God Is Red

by Liao Yiwu

  Liao: How did the guards treat his religious belief?

  Yuan: The guards were indoctrinated with Communist ideology. In their minds, there was no difference between religion and superstition. Monks and preachers were the same as witches and shamans. One day, a prison officer handed out some pamphlets on how to eliminate superstitious practices in China. My father stood up after receiving the material and said, “I don’t engage in any superstitious practices. My faith is true.” Those around him grew nervous. But the prison officer was curious: “You claim that you have true faith. Monks in temples are considered authentic believers of Buddhism. Were you a monk?” My father answered in a serious tone, “No, I wasn’t a monk in a native Chinese temple. If you really want to use a monk as a reference, I will say I’m a monk with hair in a foreign temple.” The prison officer burst out laughing, and after that my father’s nickname was “foreign monk.”

  Liao: That officer seemed to be open-minded.

  Yuan: Compared with those in other provinces, prison officers in Beijing were much more educated and civilized. Conditions were also better. But the good days didn’t last long. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution started and many intellectuals and former government officials were branded counterrevolutionaries. Within a short time, prisons in Beijing were full and the authorities again relocated prisoners with long sentences to Heilongjiang. My father was sent to a different farm. They had to start all over again—making bricks, building new dorms. By the end of 1966, even prisoners were mobilized for the Cultural Revolution and were told to expose each other’s anti-Party thinking and activities. My father was a “lackey of the foreign imperialists” and transferred to a jail for stricter supervision, which meant he had to attend political study sessions every day, listen to political speeches, and write confessions. In the area of politics, my father was an illiterate. Even though he sat through many political study sessions, his mind was elsewhere. He never paid attention. One day he was listening to a news broadcast with a group of prisoners when, absentmindedly, he wondered out loud, “How come we never hear President Liu Shaoqi in our daily newscast? Has he lost his position? Does it mean there is political infighting within the Communist Party?”

  Liu Shaoqi had been purged by Mao, and my father’s remarks were reported. He was accused of “harboring evil intentions” against the Party. During interrogation, he kept his answers short: “Yuan Xiangchen, do you still believe in God?” “Yes, I do.” The officer thought he had heard it wrong. He repeated the question, and my father said calmly, “Yes, I do.” The officer became furious. “You are a damn obstinate, incorrigible, and extreme counterrevolutionary. Your problem can no longer be resolved through study sessions. You deserve severe punishment.”

  My father was locked up in a small, dark cell, measuring about two meters long and two meters wide. There was no window and no ventilation. My father said it was like being sealed in a grave. Twice a day, someone would push food through a small opening at the bottom of the door, the “dog feeding hole.” My father lived in there for six months. He was ordered to sit, back straight, and reflect on his mistakes. He was monitored by the guards. If he did not sit straight, they would beat him.

  As the political situation deteriorated outside, more people were purged and thrown in jail, and the prisons grew quite overcrowded. In order to accommodate the rising number of “bad” people, the prison forced my father to sometimes share his tiny cell with another inmate, but most were only being given extra punishment for a few days and would soon leave. My father was a permanent resident.

  He was in the cell for six months—six months without washing, without a change of clothes, without seeing the sun—and when he emerged, he looked like a skeleton, filthy and so weak he could barely walk. When he stood up, the floor was showered with fleas. Sunlight blinded him for a long time. But he slowly recovered.

  Liao: When I saw your father the other day, I couldn’t believe that he was almost ninety. His hair remains dark, and he looks strong and energetic. He bears no mark of having suffered so much.

  Yuan: His longevity and good health are much commented upon. This may sound strange, but his jail sentence actually sheltered him from more severe persecution in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution, many pastors were beaten to death by the Red Guards. Beijing was at the center of the turmoil. Luckily, the situation in the northeast wasn’t as intense.

  In the spring of 1969, my father’s jail was overcrowded, so he and other serious offenders, about a thousand prisoners, were sent to the remote Nenjiang region. Again, they built their own dorms and resettled.

  Liao: How many times did he have to build his own prison?

  Yuan: That was his fourth time. Soon after he arrived at his new place, he ran into an old friend, Wu Mujia, one of the eleven church leaders who refused to endorse the Three-Self policy. Wu was serving a fifteen-year sentence. My father spotted him when he was working in a vegetable field. The prison rules forbade inmates talking to each other. So my father began to hum loudly a hymn as a way of greeting. Wu heard the tune, looked up, and recognized my father. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Wu turned away. My father thought that Wu would join him in humming the hymn. But Wu did not, and my father was shocked by his friend’s reaction. The two of them used to be friends and had gone through a lot in life. My father later found out that Wu had given up his faith. That news made my father quite despondent.

  Liao: Wasn’t it the case, though, that while some caved in under political pressure, more became determined to endure? I remember a Christian preacher with the name of Ba Fo in the northwestern city of Yinchuan who was jailed for many years. When Chairman Mao died, he was released ahead of schedule. In his release papers, the authorities claimed that he had confessed to his crimes. He had not, and Ba Fo wanted them to correct the record. “You don’t have to release me. I’ve never confessed my crimes.” His request was rejected, so Ba Fo asked to be sent back to jail. They refused. So he built a small shed outside the prison and lived there, fasting five days a week to appease what he called the wrath of God. He lived inside the shed for twenty-some years before his death.

