God Is Red (7 page)

I couldn't bring myself to openly boycott the government policies. I didn't dare reveal my true faith in public. When I realized that I couldn't do it, I asked God for forgiveness. Thanks to the merciful Lord, I was able to survive the political campaigns of the 1950s.

Liao:
Did you suffer during the Cultural Revolution?

Wu:
The Red Guards wanted to sweep away all sorts of “snakes and demons.” My wife and I couldn't escape. Our home was ransacked; we were interrogated. They put dunce caps on us and paraded us through the streets. They burned our precious collections of biblical books. Oh, so sad . . . but the past is like passing clouds. I just let it go.

[Zhang Fengxiang, seeing how affected her husband was, intervened at this point in the interview and offered to continue his story. “The past is too traumatic for my husband,” she said. “He doesn't want to revisit it, especially after his stroke.”]

Zhang Fengxiang:
I was born into a poor family in 1933 in the city of Chuxiong, Yunnan province. There was a Bethel Church near my home. When I was five, I began joining many children in the neighborhood to attend free classes at the church. Our teachers were foreigners with blue eyes and big noses. They smiled all the time and were very patient. They taught us how to read and write in English. Then we learned to pray and sing hymns. A few years later, we started learning Bible stories. I loved going to the classes because the teachers would distribute candies and toys to us if we came up with the right answers to their questions. Under their influence, I became a Christian and was baptized at the age of fifteen. In 1950 I was enrolled in a nursing school affiliated with the Christian hospital in Dali and became a nurse after graduation. In 1953, when I was twenty, I married Wu Yongsheng in a local church. We both worked at the same hospital.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, we became the primary targets at the hospital. We suffered all sorts of tortures. The Maoist rebels accused us of being spies. They gathered all of us in front of our church, beating drums and gongs, and sang revolutionary songs. They held a public denunciation meeting there. First they piled up all the biblical books and documents, and then they set them on fire. They cheered and danced. Several Christians, including my husband and I, were forced to bend down at a ninety-degree angle by the fire.

They were still not satisfied. They smashed the windows, the pews, the bookshelves, the furniture, old scrolls of paintings, and even the pipe organ that was brought there by Western missionaries. You know, there used to be a gigantic bell installed inside the church's top tower. They took it down and tried to break it but couldn't make a single crack. In the end, they took it away. Nobody knows where it is now. Such a shame. The bell was made in London and transported to Dali in 1905.

They were thorough. Nothing was left. One of them thought that because we were spies we might have hidden a telegraph machine or weapons. My husband insisted we were not spies. But their leader wouldn't listen. “When those imperialists left, they planted you here. They assigned you special tasks. You'd better confess if you want lenient treatment.” I stepped up and explained on behalf of my husband, “We are not allowed to hide anything illegal in the church. It is a holy place.” They scolded me for being as stubborn as granite. They got hold of some shovels and electric drills. Within a few hours, they destroyed the floor and had dug a big hole in the middle of the chapel.

Liao:
They must have seen too many spy movies.

Zhang:
Later, the church was occupied by a dozen or so local residents who decided to live there. The chapel was converted into workshops for blacksmiths, stove makers, pottery makers, and carpenters. We were detained and tortured. Each time we were released, we went back to work at the hospital and continued to take care of patients. One day, a group of peasants put up a poster saying “Thank you.” The poster was next to a bunch of slogans: “Smash the dog heads of Wu Yongsheng and Zhang Fengxiang.”

We tried to make the best of a bad situation. We accepted the humiliation without resistance.

My husband mentioned Reverend Duan Liben, who headed the local Three-Self Patriotic Committee. In 1956 he traveled to Beijing for a national conference on reforming the Christian churches in China. In July 1966 the local government ordered all the local Catholic and Protestant leaders to attend a “religious conference.” It turned out to be a trap. For forty days they were detained for interrogation. Then, Reverend Duan was sent to the countryside to “reform his thinking through hard labor.” He suffered a lot, more than ordinary Christians like us. He's no longer with us.

In 1980 the United Front Department notified us that we could hold Sunday services. The worshipping service had been banned for more than two decades. They did not return many of the church's assets, and we doubt they ever will.

In 1937, after Japan invaded China, Cai Yongchun and Wu Shengde, two professors from Huazhong University in the central city of Wuhan, relocated to Dali and founded the Dali Episcopalian Church. In 1943 the two founders received funding from the dioceses in Shanghai and bought twenty buildings and houses on one and a half acres of land. They converted the properties into a chapel, an orphanage, and an elementary school to accelerate the spread of the gospel. In 1948 Hou Wuling, a young priest, took over the church. In 1964, during a political study session, Reverend Hou took out a cross hidden in his breast pocket and slipped to the ground. He died of an aneurism.

