God Is Red

by Liao Yiwu

  I was fed up with my parents and their ideology. That was why I sought a spiritual rebirth in the church. When I was baptized, I even changed my name. My current name was given to me by Father Zhang Gangyi. It took me a while before I found my path. God changed my fate and I found meaning in life. It’s not easy. I was married once and strayed for a long time.

  Liao: Don’t forget that I was a friend of your ex-husband.

  Liu: How can I forget? When we lived on Reincarnation Lane, we tried writing stream-of-consciousness poems together. Remember we got so drunk? We turned on the tape recorder and talked gibberish into the microphone. We thought we were creating the most remarkable poetry. Only one line emerged from that experience: “A red wolf soaked in wine, his mouth dripping.” In 1986 when avant-garde poems took the country by storm, my home became a hotel—one group of crazies moving out, another waiting to move in. They slept all over the place, eating, drinking, and shitting in my house. I became a full-time cook, buying groceries and liquor. I just cooked and cooked. One night, I locked myself up in my kitchen and turned the gas on, trying to kill myself.

  Liao: Why?

  Liu: Those artist friends of mine were supposed to be the cultural elite, but they were a bunch of soulless good-for-nothing animals. One time, I saw them getting drunk and engaging in group sex. It was disgusting. Where was the artistic vision in that? Everything became so meaningless. I started to hear voices . . .

  In 1989 I was teaching at a university, and when the student movement started, I became excited and saw hope for China. I offered a lot of support to my students. But then the government crackdown happened. I became seriously depressed. I stopped socializing, broke off contact with my poet friends. I would aimlessly wander the streets. One Sunday morning, I passed the Catholic church on Zouma Street. I could hear singing and, out of curiosity, went in and saw hundreds of people under that beautiful high-arched ceiling singing along with the choir and the organ. I stood at the back, with my head down, and soon realized I was humming along with them. I felt someone touch my elbow. An old woman was smiling at me. Her face was creased like the bark of a thousand-year-old tree. She gestured for me to lift my head and sing. I felt embarrassed. I had never heard hymn singing before. I had never heard such pure and heavenly music. Tears welled up in my eyes. That old grandma handed me her hymn book. When she smiled again, I noticed that she had only one tooth left. She stood there, sticking out her dry, flat chest and singing her heart out. The whole church was under the spell of Jesus, not a shred of distraction. Everything was so bright and pure. I’ll never forget the first hymn that I sang:

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

  He leadeth me beside the still waters.

  He restoreth my soul:

  He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

  I will fear no evil: for thou art with me . . .

  I didn’t dare sing too loudly, for fear I would spoil the harmony. I was possessed with happiness, like a strayed child who found her path. I looked up at the cross above the altar and at Jesus who bore the sufferings of humans. I felt touched; my body felt electrified. I wanted to compose poetry, but not the avant-garde garbage I used to write.

  Liao: I’ve been to the church you described—the Sichuan Provincial Catholic Patriotic Church.

  Liu: At that time, I had no idea that there were government-sanctioned Three-Self patriotic churches and underground house churches. After the service, I went to the local office of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association to ask about joining the church. The priest seemed suspicious. Why did I want to become a member of the church? He explained to me the Party’s policy on religion and the principles of self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. He emphasized the need to be patriotic. I asked about the Vatican. He said. “Our Chinese church has nothing to do with the Vatican. They have no control over us.” With that, he resumed his lecturing and told me about the application process. “It’s good that you want to join the church,” he said, “but you have to get a recommendation from your university. Then your application will be reviewed by the church. Then it has to be approved by the local Religious Affairs Bureau. Your file will be kept there.” He went on and on. I found it ludicrous. So I interrupted him, “Didn’t you just tell me that everyone is equal and we have freedom of religion in this country?” The priest became defensive, “Of course, we have freedom of faith in this country. You just need to go through the proper channels. Why don’t you buy a copy of the Bible and read it. Then think it over.”

  I started reading the Bible he sold me when I got home. It was so disappointing. It was an abridged version, and at the back was an organizational chart putting the Communist Party’s Religious Affairs Bureau on top, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association beneath it, and then farther down, the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China, and then bishops, priests, and so forth. It was strange to see that within the church hierarchy, the Communist Party was the big boss. Not God? I went back to the office and asked for a refund. The receptionist said the priest was out and that I should come back later. I was furious and was venting my anger near the entrance to the building, when a woman came up to me and said, “Don’t bother trying to get a refund. You should toss it.” This was my first meeting with Teacher Bai, my mentor. She lent me her copy of the Bible and said, “If you want to be a true child of the Lord, you should stay away from here. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association is satanic.”

  Teacher Bai led me to her house. Several people were holding a Mass there and it was approaching the end. She introduced me to everyone: “We have a new sister who is suffering. Let’s pray for her.” About a dozen women recited the Novena Rose Prayer for me. Since then, each time I run into problems in life, I chant the Novena Rose.

  Liao: Are you still with your mentor?

