God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [21]
The Old City Protestant Church, or “Fuyintang,” was built in 1905. Occupying more than three hundred square meters, Fuyintang is architecturally mixed—Bai ethnic residential meets European gothic. Its facade is exposed stone, and a cross painted in red stands prominently atop a traditional Chinese roof tower that resembles an eagle flapping in flight. Old courtyard houses and Bai buildings in the vicinity are dwarfed by its presence.
The chapel was empty when I called on the afternoon of August 11, 2009, with my monk friend Ze Yu. We stepped out and turned into a small quiet lane near the chapel. Based on the address provided by the church staff, we knocked on the door of a small courtyard house. An elderly lady with gray hair popped her head out, looking stern and annoyed. When she heard we were friends of the church, she mulled it over for a few seconds and led us to a spartanly furnished house, inside of which were hung crosses and scrolls of Bible proverbs and a family portrait I took to be of Wu and his wife, Zhang Fengxiang (the gray-haired lady), and their offspring—some twenty in total.
Wu Yongsheng was born in 1924. An elder at the Dali Old City Protestant Church, he was highly respected in the Christian community. Three months before our visit, he had a stroke and fell. He received timely treatment and, though his movement was impaired and he walked with a cane, had retained all his faculties and was articulate, his mind lucid. He presented me with a copy of the Book of Psalms. I accepted it, saying that I would “study up on it.” Wu corrected me, saying, “You should use it as a mirror to confess your sins and reform.” He urged monk Ze to abdicate his pursuit of enlightenment through Buddha and look to Jesus for salvation. Ze responded with a smile.
During our interview, Wu was guarded, even evasive, when I asked about his views on the past political campaigns, though the reason for his reluctance to discuss such questions became clear toward the end of our visit.
Wu Yongsheng: I was born in the provincial capital of Kunming. In 1937, when I was finishing up elementary school, my mother’s younger brother returned to Kunming from Dali and told me to quit school. “The whole country is in chaos,” he said. “Disasters are imminent. What’s the point of attending school?” This uncle asked me to apprentice with him and become a carpenter. Even though the war [with Japan] had not officially started, you could feel it. There were sirens all the time. Food prices went up dramatically and people hoarded goods. Our family lived in constant fear. My uncle’s offer made my parents happy, and I returned with him to Dali on an old-style bus that carried both people and merchandise. We spent four days on a road that was paved with rocks as big as potatoes. It was such a bumpy ride. I felt like my whole body was falling apart. Nowadays, when you come from Kunming, it takes half a day.
Liao Yiwu: Did your uncle have his own business in Dali?
Wu: Yes. He ran his own shop in Dali’s old section. As an apprentice, at first I only helped him with some simple errands. He was a Christian and knew many foreign missionaries in town. Each time they needed some work done, they would look for him. He treated me as his own child and took me to Sunday services every week. Soon, I learned the Bible and knew how to sing hymns. In 1940, an American couple arrived in Dali.
Liao: Do you remember their names?
Wu: Let me see . . . Mr. and Mrs. Harold Taylor. They rented a small courtyard house on Foreigner Street. They put up a sign on their door. It said “The Christian Church.” They asked us to renovate the house. During the renovation, we lived on the second floor. The Taylors would leave the house in the morning and come back late at night. They treated us very nicely. They requested that we say a prayer or read the Bible before starting work