God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [14]
Liao: What was it like living in the village?
Zhang: The village put us in a stone house with two rooms, which were very drafty. It was more like a pigsty than a house. The new life was really hard for Bishop Liu and my aunt; they were both quite old. I was relatively young. So I went to the village leader and asked for pots and pans, some grain, and bedding. He made me sign a piece of paper, saying I would pay them back after I earned enough money.
What followed was hard labor. The farmwork wasn’t that difficult, but you had to have enough physical strength. I did most of the farming. My aunt and Bishop Liu assisted me. When there were no public denunciation meetings, we were allowed to live our life quietly. The village lent us an ox so we could plow the field. We also raised pigs and chickens and grew vegetables. We pickled surplus vegetables and would sell them, and eggs, at the local market. With the money we got, we bought vegetable oil, soy sauce, that sort of thing. Life was hard, but we got by, and soon we could breathe a little more easily.
Liao: Then, of course, came the Great Leap Forward . . .
Zhang: We all went up on the mountains to cut down trees to fuel the backyard furnaces making iron and steel. We were all told that if we worked hard, China could become an industrialized nation in two to three years. In the village, we had to hand over everything, including our cooking utensils. But nobody took care of the crops. Famine arrived. So many people died—it was really, really horrible. We lived on thin corn broth, almost as clear as plain water. Under the sun, you could see its reflection at the bottom of the bowl; it looked like an egg yolk. Bishop Liu used to joke that a drawing of an egg was better than no egg at all, and my aunt would cup the bowl in her hand and say, seriously, “We are eating the sunny egg broth offered by the Lord. I’m sure the broth in this bowl has more nutrients.”
Pretty soon, there was nothing left. We had to search for food in the mountains. We looked for wild vegetables, grass roots, moss, even tree bark. Some of the villagers were so desperate, they dug up dead bodies and feasted on the flesh. Even Buddhist monks hunted and ate rats. Let me tell you, there was chaos everywhere. Had the famine lasted much longer, I’m sure the villagers would have eaten us. Thank the Lord we survived.
We prayed—on the road, climbing a hill, at home. We had all spent many years reading the Bible, and God’s words were etched, stroke by stroke, on my mind and in my heart. No matter how hard the government tried, those words couldn’t be erased. When we felt dizzy from hunger, we never asked for help, because they couldn’t even save themselves. We prayed that the Lord would grant us peace.
One day, I joined other villagers combing an area in the mountains for food. Almost half a day had gone and I hadn’t found anything. I was exhausted and fell to ground and could not get up again. That’s when I noticed some colorful wild mushrooms near me. Those were the poisonous ones that nobody dared to touch. Hunger weakened my will and judgment. I snatched the mushrooms and put them into my mouth. I grew up in the region and knew the terrible consequences of swallowing poisonous mushrooms. Oh well, if I had to choose between death from hunger and death from poisoning . . . I simply picked the latter and prayed for God’s forgiveness. Several minutes later, I had a severe stomachache. I poked my fingers deep down in my throat, hoping I could throw