by Liao Yiwu
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.
The meeting with Chairman Mao caused quite a stir here. The People’s Daily carried the news with a big picture. But the Communist Party never trusted my father, and my father didn’t believe in the communist cause. Even though he had met Chairman Mao, he was the target of every political campaign. He wrote many confessions and was the subject of many public condemnation meetings. By 1964, during the “Four Cleanup” campaign, my father was finally removed from all of his public posts and was kicked out of the revolutionary ranks. Again he returned to the village to farm under supervision. I think he knew the final destination for someone like him in an atheist society. He was waiting for that moment. He was never afraid.
In 1966 the Cultural Revolution started. The revolutionary masses swarmed into our courtyard, ransacked our house, and beat everyone. They tied us together and paraded us from village to village. My father was forced to wear a big dunce cap with the words “Spy and Lackey of the Imperialists.” At public condemnation meetings attended by over ten thousand people, we were the targets of angry fists. The spit was almost enough to drown us. No matter how much we suffered, father never stopped praying. It went on like that for three years, until the revolutionary rebels began fighting one another and no longer had time to bother us. The daily harassment, for the most part, ended. My father found some former Christians, and they would gather inside mountain caves at midnight for prayer sessions. They didn’t have a copy of the Bible, but they believed it was in their hearts. The Miao people were poor, but they were simple and honest. The government forced them to shout “Long live Chairman Mao,” but it could not break their faith in God. So the gospel started to spread again in the nearby villages. My father continued to baptize people. Soon, the authorities learned about my father’s activities. At dawn on May 11, 1969, my father was arrested. He had been in the mountains the night before for some baptisms. Someone must have informed on him.
Liao: Were you there when he was taken away?
Wang: I lived on one side of the road, with my wife and children. My parents and my little brother lived on the other. I was woken up by gunshots, louder than a thunderstorm. It sounded as if the mountain had cracked open. I saw three trucks with dazzling headlights. A thick crowd of people surrounded my parents’ house. The flashlights they carried looked like stars on a summer night. I heard another bang, not a gunshot but someone kicking the door open. I heard loud screams, sharper than a knife blade. The soldiers were yelling. My mother was screaming back at them.
I sent my four children back into the house and told them to stay there. My wife and I were unable to cross the road, which was blocked by soldiers, so we took a roundabout route. By the time we got there, the trucks had rumbled away; I could see their lights heading into the mountains.
My brother told me what happened. Two soldiers guarded the entrance to the courtyard while two others, carrying loaded rifles with fixed bayonets, kicked the courtyard door open, fired two shots, and charged inside. They warned that anyone resisting would be shot on the spot. Inside the house, they found my father in bed and yelled, “Get up! Come with us.”
My father was very calm. Without saying a word, he put on his clothes, but before his feet touched the floor, the two soldiers rushed forward and grabbed and twisted his arms. He looked in their eyes and said, “No need to do that. I will go with you.” He then raised both of his hands, asking the soldiers to put the handcuffs on him. My mother screamed and wouldn’t let my father go. The soldier kicked her. She fell and passed out.
By the time I arrived, my father was gone. My mother had been taken back inside the house, and my brother’s family stood around her. She had become incontinent, her pants soaked with urine. When she regained consciousness a few moments later, she kept asking for water, saying: “I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty.” She drank several bowls and said her chest hurt. The pain stayed with her the rest of her life.
My father was held for four years in Wuding County. In December 1973 they executed him.
He was never officially accused, but they listed five charges against him: first, he was a lackey of the foreign imperialists and an incorrigible spy, using spiritual opium to poison people’s minds; second, he was a counterrevolutionary; third, he consistently boycotted the government’s religious policy; fourth, he was a member of a local landlord gang; fifth, he led a large group of evil landlords and their followers to ambush the Communist Red Army when they passed through Lufeng County in the 1930s, killing seven Communist soldiers. Local Miao did exchange fire with Mao’s army in Lufeng County. Both sides suffered casualties. The battleground was far from here. My father
had nothing to do with it.
Liao: Were you able to visit your father before he was killed?
Wang: We could visit the detention center but were not allowed to see him. We could drop off clothes, but not food. They wouldn’t give us any information about his physical condition. We were constantly taunted by the revolutionary soldiers and villagers: “Your old man was a bad guy. He believed in God. Why don’t you draw a clear line with him?” “God is not the savior. Chairman Mao and the Communist Party are the saviors of the people? Do you believe in God or in Chairman Mao and the Communist Party?”
Eventually, we received a notice from the local government saying he would be executed. Since he was labeled “an incorrigible counterrevolutionary,” the rules said we would not be able to see him. But since our family belonged to the Miao minority group, the government had granted us a final meeting, for “revolutionary humanitarian reasons.”
On December 28, 1973, the day before my father’s execution, members of the local militia showed up at our door and informed us that we could visit him. A dozen of our family members gathered, and we went together. It took us several hours to reach the detention center. After passing through several checkpoints and layers of high walls, we finally saw our father. His hair had turned gray; he was thin, like a skeleton. Each time he moved, the shackles around his ankles clanked loudly. As he hobbled toward us, we all cried.
He was treated the same as a murderer. Seeing that our whole family was crying and sobbing, one guard howled at us: “Stop crying! Hurry up and talk to your father one by one. Time is limited.” He made us speak Mandarin so he could understand what we were saying.
My mother nodded at my father and said, “You are the one who used to do all the talking. We listen to you first.”
My father smiled. He understood what my mother meant. “I haven’t been able to reform my thinking,” my father said in his usual tone of a Christian minister. “Since I cannot be changed, I am responsible for, and deserve, what I receive. But for all of you, don’t follow me. Listen to what ‘the above’ tells you.”