Wu Yongsheng,
The History of Christianity in Dali

 

W
ho was this young priest, Hou Wuling? His mention in Wu Yongsheng's book was so brief that it didn't shed much light on the man's life or the circumstances surrounding his death. How could such a religious leader, for he clearly was that, pass like a meteor, flashing momentarily and then disappearing with scarcely a trace? What happened to him under Communism? What prompted him to bring out the hidden cross at that political study session? I was intrigued; I like a good mystery. I began by examining existing church records but could find nothing about Hou.

In Wu's book, I also found a brief mention that when the government reversed its verdict against Hou, Wu was responsible for reaching out to Hou's family. Wu had told me that Hou headed the local Episcopalian church in Dali but refused to give me further details. Was he dodging a political landmine?

I contacted Kun Peng, who seemed to know everyone who mattered. I needed more information and hoped Kun could point me in the right direction. I particularly wanted to find Hou's family members. Kun called me back a few days later. He hadn't managed to trace Hou's daughter but found three other elderly Christians who might know something about Hou's life. I interviewed all of them and obtained some details.

Hou did take charge of the Dali Episcopal Church in 1948, a time when the country was embroiled in civil war. He was responsible for the assets that the church had accumulated over the years but was mainly concerned with ministering to the thousands of followers who lived in constant fear of the war. He was in his prime and diligent in his duties. Wu remembered that Hou had tried to keep the church neutral in the war between the Communists and the ruling Nationalists and divorced from politics after Mao Zedong's victory in 1949. But the new Communist government considered foreign missionaries as hostile forces. Religious networks of all faiths crumbled. Christians renounced their faith at public meetings as “a shameful chapter” in their lives. Hou was devastated by the turn of events. His refusal to renounce his faith made him a political target. At a conference held by the United Front Department, one official confronted Hou: “Are you trying to challenge the power of the revolutionary masses?” He remained silent; his answer lay in his actions—he continued to follow the Lord and was guardian of his church. He was nicknamed “The Silent Lamb.”

With each successive political campaign, Communist officials made him a target. In 1953 the government wanted him to surrender the Huiyu Elementary School, which had been founded and operated by the Dali Episcopal Church. Officials proposed changing its name to Dali No. 2 Elementary School. Hou refused to let government officials enter the school. They countered by sending him a bill for the school's utility fees and repair costs. With all funding sources cut off under the new regime, Hou couldn't pay, so he disconnected the electricity and told students: “Our hearts are open and lit by truth; we don't need electric lights.”

While Hou was praying by candlelight in the school's chapel, local militiamen broke in and took him away. They accused him of sabotaging school facilities and engaging in counterrevolutionary actions. After the government raided his church and reviewed his finances, they charged him with counterrevolutionary corruption. Soon after that, the government brought another charge against him—raping underage female orphans. With one accusation after another directed at him, Hou was arrested and held for a year, but there was insufficient evidence for a conviction, so he was released.

As Hou stood watch over his flock, he remained in conflict with the Party. One day a Christian woman named Li Huijun showed up at his door with her ten-year-old daughter. They were escaping from her rural village, where her family had been persecuted as members of the “evil landlord class.” Hou and his wife took them in. A few months later, Li's daughter, who had tuberculosis, died. Subsequently, the street committee noticed Li's presence in the church and, having ascertained her family background, sent her back to her village. Li escaped again. The local militiamen hunted her down and brought her back. In 1954 she ran away for the third time and hid in the church. Her captors followed her to Dali. She was found in a room next to the church library. Li had hanged herself.

In the same year, Hou was asked to support and join the newly formed Three-Self Patriotic Church. He refused, calling it “collective surrender.” Local progovernment religious leaders held a conference and “unanimously” voted that he be stripped of his title and barred from participating in any religious activities. In 1957 he was labeled a Rightist. In 1958 the local government in Dali officially seized the Dali Episcopal Church land and converted it into a chemical plant. Hou was threatened with imprisonment if he refused to move out. He was assigned a bed in a dorm for factory workers. His wife and a daughter went back to Chengdu to live with her parents.

Hou was a regular at public denunciations, which continued even as famine swept China in 1959. A Christian survivor told me that people were too weak to beat up class enemies, so instead, the masses would pinch and bite them. He remembered seeing Hou covered with bruises.

In 1963 the government under President Liu Shaoqi adopted a series of policies to curb Mao's radical industrialization and nationalization programs and help alleviate the famine situation. Mao retreated. Persecution of Christians abated, and there was more food. In 1964 Mao countered with his “Socialist Education Campaign,” and Hou was called to attend a weeklong political study session with forty other Rightists and counterrevolutionaries at a segregated building guarded by soldiers. He was forced to answer question after question until he simply stopped talking and dropped to the ground, dead. There is no official record on the specifics of his death, and those in attendance suffered collective amnesia. All I have to go on are the lines from Wu's book: that Hou took out his cross, slipped to the ground, and died of an aneurism. The interrogations, public denunciation meetings, and political study sessions were over for him.

We know Hou's body was cremated several hours after he died. No autopsy was performed. Several days later, Hou's wife arrived from Chengdu and took an urn of his ashes home. According to Mr. Wu, she never dared ask how her husband had died. Maybe it was good that he had died before the Cultural Revolution, Wu said.

In 1980 the United Front Department of Dali issued a notice officially exonerating Hou of any wrongdoing. Wu accepted the notice on behalf of the Hou family and then mailed it to Hou Mei-en, the daughter in Chengdu. He is certain that Hou's wife and daughter are still alive, though he has heard nothing from them in thirty years. I asked if the government had compensated the family for its suffering, and Wu shook his head, “Not a single penny.” Church assets were sold off by the government to private developers. The state-run chemical plant built on the church property went bankrupt and was closed. The land is now occupied by the Internal Medicine Department of Dali's No. 2 People's Hospital.

S
tripes of light from the setting sun occupied a corner of Li Linshan's tiny courtyard. As Li was talking, he massaged a large lump of flour dough to make shells for dumplings. His pale face turned crimson from the effort; sweat beaded his forehead. I had heard he was a singer and urged him to give me some local Shanxi opera tunes. He straightened his back and took a deep breath, exhaled. He said the opera required that the singer howl in a higher register but he no longer had the strength and that the best he'd be able to manage would be a lower octave. “I might sound like a woman,” he warned. I really liked his version; I thought it mixed in some styles of hymn singing. I applauded enthusiastically.

When the steamy dumplings were put on a low table in the courtyard, we sat and Li led a prayer of thanks, which went on for some time. “Today is Praying for World Peace Day. Lord, you have brought Brother Kun Peng and Mr. Liao over to listen to my humble life story. They are prominent intellectuals but are willing to be friends with me. I thank you for your blessing and hope you bless them with good health . . .” Heads were bowed in silence around the table. I watched the dumplings grow cold. Having experienced the famine of the 1960s, I never refuse food and am somewhat of a glutton, but I ate slowly and smiled throughout the meal. I smiled when we finished our interview and shook hands to bid our good-byes. I smiled for about half a mile along the road. I didn't want to smile, and my face hurt from faking it; I had been in a house of great suffering.

A gathering thunderstorm finally broke, with torrents of rain and strong winds, but soon the moon rose, and the clearing clouds looked like dangling shreds of wet mountain moss against the lunar light.

I first heard of Li Linshan from my friend Kun Peng in the spring of 2009. Kun urged me to visit Li immediately. “Otherwise, it will be too late,” he said.

Arrangements were made, and at about noon on August 16 I set out along a narrow muddy path through a vast expanse of grassland. I could see cows and packs of dogs to the far left of me in the meadow. As I approached the foot of a mountain, I heard the booming of a distant thunderstorm. Clouds as big as ships floated overhead. There had been a big storm the night before, and my dreams had been filled with disturbing images of rising waters that submerged the town and reached a mountain peak, leaving me the only survivor, jumping from mountaintop to mountaintop like a monkey.

Li lived in the old section of Dali, and Kun Peng met me at Renmin Avenue to guide me the rest of the way, down narrow alleyways, turning left and right until we reached Guangwu Street, where we stopped outside a doorway, horizontal red poster atop the faded wooden doorframe proclaiming in four prominent Chinese characters: The Blessings of God.

