God Is Red (13 page)

Liao:
Why did you separate the body from the coffin? Was that a Miao custom?

Wang:
No, no. We had no choice. We didn't have enough strength to carry the coffin with Father's body inside. A truck with soldiers had arrived, apparently to prevent a possible riot among the Miao people. Soldiers with loaded guns were scattered around the village. Only family members were allowed to approach my father's grave. We had thought of having a brief funeral, but with the soldiers there, the villagers could only watch from about a hundred meters away. They were anxious to pitch in but couldn't do anything. It normally took eight people to carry a coffin, but there were only four men in my family. We tried several times but couldn't lift it. In the end, we had to separate the body from the coffin. The soldiers didn't leave until we had finished filling in the grave and returned home.

Liao:
Many things changed in 1974. Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai were sick and approaching the end of their lives. The Cultural Revolution was winding down.

Wang:
Yes, we could feel things change. Political control became somewhat relaxed; prayer and other religious activities resumed in our village. The local government found out and gathered all the Miao people for a meeting. One leader lectured us: “It's been only a few months since that counterrevolutionary was executed. You are not learning any lessons. Instead, you are meeting secretly to conduct religious activities. Your disregard for the Communist Party will be punished. Who is your leader? Step out!”

I was the first to step forward. In 1976 I was officially arrested and thrown in the same jail as my father. The public security officers said I was more incorrigible than my father. If my father's crimes were committed unintentionally because he had been brainwashed in the pre-Communist days, mine were premeditated. For the first four months, I was in solitary confinement, a small dark room with a concrete floor. The room had a porcelain bowl and a container for urine. I conducted all my activities—eating, drinking, peeing, and shitting—in that tiny space. I was in darkness all the time. A person cannot stay in darkness. A plant will die without sunlight. Animals go crazy after two weeks.

Liao:
But a person can keep his sanity because he can think.

Wang:
I had God in my heart. He kept me sane. During the Cultural Revolution, seven members of my family were persecuted; my father was executed; my second brother, Wang Zihua, who was dean of the People's Hospital in the Nujiang Lisu Ethnic Autonomous Prefecture, became a target of public condemnation. Wang Zihua couldn't take the beatings and the endless public denunciation. He jumped into the Nu River, committing suicide. My elder brother, Wang Zirong, followed the same path as I. We were arrested at the same time, both sentenced to eight years, and were released at the same time. I was sent to a labor camp in Yao-an County while my brother stayed in Luquan County. My mother's two sisters and one of my father's sisters were also arrested. They were sentenced to five and three years respectively for organizing and attending secret religious gatherings.

In 1979 China relaxed its control over religion and we were all released ahead of schedule after serving three years. In early 1980 the winds seemed to have changed in our favor. The government sent word that I was chosen to be a representative to the Wuding County People's Congress, a local legislative body. I couldn't refuse the appointment. I dug out my “sentence reduction certificate” and showed it to the head of the local People's Congress. I pointed out the words printed on the document: “The criminal has confessed his crimes and is granted early release on good behavior.” I said, “How can a former criminal be eligible for the position of a legislator?” The official went red in the face and said, “They did a sloppy job. I'll look into this.” A couple of days later, I was issued a new document, which said I was cleared of all charges. My father's name was also cleared after they officially reversed the verdict. We were then able to build a tomb for him.

Liao:
I believe it is the only monument known to commemorate a Christian killed in the Cultural Revolution.

Wang:
In 1996 the church here held a big memorial service for my father, the largest in history; the choir alone numbered two thousand.

Liao:
And in 1998 Westminster Abbey in London chose your father as one of ten Christian martyrs of the twentieth century to be honored. Tell me about that.

Wang:
He was honored with a statue above the Great West Door of the Abbey. I didn't learn about it until later. Someone sent us a thick stack of documents. They were all written in English. Since I was only a middle-school graduate—I wasn't allowed to complete high school because of my father's “counterrevolutionary activities”—I didn't understand a word of it. In December 2002 a relative's son went to London and took some pictures of my father's statue in front of Westminster Abbey. We all cried when we saw them. My father had fought against devils in those dark days and had triumphed.

Liao:
Do you feel bitter about the past?

Wang:
No, I don't feel bitter. As Christians, we forgive the sinner and move on to the future. We are grateful for what we have today. There is so much for us to do. In the mid-1960s, when my father was preaching, there were 2,795 Christians in Wuding County. In 1980, after he was “rehabilitated” by the Communist Party, the number of Christians in Wuding had grown to twelve thousand, and we now have about thirty thousand. In our society today, people's minds are entangled and chaotic. They need the words of the gospel now more than at any other time.

O
n the last day of 2005, Dr. Sun and I left Luquan County and boarded a bus for Zehei County. A heavy fog had just lifted, and the lush vegetation on the hills was refreshing to the eye. Our bus crawled along on a narrow winding road high in the mountains, the sort of road that meandered between a deep ravine and steep cliffs. Dr. Sun said a bus laden with twenty passengers, their bags, and animals had slid into the deep ravine a few weeks before.

In the distance, a bright red dot could be seen in a fold of snow-capped Jiaozi Snow Mountain. As we moved closer, the dot evolved into a cross, a Christian cross, fixed atop a white church towering five stories over an otherwise depressing little town in Zehei County.

“Many Yi and Miao people live here,” Dr. Sun said, as we wandered empty streets, watched by residents sitting or standing beneath the eaves of their seemingly identical little homes. “A lot of them are followers of Jesus.”

Dr. Sun led me to one of two shops on the ground level of the church—it was a pharmacy he helped set up to serve the local residents—and made a phone call. A few minutes later, a motorbike clattered toward us, and its rider, a sun-darkened youth, gathered up our bags onto the seat behind him, and we followed him to the upper village. Dr. Sun explained that the middle village was mostly shops and small businesses; most residents lived in either the upper or lower villages, which opened out onto farmland.

We walked on paths of red dirt. On one old wall had been daubed in now-faded red paint, “All ethnic groups are treated equally.” I was told it was a slogan from the 1930s and left by the passing Communist army, which was on the run from the Nationalist troops. We turned into a courtyard, and there an old couple, smiles spreading their wrinkled faces, greeted us. The man was the most venerated Christian elder in Zehei County, Zhang Yingrong, and the woman, his wife, Li Guizhi.

Zhang Yingrong:
I was born in 1922, though I don't know the exact date because I lost my mother when I was five and my father couldn't remember. He was a church elder and devoted his life to the Lord. I became a Christian at a young age, but I didn't really understand what that meant; I read the Bible because my parents wanted me to. But at the age of sixteen, two foreign Christians came to preach in the region. I took part in a service and, with my friends, took part in a three-week Bible study camp. My heart was touched. I confessed my past sins to the Lord and committed myself to the Christian faith. My church at Salaowu recommended me for a Bible school attended by students from every ethnic group in the region—the Han, the Yi, the Lisu, the Gan, and the Dai. I studied there for three years.

Liao Yiwu:
We visited the site of the Southwestern Theology Seminary founded by two missionaries who died there more than half a century ago. Did you know them?

Zhang:
Yes. The man came from Australia. He was in his fifties at that time. His Chinese name was Zhang Erchang. His wife was a Canadian. I can't remember her name now. Reverend Zheng Kaiyuan from Britain was another founder. He used to run a religious school in Sichuan province. After Japan invaded northern China, he came over to Yunnan and helped found the seminary. Several months later, they moved the seminary to Salaowu. After I graduated from the Bible school, I was in the first group of students to enter the seminary. During summer holidays, I would follow my teachers around to learn how to preach.

Our county was remote and backward, quite ethnically diverse. Back then, we only had mountain paths and used horses, donkeys, and human legs to move around. To get to Kunming took twenty days; now you can do it by bus in ten hours.

I had wanted to stay in Yunnan, but a few days before graduation, the seminary received a letter from a preacher in Zhaojue County in Sichuan province. He was a doctor from London and planned to set up a medical school there, but he only spoke Mandarin and the county was in the heart of the Yi region. The Yi language and culture were quite challenging for the British doctor.

The seminary sent me and another Yi student. We worked as interpreters and taught the doctor to speak Yi. I returned home at Christmas in 1950.

