God Is Red

by Liao Yiwu

  When the steamy dumplings were put on a low table in the courtyard, we sat and Li led a prayer of thanks, which went on for some time. “Today is Praying for World Peace Day. Lord, you have brought Brother Kun Peng and Mr. Liao over to listen to my humble life story. They are prominent intellectuals but are willing to be friends with me. I thank you for your blessing and hope you bless them with good health . . .” Heads were bowed in silence around the table. I watched the dumplings grow cold. Having experienced the famine of the 1960s, I never refuse food and am somewhat of a glutton, but I ate slowly and smiled throughout the meal. I smiled when we finished our interview and shook hands to bid our good-byes. I smiled for about half a mile along the road. I didn’t want to smile, and my face hurt from faking it; I had been in a house of great suffering.

  A gathering thunderstorm finally broke, with torrents of rain and strong winds, but soon the moon rose, and the clearing clouds looked like dangling shreds of wet mountain moss against the lunar light.

  I first heard of Li Linshan from my friend Kun Peng in the spring of 2009. Kun urged me to visit Li immediately. “Otherwise, it will be too late,” he said.

  Arrangements were made, and at about noon on August 16 I set out along a narrow muddy path through a vast expanse of grassland. I could see cows and packs of dogs to the far left of me in the meadow. As I approached the foot of a mountain, I heard the booming of a distant thunderstorm. Clouds as big as ships floated overhead. There had been a big storm the night before, and my dreams had been filled with disturbing images of rising waters that submerged the town and reached a mountain peak, leaving me the only survivor, jumping from mountaintop to mountaintop like a monkey.

  Li lived in the old section of Dali, and Kun Peng met me at Renmin Avenue to guide me the rest of the way, down narrow alleyways, turning left and right until we reached Guangwu Street, where we stopped outside a doorway, horizontal red poster atop the faded wooden doorframe proclaiming in four prominent Chinese characters: The Blessings of God.

  Kun shouted for Li from the street. A tanned woman opened the door. She was Li’s current wife. They had been married for five years. Kun led me to the middle of the tiny courtyard and introduced me to Li, who was squatting in a corner, a kitchen knife in each hand. “So nice to meet you,” Li said. “Sorry, I can’t shake hands; I’m making dumplings for you.” He went back to his chopping and slicing, and Kun took my arm, whispering, “Brother Li is little more than a bag of bones.” Surprised by Kun’s blunt remarks, I said, “He’s a little thin, but he looks quite energetic.” Li heard me and laughed. “I’m energetic because it’s a special day today. I’m very excited about your visit. That’s why I’m making dumplings. This is the first time I’ve cooked since I became ill. Who knows, it could also be my last.” Li said he was using a traditional recipe from his native Shanxi province. “I have to cut the meat and vegetables very finely. I want to treat you to an authentic Shanxi dumpling feast.” Li was soon done, and as he wiped his hands on an old cloth, we began our talk:

  Liao Yiwu: How did you get sick?

  Li Linshan: Hmm . . . actually, I don’t know. I think I’ve always been sick. I was born in 1963, at the tail end of the three-year famine. While she was pregnant, my mother couldn’t get enough to eat in the city. She returned to her native village in Shanxi province. According to my grandma, when I was born, I looked like a tiny pussycat, clutching myself, too weak to even cry. My parents didn’t think I would survive and had decided to abandon me, but my grandma stopped them. She said, “He’s breathing. If we wrap him up near the fire, we can probably warm him up and save him.” My father sighed and said, “We haven’t been able to feed ourselves for three years. How are you going to be able to raise this kid? Besides, he doesn’t seem to have the lungs for singing.”

  Liao: Your parents were singers?

  Li: They were professional singers with a local Chinese opera group. They were quite well known in Luozi opera. My parents performed with the opera group for several years, but the times were hard so they returned to their home village in Danshan Township. They thought farming would provide a stable income, but they had never been lucky. A major source of their misery was my health. I’ve been constantly tortured with all sorts of illnesses. But poor people can’t afford a doctor.

