• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 293 0

when we arrived. I remember the sun was setting behind the hills. There must have been about a hundred villagers surrounding the patient’s dark thatched house. A red casket was outside the door, its cover wide open. It was quite spooky. The patient was coughing blood; there were bloodstains everywhere. He seemed to be on the verge of death. His family members told me that he had lung cancer and showed me his X rays. The patient was quite lucid. I gave him an injection to stop the bleeding and asked him for the history of his illness. After an examination, I was sure it was not cancer, but tuberculosis, still quite serious. I didn’t have any TB meds with me. The next morning I set out with the patient’s two daughters for Kunming, which we reached midafternoon, and sent them back with some medicine and instructions on correct dosage. When I called three days later, the casket was gone from his door and his condition was improving. A checkup three weeks later confirmed he was making a speedy recovery.

Liao: You wander around the rural areas, providing these services to people. How do you support yourself financially? Do you charge people for treatment?

Sun: In the first two years, a church organization in the United States provided some financial support so I could do my charity work. I developed a close friendship with a young woman at that organization. Later, her boss changed his mind and stopped the financial aid. But I put my trust in God. I don’t have a lot of expenses. The only money I need is for bus or train fares. When I travel from village to village, I stay at the homes of local peasants who feed me a bowl of rice and beans.

Liao: But that’s not really a long-term plan.

Sun: People are really kind. Some peasants insist on paying for treatment—ten or twenty yuan. Those requiring more complex treatment offer two hundred to three hundred yuan. I have some contacts willing to let me pay wholesale for meds, and the money the peasants give me covers those costs. In the past two years, some doctors abroad have learned about me and are interested in what I do. They contribute medicines, and the two Chinese American doctors have rented a place in Kunming to use when they are here; I look after their patients when they are in the United States.

Liao: I stayed at their office once.

Sun: The place can accommodate six people at a time. There are enough doctors in big cities. I think I’m going to spend the rest of my life here. It fits me perfectly.

Epilogue

In 2009 Dr. Sun caught the attention of Yunnan government officials, who accused him of harboring “ulterior motives” by treating the poor for free and subsequently banned his medical mission in Yunnan. Meanwhile, after Liao published Dr. Sun’s story on an overseas Chinese website, he received an invitation from a Chinese church in the United States to talk about his work. He arrived in the United States in 2009 but has not been allowed to return to China. He now resides in California, trying to improve his English skills and seek missionary opportunities in Africa.

Chapter 9

The Martyr

Above the Great West Door to Westminster Abbey in central London stand ten statues recognizing Christian martyrs of the twentieth century from around the globe. One of those statues is of Wang Zhiming, who lived and preached in Wuding County in China’s Yunnan province and served the ethnic Miao. Arrested in 1969 for his religious work, he was executed in 1973. He was sixty-six years old. Wang Zhiming’s story was well known within the Christian community in Yunnan, but outside the circle most Chinese have never heard of him. His family members, many of whom have continued his cause, rarely talk to the mainstream media.

I first heard of Wang Zhiming in December 2005, when I was traveling in Yunnan with Dr. Sun, who was an acquaintance of Wang Zhiming’s son, a well-known Christian leader. I tracked him down in January 2007.

The church in Xiachangchong Village, Gaoqiao Township, is an impeccable white, with a pink roof, and reminded me of a magic castle against the backdrop