Liao:
China was under Communism then.

Zhang:
Right before Christmas in 1949, Yunnan province was taken over by the Communists. However, Zhaojue was still under the Nationalists. As a Christian, I didn't pay much attention to politics; no matter who ruled China, people needed the guidance of the gospel. At the end of 1950, the Communist Party was too busy with regime change to worry about religion. They had just started the Land Reform Movement and had to handle armed rebellions from local secret societies and landlords. I was approaching thirty years old and married. Unfortunately, my family was classified as landlord.

Liao:
Was your family rich?

Zhang:
My family had five boys and two girls. I was the second child. My eldest brother was county chief under the Nationalist government but didn't own much land. As a seminarian, I had nothing under my name.

Liao:
How did you get the landlord classification?

Zhang:
Several reasons. In those days, there weren't so many Christians in the county. Those of us who were had mostly inherited the faith of our parents. Our family stood out. Second, the seminary sent me to Zhaojue County, which was under the rule of the Nationalist army. The Communists suspected I had been sent on a secret mission for the foreign imperialists. Third, my eldest brother's past implicated the whole family.

Liao:
What happened next?

Zhang:
When the Land Reform Movement started, I still lived at the seminary. Once my family was classified, I was dragged back to the village and locked up with several dozen other “landlords.” At first, the job of the local Communist Party was to confiscate and redistribute land and other assets. They didn't use much violence. Many wealthy families buried clothing and food, thinking they could dig them up after the campaign was over. But the campaign became more and more violent. The buried food and clothing was found, and those landlords were severely punished. When they asked me to cough up money, I could honestly say I had none. When they tried to confiscate my assets, I could offer them nothing. They searched everywhere. They were outraged. They even went to the seminary and brought back my belongings, which amounted to an old quilt. I didn't even have sheets. Officials were really upset and swore at me nonstop. How could a landlord be so poor? They didn't believe me. They made me kneel on the ground for three days and three nights. Local militiamen guarded me with big sticks, and each time I fell asleep, they would beat me.

Liao:
Were you inside a jail?

Zhang:
No, it was out in the open. They broke some roof tiles and bricks, placing them under my knees. It rained all that time. I was soaking wet and shivering and kneeling in a puddle that rose to my thighs. I closed my eyes and prayed.

I wasn't the only one kneeling in the yard. There were a dozen more like me. We were forced to confess our “crimes.” I was supposed to tell them what I had done in Sichuan province, the ulterior motive of my trip. Did I try to contact the Nationalist army there? Before the government reversed its verdict against me in the late 1970s, I had written several hundred confessions.

[Zhang stops talking, either too tired or unwilling to continue his story; his wife continues.]

Li Guizhi:
After my husband was taken away, I went to stay with my parents in Salaowu. Since my family didn't own land and my parents were not connected with the Nationalist government or the church, we were not affected; we were classified as part of the revolutionary masses. All I could do was cry all day. One day someone stopped by and told me that my husband was dying. I was desperate and rushed to Zehei, which was about forty-five kilometers away. I saw him kneeling in the rain, like a ghost. I squatted in front of him, but he didn't recognize me. I was afraid his soul had gone. After I called his name a couple of times, he began to respond. I had brought boiled potatoes and fed him. A militia guy came and yelled at us. I ignored him and continued to feed my husband. The guy hit us with his stick. A potato fell to the ground. It was horrible. He had been kneeling there like that for three days and three nights without food. In the end, they kicked me out. By the time I got home, my house was guarded by members of the Poor Peasants Association. I was not allowed to leave my home.

At the tail end of the campaign, my husband crawled home. The night he returned, I had been unable to sleep, and just before dawn I heard strange scraping sounds outside. When I opened the door, there was a person covered in mud lying at my feet, hands reaching for my legs. It was my husband. He didn't even have the strength to moan. I pulled him inside, wrapped him in a quilt. Several hours later, the local militia people arrived. They wanted to drag him to a public denunciation meeting. When they realized that he couldn't move, they found a wooden plank and carried him out, put him on stage, and forced him to open his eyes.

