“How about the same place as before?”
The same place! Two minutes from Red Square! Markov might have nerves of steel, but I did not.
“I’d rather see some new scenery.”
For the first time Markov lowered his voice. “On the road to Smolensk there is a large blue sign saying ‘Moscow.’ Rendezvous there at five o’clock. I will lead you to another place. Have the gifts unpacked so we can move fast.”
This sounded better, but Rolf and I were still faced with the problem of where to unpack those Bibles. It would take at least half an hour of uninterrupted privacy to do the job.
Back at camp I had an idea. “Let’s go for a ride,” I said. “You just keep sightseeing, and I’ll crawl into the back and begin unpacking. Whatever you do, keep moving.”
But I had barely begun when the van jerked to a halt. I crept forward and peered over the seats. A police officer was coming toward the car.
“Pray!” Rolf hissed, and then stuck his head out the window.
“What is it officer?” he asked in Dutch.
The policeman rattled off a long angry sentence in Russian, then produced a few words in English. “No turn! No turn! Sign say.”
“Was there something wrong with that turn, officer?” said Rolf, still in Dutch. “I’m terribly sorry. I’m not used to driving in such a vast and handsome city as Moscow.”
The policeman was raging in Russian again. I flattened my back against the side of the van, praying that the officer would not look inside. At the end of a lifetime I heard him say something else in Russian, more calmly. “The same to you, officer,” Rolf answered in Dutch. “And I do wish you and your people the very best of God’s love.”
Rolf put the van into gear and moved slowly out into traffic. Not until several blocks further did I let out my breath.
“Let’s not try that any more. It’s too much for me!”
We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for a place to finish our work. Finally, at four o’clock we knew that, ready or not, we had to head for the rendezvous. So with hearts that did not match the sunny sky overhead, we drove out the Smolensk road.
“Why are we worried!” Rolf said suddenly. “This is God’s work! He’ll make a way for us.” And as if to prove his conviction, he started to sing.
Oddly, as the mood inside the van brightened, the sky overhead darkened. First an overcast hid the sun, then a heavy buildup of clouds spread swiftly across the sky, dark and threatening. Lightning flashed in the distance. Thunder answered. And still Rolf and I drove on, singing.
Then the rain began.
In all my travels I had never seen a rain like this one. It was as if a celestial reservoir had burst, letting a solid sheet of water fall to earth. We had no choice but to pull to the side of the pavement. Other cars too had to abandon the road. The windows steamed up. We could hardly make out our own struggling windshield wipers. . . .
“Say—”
“I know—”
“God has made us invisible!” said Rolf.
Praising Him, we crawled back into the van, unhurriedly dislodged the rest of the Bibles, and packed them into cartons. We settled back in our seats comfortably just as the rain lifted and the skies lightened once again.
At precisely five o’clock we drove past the Moscow sign. Markov passed us, his headlights still on after the storm. He blinked them once. At ten minutes past five we stopped in front of a sort of shopping center where people all around us were unloading boxes or piling them into trucks. It took five minutes to make the exchange. After three years the first payment had been made on a promise to some pastors.
20
The Awakening Dragon
Below my plane lay the great rock called Hong Kong, capital of the British crown colony that sits like a fragile butterfly on the tail of the not-so-sleepy dragon that is Communist China. Beyond it was the China mainland stretching off as far as eyes could see.
For a fraction of a second I was startled not to see a high wall running around it. That was how Red China looked in my mind: shut off, closed, unassailable. Even when I was learning to distinguish between Outer Circle and Inner Circle countries in Communist Europe, I had never even attempted to give China a rank. To me it was in a sealed world by itself, more inaccessible to a Christian outreach than the most totalitarian European regime.
And then one day in Moscow I took a seat in a bus next to a Chinese man. There were hundreds of Chinese in Moscow in those days, but this man wore a cross in his lapel. We got to talking, in English, and he told me that he was the secretary of the Shanghai YMCA. I was astonished. The “Y” still open in Shanghai? Yes, he assured me, open and busy. He gave me his card and invited me to visit him.
And from that day on, a hope-beyond-hope began to grow within me of someday ministering to the isolated Christians of China.
But there were so many questions to answer before we could begin. How many Christians were there in China anyhow? I knew that the vast majority of the population never had been Christian. On the other hand, China had probably been the scene of more missionary effort than any other country. What had become of the devotion of so many men and women? Were the congregations they had founded still functioning? Were they suffering persecution? Were they meeting in secret? If they still existed, were they as hungry for Bibles as the churches in Eastern Europe?
These were the questions we needed answers to. And so when, in 1965, a speaking tour took me to California, I decided just to keep going, to visit Taiwan to talk with people who knew China, and then to try to get onto the mainland itself. I was counting on my Dutch passport—Dutchmen under some circumstances were still permitted to travel behind that stronger-than-iron curtain.
But now, even on the plane to Hong Kong, I discovered that I had started out all wrong. The man next to me, a Hong Kong banker, looked at me oddly when I told him I was bound for China. “Didn’t you get abroad at Taiwan?” he said.
“Yes, I spent ten days there.”
