God's Double Agent (17 page)

I whipped around to see who’d gotten me. For so long, I’d been terrified of the special agents lurking behind every shadow. During my months of seclusion, the university didn’t even let me go home to see my family. It was a pretty scary and demoralizing
time. But when the fall semester arrived, I was allowed to go back to the classroom. This allowed me to relax a bit. I didn’t look out for the agents, or think of them as much. On rare occasions, I’d catch a glimpse of them off in the distance. They were always just staring, like dogs waiting for the command to attack. They scared me, of course, but I had no other choice than to just keep going and live my life. And thankfully, after a while, they seemed to disappear.

Until now. The hand wrapped around my arm firmly so I couldn’t pull loose.

“Stop it,” I yelled, looking up to see one of the agents who’d been assigned to me. It was the older, thicker one, the one who looked like he could snap my spine with one hand. Behind him stood his cohort, smirking like a cat who had finally caught his mouse. I knew my life would somehow end up like this, getting snatched without committing any real crime. I’d feared this moment for many months, and yet as I stood in their grip, calmness overcame me.

“Xiqiu,” the thin one said very sternly. He hiked up his pants, which were already too high on his waist, and revealed shoes that were disturbingly shiny. “We need to talk to you about your recent behavior.”

“What do you want to know?” I asked, looking around to see if I’d have any witnesses. We were standing beneath a tree near the sidewalk on the way to my dorm. They’d caught me just as I was about to go into my building.

“Did you write some sort of Bible passage on the blackboard in the English department?” he said, through impossibly thin lips.

“I did,” I said. “I became a Christian!”

“Don’t you know that’s illegal?”

“There are state-run churches,” I said. “Why would it be illegal to join one?”

“Well, you’re a university student,” he said. “Don’t you know the Communist Party forbids students from converting?”

I sighed and the agent released his grip on my arm upon seeing my resignation. There were so many government restrictions I’d need a chart the size of the Beijing phone book to keep up with them all. Why would I pay attention to rules governing, of all things, Christianity? I’d never cared about it before. I took a handkerchief out of my pocket and wiped my forehead.

“Christianity is a danger to national security,” the older one said. “It’s the party’s policy that all university students be socialists.”

“But this isn’t about politics,” I said. “It’s a spiritual decision. Do you know the gospel?”

“No!” He put his hand over my mouth for a moment. “And I don’t want to know. You shouldn’t share Christianity with me, and you shouldn’t share it with the other students.”

“Honestly,” I said, plaintively. “I didn’t know.”

“Religion and politics are always intertwined,” he scolded. “Do you realize you were a counterrevolutionary student leader and now you’re going around asking other people to join you in illegal religious activities?”

I swallowed hard, trying to maintain my composure.

“You could lose your student status if you don’t stop.” He sneered. “You’d be farming potatoes for the rest of your life.”

Both agents turned their backs to me and began walking away. After taking a few steps, the thin one turned around and added, “And if you don’t stop, there’s no telling what else could happen to you.”

11

“I don’t want to be a potato farmer,” I said, sitting in Lao Wu’s home with the other new Christians the next morning. I took a sip of hot tea and scalded my tongue, but that didn’t hurt as bad as the thought of going back home without a degree. “Did you know telling people about Jesus is illegal?” I set the mug back on the coffee table and flopped back into the soft cushions of the sofa. The small living room was packed with wide-eyed students, including Heidi, Jack, and about a dozen other people. We’d begun meeting every week for Bible study, but this felt different than when we’d hung out there in the past. It felt dangerous.

“It’s not technically illegal,” Lao Wu said, moving a gigantic bowl of popcorn and picking up the newspaper it had been sitting on. “The authorities are just panicking.”

“I’m panicking,” Jack said.

Lao Wu traced his finger over the newspaper before landing on an article just below the fold. “Listen to this.” He put on his reading glasses and cleared his throat. “In Beijing, students now comprise over 25 percent of government-sanctioned Three Self Patriotic Movement churches.”

“It doesn’t feel like we’re an epidemic,” said Heidi. I looked at her, sitting in the apartment listening so earnestly to Lao
Wu. Gratitude overcame me. I was thankful to have someone like her in my life, and even more thankful that she had also come to know the Lord. But in the back of my mind, I worried I wouldn’t be able to make a high enough salary to provide a nice lifestyle for her. Even though she came from a peasant village like I did, she deserved more than that. She was kind, beautiful, smart, and courageous. Every time I looked at her, however, I worried if I could take her as my wife considering all the problems I was facing.

“Reports indicate more Chinese students are becoming Christians than joining the Communist Party,” Lao Wu read.

We sat for a moment in silence. It seemed both shocking and perfectly natural that this religion—so foreign and unknown—was spreading like a fire through the various campuses. “So, it’s legal to be a Christian, but illegal to talk about it?” I asked.

“And doesn’t the Bible tell us to spread the good news?” Heidi asked. “Just like Jack told Bob?”

“Hey,” he protested. “I was just trying to stop Bob’s blubbering.”

“We just need to be careful,” Lao Wu said, his sober tone quieting the room. In silence, we felt the gravity of our situation, and one by one we bowed our heads. “Let’s pray.”