  Liao: And now?

  Li: I have what the doctor calls “carcinoma gastric cardia.” The cancer is here, where my throat meets my stomach. When the doctor diagnosed it in 2007, it was still at an early stage. But now, the cancer has spread. Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy—that would cost at least twenty thousand yuan. I mend clothes, one yuan to patch a hole or sew on a button. There was no way I could get that much money. Even with the surgery, the doctors said I might only get five years or so. We didn’t have money. I didn’t even have a place to borrow money. And even if I had been able to borrow enough money to extend my life a little bit, it would take my family generations to pay it off. I’m a Chinese and I was born in a poor area. What can I do?

  Liao: Your hometown served as a base for the Communists in the early revolution era. Chairman Mao mentioned the contributions of your hometown to the revolution in several of his articles.

  Li: You are right. In the early days, folks in my hometown joined Mao in his guerrilla warfare and supported the Communist troops in the hardest of times. When the revolution succeeded, people were supposed to become masters of the nation, but their lives were even worse than before.

  You see, we had no water. We dug wells, as deep as two people, but they were always dry. Water was like gold. Rainwater was free, but that didn’t last long. It tasted like muddy soup with lots of bugs in it. If you filled up a scoop, you could see the bugs wriggling in the water. In the dry season, every puddle was precious. Unfortunately, we had a very long dry season. During that time, everyone drove a donkey-drawn cart with a big bucket on top. We would climb hills to get water from five or six kilometers away.

  Things have changed quite a bit now. The government has initiated a few water projects to help alleviate the situation. But, you know, before I left my village at the age of thirty, I had only ever washed in pouring rain, stark naked in the courtyard, our annual cleansing. After my first daughter was born, the midwife cleaned my wife and the baby with only a small basin of water.

  Liao: Didn’t you worry about infection?

  Li: We never considered infection as an illness. People with cancer couldn’t afford treatment, not to mention an ordinary infection. It would heal itself. In my hometown, there was a high incidence of stomach or esophagus cancers. If I remember correctly, the only person who could afford treatment was a respected teacher who used to work in the city and had since retired. After he got cancer, he was hospitalized and had surgery. All of his medical bills were covered by the government. The surgery was a success. It was such big news, almost unheard of before. When he came back from the hospital, the village had a huge celebration planned for him. The retired teacher contributed six hundred yuan. Local opera groups put up a stage and performed for three days. People came from faraway to watch the operas.

  Liao: What was the average lifespan for people there?

  Li: About sixty or something. There were exceptions. My grandpa lived to be eighty, but he had no idea how he had managed to live that long. My father was the healthiest in my family. In the fields, he was like a big bull, working from morning to night without a break. He died at the age of fifty. Poisoning. Before he went to work in the field, he sprayed insecticide all over his body to kill fleas. It was a hot sunny day. Soon, he was sweaty all over. I think the insecticides seeped into his skin through the open pores. He began to have a stomachache first. Then, the pain became unbearable. He stumbled back home and lay down in bed. I remember he let out a couple of screams first and then passed out. Before the stars came out that night, his body twitched a couple of times and then he was gone.

  People usually used DDT or “666” powder. The insecticide my father used was more potent; the itch
ing fleabites drove him nuts, and he wanted quick relief. Without water, people never showered or washed their clothes or bedding. Perfect for fleas.

  Liao: Did many people get killed by insecticides like your father?

  Li: It was pretty rare. We started to mess around with insecticides when we were kids. We first had some burning sensations, and some of us had patches of purplish scars. Then the skin would flake off. In some serious cases, the skin would be red and irritated. You might experience some wooziness. You could get over it in three or four hours. Gradually, your body would become accustomed to the poison. Besides, in the summer, after we sprayed the insecticide, we normally waited for it to dry before leaving the house. My father was so impatient and dashed out into the hot sun when he was still wet.

  Liao: What did you do before you came to Yunnan?