“Let me see your passport.” He flipped through the pages looking for the Taiwan stamp but stopped short at the American visa. “United States!” he said.
“Yes. I’ve just come from there.”
“Man, you’ll never get into Red China with that passport.”
Now usually I enjoy it when people tell me a missionary adventure is impossible, because this allows me to experience God’s way of dealing with impossibilities. But no sooner had I checked in at the Hong Kong “Y” than I began to hear more discouraging facts. All of Hong Kong, it seemed, was filled with missionaries who had tried and failed to get into mainland China. They included doctors and teachers with long records of service to the people. Today none of it counted; the fact that they had been accredited under the pre-Communist regime automatically barred them from the country.
When I’d heard these things for the one hundredth time, my confidence wavered. Maybe I could get a new passport with none of my earlier trips stamped in it.
I took the ferry from Kowloon, where the Hong Kong “Y” is located, across to the main part of the city on its rock island and went to the Dutch consulate. I found the consul behind a screen of thick pungent smoke, puffing at a long-stemmed clay pipe, which made me ache for Holland. When I told him I wanted to go to the China mainland, he took the pipe from his mouth and began to smile. When I went on to explain that I was a missionary, his smile broadened. When I told him frankly that I wanted to look for Christians there and explore the possibilities of getting Bibles to them, he actually began to laugh.
“May I see your passport?” he said. He ruffled through the pages, shaking his head. “Impossible,” he said, stabbing the damaging visas with the stem of the pipe.
“Sir,” I said, “that’s why I’m here. I want a new passport.”
“Impossible,” he said again. The consulate in Hong Kong had no authority to issue passports. If he were to send my request to Indonesia, he’d have to show legal cause, and there was none. He sent a cloud of smoke spirali
ng to the ceiling. And I knew the interview was over.
At first I was disappointed with the failure of my stratagem; then suddenly I knew I was glad. Now there was no possibility of my getting into China by my own cleverness. I believed that the desire to go to China had come from God; I would leave the means to Him too. The next morning I would simply go to the Chinese consulate and apply for a visa, knowing that if God really wanted me to go, the necessary papers would be forthcoming.
First, though, I had some homework to do. I thought of Joshua preparing to invade the land of the Canaanites, and how he had sent spies ahead to scout out the land. Perhaps this is what I must do: spy out the land of Chinese officialdom. It was dark now—stores and offices were shut—but I set out in search of the Chinese “travel agency,” as the tourism department of that government was called.
As I had expected, it was closed. On a large pillar outside the door, a sign announced in English: “Chinese Travel Service.” On the dark sidewalk in front of the barred door, I began to pray the Prayer of Victory, binding any force that could prevent me from going where God willed, proclaiming the fact that Christ had been victorious once for all over any power opposed to the rule of God. Back and forth in front of the building I walked. I prayed for two hours there in the dark.
The next morning I was back again. This time the door was open. At the top of a flight of stairs sat a Chinese soldier. Behind him was a large room jammed with people. I chose a line, and while waiting, I prayed for the officials and clerks on the other side of the counter, praying that God was opening channels with which to reach these citizens of China.
And then it was my turn. I stepped forward, and the man in the pale blue “people’s uniform” looked up at me inquiringly.
“Sir,” I said in English, “I want to make application for a visa to China.”
The man took his eyes off mine and began stamping papers. “Have you ever been to the United States or to Taiwan?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. I’ve just come from Taiwan, and before that I was in California.”
“Then,” he said with a smile, “you cannot possibly go to China, because these countries are our enemies.”
“But,” I said, smiling back at him, “they are not my enemies, for I have no enemies. Will you give me the forms?”
We held each other’s eye. I do not know what the other man was doing, but I was praying. He looked at me steadily, without expression, for a long time. Then at last his gaze broke. “It will achieve nothing,” he said with a shrug. But he handed me the application forms.
When I had filled them out, he told me that I could not have my answer before three days. The application, with the incriminating passport, would have to travel up to Canton.
That night I had dinner with an old China missionary. “They said I might hear after three days!” I told him jubilantly.
My host threw back his head and roared. “That just shows how little you know the oriental mind!” he said. “They always tell you ‘three days.’ Three days is Chinese for never.”
Resolutely I closed my ears to his merriment. For those three days I fasted and prayed almost continually. I did more than this. I went to the local Bible shop and purchased supplies of Chinese Scripture to take with me behind the Bamboo Curtain. I made arrangements to store some of my clothes, since I would have so little room in a suitcase filled mostly with Bibles. And I waited.
On the third day I returned to my room at the “Y” to find a note telling me to telephone the Chinese travel agency. Instead of returning the call, I went directly to the office. I tried to read the face of the Chinese official as he looked up and saw me. But he was as inscrutable as his countrymen’s reputation. At last I reached the counter. Without a word, he handed me my passport; attached to it was a piece of paper, stamped with the all-important visa for travel in his country.
———
At eight o’clock the next morning I was aboard a train pulling out of Tsim Sha Tsui station. To get to the border required a two-hour train trip across the British Crown Colony to the little town of Lo Wu. There, over a railroad bridge across a small stream, was the entrance to the land of the awakening dragon.