Kun shouted for Li from the street. A tanned woman opened the door. She was Li's current wife. They had been married for five years. Kun led me to the middle of the tiny courtyard and introduced me to Li, who was squatting in a corner, a kitchen knife in each hand. “So nice to meet you,” Li said. “Sorry, I can't shake hands; I'm making dumplings for you.” He went back to his chopping and slicing, and Kun took my arm, whispering, “Brother Li is little more than a bag of bones.” Surprised by Kun's blunt remarks, I said, “He's a little thin, but he looks quite energetic.” Li heard me and laughed. “I'm energetic because it's a special day today. I'm very excited about your visit. That's why I'm making dumplings. This is the first time I've cooked since I became ill. Who knows, it could also be my last.” Li said he was using a traditional recipe from his native Shanxi province. “I have to cut the meat and vegetables very finely. I want to treat you to an authentic Shanxi dumpling feast.” Li was soon done, and as he wiped his hands on an old cloth, we began our talk:

Liao Yiwu:
How did you get sick?

Li Linshan:
Hmm . . . actually, I don't know. I think I've always been sick. I was born in 1963, at the tail end of the three-year famine. While she was pregnant, my mother couldn't get enough to eat in the city. She returned to her native village in Shanxi province. According to my grandma, when I was born, I looked like a tiny pussycat, clutching myself, too weak to even cry. My parents didn't think I would survive and had decided to abandon me, but my grandma stopped them. She said, “He's breathing. If we wrap him up near the fire, we can probably warm him up and save him.” My father sighed and said, “We haven't been able to feed ourselves for three years. How are you going to be able to raise this kid? Besides, he doesn't seem to have the lungs for singing.”

Liao:
Your parents were singers?

Li:
They were professional singers with a local Chinese opera group. They were quite well known in Luozi opera. My parents performed with the opera group for several years, but the times were hard so they returned to their home village in Danshan Township. They thought farming would provide a stable income, but they had never been lucky. A major source of their misery was my health. I've been constantly tortured with all sorts of illnesses. But poor people can't afford a doctor.

Liao:
And now?

Li:
I have what the doctor calls “carcinoma gastric cardia.” The cancer is here, where my throat meets my stomach. When the doctor diagnosed it in 2007, it was still at an early stage. But now, the cancer has spread. Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy—that would cost at least twenty thousand yuan. I mend clothes, one yuan to patch a hole or sew on a button. There was no way I could get that much money. Even with the surgery, the doctors said I might only get five years or so. We didn't have money. I didn't even have a place to borrow money. And even if I had been able to borrow enough money to extend my life a little bit, it would take my family generations to pay it off. I'm a Chinese and I was born in a poor area. What can I do?

Liao:
Your hometown served as a base for the Communists in the early revolution era. Chairman Mao mentioned the contributions of your hometown to the revolution in several of his articles.

Li:
You are right. In the early days, folks in my hometown joined Mao in his guerrilla warfare and supported the Communist troops in the hardest of times. When the revolution succeeded, people were supposed to become masters of the nation, but their lives were even worse than before.

You see, we had no water. We dug wells, as deep as two people, but they were always dry. Water was like gold. Rainwater was free, but that didn't last long. It tasted like muddy soup with lots of bugs in it. If you filled up a scoop, you could see the bugs wriggling in the water. In the dry season, every puddle was precious. Unfortunately, we had a very long dry season. During that time, everyone drove a donkey-drawn cart with a big bucket on top. We would climb hills to get water from five or six kilometers away.

Things have changed quite a bit now. The government has initiated a few water projects to help alleviate the situation. But, you know, before I left my village at the age of thirty, I had only ever washed in pouring rain, stark naked in the courtyard, our annual cleansing. After my first daughter was born, the midwife cleaned my wife and the baby with only a small basin of water.

Liao:
Didn't you worry about infection?

Li:
We never considered infection as an illness. People with cancer couldn't afford treatment, not to mention an ordinary infection. It would heal itself. In my hometown, there was a high incidence of stomach or esophagus cancers. If I remember correctly, the only person who could afford treatment was a respected teacher who used to work in the city and had since retired. After he got cancer, he was hospitalized and had surgery. All of his medical bills were covered by the government. The surgery was a success. It was such big news, almost unheard of before. When he came back from the hospital, the village had a huge celebration planned for him. The retired teacher contributed six hundred yuan. Local opera groups put up a stage and performed for three days. People came from faraway to watch the operas.

Liao:
What was the average lifespan for people there?