Zhang:
There were about three to four thousand people there. I couldn't move. There were ten others on the stage for denunciation, all tied with ropes. My eldest brother was there beside me, his arms held behind him by two militiamen, his body bent to ninety degrees. I lay on the wooden plank, looking up. The rain had stopped. Amid the loud shouting, I could hear the river nearby. The clouds had dispersed and the sky was a clear blue. I thought:
People lived harmoniously under this same sky in the same village for many years. Why did they act like this now? Why did they hate each other and torture each other like that? Was that what the Communist revolution was all about?
All the “class enemies” had been beaten; their faces were swollen and their heads scarred. Beatings couldn't quench their thirst. They started killing. After that meeting, all the former officials under the old regime were executed, including my brother; their children were sentenced to ten or twenty years in jail, where some lost their minds, or died.

I wasn't involved in politics at all. I had never exploited anyone. So they let me live. The torture left me disabled for the rest of my life. I was ordered to work under the supervision of the revolutionary masses. I wasn't allowed to preach, of course. In 1958 during the Great Leap Forward campaign, they sent me to a labor camp. Around that time, our commune was building a dam. My job was to dig mud. After that, I was assigned to a different reeducation group and worked at a coal-burning kiln for ten months. Our group had about 250 members; within a month, one third had fallen ill because there wasn't enough food. We ate soupy rice porridge every day and didn't have the strength for heavy labor. I wasn't a strong person in the first place.

That was the summer of 1959, a year of widespread starvation. We had eaten everything—tree bark, grass and leaves, things animals didn't even touch. Many died of food poisoning. One day, three in my group dropped dead by the side of a road. Passersby stripped off their clothes. Their teeth and tongues stuck out, as if they were still hungry. We had to bury the bodies deep or they would be dug up again. People were desperate for anything.

[Zhang stops talking to rest.]

Li Guizhi:
When he was taken away to the labor camp, our eldest daughter was only three months old. She cried all day for food. Eight months later, she died, and I was suffering that loss when my cousin brought me a message: “Your husband is dying of starvation. You'd better go save him.” If he died, I did not think I'd be able to live either. So the next morning, before dawn, I waited outside the village chief's house. When he woke up, I went in and knelt in front of him, begging that he lend me some grain so I might take some food to my husband. He let me have five kilograms and three yuan for bus fare to reach the camp. There were bodies everywhere. One minute, you saw someone standing in front of the coal-burning kiln; the next minute, you turned around and the person would be lying on the ground, dead. My husband wasn't at his dorm, so I gave someone there some of the food I had brought with me and asked him to help me look. I found my husband curled up in a pile of rotten grass. I had to call his name several times and shake him before he opened his eyes. He gobbled up some of the food and felt strong enough to stand. Before I left, he hid the rest of the food at a secret place. In the fall of 1959, the camp was disbanded and he returned home. Soon after, he became paralyzed. He had rheumatism. For three months, he couldn't move. Since he couldn't go to work in the field, our ration was reduced, and his illness worsened. I begged our village chief again to give us more food. The chief discussed it with the other village officials, and in the end they let us have some wheat, which I made into a gruel mixed with wild vegetables to feed him each day. It was a daily struggle.

One day an herbal doctor passed by our village and heard about my husband's illness. He had me dig a hole in my backyard and filled it with dried mulberry leaves. Then we burned the leaves and perched my husband on top. The smoke scorched his body for a whole day, from sunrise to sundown. The dampness in his body gradually leaked out. The next day, we filled the hole with dried pine needles and did the same thing. You know what? The remedy actually worked. Soon he could stand up but for only a couple of minutes. Then a friend gave us a bottle of Yunnan White Powder, which was effective against rheumatism. It was very hard to get at that time. Thank the Lord, he finished the meds and gradually recovered. He still can't do much heavy work in the field but he can move about without problems.

Zhang:
I also learned how to survive. When they needed me for public denunciation meetings, I would be there on time. Before they forced me to bend, I did it myself. I survived the “Four Cleanup” and “Socialist Education” campaigns. The most horrible campaign was the Cultural Revolution. I only have one tooth left. The Red Guards knocked out the rest.