God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [65]
He wanted Wenli’s help with a publication for Beijing’s house-church members and, warming to me, talked about the concept of salvation through God. I knew little about Christianity at the time. I was not really interested in what he had to say. Deep down I rejected his proselytizing. In the end I said, “I don’t go to the church.” He laughed, “I don’t go to the church either . . . they are all government controlled.”
Four months later, after returning to Sichuan, I learned that Wenli was given a thirteen-year prison sentence for establishing an opposition party in China. I further learned that just before Wenli’s arrest, Yonghai helped remove the handwritten manuscript of my book My Testimonials, which I had hidden at Wenli’s house, and it was now in a safer place.
Yonghai and I talked a few times over the telephone until I discovered, in 2002, that his phone had been disconnected. I sent out feelers for his contact information and discovered that the neurologist was a preacher and leader in Beijing’s “house churches.” After his home was targeted for demolition by a private developer, Yonghai led a residents’ protest against unfair treatment, but their numerous petitions to the government for help were ignored. After his house was reduced to rubble, he considered suicide as a way to make a statement but was dissuaded by fellow Christians. I was told he had quit his medical practice and dedicated himself to following the path of God. In 2004 I read a report saying that Yonghai and another Christian, Liu Fenggang, were arrested while preaching the gospel in Zhejiang province. The government blocked any information on his whereabouts or his health. Occasionally, I would see online postings by his nurse wife, Li Shanna, who called on fellow Christians to pray for the safety of her husband. Yonghai spent three years in prison.
Curious about Yonghai’s story, I decided I needed to interview a “house church” Christian to understand more of what drives them to reject the government-sanctioned alternative. I was back in Beijing in February 2004, when a preacher friend, Liu Min, called to say she had a telephone number for me if I wanted to talk to Yuan Xiangchen, a respected figure in the Christian community in Beijing. I got through to his eighty-six-year-old wife, and she agreed to meet me. I jotted down the address and instructions on how to get there by subway. Excited at this rare opportunity to talk with a Christian couple whose lives spanned much of the twentieth century, I invited a documentary maker from Taiwan, who went by the name of Ms. Wen and has made several films about social issues in her homeland, to join me.
A week later, the three of us met at the Xuanwumen subway station. Waves of dusty, cold wind from the tall gray buildings lashed at our faces relentlessly. We all flinched and instinctively clutched our hands to our chests. Before heading downstairs to the train platforms, Liu Min spotted a Catholic church on the side of the road, the pale winter sun painting a layer of gold on the cross that stood high above the church steeple. Liu suggested we go for a quick visit. Inside the spacious prayer hall, Liu knelt down on the floor for a short prayer.
We boarded the subway and got off at the Yangqiao Hospital. Liu Min, a Beijing native who was supposed to be our guide, got lost, so it took another half hour to reach our destination.
“We want to visit Uncle Yuan,” Liu Min told the security guard at the building we managed to find with the help of passing strangers. “He lives on the second floor.”
“Who are you?” the guard asked, but Liu Min ignored him as she hit the