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By Root 312 0

such cases, especially baby girls. They were abandoned by the side of the mountain path or on the beach. Lucky ones were picked up by passersby, but many became the victims of wild animals, like dogs. For baby boys, if they were born with deformities or illness, they were subject to the same fate as girls. When nuns saw an abandoned baby outside, they would bring her to the priest or bishop who knew Western medicine. If the baby had been left out for a short time, there was hope. Those who had been left outside for a long time, their arms or legs would have been ripped apart by wild animals. The chances for survival were quite small. When a baby died, we would say prayers and then bury him or her in the Catholic cemetery. It’s on the south side of Wuliqiao Village, the one that has been destroyed.

Liao: I visited the cemetery. It’s a cornfield now.

Zhang: Actually, there used to be two cemeteries there, one for the Catholics and the other for Protestants. The two were located next to each other. Both have been destroyed now. We can’t even get the land back from the government. Many local Catholics were buried down there. So were the abandoned children we weren’t able to save. Those poor babies! We would hold a simple ceremony and give them a proper burial. In the cemeteries, we set up grave markers for everyone, whether you were a bishop, a priest, a nun, a monk, a parishioner, or an abandoned baby. On their tombstones, you would find inscriptions of their names, dates of birth and death, that sort of thing.

Liao: How would you find out the names of those abandoned babies?

Zhang: If it wasn’t with the baby, the nun who found it would come up with a name, be it Chinese or French. Then we would list when and where we found her.

By the 1940s, our church had adopted more than two hundred orphans. The majority of nuns became full-time nannies. Those who had medical training turned themselves into pediatricians. My job was to work in the kitchen, heating up milk, cooking rice congee. Sometimes, we would have four or five abandoned babies brought in on one day. They were so hungry. I think a couple of the former orphans still live around here. They’d be in their seventies or eighties now. But despite the changing political environment, they still won’t admit their relations with the church.

Liao: Why is that?

Zhang: They renounced the church during the Cultural Revolution, afraid they would be accused of colluding with foreign imperialists. Even now, despite the situation having made a turn for the better over the past decade, they are probably still afraid of being persecuted.

Looking back on the first half of my life, I was truly happy. Every day, the church would be hustle-bustling with people. In the fall, when the breezes blew the leaves off the trees—dear God—the ground was covered with a layer of gold. During prayers or Mass, the church was packed with parishioners, but at other times this whole yard was quiet, a place of happy tranquility. In the old days, our church was big, and I was so busy every day that my back hurt all the time. My favorite job was to clean the inside of the church, dusting the altar, the pews, and the statues. We had over a dozen priests from France, Switzerland, and Belgium. If I did something wrong, they would tease me by saying: “As punishment, you need to sing three hymns—solo.” They would join me, and we would have a hymn-singing contest.

Liao: What about the second half of your life?

Zhang: In August 1949, on the eve of the Communist takeover, a Swedish priest, Father Maurice Toruay—I can’t believe I still remember his name—traveled to the Cizhong region [near Tibet] to preach the gospel. He was shot and killed. The news hit us hard. It was like hearing the sinister caws of dark ravens. We could sense the danger lurking ahead of us. We all knelt and prayed for protection in the new era. During a special Mass, we braced ourselves for the suffering we knew would come. We were ready to follow the steps of Father Toruay and sacrifice our lives if necessary to glorify the work of the Lord.