  Liu: No. She was arrested soon after I met her. She got seven years on charges of conducting illegal religious activities. The government has raided many house churches in Chengdu since the late 1990s. Several leaders of the underground churches have been locked up because they pledged loyalty to the Vatican, not the Communist Party. Many underground leaders try to maintain contact with the Vatican through secret channels. It’s a long story. Anyhow, before Teacher Bai was arrested, she introduced me to Father Zhang Gangyi, and at Easter in 1993 I went to Zhangerce Village in Gaoling County, Shaanxi province, and was baptized by Father Zhang. He was eighty-six and his Christian name was Anthony. I hope you will always remember this name.

  Liao: Why’s that?

  Liu: Because he inspired a new generation of Catholics like me. I hope to write a book about his life someday.

  Liao: I only know of Cardinal Gong Pingmei, who was arrested in the 1950s for refusing to renounce the Vatican and recognize the government-sanctioned church. He was sentenced to thirty years. In the late 1970s, while he was still in prison, the pope secretly appointed him cardinal and made the appointment public in 1991. There was an article in the international section of the People’s Daily about the Foreign Ministry accusing the Vatican of meddling in China’s internal affairs. The appointment was only publicized after the cardinal moved to the United States.

  Liu: In the past fifty years, many Christians have died because of state oppression and persecution. Since the government controls the media, we don’t hear about most of these martyrs. You and other people learned about Cardinal Gong because he was singled out by the Party paper as a target for condemnation. That was how I heard of Father Zhang. The People’s Daily carried a story about him to show how “harmful” religion was to people. “Eliminate superstition and change old customs and traditions,” it said. The reporter was very sarcastic. The report went something like this [Liu recites]:

  A pandemic hit the region lately and many people became sick. Some bad people used the opp
ortunity to spread rumors, saying the pandemic was the result of people’s rejection of God. One day, after midnight, locals claimed to have seen a glowing halo on top of what used to be the grave of a foreign missionary. Inside the halo was a figure of Jesus holding a cross. A former Catholic priest immediately gathered a small group of villagers who were backward in their political thinking. He poisoned people’s minds with what amounts to demagoguery. He was quoted as saying, “This will be the last time that the Lord will appear to you. God is asking his strayed sheep to return to the right path.” This former priest even proclaimed himself to be Jesus’s disciple Peter. Moreover, some local people also spread false tales about how this former criminal scooped up water from a stinky ditch near where he stood and then drank it. Within seconds, the ditch turned into a running stream of clean water.

  As a result, many sick people heard about the tales and flocked to the spot where the halo had appeared and drank water from the stream of clean water nearby. They were immediately cured and their health had never been better. This myth has deceived the masses, and every day people swarmed to Zhangerce Village, thinking that they had discovered a panacea for their illnesses. When the reporter visited the area for this article, he found that the dirty ditch was still there and there was no trace of the clean stream. There was no sign of the holy apparition there.

  At the end of the article, the reporter warned people not to believe in superstition and admonished them to report to the public health department if there was a pandemic. The reporter also advised people to “be vigilant against those who spread rumors and report bad people to the police.”

  That former priest was Father Zhang Gangyi. I don’t know if the claims of the halo and the clean stream were true or not. They might have been made up by the Party paper to smear Father Zhang, or maybe something did happen and the local people have embellished it; you know how people are. That “negative” story made Father Zhang and Zhangerce Village famous across the nation. Christians poured in from all over, some with that very article in their hands. They came to pray and sought Father Zhang’s blessing. Father Zhang helped revive Catholicism in the region. Until he was arrested in late 1989, he held a big Mass in the local church every Easter.

  Liao: What have you learned about him?

  Liu: Father Zhang Gangyi was born in 1907, to a Catholic family in Xincheng Village, Xiyang Township. It’s in today’s Sanyuan County, Shaanxi province. At the age of eighteen he joined the Tongyuanfang Monastery. Then, he was transferred to a monastery in the Ankang diocese in southern Shaanxi province. In 1930, he was chosen to join the Franciscan Order, one of the best known religious orders within the Catholic Church. The Franciscans sponsored his study at its headquarters in Rome. He became a novice in 1932 and was ordained a priest on August 15, 1937.

  When World War II broke out, Pope Pius XII sent Father Zhang to work as a chaplain at a prisoner-of-war camp in northern Italy. Thousands of allied soldiers were held there. Italy under Mussolini was like a big military camp. There were checkpoints everywhere. According to a popular version of his story, Father Zhang was arrested and, during interrogation, said in fluent English, “I’m a priest, not a POW.” But his interrogator didn’t agree, “You come from an enemy country and we consider you a prisoner of war.” Father Zhang argued back, “In the eyes of God, there is no such a thing as an enemy country. There is only Satan.” The interrogator laughed, “In a time of war, our enemies are Satanic.” Father Zhang was held as a prisoner of war and sent to a camp, probably like those you see in movies about World War II—barbed wire, spotlights, and guard towers. Father Zhang spent his time ministering to the allied prisoners, caring for the wounded, praying for those who needed his prayers, and led Mass every Sunday. Father Zhang made quite a name for himself; even Mussolini went to meet him. After that meeting, Father Zhang was made chaplain for all POW camps in the region and was relatively free to move around. After Italy surrendered to the Allied Forces in late 1943, the POW camps were taken over by the Germans and, in late 1944, Father Zhang learned that four thousand British and American prisoners were to be executed. He went to the camp on a rainy night, opened the gate wide and declared: “You are the children of God. Nobody, except God, has the right to deprive you of your freedom. Follow me and leave this hell on earth. Go home and reunite with your relatives. May God bless you!” The prisoners rushed and disarmed the guards and successfully escaped.