Liao: In secular terms, the word “above” means the government, but I assume that your father meant “God.”
Wang: Exactly. Christians knew what he meant right away. Then he said, “You should engage in physical labor, making sure to have food to eat and clothes to wear. You should pay attention to personal hygiene and stay healthy. Don’t get sick.”
Our father’s words warmed our hearts. He used to tell us that those were the words of his own father and the foreign missionaries. I stepped up to him and sobbed: “Dad, we will listen to what ‘the above’ tells us, but we have many children at home who need you. If you can’t be reformed and come back home, what will the children do?” What I really meant was that he was a reverend and a leader of the church. His flock wanted its shepherd.
Then, my mother brought out six eggs and presented them to Father. My father reached out his bleeding hands, touched Mother on her head, her chest, and her shoulders, and then he separated the eggs, keeping three and giving back three.
Liao: The Trinity?
Wang: We understood the symbolism. At that point, a prison officer came in and announced, “Wang Zhiming has been sentenced to death. The execution will be carried out tomorrow after a public trial. The criminal’s body shall be handled by the government. Family members don’t need to get involved.”
We begged the guard to explain why we could not take his body. He said that in response to the overwhelming requests from the revolutionary masses, the government had decided to blow up his body with explosives. We were shocked. We kept begging. We promised not to erect a tombstone or put up any prominent signs that could bring people to pay tribute. The guard refused. “Throughout history, you Miao people are well known for being superstitious. Who knows what will happen if we allow your family to give him a proper burial!”
After Father was taken away, we refused to leave, demanding the right to collect his body. The prison officer became mad and summoned the local militia to drive us out. We did not resist them. It was already dark when we got home, and several dozen villagers were waiting for us there. They cried after hearing that my father’s body would be blown up into pieces. We stayed home and prayed for God’s help.
Early the next morning, a village official came and told us to borrow a horse-drawn cart. He said we could go to Father’s public trial, which would be attended by ten thousand people. Afterward, we could, in his words, “drag home the body of the counterrevolutionary.”
God must have heard our prayers, we said to ourselves. On the road, we quietly sang hymns together. The meeting site was packed with people shouting slogans and waving red flags. Two other criminals were also there on trial, but they wouldn’t get the death penalty. They were dragged there to receive “education.”
As soon as we arrived, several armed soldiers walked over and aimed their guns at us: “Don’t move. Squat down with your hands clutching your heads.” So we did, our backs toward the stage, but during the meeting, when the soldiers were distracted, we would quickly turn around to take a quick glance between people’s heads at what was going on with our father. There were two rows of seats on the stage. All the county leaders were sitting there. My father, with his hands and legs tied with ropes, stood in the middle of the stage, the two other criminals on either side. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. We learned later that a guard had used his bayonet to slash his tongue so he wouldn’t be able to shout or preach. Some former church members and leaders went up on the stage and denounced my father’s crimes. After that was over, a leader grabbed the microphone and announced, “Wang Zhiming has been sentenced to death; the execution will be carried out immediately.” Soldiers raised Father into the air so everyone could see him. The crowd roared. They raised their fists high and shouted, but all I could hear were the words “Down with . . . ,” “Smash . . . ,” and “Long live Chairman Mao.” There was a popular saying at that time: “When the revolutionary masses rejoice, counterrevolutionaries collapse.”
The soldiers put a wooden sign on his back—a “death sign,” it was called. It was half his height and listed the five crimes my father was said to have committed. His name was also there, with a big red X over its characters. The soldiers carried him to a truck and pushed him in with the other prisoners, bending his head low. Two cars led the way. My father’s truck was in the middle. Another truck with fully armed soldiers followed. A machine gun was perched on the roof of the last vehicle. I was told they paraded my father around the streets for half an hour before taking him to an old airport where he was shot.
Liao: Where were you?
Wang: We were still at the meeting place, guns pointing at us. When most of the spectators had left, the soldiers tied all of us together with a long rope and led us to the detention center and a room where all of my father’s belongings were on the floor. A public security officer said, “That’s the garbage left by the counterrevolutionary. Take it home.”
Liao: Weren’t you supposed to collect your father’s body?
Wang: Friends in the village did that for us. They had borrowed a cart, and when they reached the old airport, my father’s body was surrounded by several hundred gawkers, like black crows. A soldier was guarding the body. Once he made sure the villagers were who they said they were, he let them take my father. We met up with them at the detention center. I wiped my father’s face with a wet cloth. My sister covered his body with a quilt. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. It was sunny and the sky was blue. The road was empty by the time we left, the cart moving slowly, us on each side walking with it. I remember there were birds, flying and chirping, and it felt like Father was still alive all around us.
Some Miao people stopped our cart and said their good-byes to my father. Some were old, some young, some we knew, some were strangers. A little girl climbed onto the cart, opened the quilt, and touched my father’s body, from head to toe. We smiled at her innocent gesture
and for a moment forgot our grief.
By the time we reached the village, the sun had already set. We took my father’s body inside the house. His face looked peaceful, as if he were just taking a nap. Village officials and members of the militia guarded the house to keep out visitors wanting to pay tribute, but after midnight, when the guards went home to sleep, fellow Christians quietly knocked and came in to pray with us.
Liao: How many people came that night?
Wang: Between seventy and eighty. They came quietly along the hilly paths, without flashlights for fear of being discovered. They were as quiet as sleepwalkers. By two in the morning, the last had finished their prayers and left. Our father’s body was cold and stiff. He had left too.
At dawn, I went up the hill with my two brothers and my brother-in-law and spent about two hours there digging a grave. After breakfast, we carried the coffin up the hill and placed it inside the hole. Then we went back to fetch our father’s body.
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.