  Li: In 1988 I saw a newspaper ad about a school for tailors in the provincial capital, Taiyuan. I left the village and traveled to Taiyuan, using up all my savings to pay for the tuition and living expenses. After graduation, I returned to the village. I was the “famous tailor” who had seen the bigger world. It was right before the Chinese New Year. Many families would show up at my door, bringing new fabrics and asking me to tailor some outfits for them. You can’t imagine how nervous I was, a new graduate without any experience at all. I had to improvise. But I survived. A few years later, my skills had improved somewhat, and my stuff became presentable. In 1994 an uncle on my mother’s side came home for a visit. He lived in Chuxiong, Yunnan province. It was right after my divorce, and I was feeling miserable. This uncle of mine urged me to come to Chuxiong and even paid my train fare. Still, the journey took four days.

  Liao: Like the Chinese saying goes: a tree will die if it is replanted, but a person will thrive when he moves.

  Li: I can use water that flows freely out of a tub and shower as much as I want. Sometimes, I feel guilty for being too extravagant. One night, I had a dream that I was sitting inside a bathtub. Then my fellow villagers popped up around me, swearing and cursing: You bastard! How could you waste so much water that can feed generations of people here? Then they started to bite me. I woke up in a sweat.

  Liao: So, did you continue with your tailor business here?

  Li: Yes. Initially, I worked for a tailor on Foreigner Street. Eventually, I started my own shop. There were lots of foreigners and foreigner wannabes in the city. You could spot all sorts of exotic and weird outfits around. It was really quite cosmopolitan. But I was a hick from Shanxi, and there was no way I could compete with the other tailors, so I decided to specialize in mending clothes—hemming, fixing zippers, and patching holes, that sort of thing. It was small money but it all added up. Just like that, I thrived. I arrived here when I was thirty-one. In fifteen years, I saved up quite a bit of money and was able to send some home.

  Liao: Who is taking care of your business now?

  Li: I don’t have to worry about my business anymore. I closed it down. I’m too weak to handle the sewing machine. I don’t have a lot of days left.

  Liao: Do you feel lost?

  Li: No, I’m not lost. God will make plans for me.

  Liao: When did you start to believe in God?

  Li: I had heard about Christianity when I was a child. I don’t know whether it was from textbooks or from newspaper reports, but we were told foreign imperialists enslaved the Chinese people with Christianity, that it was a type of spiritual opium. We were atheists. There were no Christians in my village. Some old folks would light incense and worship Buddhist and Taoist gods at some temples during holidays. I used to look down on them, even condemning them for being superstitious. After I arrived in Yunnan, my mind was opened. I saw people of all colors and countries. I started to hang out with some of them. We have Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Bahá’í believers, all sorts of faiths here.

  I was a victim of the Communist atheist ideology. I had nothing to cling to spiritually. I had no idea where the end would be. Each time things started to trouble me, I planned a way to escape, either through smoking or drinking, or simply burying it down inside. My eldest daughter suffered from a severe fever, which turned out to be meningitis. We didn’t get her treatment right away. She ended up having epilepsy, and later on she became deaf and mute. She died before she turned nine. At that time, my heart was bleeding all the time, but I didn’t know what to do and where to seek help.

  When I first found out that I had cancer, I had a very hard time thinking it through. I would count my days with my fingers and say to myself: “I hardly have any happiness in life. What is the meaning in life?”

  Liao: If you had twenty thousand yuan, you could have had treatment. Things might have been different.

  Li: If I had the surgery, it might have prolonged my life another five years. But what’s the point? It would be like waiting for death. Cancer is a blunt knife, poking me and slowly cutting me to pieces. The pain is unbearable; it was all I could do to endure it. I didn’t even have the strength to commit suicide.

  Liao: What changed?