  As to what happened to Father Zhang, there are two versions of events. The one on the Internet says Father Zhang was caught by the Nazis and sentenced to death by a military court in Germany. He was supposed to be executed on January 15, 1945, but was rescued in an allied air operation and he spent the remainder of the war in the Vatican. The version I heard in Shaanxi, and for this I can find no corroboration, is amusing. After the prisoners escaped, Father Zhang put on a woman’s dress, covered his head with a shawl, and trekked across Italy to Rome and snuck into St. Peter’s by a back door. He tailed a priest through the cavernous halls, trying not to get lost, when he lost sight of the priest. As he tried to figure out where to go, he was tripped and fell to floor. It was the priest, who thought he was being followed by a woman. Upon discovering that what he thought was a woman was actually an Asian man in drag, he pulled the shawl off Father Zhang and asked. “Do all oriental men wear head scarves?”

  Liao: That’s certainly a . . . dramatic rendition.

  Liu: Father Zhang had an audience with the pope. Touched by his story, the pope asked him to continue serving in Vatican City. When the war was over, Father Zhang asked to return to his native China. “The Vatican is merely a city, but its spiritual territory will cover the West and the East,” Father Zhang was quoted as saying. “We as missionaries will leave God’s footprints around the world.”

  Before his departure, Father Zhang was awarded a medal by the postwar Italian government for saving the prisoners of war and was invited to say Mass in a cathedral in downtown Rome. At the beginning of 1947, Father Zhang arrived in China. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek met with him in Nanjing, the then capital city, and awarded him a “National Hero” medal. He returned to southern Shaanxi province and continued to preach. By the end of 1949, the Chinese civil war was coming to an end and the Nationalist government was on the verge of total collapse. Many of his friends tried to persuade him to leave China, but he chose to stay. “God has chosen me to serve the Chinese people who have been afflicted with catastrophes and sufferings, and to stay here in this chaotic world.”

  In 1950, Father Zhang was banned from preaching in Ankang. He went home to Sanyuan and, in 1959, was among those who boycotted the government-sanctioned Three-Self patriotic church and maintained their allegiance to the Vatican. He was arrested as a counterrevolutionary spy and sentenced to life imprisonment.

  By 1980, as China opened to the West, the government had somewhat relaxed its control over religion and, toward the end of the twenty-first year of his incarceration, Father Zhang was released. When he returned to his native Zhangerce Village, he received letters from the Vatican and the Italian government. The Vatican had been monitoring his situation for two decades. After China and Italy established diplomatic relations, Italian officials attempted to address the issue through diplomatic channels. Neither the Vatican nor the Italian government received a response from Chinese authorities. When Chairman Mao died and the Cultural Revolution was over, a large number of Christians in China had been asked by the Vatican to gather information about Father Zhang and it was learned that he was imprisoned in Shaanxi province. Our new leader, Deng Xiaoping, who had studied abroad when he was young, granted Father Zhang’s release. Deng even allowed Father Zhang to make a pilgrimage to the Vatican, which he had not seen in thirty-five years. Rome was packed with tourists and pilgrims, a sharp contrast with the nearly deserted wartime city he remembered. The buildings were the same, but the people were different. The new pope, John Paul II, was busy and, after waiting for three days, Father Zhang met with a Vatican o
fficial, and their conversation went something like this:

  The Vatican official greeted him, “On behalf of the pope, we welcome you. We understand that you have suffered tremendously in the past three decades.”

  Father Zhang remained silent.

  The official continued, “Your situation in China should improve fast. We have long known that the Chinese government has set up patriotic church organizations that are independent of the Vatican. You can join the church and offer your service, if you are willing.”

  Father Zhang asked, “Is this what the new pope wants?”

  The official nodded, “Since Deng Xiaoping assumed power, religious activities in communist China have resumed. You should go tend the church of your nation and people under the leadership of the Communist Party.”

  “Are these also the words of the new pope?” Father Zhang asked.

  The Vatican official nodded.

  Father Zhang stood up with anger, “Then please go and tell him there is only one center. It is the Vatican. The Vatican is the spiritual capital for Catholics around the world.”

  Father Zhang’s outbursts stunned the official, who stood up and embraced him. “On behalf of the pope, welcome home.”

  Father Zhang was gripped with emotion when Pope John Paul II received him. He said to Father Zhang during their meeting, “We thought you could have been brainwashed by the Communists. We are glad you haven’t changed.”