Li:
About sixty or something. There were exceptions. My grandpa lived to be eighty, but he had no idea how he had managed to live that long. My father was the healthiest in my family. In the fields, he was like a big bull, working from morning to night without a break. He died at the age of fifty. Poisoning. Before he went to work in the field, he sprayed insecticide all over his body to kill fleas. It was a hot sunny day. Soon, he was sweaty all over. I think the insecticides seeped into his skin through the open pores. He began to have a stomachache first. Then, the pain became unbearable. He stumbled back home and lay down in bed. I remember he let out a couple of screams first and then passed out. Before the stars came out that night, his body twitched a couple of times and then he was gone.

People usually used DDT or “666” powder. The insecticide my father used was more potent; the itching fleabites drove him nuts, and he wanted quick relief. Without water, people never showered or washed their clothes or bedding. Perfect for fleas.

Liao:
Did many people get killed by insecticides like your father?

Li:
It was pretty rare. We started to mess around with insecticides when we were kids. We first had some burning sensations, and some of us had patches of purplish scars. Then the skin would flake off. In some serious cases, the skin would be red and irritated. You might experience some wooziness. You could get over it in three or four hours. Gradually, your body would become accustomed to the poison. Besides, in the summer, after we sprayed the insecticide, we normally waited for it to dry before leaving the house. My father was so impatient and dashed out into the hot sun when he was still wet.

Liao:
What did you do before you came to Yunnan?

Li:
In 1988 I saw a newspaper ad about a school for tailors in the provincial capital, Taiyuan. I left the village and traveled to Taiyuan, using up all my savings to pay for the tuition and living expenses. After graduation, I returned to the village. I was the “famous tailor” who had seen the bigger world. It was right before the Chinese New Year. Many families would show up at my door, bringing new fabrics and asking me to tailor some outfits for them. You can't imagine how nervous I was, a new graduate without any experience at all. I had to improvise. But I survived. A few years later, my skills had improved somewhat, and my stuff became presentable. In 1994 an uncle on my mother's side came home for a visit. He lived in Chuxiong, Yunnan province. It was right after my divorce, and I was feeling miserable. This uncle of mine urged me to come to Chuxiong and even paid my train fare. Still, the journey took four days.

Liao:
Like the Chinese saying goes: a tree will die if it is replanted, but a person will thrive when he moves.

Li:
I can use water that flows freely out of a tub and shower as much as I want. Sometimes, I feel guilty for being too extravagant. One night, I had a dream that I was sitting inside a bathtub. Then my fellow villagers popped up around me, swearing and cursing: You bastard! How could you waste so much water that can feed generations of people here? Then they started to bite me. I woke up in a sweat.

Liao:
So, did you continue with your tailor business here?

Li:
Yes. Initially, I worked for a tailor on Foreigner Street. Eventually, I started my own shop. There were lots of foreigners and foreigner wannabes in the city. You could spot all sorts of exotic and weird outfits around. It was really quite cosmopolitan. But I was a hick from Shanxi, and there was no way I could compete with the other tailors, so I decided to specialize in mending clothes—hemming, fixing zippers, and patching holes, that sort of thing. It was small money but it all added up. Just like that, I thrived. I arrived here when I was thirty-one. In fifteen years, I saved up quite a bit of money and was able to send some home.

Liao:
Who is taking care of your business now?

Li:
I don't have to worry about my business anymore. I closed it down. I'm too weak to handle the sewing machine. I don't have a lot of days left.

Liao:
Do you feel lost?

Li:
No, I'm not lost. God will make plans for me.

Liao:
When did you start to believe in God?

Li:
I had heard about Christianity when I was a child. I don't know whether it was from textbooks or from newspaper reports, but we were told foreign imperialists enslaved the Chinese people with Christianity, that it was a type of spiritual opium. We were atheists. There were no Christians in my village. Some old folks would light incense and worship Buddhist and Taoist gods at some temples during holidays. I used to look down on them, even condemning them for being superstitious. After I arrived in Yunnan, my mind was opened. I saw people of all colors and countries. I started to hang out with some of them. We have Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Bahá'í believers, all sorts of faiths here.

I was a victim of the Communist atheist ideology. I had nothing to cling to spiritually. I had no idea where the end would be. Each time things started to trouble me, I planned a way to escape, either through smoking or drinking, or simply burying it down inside. My eldest daughter suffered from a severe fever, which turned out to be meningitis. We didn't get her treatment right away. She ended up having epilepsy, and later on she became deaf and mute. She died before she turned nine. At that time, my heart was bleeding all the time, but I didn't know what to do and where to seek help.

When I first found out that I had cancer, I had a very hard time thinking it through. I would count my days with my fingers and say to myself: “I hardly have any happiness in life. What is the meaning in life?”