God Is Red

by Liao Yiwu

  Chapter 7

  The Fellowship

  Li Linshan, the cancer patient, wanted me to go with him to a Christian service so I might better understand what God had done for him. It was dusk on August 18, 2009, as I left the house I was staying at in Dali and made for a nearby intersection where Li said he would meet me. It was a pleasant evening, with a warm southerly breeze and the sky smeared pink with clouds. The streetlights came on. I could see shadows of human activity flickering in the windows of low-ceilinged houses. Li was waiting for me, and we headed toward a suburban village through the east side of Dali’s old town.

  I was becoming used to the messy alleyways that connected the city with its rural suburbs. A mismatched mixture of new buildings and old houses lined the way. Gigantic machines spewed out dust from a stone quarry. Trucks and tractors ran amok on the narrow roads, squeezing pedestrians into single file along the sidewalks. Li Linshan seemed oblivious to the noise and bustle around us, shuffling along with ease. He began humming a hymn, which lifted my mood. The setting sun cast rich layers of purple shadow. I thought for an instant we were inside a half-finished oil painting.

  Li said we were going to Ganjia Village, near Erhai Lake, though the chaotic mixture of tall buildings and low houses along our route gave no indication of where one village ended and another began. I simply followed Li, who said the area used to be a cornfield, but had recently been converted into pig and chicken farms. That explained the permeating stink in the air. It was not until we walked past a family-run grocery store and turned into a courtyard that I realized we had reached our destination. On the stairs to the house, two shabbily dressed women greeted us. They shook our hands enthusiastically and ushered us into the house, which was already so crowded with people that I imagined being submerged in a pot of steamy hot soup bubbling with noise and laughter. It was a sparsely furnished room, maybe ten square meters, with an extremely low ceiling. A double bed, an old Chinese-style armoire, and a pile of cardboard boxes filled half the space; squeezed into the other half were eighteen or so people occupying a small sofa and scattered benches and chairs. People stood up to make room for us, handing us candies and fruits. I found a seat against the wall, next to a tiny coffee table with a pot of plastic violets and a vacuum flask. Li was engulfed with greetings as soon as he entered, and a woman ushered him to the sofa, which someone jokingly referred to as “the throne of our honored leader.” After maybe ten minutes the chattering died down and Li was asked to lead the hymn singing. He chose “God exists here . . .”

  Li stood before his audience, hymnbook open, took a deep breath, and began what sounded like a howling song, but as everyone joined in with a distinctive mixture of accents, the cringing dissonance that reached my ears gradually resolved itself into harmony, like blending water with milk.

  I had heard some Western hymns in movies, where church choirs of men and women, boys and girls, sang beautifully with trained voices to the accompaniment of organ or piano. Certainly, I could understand why some would call it divine. But what I was humming along to were secular Chinese folk songs, easy to follow and easy to remember. Some tunes reminded me of those songs of the 1980s when the Chinese public had just started to embrace pop music. I presume the hymn was by Xiao Min, a young farm girl from the central province of Henan. Featured in a documentary called The Cross: Jesus in China, which I had seen recently, Xiao Min claimed to be inspired by God and, with no musical training, created and sang hymns while working in the field. She continued to write melodies and lyrics after she was imprisoned. In a matter of a few years, she composed more than 1,200 hymns, which spread all over China. At my friend Wang Yi’s house in Chengdu a few months before, they also sang a hymn by Xiao Min: With tears and laughter, with songs and silence, / We’ve gone through ups and downs, / We’ve walked through the darkest valley, / We’ve climbed upon the highest mountains. / Year after year, the gospel, the salvation, the happiness and the elevation, / Blessings all over China.

  During Li’s hymn singing, I noticed two women and a man merge into the crowd, and one of the women slid in next to me. She was young and had beautiful long dark hair, like those models in shampoo commercials. Her fragrance unsettled me. She smiled and asked to share a hymnbook with me, gesturing to her open mouth, urging me to sing louder.

  During a break between the hymns and the testimonials, I struck up a conversation with the young woman. She said her Christian name was Ruth and revealed she was a preacher and leader of this particular Christian fellowship. She declined to tell me her Chinese name.

  Ruth was dressed like an urban fashionista. She told me she was a member of the Bai ethnic group, that she used to engage in ancestor worship, and bowed to a variety of deities and gods. She had owned a store in the old section of Dali and set up a minialtar for the Taoist god of fortune. She burned incense every day, hoping that her business could prosper. She was married but grew worried when, after several years, she was unable to conceive:

  Ruth: I visited a Buddhist temple, seeking blessings from the Guanyin bodhisattva. But life still didn’t work out the way I wanted. My husband left me. Our family was broken. I totally lost myself. I was in no mood to run the business in Dali. So I came back and moved in with my mother in Ganjia Village. She is a Christian. One day she dragged me to the church. I found myself surrounded by old men and women. It felt very strange to be thrown into that group of senior citizens. It was awkward and comical.

  Soon after that, I took a bus to Xiaguan. During the trip, a rock bounced up from under the wheel and shot through the window. It struck my foot. I screamed with pain. But the other passengers just sat there, like robots. Not a flinch. The bus was as quiet as a pool of water. I was dumbfounded by what had happened. How could it be possible? Was someone trying to send me a signal?

  When I returned from the trip, I was very distracted and couldn’t get over the incident. I went to find my mother, but she wasn’t in her room. On a table, I saw a copy of the Bible, which had never held any interest for me, but I picked it up and flipped it open. The passage I read was Isaiah 54:1: “Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.”

  I was stunned. How could the Lord know that I was barren? Was he encouraging me to keep trying? I was deeply moved. The following Sunday, I went to the church and said my commitment prayer. I felt like I was reborn. I had a new name, from the Bible book of Ruth. She was a brave woman who took on the responsibility of supporting her mother-in-law after her husband died. She gleaned the fields for fallen grain and picked up all sorts of jobs. Eventually, she gained God’s blessings, married another man, and bore a son.

  Soon all my friends began calling me Ruth. I volunteered to work at a school in a poor region deep inside the mountains. The school was sponsored by the church, and I was given three hundred yuan a month to cover food and basic expenses. Living conditions were really harsh. For a while, I wavered in my faith. One morning I woke up feeling awful and depressed. So I covered myself with my quilt and started praying. I asked the Lord to direct me to the right path. I prayed for about ten minutes before I heard someone mumbling something. There was a little girl in the bed next to me, and she seemed to be talking in her sleep: “Take it easy, Ruth. You will be fine.” I woke her up and asked what she was saying. She was still half asleep and didn’t understand my question. I gently raised my voice and said, “You just said something to me. Try to remember it.” The girl sat up, and after a while she remembered her dream. “You were crying. Angels were patting your head with their wings and telling you to take it easy,” she said.

  Ruth’s story was interrupted when a woman sitting next to us signaled for us to hush. Another round of hymn singing was about to begin, and then some of the members gathered that evening would talk about their experiences, an opportunity to pour their hearts out to their Father in heaven. Village women, many of whom were
semiliterate, had long been deprived of the right to speak and did not so much “tell” their stories as perform them, articulating their ideas with eloquence, as if each had been a professional trained actress. Their stories were told with vivid anecdotes. The variation of tone and occasional outbursts of tears enhanced the effect, carrying their performances to a high emotional level. They were true storytellers. I was a meager scribbler compared with their gift.

  Each time a story ended, the audience would respond with “Amen.”

  The fellowship meeting lasted about ninety minutes—an incomparable piece of theater quite unlike anything that might have been staged or contrived. Then came the “curtain call” and everyone stood: “In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” There followed a brief silence before the room began to return to a secular state with eddies of chatter and laughter rising steadily in volume. My mind lingered on the scene that had just ended, turning over in my mind sounds and images. I found my notebook and, taking advantage of the relaxed and open atmosphere to interview the “brethren,” learned that the fellowship group was started by Ruth’s family. Many of her relatives were core members. Growing up in a family with generations of farmers, Ruth was the first to leave the village. Her fifty-nine-year-old mother had been a believer for nine years, and Ruth had joined the church six years before; they were the “veteran” Christians in the village.

  Two of Ruth’s uncles and aunts on her mother’s side had just converted. The elder uncle, in his fifties, worked as a truck driver at a county electric power station. He was baptized at the end of 2008. In the old days, he lived in constant fear because his truck moved in and out of deep valleys and dark tunnels where mudslides and tunnel collapses were frequent, but since his conversion he had found that prayer kept him calm in danger zones and banished his fear. He was thus more energetic.

  The younger uncle was a farmer, quiet and shy. He looked a little over forty. He had only joined the church two months before. The conversion was prompted by a sudden illness. The younger uncle suffered a myriad of illnesses, including gallbladder inflammation caused by stones. The doctor recommended surgery, but that was not an option. “We wouldn’t be able to afford to pay the bill,” he said, “even if we sold everything we had.” Without other alternatives, Ruth’s mother suggested that he turn to Jesus. She believed that faith would assuage her brother’s mental anguish and worries and help heal his physical ailments. For the past two months, he had mixed prayer with an herbal medicine prescribed by a village doctor. His condition improved. Ruth’s mother had yet to persuade her husband to join the church.

  Ruth introduced me to a friend who had brought her daughter along. The woman, in her midthirties, was animated and articulate. It was hard to imagine that this young mother used to be tormented by depression and insomnia, suicidal thoughts, and dependency on medication. “I have gotten rid of my long-term dependency on medicine. I always bring my daughter to the fellowship gathering. I’m putting her under the care of our Immortal Father.”

  Having overheard our conversation, a young woman stepped over, but before she opened her mouth, tears streamed down her cheeks. She began crying uncontrollably, and people around us quietly wiped their own tears. The woman’s husband had been diagnosed with gallbladder cancer. The family had sold everything in the house to pay for his surgery, but it couldn’t save him. He had just passed away. When she calmed down, she apologized and said faith had given her the strength to move on. She pulled a young girl toward us and continued, “My daughter is a fourth-grader. She and I read the Bible together. When she prays, she does a much better job than I do. If her father hears her in heaven, I’m sure he will be so proud.”

  Most women in the fellowship were middle-aged. One gray-haired grandma caught my attention; I thought she might have been a seasoned Christian. Instead, she was a relative newcomer, having joined just three months earlier. She grew up fasting and chanting Buddhist mantras. She worshipped indigenous gods but also attended Christian churches when she was young. Like most Bai people, she was carefree with her worshipping and was prepared to accept anything she felt was useful to her. One day on her way home from the fields, she suffered a stroke and collapsed by the side of the road. Ruth happened upon her and took her to a hospital. Timely treatment saved her life. After the woman recovered, Ruth started preaching the gospel to her. Since the woman was partially deaf, Ruth would raise her voice and shout in her ear. Now, each time the woman’s heart becomes constricted, she clutches her chest and prays and immediately feels better.

  I spent the remaining few minutes with a couple from my native province of Sichuan. We talked in the Sichuan dialect. They both grew up in Anyue County and moved to Dali more than eighteen years earlier. They had been in the marble and granite business. The wife did most of the talking, while the husband kept nodding. When she and her husband first arrived in Dali, they held temporary jobs and worked long hours. When they had saved enough money, they opened their own store selling marble slabs. In their spare time, the wife said, she would play mahjong:

  Wife: Ten years later, I became a mahjong addict and would play whenever I found a spare moment. This shouldn’t surprise you. As you know, Sichuan is probably ranked as the number one mahjong province. Everyone knows how to shuffle mahjong tiles. Mahjong involves gambling. Ordinary folks bet ten or twenty fen for fun. In some circles, the bets are much higher. At the beginning, I didn’t see my addiction as a serious problem. I thought I could kick my habit very easily. I was wrong. I picked up mahjong easily but couldn’t put it down. When I was craving a round of mahjong, it didn’t matter what else I was doing. Nothing would stop me. When I had my first child, I would nurse him with one hand and move the tiles with the other. I lost money big time. Each time I lost, I would go pray at a temple, burning incense, hoping merciful Buddha would grant me some luck so I could win the next time. If I won, I would donate part of the proceeds to the temple.