  Yuan: My father’s belief sustained him spiritually, enabling him to live on. None of his family members thought he would survive. Under normal circumstances, many people who got life imprisonment would end up either committing suicide or going crazy. My father underwent terrible physical tortures, but he survived. He even jokes that he should be thankful. At a labor camp in the northwest he had to carry baskets of dirt balanced at the ends of a pole, but the roads were icy and he had to keep his back straight or he’d fall flat on his face. Now he walks with a straight back, rather than hunched over, and he doesn’t suffer shortness of breath, unlike other people his age.

  On December 20, 1979, after Father came back from the field, an officer came into his dorm and handed him a sheet of paper, which said: “Criminal Yuan Xiangchen has been granted parole. During the parole period, which starts from the date of his release to 1989, he shall not leave his residence in Beijing. Yuan shall report regularly his activities and his thinking to the local public security bureau.” With the parole paper in hand, he packed immediately and walked three kilometers to the bus stop, caught a train at the next town, crossed three provinces, and arrived in Beijing. His telegram saying he was coming home had been a complete surprise.

  My eldest brother had written to the local court, saying that my father had been wrongly accused by the fanatics in the Mao era and asking the judge to follow government policy and reverse my father’s verdict and clear his name. My brother was told that Father was the ringleader of a counterrevolutionary clique and the verdict would stand. He was given a form letter stating: “We have carefully reviewed your request. We believe that the original verdict reached by our court against your father still stands. The charges against him remain unchanged.” The letter, dated November 16, 1979, bore the court’s stamp.

  Liao: And barely a month after that, y
our father is out on parole . . .

  Yuan: The Communist Party can be capricious.

  We were all at the station to meet him, but, eager to get home, he didn’t linger and took a late night bus at the Baitasi stop. He walked around the neighborhood, trying to find our house, and began shouting my mother’s name. My sister-in-law was home and heard my father call. It was the first time they met. By the time we got home, Father was soaking his feet in a basin of hot water.

  Liao: How did your father adjust himself to life outside prison?

  Yuan: It wasn’t easy. He was completely out of touch with the realities of modern life, but while he had to reconnect with the physical, he remained in tune with the spiritual. If anything, his faith had grown stronger. After 1979 many people who had been jailed for religious beliefs were released. If they openly expressed support for the government-sanctioned Three-Self churches, the Religious Affairs Bureau would assign them jobs, offer them compensation, and allocate housing. Wu Mujia joined a Three-Self church and got a teaching job at the Yanjing Theology Academy. He lived a very comfortable life. My father didn’t even bother to ask the court to clear his name and soon resumed his religious activities.

  He turned our house into a church. Initially, he preached to ten people at our house. Within a few years, his congregation was three hundred and his house church was the biggest in Beijing. Our house was certainly too small to accommodate such a number—we would dismantle our beds to make more room—and soon the whole alley was packed with followers when he preached. We used to have a joke: “We are short of everything at home, except Bibles and benches, and we were given those.” My father still holds that the government and the church should be separate and that the church should also be self-sustaining. Several foreign Christian organizations such as Open Doors have offered help by donating Bibles. Father doesn’t believe his house church should be registered as a nonprofit organization as that would place him under government authority. Our house has been ransacked several times, and we are being constantly harassed, but my father’s position remains unchanged. He continues to preach and the number of his followers has increased many times over. Several years ago, we moved into a new apartment. That was the one you visited.

  Liao: I decided to visit your parents because I saw them interviewed in a recent documentary film, The Cross: Jesus in China. There is a scene where your father sang a hymn in his hoarse but excited voice on camera: “So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross / Till my trophies at last I lay down / I will cling to the old rugged cross / And exchange it some day for a crown.” With your mother humming along, he waved his arms in the air and his face exuded excitement. It was hard to believe that he was approaching ninety and that he had been locked up in jail for so long. It was very touching.

  Yuan: The name of the hymn is “The Old Rugged Cross.” My parents are young at heart. I should mention the night of June 3, 1989, when fully-armed soldiers took over the streets and began their crackdown on the student protests. We could hear nonstop gunfire from our house. My father was not intimidated. He insisted that church services should go ahead without any interruption. The next morning, he got up at five o’clock. There was no bus service, so he biked fifteen kilometers to my sister’s house and preached to Christians there. During the sermon, he condemned the government’s action against students and citizens. He invoked the Word of God to console victims of the massacre. Looking back, it was quite scary for him to travel alone that day. There was still random shooting by soldiers on the streets, but my father, who was already in his eighties, went out calmly and fearlessly.

  Liao: What’s the government reaction to your father’s activities now?

