God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [52]
Liao: Do you feel bitter about the past?
Wang: No, I don’t feel bitter. As Christians, we forgive the sinner and move on to the future. We are grateful for what we have today. There is so much for us to do. In the mid-1960s, when my father was preaching, there were 2,795 Christians in Wuding County. In 1980, after he was “rehabilitated” by the Communist Party, the number of Christians in Wuding had grown to twelve thousand, and we now have about thirty thousand. In our society today, people’s minds are entangled and chaotic. They need the words of the gospel now more than at any other time.
Chapter 10
The Elder (II)
On the last day of 2005, Dr. Sun and I left Luquan County and boarded a bus for Zehei County. A heavy fog had just lifted, and the lush vegetation on the hills was refreshing to the eye. Our bus crawled along on a narrow winding road high in the mountains, the sort of road that meandered between a deep ravine and steep cliffs. Dr. Sun said a bus laden with twenty passengers, their bags, and animals had slid into the deep ravine a few weeks before.
In the distance, a bright red dot could be seen in a fold of snow-capped Jiaozi Snow Mountain. As we moved closer, the dot evolved into a cross, a Christian cross, fixed atop a white church towering five stories over an otherwise depressing little town in Zehei County.
“Many Yi and Miao people live here,” Dr. Sun said, as we wandered empty streets, watched by residents sitting or standing beneath the eaves of their seemingly identical little homes. “A lot of them are followers of Jesus.”
Dr. Sun led me to one of two shops on the ground level of the church—it was a pharmacy he helped set up to serve the local residents—and made a phone call. A few minutes later, a motorbike clattered toward us, and its rider, a sun-darkened youth, gathered up our bags onto the seat behind him, and we followed him to the upper village. Dr. Sun explained that the middle village was mostly shops and small businesses; most residents lived in either the upper or lower villages, which opened out onto farmland.
We walked on paths of red dirt. On one old wall had been daubed in now-faded red paint, “All ethnic groups are treated equally.” I was told it was a slogan from the 1930s and left by the passing Communist army, which was on the run from the Nationalist troops. We turned into a courtyard, and there an old couple, smiles spreading their wrinkled faces, greeted us. The man was the most venerated Christian elder in Zehei County, Zhang Yingrong, and the woman, his wife, Li Guizhi.
Zhang Yingrong: I was born in 1922, though I don’t know the exact date because I lost my mother when I was five and my father couldn’t remember. He was a church elder and devoted his life to the Lord. I became a Christian at a young age, but I didn’t really understand what that meant; I read the Bible because my parents wanted me to. But at the age of sixteen, two foreign Christians came to preach in the region. I took part in a service and, with my friends, took part in a three-week Bible study camp. My heart was touched. I confessed my past sins to the Lord and committed myself to the Christian faith. My church at Salaowu recommended me for a Bible school attended by students from every ethnic group in the region—the Han, the Yi, the Lisu, the Gan, and the Dai. I studied there for three years.
Liao Yiwu: We visited the site of the Southwestern Theology Seminary founded by two missionaries who died there more than half a century ago. Did you know them?
Zhang: Yes. The man came from Australia. He was in his fifties at that time. His Chinese name was Zhang Erchang. His wife was a Canadian. I can’t remember her name now. Reverend Zheng Kaiyuan from Britain was another founder. He used to run a religious school in Sichuan province. After Japan invaded northern China, he came over to Yunnan and helped found the seminary. Several months later, they