  Li: There was a person, Brother Yang. He was born in Baoshan, Yunnan, and lived near here. He used to pass my store all the time. As we got to know each other, he would come in and chat with me, asking me about my life and business. One day, I told him about my cancer. He was very shocked. He sat down and heard my story. He was really worried about me. He said, “It will cost you lots of money to treat the cancer.” I told him that I didn’t have money. All I could do was wait for death to take me. He didn’t agree. He said, “Don’t give up too easily. Come to believe in God. God will offer a cure.”

  I didn’t take him seriously. He visited me many times and would say things like: “Old Li, with your current condition, having faith in God is your only way out. The hospital can’t help you. Your relatives are helpless. The government can’t help you. For ordinary people like us, especially poor people like us, we have to have some spiritual support and have faith. You are on the verge of death, so why are you hesitating? Give yourself over to God.”

  At that, tears welled up in my eyes. To tell you the truth, I was a pathetic living ghost but had been quite snobbish, worrying about being corrupted or getting bad luck from others. But God reached out to me again and again through Brother Yang. So I said loud and clear: “God, take me.”

  Brother Yang said a prayer of deliverance for me on the spot. The hustle and bustle on the street remained the same. The sun continued to shine on the city. The tiles stayed on the roof, and the birds perched on them, chirping as they always do. Nature continued its way. I was the one who changed.

  I followed Brother Yang, clutching both hands in front of my chest, tears streaming down like raindrops. I tell you, I wasn’t overcome with grief. I felt grateful. For the first time in my life, I didn’t think about myself or about human beings. I was thinking about God, who is above us, above all living things, above the highest mountain and above Erhai Lake. My parents gave birth to me, but God gave me life. I didn’t know that before. Cancer helped enlighten me, giving wings to my heart, which had been downtrodden in the mud, and made it fly and feel the bliss of heaven.

  Liao: I’m touched by your poetic description. Tell me more about Brother Yang.

  Li: He’s a minister from a local house church. He believes that going to church doesn’t necessarily make one a believer of Jesus. But as you know, the government doesn’t recognize the legal existence of house churches. During Easter in 2008, I was baptized at an old church here, which has over one hundred years of history. Many Christians in the region are like me. We do both, attending services at the church as well as at individual homes.

  Liao: Since you were converted, has your health improved?

  Li: The illness has probably worsened. It’s harder and harder for me to take food. I can feel the tumor stuck in here. For every meal, I have to rely on luck. I would have some water first and then take the food bit by bit. If I’m lucky, the passageway would open up a bit and some food could go do
wn smoothly. Sometimes, water can’t even go down. When that happens, I have to go hungry. But I feel more relaxed and in high spirits. When I first started praying, I used to harbor selfish thoughts. I was hoping for a miracle, as if God owed me that. As a result, I was always distracted. I would think that God was probably helpless. God wouldn’t save me. In the past forty-some years, I had lived in misery, nothing but total misery. It wasn’t easy to change completely. My minister instructed me to pray for friends and relatives, and pray for those who are caught in the disasters that are happening in the world every day, and pray for individuals and nations that are deep into crimes of injustice, greed, and murder and refuse to acknowledge their crimes. We should pray to the Lord to forgive those individuals and nations and give them another chance for redemption. I should pray for others and, if I’m deeply committed, the Lord will help me without my knowing it.

  Liao: You mentioned suicide before; would you still try to do it if you could?

  Li: Now I think it’s a sin. All lives are given by God. Only he has the right to end them. I used to have all sorts of illnesses, and I had surgeries. I lived in a village without water. I thought life was unbearable and I wouldn’t be able to survive, but I did. I think a natural death will be much more bearable than going through a surgery or living in a village without water. Death will be like a leaf falling onto the ground. My soul will float into the arms of angels.

  Epilogue

  Liao published this story on an overseas Chinese language website. John Zhang, a pastor at the San Mateo, California–based Bay Area Reformed Evangelical Church, was deeply moved by the patient’s courage and raised funds through his nonprofit organization, Humanitarian China, to cover the surgery. Li Linshan was able to undertake surgeries. At this time, the patient is on the path of recovery.