God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [7]
We ate in a Muslim halal restaurant. A painting of pilgrims in Mecca hung in the main serving hall. We ordered beef and lamb while Monk Ze extolled its range of vegetarian dishes. As we chatted, we talked about “Charter 08,” the manifesto to promote political reforms and human rights in China, of which he is a signatory. I saluted his courage but wondered whether a monk shouldn’t stay out of politics. His happy face became earnest: “Without democracy, Buddhism won’t survive here.”
As we walked off lunch in the old city, Ze pointed out little details, missed by the average tourist, that brought to life Dali’s thousand years of history. The old city was small by Chinese standards—only three or four kilometers from one end to the other, with a permanent population of thirty to forty thousand. But concentrated here were worshippers of many gods and deities. The indigenous Bai people venerated thousands of them in their temples, from the legendary Dragon King of the Eastern China Sea and the Queen Mother of Heaven to ancient emperors and warriors. He showed us Muslim mosques and Buddhist temples and Christian churches, both Catholic and Protestant. Less conspicuous, he said, were the practitioners of Bahá’í and Falun Gong, who used their homes, as did those Christians who refused to recognize government-sanctioned churches.
Since it was the Christians who had stirred my curiosity, Ze wanted to show me a well-known cemetery for Western missionaries who had journeyed into China more than a century before. He believed I might learn something. And so, a few days later, after much walking along mountain paths and several bus rides, Ze and I reached Wuliqiao Village. After more walking, mostly uphill, we stood under a blazing sun at the edge of a cemetery. “Here?” I asked, but Ze shook his head. This, he said, was for Muslims, primarily ethnic Hui. I knew about the Muslim rebellion against Chinese rule in the mid-nineteenth century and the violence that swept Dali. Many Han and Bai were slaughtered. The Qing emperor sent troops and brutally suppressed the Muslim uprising with thousands of casualties. The cemetery was bounded by a stone wall. “Only Muslim ghosts are allowed in here,” Ze said. With suppression of the Muslim rebellion came a period of calm, and it was during the lull that missionaries from, among others, the China Inland Mission, poured into the area.
“We are close,” