God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [19]
Liao: Are there many Christians in Tibet?
Jia: No. I think there are only about seven hundred or so. In Cizhong, the Catholic missionaries were the first to arrive, but as travel has become easier the Protestant churches have also been expanding. In recent years, Cizhong has become a popular destination for tourists from France, America, Britain, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and New Zealand. On their way to climb the Meili Snow Mountain, many stop and worship at the Cizhong church.
Liao: Have you heard any stories about early Western missionaries in the region?
Jia: Yes. I’ve seen their tombstones. Some of them were damaged during the Cultural Revolution, but now they have been restored and are protected. I’ve also seen trees planted by foreign missionaries at the beginning of the last century. The missionaries picked mountain slopes that faced the sun to plant grapes. We call them “rose honey.” They have a strong, thick, and sweet taste. They are part of an ancient variety in France. The missionaries brought winemaking techniques to the region.
Liao: I have tasted rose-honey wine. It is red and mild.
Jia: It doesn’t scratch your throat like barley wine does. The French missionaries originally intended it just for Holy Communion. But after they had settled in our village and built a church there, people easily overcame cultural difference and treated them like family. The Tibetans would offer highland barley wine to their French friends, who offered their red rose-honey wine in return. Tibetan traders and farmers would go to the church not to pray or sing hymns—they were still Buddhists—but to visit their French friends and drink wine with them. I’m told that sometimes a local farmer would enjoy too many glasses of wine and the priests would find him a bed to sleep it off.
During harvest seasons, the French priests would bring their wine to the barley field and help farmers with harvesting and planting. They also tried to teach them how to sing hymns. You know, Tibetans are good at bellowing out loud mountain tunes. They open their mouths and howl. The priest would stop them, saying: “Amen; God bless your voice. But you don’t have to howl. God is not deaf. He can hear you.” The French priests made lots of adjustments to the hymns. Nowadays, psalms are sung with Tibetan highland melodies. Sunday Mass will sometimes feature a dance around a bonfire. Christmas is celebrated with dancing around bonfires.
Relations between local Tibetans and foreign missionaries have not always been easy though. We Tibetans suffered deeply, sometimes ravaged by war, other times by pandemics, at times both war and pandemics.
I was told that in my great-great-grandfather’s time, the region was hit by a severe drought. For several consecutive years, there was no rain or snow. The riverbed lay exposed. Goats and cattle died of starvation because there was no grass to feed them. Crops withered to sticks. People’s lives were in danger. The lamas chanted and prayed for rain. It didn’t help. People burned incense to local gods and deities. Nothing. Some Tibetans began to vent their frustrations on the foreign missionaries. Some claimed that Tibetans had offended their ancestors because they had invited foreigners to their villages and allowed them to change their faith. In one area, local villagers surrounded a church and captured the lone priest. They tied him up and carried him up to the mountains where they planned to sacrifice him to their ancestors. When the knife fell on the priest’s neck, his head turned into a piece of blue rock. From his neck spurted not blood but milk, which streamed down the mountain and into the village. Everyone hastened out. They jumped into the stream to drink the nurturing liquid. Just like that, the blighted land was rejuvenated. People were grateful and carried the priest’s body down the mountain and buried him at the back of his church. Ever since, they