God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [38]
Liao: You were young and had a bright future.
Sun: A critical skill of an ER surgeon is to diagnose fast and accurately, and then act. You can’t play games. But as an administrator, none of the skills I had acquired applied. They played by a different set of rules. In my leadership position, I initiated some reform measures. The school assigned me a Santana car, but I asked the authorities to sell it and spend the money on the hospital. I rode my bike to work every day. I abolished the traditional big staff banquets during holidays and banned the use of public money for eating and drinking. I also tightened up on reimbursing expenses. All of those measures hurt the interests of other leaders; they hated my guts and conspired against me. It was very frustrating and depressing. In early 1990 our college invited some foreign teachers and students to teach and study there. It was through them that I got hold of a Bible. I was examining my life at that time. I felt extremely frustrated with my work as a deputy dean. The Bible taught me to be in awe of God and to love, two important qualities that the Chinese people lacked. Too many Chinese will do anything for trivial material gains and have no regard for morality, ethics, or the law. How do we change that? Can we rely on the Communist Party? Can we rely on government rules and regulations? Apparently not.
In September 1990 I participated in a prayer session at a foreign student’s dorm. It was the first time I ever prayed. I saw several Chinese students there. I began to attend Sunday Mass at private homes and gradually formed the habit of praying before bed every night, reflecting on what I had done that day and how I might do better. In the winter of 1991 I went on vacation to Xishuangbanna. It happened to be Christmas. While I was attending a Christmas celebration at a Christian’s home, my heart was touched in a way it had never been touched before. With the help of a missionary from Germany, I was baptized.
Liao: Could you be both a Christian and a government official?
Sun: I felt I had to make a choice, but that choice was largely made for me. One of the students at my first private prayer session ratted on me. In 1997, my boss came to me with an application form for membership in the Communist Party. He told me that by joining the Party, I would be able to dispel the “rumors” about my association with the Christian movement, that I had been in the system for many years and had established myself in the medical field, and that it was a minor concession that would open a lot of doors for me.
I told him I could not fill out the application form. I said, “What you heard are not rumors. It is true.” My boss was shocked and pretended not to have heard what I said. “I believe in Jesus Christ,” I said. “I have already made my choice, and this is the only choice.”
He was tremendously upset. “You are a Communist official. You enjoy the salary and the benefits of a Communist official, yet you believe in Jesus Christ. What can you do with Jesus? Can he provide you with food and clothing?”
I looked him in the eye and said, quite deliberately: “I am quitting now. I need to save my soul.”
The hospital relieved me of all my duties, and I had to leave the medical school. Soon after, Jinghong Hospital in Xishuangbanna hired me, but it didn’t work out. I tried the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and eventually landed in Thailand where I traveled to the beautiful northern city of Chiang Mai. I was recruited as a volunteer by a hospital sponsored by an international humanitarian organization and went to a poor mountain region in Myanmar, which was ravaged by war, epidemic diseases, and poverty. There were poppy plants everywhere and gun-toting guerrillas, who looked more like bandits. I heard shooting sometimes. The “hospital” was several sheds with thatched roofs in the middle of a forest, but it had some highly skilled doctors, many of them from the West, who came on rotation.