by Liao Yiwu
Liao: Do you consider yourself one of them?
Wu: I’m just an ordinary Christian. I was a carpenter, nothing worth mentioning. Anyway, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war. Some Westerners working in the Japanese-occupied territories were arrested and murdered. Many were forced to escape south. A lot of them came to Dali. The China Inland Mission had established a Christian hospital in Henan province around 1906, and the hospital moved to Dali around that time.
Liao: I read about the China Inland Mission, a British missionary organization that was founded in London in 1865 by James Hudson Taylor. From your own book, I learned that Reverend Taylor and sixteen other missionaries arrived in Shanghai in 1866. They were probably among the earliest Christian foreign missionaries in China.
Wu: Probably.
Liao: Please, go on with your story.
Wu: In 1942 the Japanese troops moved in from Myanmar. Cities like Wanding, Tengchong, and Baoshan fell one after another. Kunming and Xiaguang were frequently bombed. The Christian hospital was open to all people. Doctors were busy treating wounded civilians and soldiers. There was an outbreak of cholera. It was really busy there. I did carpentry work for the hospital and became a regular employee. I became interested in medicine, took classes, and became a doctor at the hospital and stayed there until I retired in 1988.
Liao: Doesn’t that rather oversimplify your life in the past sixty some years?
Wu: I don’t want to dwell on the past. Besides, after I had my stroke, my memory is no longer good. Our Christian hospital was the best in the whole southwestern region. We helped thousands of patients.
I still remember the names of many missionaries. People like De Meichun (Jessie McDonald), Bao Wenlian (Frances Powell), Shi Airen (M. E. Scott) and Ma Guangqi (Doris M. L. Madden) had moved to Dali from Henan province at the end of 1941. They devoted their lives to serving the people here. But when the Communist troops came, they forced all foreign missionaries to leave. I still remember the date, May 4, 1951, when the troops took over the hospital. They reviewed the asset inventories, then ordered our hospital president, Jessie McDonald, to sign over all the hospital’s assets. Then they kicked her out.
Liao: Were you condemned?
Wu: Comparatively speaking, the attacks against me were minimal. After all, I was only a staff member at the hospital. At that time, we had about fifty staff members; only ten of us were Christians.
Liao: Did you attend public denunciation meetings?
Wu: I wasn’t singled out, but we had to attend many political study sessions.
Liao: Did they question your close relations with foreign missionaries?
Wu: The foreign missionaries had all left. There was nothing left to question. I did have to write many confessions. I’ve written hundreds of confessions in my life.
Liao: Did they allow people to attend church services?
Wu: We were allowed at the beginning. Then all religious activities were banned. Many people were too scared to go. Some attended services at the beginning until they openly renounced their beliefs. I persisted throughout. In the end, I simply prayed at home.
Liao: Did it feel strange to attend Communist study sessions during the day and pray to God at home in the evenings?
Wu: I would do whatever the authorities wanted me to do at work. However, secular politics couldn’t replace spiritual pursuits.
Liao: In the 1950s, Reverend Wu Yaozong in Beijing established the Three-Self Patriotic Church, which was then endorsed by the government. Did you support the Three-Self principles?
Wu: When the Westerners left, the churches already followed the principles of self-governance, self-propagation and self-support. In Dali, we also established the Three-Self Patriotic Committee. Reverend Duan Liben was the director. I supported the tenets laid out in the Bible.
Liao: Did you openly state that position in the Mao era?
Wu: Oh, I wouldn’t dare. In 1952 the Dali United Front Department ordered Christian churches of different denominations to merge. We had the Catholic Church, the Episcopalian Church, and the Old City Church. We held services together until the political campaigns became really bad. The revolutionary masses had been mobilized to attack Christians. The slogan was “hurting their flesh to change their souls.” As a result, people left the church in droves. In the end, the only open Christians in Dali were Reverend Hou Wuling and his wife, Li Quanben, and Yang Fengzhen . . .