On the British side were only a small restaurant and the station-and-customs office. I grew tired of waiting and strolled outside where a British soldier was on duty at the bridge. A freight train was rattling across, bound for Hong Kong, carrying live pigs and chickens and produce for the millions in the British city. The soldier told me that the place was known locally as the Bridge of Weeping. Each day it was necessary to round up refugees who had sneaked across the stream and herd them back over the bridge. He told me how they wept and pleaded and clung to the superstructure of the bridge, not wanting to return.
“Lord,” I prayed silently, “some day let there be no more bridges of weeping. Bring the day soon when all mankind will belong to the one kingdom of Your love.”
My job now was to do some scouting for that kingdom. At long last the British customs officer told us we could cross the bridge. We went single file, stepping cautiously on the cross ties. There were half a dozen of us Europeans in the group; the others were mostly businessmen from England, France and Canada. At the halfway point the shade of green in which the girders were painted changed. We were in Communist China.
On this side of the border was a much larger complex of buildings, neat and dull, the monotony broken by a profusion of geraniums planted everywhere. The customs inspector was a girl, very young, very trim. With the same polite smile the official in the travel agency had given me, she said, “Will you please open your valise?”
My heart beat faster. Inside, without any effort to hide them, I had put the supply of Chinese Bibles with which I would test China’s reaction to the presence of a missionary. How was this young official going to react?
I raised the lid to my suitcase, revealing the stacks of Bibles. And as I did, I had my first puzzling experience with the Chinese Communists.
The customs officer did not touch a thing in my suitcase. She looked at the Bibles for a moment, then raised her eyes: “Thank you, sir,” she said, with the ever-present smile. “Are you carrying a watch? Do you have a camera?”
No reaction at all to what she had seen in the suitcase. She was 20, perhaps 25 years old. Was it possible that she had never seen a Bible? That she had no idea what it was . . . ?
———
The train for Canton was waiting for us. The ancient passenger car was spotlessly clean, fresh flowers filled little vases between the seats, a stewardess served us hot tea. As the train started I glanced at my watch: We were on schedule to the minute. The stewardess, after searching a moment for the English words, beamed at me.
“Our train on time,” she said.
It was my first encounter with the “our” of modern China. Everywhere I heard about “our” train, “our” revolution, “our” first Chinese-made automobile. And in the railroad station in Canton I got a glimpse of how such national sentiment is created and maintained. Everywhere were racks of reading matter, beautifully printed and illustrated and free. It was the same at the hotel where I stayed: Stack upon stack of literature awaited me in the lobby, the dining room, every stair landing. Those in the hotel were in European languages—German, English, French—and obviously directed at the traveler. But elsewhere the literature was for home consumption. Every magazine, newspaper, movie, and play carried a twofold message. Be grateful for the Revolution. Hate America.
One night I went to a theater where a troupe of child acrobats was performing. The comedian was a Puck-like little boy who was always trying to light a firecracker. Each time, just as the fuse was about to ignite the powder, the hero of the play would put it out. With each episode the firecracker got larger until it had become an atomic bomb, draped with a huge American flag. Again at the last moment the hero saved the day and destroyed the bomb. At this, the audience went wild, leaping from their seats in a frenzy of glee and patriotism.
> The other theme of all propaganda—enthusiasm for the revolution—was equally relentless and, in its own way, just as deadening. During my stay in Canton I visited an old people’s home. By European standards it was extremely primitive, but the men and women there seemed content enough: some weaving, some cleaning up the compound, all engaged in some form of productive work.
The leader of the community, an old woman in her eighties, greeted me through an interpreter and made a little speech. The theme seemed to be how happy and useful old people felt since the revolution. “Before liberation,” she said, old people were left to die in the fields. “After liberation,” though, things had been wonderful.
The rest of the old folks scarcely glanced up as their leader talked. Every time she spoke the words “after liberation,” however, it was as if a button had been pushed. Each aged face became animated. Each pair of hands began to clap. And then as the leader continued, they settled back again to the reveries of old age.
But if the enthusiasm of the elderly seemed less than spontaneous, it was not so with young people. My youthful interpreter in Shanghai a week later clearly had an evangelist’s fervor. “Before,” Shanghai had been noted for its prostitution; “After,” the prostitutes were taken to training camps where they had learned useful skills. “Before,” China had had one of the lowest literacy rates in the world; “After,” it had achieved one of the highest. On and on it went.
———
This kind of conversation made me all the more eager to visit a commune. After all, guides were government employees, screened and indoctrinated for their jobs. Surely the average worker was not so starry-eyed about the wonderful world of After.
In all, during my stay in China, I was able to visit six communes. The first numbered more than ten thousand people. And it was here that I had my first chance to visit informally in a Chinese home.
I chose the home myself—a small, thatch-roofed house on a side street—and was allowed to drop in unannounced. An old man answered our knock. He and his wife showed us around with crackling laughs and ever-present smiles. Pride was obvious. They pointed several times to their grain store, a cylindrical bin made of bamboo and filled with wheat. I asked through the interpreter if mice were not a problem. The old man laughed.
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