  Yuan: We get harassed all the time. Every year, the police will accuse my father of organizing illegal gatherings and threaten to put him in prison again. The frequency of police harassment tends to coincide with the political situation in Beijing. For example, when the Party Congress or the legislature is in session, or during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, or on National Day, or when heads of state from major countries visit China, we will be under round-the-clock police surveillance. Our home phone will be tapped, or cut off altogether. They make it hard for fellow Christians to gather and hear my father’s sermons. If President Obama or heads of religious or international human-rights organization visit China, the police will take my parents away and put them in a hotel somewhere to make sure my father doesn’t talk with foreign media or do anything that could embarrass the government. Other times, we are okay.

  Liao: I think many dissidents in Beijing get similar treatment.

  Yuan: Unlike other dissidents’ activities, my father’s action is not intended to be antigovernment. He is here to do God’s work.

  Liao: How does your father handle this harassment?

  Yuan: Years of incarceration haven’t changed him a bit. Actually, he is becoming tougher and more determined. Each time the police show up at our house, he will step forward and confront them. “If my fellow Christians want to come, I can’t stop them unless you put a padlock on my house and arrest me. I’m a person with faith. When the country’s religious law contravenes my faith, I’m sorry that I have to follow the Word of God.” Often, police officers can only shake their heads. As you can see, my father refuses to be swayed by secular power.

  Liao: I heard that U.S. president Bill Clinton once invited your father to participate in an annual White House Prayer Breakfast attended by Christian leaders from around the world.

  Yuan: Yes, but my father turned down the invitation because the U.S. government had also invited leaders of China’s Three-Self churches. He had no intention of praying in the same room with those who bowed to power and gave up their faith. In addition, he didn’t want to attend religious activities organized by the government, be it the United States or China. Last, even if he had accepted the invitation, the Chinese government wouldn’t have issued him a passport. My father doesn’t feel compelled to ally himself with money and power. It’s not easy nowadays, but our whole family rallies around him. We are all Christians and, despite the challenges, I think the future looks bright here in China.

  Epilogue

  Reverend Yuan Xiangchen passed away in 2005 at the age of ninety-two. He had six children, all of whom are pious Christians. His son, Yuan Fusheng, whom I interviewed for this story, continues to be active in the Christian community in Beijing.

  Chapter 15

  The Poet and the Priest

  I am desperate,” she whispered. “I cannot stay in China anymore. I want to escape.” When I last saw Liu Shengshi, she was young and beautiful; now, her skin was weathered and rough, her forehead scored with deep creases. The leader of the avant-garde poetry movement in Sichuan in the 1980s, Liu had dropped out of sight, disappeared—no one had heard from her in years. Seeing her dressed in black and coming toward me as I sat with friends outside the Three-One Bookstore in Chengdu in 2002 startled me, as did her words. We moved to a separate table. She began to cry. She had become a Catholic activist and had been jailed for seven months for proselytizing in rural areas.

  Liu had me worried, so I made some inquiries on her behalf, but when I tried to set up a meeting, she didn’t return my calls and I had no other contact information for her. I saw her again three months later. It was the third day after the Chinese New Year. She was giving a talk at an outdoor teahouse. She looked calm and relaxed. “My daily prayers have given me much internal peace,” she said. Liu said she was gathering information on Father Zhang Gangyi, a key figure in the Chinese Catholic community.

  Liu came from a family of Communist officials. Her father had fought with Mao Zedong during the Chinese civil war. He was there when the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and he helped establish the new government in Chengdu. For years, her father took charge of the Communist Youth League in Chengdu. He met Liu’s mother during the campaign to nationalize China’s private enterprises. She was a worker in a textile factory and devoted to the Communist cause. T
hey married. Liu was born in the spring of 1961, a time of famine in China when very few babies survived.

  Liu Shengshi: I was a rebel, a black sheep. I didn’t have anything in common with my parents. As a child, only eighteen months old, I was sent by my parents to a kindergarten specifically for the children of senior government officials. I went to a special high school and then college. I was duck-fed Communist ideology. My parents were more dedicated to their work than to their family. When they visited me and my siblings, it was like a prison visit—short and formal. After they retired, the Party no longer needed them, and they discovered they had no life outside the Party. They didn’t even know how to live together as a family. My parents are both in their seventies, but they fight all day long. They become very irrational and verbally attack each other as if they were sworn enemies.

  Liao Yiwu: They had put their faith in Communism . . .

  Liu: . . . and their faith amounted to nothing. They devoted their lives to the Communist Party, and the Party wrote them a big check, but they can never cash it because the Party is bankrupt. Several generations of Chinese have been deceived by the Party. They all became fanatics. Many former officials were attracted to the practice of Falun Gong, and no matter how hard the Party tried, they couldn’t keep them from joining what the government declared was a cult. The reason was simple. Those practitioners were disillusioned with the Party. They had devoted their lives to that promised check, only to discover it was not worth the paper on which it was written. When my father mentions the top Communist leaders now, it is always with a volley of curses. He and other war veterans planned to gather in Tiananmen Square for a sit-in demonstration. They planned to don their uniforms, put on all their medals, and protest against the loss of old revolutionary traditions and values. They felt that the Party’s image had been tarnished by the new leadership. The police got wind of it and tried to talk them out of their plan, consoling them, promising benefits. My father got into a big debate with police officers and said afterward that it made him feel the government was paying attention to their grievances. The veterans backed down. They got nothing but words.