Miao, the Yi, and the Lisu—would come from all directions and gather inside the church to hear the gospel, to hear the Word of God. On weekdays, they prayed at home or together in their villages. Many parents brought their children, asking the foreign Christian ministers to name them. I don't remember my grandfather's original name, but it was changed to Wang Sashi by the Australian minister, Guo Xiufeng. My grandfather's new name meant “abandon the secular world to pursue the path of the Lord.”

My father, Wang Zhiming, was born in 1907. That was the second year after the foreign Christians arrived. Our family lived in Bajiaojing Village then, in Dongcun Township in Fumin County. He started attending a local school in 1921, when he was fourteen years old. Three years later, my grandfather transferred him to a school run by the church in Sapushan. He graduated in 1926. He was nineteen. The church assigned him to teach in schools and preach in Haoming and Lufeng counties. He returned to Sapushan in 1935 and continued to teach and preach in nearby villages. When the resistance war against Japan started two years later, the two foreign pastors left to take up assignments elsewhere. My father was chosen to be the preacher at the main congregation in Sapushan. In 1944 he became president of the Sapushan Christian Association.

Liao:
So Sapushan was where Christianity in the Miao ethnic region started and developed. How big was the parish?

Wang:
It encompassed all the Miao churches in five counties: Wuding, Luquan, Fumin, Lufeng, and Yuanmou. It was the largest Miao parish in Yunnan. Since donkeys were the main means of transportation, preaching the gospel meant days on the road, climbing up and down the mountains. It was very tough. But under the leadership of my father, the parish developed fast. According to documents that I have obtained, before the Communist takeover in 1949, about 5,500 Miao, Yi, and Lisu people were converted and joined the church group in Sapushan. In 1945 my father went to live in the provincial capital of Kunming for three months. He compiled a collection of psalms in the Miao language. That was probably the first Miao hymnal in China.

When the Communists came, all religious activities were banned. In 1951, when I was eleven, my father traveled to Kunming and was ordained as a minister by Chu Huai-an, who had come from Shanghai. At that time, all foreign missionaries had been kicked out of China. The Communist government condemned foreign religions as spiritual opium, tools of invasion to oppress the Chinese people.

Liao:
The Land Reform Movement started in 1951. Was your family affected?

Wang:
Ours was a poor village. There were no landlords or rich peasants to persecute. Three relatively well-off households were put in the middle-class category, but the rest belonged to the class of poor peasants, allies of the revolution. But while my family was categorized poor peasant, we were Christians and received different treatment. We couldn't share any of the “fruits of the revolution”—we were not given land, housing, or money.

Liao:
Without an evil landlord as its target, how did your village conduct its “class struggle sessions”?

Wang:
We would import landlords from other villages to use as targets. People would raise their hands to condemn the landlords, tell their bitter stories about how they had been exploited, and then parade the landlords around in the field. You know, there were a lot of beatings and tortures. The village here didn't miss a single activity the campaign required. My father took pity on those fallen landlords. He would often sigh in private and say, “I don't know what's happening! Those kindhearted people leased their lands to us. They didn't even charge us that much money. It was very generous of them to do that. But now they are getting all this brutal treatment.”

The government sealed and confiscated the church property in Sapushan and ordered my father to return home and farm under the supervision of the revolutionary peasants. Since he was one of the few literate people in the region, they made him the village accountant. He obeyed because the Bible says you should submit your body to the rulers, but he never stopped his daily prayers.

Sometimes, Christians in other villages would gather at our house late at night. The tense political environment made everyone nervous. All prayer activities went underground. Then the local government assigned members of the local militia to monitor us and interrogate us. They forced my father to confess his close ties with ministers in foreign countries. My father's situation made it very hard for him to connect with other local Christians, but he persisted. In 1954 the local public security bureau arrested my father on charges of “refusing to mend his ways and continuing to engage in religious and spying activities.” He was sent to a prison in Luquan County.

Liao:
How long did he stay in prison?

Wang:
Not very long. You see, my father's case was unique; he was a prestigious figure in the ethnic Miao region. Since he had always worked hard in the field and obeyed orders, the government leaders decided, after careful consideration, to condemn my father publicly but at the same time make him a positive role model for other reactionaries. It would be good propaganda for Mao's thought-reform movement. So they released him in a few months and even appointed him to the preparatory committee of the Political Consultative Conference in the Chuzhou Prefecture. In 1956, as a Christian minister, he was made deputy of a delegation, which consisted of representatives from various ethnic groups in the region. His delegation traveled to Beijing to join in the National Day celebrations. Chairman Mao even met with my father.