  I wasn’t well educated, but I was pious. I set up an altar in my home and worshipped the god of fortune and goddess of compassion every day. Even so, my lot never changed. I continued to lose big. My husband tried to talk me out of playing it, but I wouldn’t listen. He became frustrated. Out of anger, he picked up the habit himself and fell into a bottomless pit. With two gamblers in the house, we fell deeply in debt. Sometimes we didn’t even have money to buy food. Even so, we couldn’t escape our addictions. We both ended up getting sick. Many people thought we were hooked on heroin. In truth, it was a type of heroin.

  Luckily, we ran into Ruth, who generously helped us when we had no place to go. I heard a sermon one Friday evening. On the following Sunday, I participated in this fellowship group and was on my knees to make my commitment prayer. I changed my name to Yue Lang—Bright Moon—to mark my rebirth that moonlit evening. When I went home that night, I bundled up the statues on my altar and my mahjong tiles and tossed them into a river. I cleaned the house, inside and out, and was soaked in sweat. It felt good. I had suffered insomnia for four years, but as soon as I fell into bed, I was asleep and slept through to the next morning. When I awoke, I opened the windows and felt the fresh breeze. That was 2005. I have played mahjong just once since then. I couldn’t concentrate. I knew I had sinned. When I got home, I was on my knees, praying, and my husband saw me and asked, “What is this for? Is it worth it?” That night, I dreamed about a cross, shining so brightly it hurt my eyes.

  I have not played since then. Our family situation has changed for the better. I no longer have insomnia. I’m quite healthy. My husband has even given up smoking. I don’t have to beg the Lord for anything. He knows everything. Each time I make some progress, he would reward me with his blessing. I’m going to follow the path of the Lord and seek redemption until I die.

  By eleven o’clock, the Christian brothers and sisters were making their farewells. Since I was the only nonbeliever in the group, people took turns urging me to remove my worries and submit myself to God. The simplicity and sincerity in their offeri
ngs touched me. They believed that faith was a valuable gift, and they wanted to share this spiritual awakening with a guest. At the crossroad, I parted with my friend Li Linshan, who leaned on the shoulder of his wife and walked home, step by step. I watched as he shuffled down the street. I knew the cancer was eating him away, but he made steady progress toward the light of his home.

  Part II

  THE YI AND MIAO VILLAGES

  Chapter 8

  The Doctor

  Darkness in the countryside is truly dark, black-ink dark, when the clouds are out and the moon so new it has yet to be born. I had not seen darkness like it for years. With the chill wind whistling, I felt alone, though I knew my traveling companion was just an arm’s length away. Dr. Sun (I will only use his family name because he wishes to avoid undue attention from the authorities) was taking me, on this dark night, to Fakuai Village in the mountains of Tianxin County in Yunnan province. “Fakuai,” I learned, was slang in the local Yi language for “waist of the mountain,” which was indeed where the village was located, though Dr. Sun was more precise when he explained we were going into the mountain’s “belly button.”

  Dr. Sun, a missionary doctor I had met in 2004, agreed to introduce me to some Christian leaders in the ethnic Yi and Miao villages, where he visited three or four times a year. We had set out early enough, I thought, on December 9, 2005, but it was late in the day when our driver reached the end of the asphalt highway and his van began to shudder as its tires rumbled along a “hard candy” road, made from a mixture of mud and small stones. The driver, teeth now clattering, made no effort to slow down, and the van hurtled forward. Dr. Sun shrugged his shoulders—such was the violent shuddering of the van it was hard to tell—and grinned, “You just get used to it.”