Liao: What happened to them?
Wu: They all died tragically. Reverend Hou Wuling had been publicly denounced several times. He died during a public study session, an aneurism . . . but please, let’s not talk about him. It breaks my heart to even think about it.
Before the Cultural Revolution ended, all open religious activities had been banned. Churches and church assets had been seized. Only in silence could people pray and read Scripture. It was a treat just to move our lips and shape the name of God.
I couldn’t bring myself to openly boycott the government policies. I didn’t dare reveal my true faith in public. When I realized that I couldn’t do it, I asked God for forgiveness. Thanks to the merciful Lord, I was able to survive the political campaigns of the 1950s.
Liao: Did you suffer during the Cultural Revolution?
Wu: The Red Guards wanted to sweep away all sorts of “snakes and demons.” My wife and I couldn’t escape. Our home was ransacked; we were interrogated. They put dunce caps on us and paraded us through the streets. They burned our precious collections of biblical books. Oh, so sad . . . but the past is like passing clouds. I just let it go.
[Zhang Fengxiang, seeing how affected her husband was, intervened at this point in the interview and offered to continue his story. “The past is too traumatic for my husband,” she said. “He doesn’t want to revisit it, especially after his stroke.”]
Zhang Fengxiang: I was born into a poor family in 1933 in the city of Chuxiong, Yunnan province. There was a Bethel Church near my home. When I was five, I began joining many children in the neighborhood to attend free classes at the church. Our teachers were foreigners with blue eyes and big noses. They smiled all the time and were very patient. They taught us how to read and write in English. Then we learned to pray and sing hymns. A few years later, we started learning Bible stories. I loved going to the classes because the teachers would distribute candies and toys to us if we came up with the right answers to their questions. Under their influence, I became a Christian and was baptized at the age of fifteen. In 1950 I was enrolled in a nursing school affiliated with the Christian hospital in Dali and became a nurse after graduation. In 1953, when I was twenty, I married Wu Yongsheng in a local church. We both worked at the same hospital.
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, we became the primary targets at the hospital. We suffered all sorts of tortures. The Maoist rebels accused us of being spies. They gathered all of us in front of our church, beating drums and gongs, and sang revolutionary songs. They held a public denunciation meeting there. First they piled up all the biblical books and documents, and then they set them on fire. They cheered and danced. Several Christians, including my husband and I, were forced to bend down at a ninety-degree angle by the fire.
They were still not satisfied. They smashed the windows, the pews, the bookshelves, the furniture, old scrolls of paintings, and even the pipe organ that was brought there by Western missionaries. You know, there used to be a gigantic bell installed inside the church’s top tower. They took it down and tried to break it but couldn’t make a single crack. In the end, they took it away. Nobody knows where it is now. Such a shame. The bell was made in London and transported to Dali in 1905.
They were thorough. Nothing was left. One of them thought that because we were spies we might have hidden a telegraph machine or weapons. My husband insisted we were not spies. But their leader wouldn’t listen. “When those imperialists left, they planted you here. They assigned you special tasks. You’d better confess if you want lenient tre
atment.” I stepped up and explained on behalf of my husband, “We are not allowed to hide anything illegal in the church. It is a holy place.” They scolded me for being as stubborn as granite. They got hold of some shovels and electric drills. Within a few hours, they destroyed the floor and had dug a big hole in the middle of the chapel.
Liao: They must have seen too many spy movies.
Zhang: Later, the church was occupied by a dozen or so local residents who decided to live there. The chapel was converted into workshops for blacksmiths, stove makers, pottery makers, and carpenters. We were detained and tortured. Each time we were released, we went back to work at the hospital and continued to take care of patients. One day, a group of peasants put up a poster saying “Thank you.” The poster was next to a bunch of slogans: “Smash the dog heads of Wu Yongsheng and Zhang Fengxiang.”
We tried to make the best of a bad situation. We accepted the humiliation without resistance.