From that point on, our college Christian group went “underground.” Though we still told people about Jesus, we didn’t do it in such obvious ways. We attended church, but we didn’t go in one large group. Instead, one of our members went through the halls of the dorms on Sunday morning, knocking on the doors of the Christian students. We had a special knock, a rat-a-tat-tat, which alerted our friends that it was time to attend worship. Instead of attending the more popular late services, we worshiped during the early morning. Three knocks meant to meet down by the riverside instead. Also, we didn’t publicly use the word “God” or “Jesus,” but instead referred obliquely to “father” and “brother.” In fact, we stopped using the phrase “Bible study”
altogether. We began calling our Bible study groups by three repeating letters. Our guys’ group read the Bible together, so we called ourselves “BBB.” The ladies focused mainly on prayer, so we called them “PPP.” Also, we no longer walked directly to Lao Wu’s apartment for Bible study. Instead, we took a back way into the foreign expert regiment area and climbed over a wall to reach his place unnoticed.

We did all we could to spread the gospel. Once when we were at church we saw our friend Craig, who was a dear Australian missionary friend. He was always trying to connect us with others to make sure new Christians received good teaching, theology, and support.

“There’s a new Christian I’d love for you or Heidi to call,” he said, slipping a business card into my hand. “He works at a travel firm, and I don’t think anyone at his agency knows of his faith. So be discreet.”

“When am I not discreet?” I asked. He looked at me and laughed.

And so we gradually spread the gospel from one person to another. Even though we had to sneak around, my new faith made my college life full of joy and gladness. I wasn’t completely sure how my dad felt about my newfound religion, as he never really addressed my Christianity in any of his letters. Even though I kept him updated about all of the activities of our Christian group, he always responded in the same way as he did when I told him about Heidi. “Just make sure your main focus is on academics,” he would vaguely respond.

Though I took that as tacit disagreement, I obeyed my father. As college came to a close, I had pretty good grades, though it didn’t really matter. No matter how much I studied, the Communist Party in the university conspired to keep me out of graduate school in international studies and I was unsure of my future. Excitement—and anxiety—permeated the atmosphere of the campus as academic life began to wind down. Students jockeyed
to find the best possible positions for themselves after graduation and went through back channels to get good jobs back in their hometowns. Mainly, I regretted I’d have to leave the close bonds of fellowship with my new Christian friends and Lao Wu.

“What are you going to do after graduation?” a friend asked me one day close to the end of school. “Do you know whom to bribe to get a good job?”

“Bribery’s not for me,” I responded. I’d tried it before I’d given my life to Christ, but even then it had felt wrong.

“I’ll keep you in mind if I ever need to buy some potatoes.” He laughed.

“I don’t want to be a farmer, but I don’t want to be a teacher either.” For as long as I could remember, my goals were pretty simple: get my degree, go to graduate school, and make money to send home to my family.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re a troublemaker so you can’t get into grad school,” he said. “Why aren’t you rushing around? You have more to lose than anyone else by not angling for a better future.”

“My future’s not dependent on bribery or the whims of a university,” I said. Though I knew this last-minute maneuvering would affect paychecks for the rest of our lives, I didn’t feel compelled to rush around. For the weeks leading up to the end of school, peace surrounded me, even though I didn’t have a clear directive.

“Okay,” he said, chuckling. “Well, I’ve got to go deliver five bribes this afternoon!”

I walked back to my dorm with a heavy, confused heart. I knew God was all I needed, but I wasn’t sure what that meant for the next steps of my life. I also didn’t understand why God would shut the door to graduate school when that’s all I’d ever wanted to do. A large stack of international textbooks sat on top of my bed, and I plopped them onto the floor as I made room
for myself. I’d studied these books on my own time, preparing for graduate school. It felt a little like it’d been stolen from me.

“Lord,” I prayed aloud while burying my head in my pillow. “What would You have me do?”

I listened, but all I heard was the sound of people laughing outside my dorm room. A dog barked off in the distance. Friends chatted as they walked by my door. Life, in other words, was going forward as per usual for everyone but me. I sat up in my bed and looked out the window at all the happy people living their lives. Off in the distance, carrying a stack of papers, was the dean of my English department. I looked again. He was walking toward my dorm.

Hurriedly, I slipped on my shoes, ran my hand through my hair, and bolted down the stairs. Certainly, if anyone knew a good path for me to take, he’d know. He was very open-minded and had been supportive of the students’ movement. However, after the massacre, he had to follow the official line. Behind the scenes, he’d invited me to his home and tried to persuade me to give up. “If we invited Gorbachev, Thatcher, and Reagan over here, do you think they could manage China as well as the Communist Party? Could they win the popular vote in China? Don’t think of a Westernized China because we have our own historical tradition,” he’d said.

But even though he thought I was too idealistic, I could tell he knew I’d been wronged. I ran down the stairs two at a time until I reached the main floor with a thud. Then I tried to slow down my breathing and walked sedately in his direction.

“Oh, hello!” I said as I neared him, acting surprised. “What brings you over to the dorms?”

“Everyone is filing last-minute recommendations. I got behind, so I’m hand-delivering some,” he said. “What’s next for you?”

“I can’t go to graduate school to take the exam,” I began. “Because of my . . . problems.”

He gave a pained half-smile and placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry, Xiqiu. I know how much you really wanted that post-grad degree.”

“I heard there’s another program, a double bachelor degree,” I said. “Do you think I could qualify?”

His eyes were instantly filled with compassion and pity. “Well, the People’s University of China recruits people with your academic background, but there’s no way you could pull that off. It’s one of the most prestigious universities,” he said, clearly straining to keep incredulity out of his tone. “Which means it’s also one of the most
exclusive
. You have to compete against other students nationwide just to take the exam.”

“That’s what I’d like to do,” I said.

“It’s not a matter of what you’d
like
to do,” he said, much like a parent trying to protect me from unrealistic expectations. “You need to focus on what’s
possible
for you to do.”

“So . . .” I said, with a sheepish grin, “if I managed to pull it off, you’d give me a letter of recommendation?”