My husband mentioned Reverend Duan Liben, who headed the local Three-Self Patriotic Committee. In 1956 he traveled to Beijing for a national conference on reforming the Christian churches in China. In July 1966 the local government ordered all the local Catholic and Protestant leaders to attend a “religious conference.” It turned out to be a trap. For forty days they were detained for interrogation. Then, Reverend Duan was sent to the countryside to “reform his thinking through hard labor.” He suffered a lot, more than ordinary Christians like us. He’s no longer with us.
In 1980 the United Front Department notified us that we could hold Sunday services. The worshipping service had been banned for more than two decades. They did not return many of the church’s assets, and we doubt they ever will.
Chapter 5
The Episcopalian
In 1937, after Japan invaded China, Cai Yongchun and Wu Shengde, two professors from Huazhong University in the central city of Wuhan, relocated to Dali and founded the Dali Episcopalian Church. In 1943 the two founders received funding from the dioceses in Shanghai and bought twenty buildings and houses on one and a half acres of land. They converted the properties into a chapel, an orphanage, and an elementary school to accelerate the spread of the gospel. In 1948 Hou Wuling, a young priest, took over the church. In 1964, during a political study session, Reverend Hou took out a cross hidden in his breast pocket and slipped to the ground. He died of an aneurism.
Wu Yongsheng, The History of Christianity in Dali
Who was this young priest, Hou Wuling? His mention in Wu Yongsheng’s book was so brief that it didn’t shed much light on the man’s life or the circumstances surrounding his death. How could such a religious leader, for he clearly was that, pass like a meteor, flashing momentarily and then disappearing with scarcely a trace? What happened to him under Communism? What prompted him to bring out the hidden cross at that political study session? I was intrigued; I like a good mystery. I began by examining existing church records but could find nothing about Hou.
In Wu’s book, I also found a brief mention that when the government reversed its verdict against Hou, Wu was responsible for reaching out to Hou’s family. Wu had told me that Hou headed the local Episcopalian church in Dali but refused to give me further details. Was he dodging a political landmine?
I contacted Kun Peng, who seemed to know everyone who mattered. I needed more information and hoped Kun could point me in the right direction. I particularly wanted to find Hou’s family members. Kun called me back a few days later. He hadn’t managed to trace Hou’s daughter but found three other elderly Christians who might know something about Hou’s life. I interviewed all of them and obtained some details.
Hou did take charge of the Dali Episcopal Church in 1948, a time when the country was embroiled in civil war. He was responsible for the assets that the church had accumulated over the years but was mainly concerned with ministering to the thousands of followers who lived in constant fear of the war. He was in his prime and diligent in his duties. Wu remembered that Hou had tried to keep the church neutral in the war between the Communists and the ruling Nationalists and divorced from politics after Mao Zedong’s victory in 1949. But the new Communist government considered foreign missionaries as hostile forces. Religious networks of all faiths crumbled. Christians renounced their faith at public meetings as “a shameful chapter” in their lives. Hou was devastated by the turn of events. His refusal to renounce his faith made him a political target. At a conference held by the United Front Department, one official confronted Hou: “Are you trying to challenge the power of the revolutionary masses?” He remained silent; his answer lay in his actions—he continued to follow the Lord and was guardian of his church. He was nicknamed “The Silent Lamb.”
With each successive political campaign, Communist officials made him a target. In 1953 the government wanted him to surrender the Huiyu Elementary School, which had been founded and operated by the Dali Episcopal Church. Officials proposed changing its name to Dali No. 2 Elementary School. Hou refused to let government officials enter the school. They countered by sending him a bill for the school’s utility fees and repair costs. With all funding sources cut off under the new regime, Hou couldn’t pay, so he disconnected the electricity and told students: “Our hearts are open and lit by truth; we don’t need electric lights.”
While Hou was praying by candlelight in the school’s chapel, local militiamen broke in and took him away. They accused him of sabotaging school facilities and engaging in counterrevolutionary actions. After the government raided his church and reviewed his finances, they charged him with counterrevolutionary corruption. Soon after that, the government brought another charge against him—raping underage female orphans. With one accusation after another directed at him, Hou was arrested and held for a year, but there was insufficient evidence for a conviction, so he was released.
As Hou stood watch over his flock, he remained in conflict with the Party. One day a Christian woman named Li Huijun showed up at his door with her ten-year-old daughter. They were escaping from her rural village, where her family had been persecuted as members of the “evil landlord class.” Hou and his wife took them in. A few months later, Li’s daughter, who had tuberculosis, died. Subsequently, the street committee noticed Li’s presence in the church and, having ascertained her family background, sent her back to her village. Li escaped again. The local militiamen hunted her down and brought her back. In 1954 she ran away for the third time and hid in the church. Her captors followed her to Dali. She was found in a room next to the church library. Li had hanged herself.
In the same year, Hou was asked to support and join the newly formed Three-Self Patriotic Church. He refused, calling it “collective surrender.” Local progovernment religious leaders held a conference and “unanimously” voted that he be stripped of his title and barred from participating in any religious activities. In 1957 he was labeled a Rightist. In 1958 the local government in Dali officially seized the Dali Episcopal Church land and converted it into a chemical plant. Hou was threatened with imprisonment if he refused to move out. He was assigned a bed in a dorm for factory workers. His wife and a daughter went back to Chengdu to live with her parents.
Hou was a regular at public denunciations, which continued even as famine swept China in 1959. A Christian survivor told me that people were too weak to beat up class enemies, so instead, the masses would pinch and bite them. He remembered seeing Hou covered with bruises.
In 1963 the government under President Liu Shaoqi adopted a series of policies to curb Mao’s radical industrialization and nationalization programs and help alleviate the famine situation. Mao retreated. Persecution of Christians abated, and there was more food. In 1964 Mao countered with his “Socialist Education Campaign,” and Hou was called to attend a weeklong political study session with forty other Rightists and counterrevolutionaries at a segregated building guarded by soldiers. He was forced to answer question after question until he simply stopped talking and dropped to the ground, dead. There is no official re
cord on the specifics of his death, and those in attendance suffered collective amnesia. All I have to go on are the lines from Wu’s book: that Hou took out his cross, slipped to the ground, and died of an aneurism. The interrogations, public denunciation meetings, and political study sessions were over for him.
We know Hou’s body was cremated several hours after he died. No autopsy was performed. Several days later, Hou’s wife arrived from Chengdu and took an urn of his ashes home. According to Mr. Wu, she never dared ask how her husband had died. Maybe it was good that he had died before the Cultural Revolution, Wu said.
In 1980 the United Front Department of Dali issued a notice officially exonerating Hou of any wrongdoing. Wu accepted the notice on behalf of the Hou family and then mailed it to Hou Mei-en, the daughter in Chengdu. He is certain that Hou’s wife and daughter are still alive, though he has heard nothing from them in thirty years. I asked if the government had compensated the family for its suffering, and Wu shook his head, “Not a single penny.” Church assets were sold off by the government to private developers. The state-run chemical plant built on the church property went bankrupt and was closed. The land is now occupied by the Internal Medicine Department of Dali’s No. 2 People’s Hospital.
Chapter 6
The Cancer Patient
Stripes of light from the setting sun occupied a corner of Li Linshan’s tiny courtyard. As Li was talking, he massaged a large lump of flour dough to make shells for dumplings. His pale face turned crimson from the effort; sweat beaded his forehead. I had heard he was a singer and urged him to give me some local Shanxi opera tunes. He straightened his back and took a deep breath, exhaled. He said the opera required that the singer howl in a higher register but he no longer had the strength and that the best he’d be able to manage would be a lower octave. “I might sound like a woman,” he warned. I really liked his version; I thought it mixed in some styles of hymn singing. I applauded enthusiastically.
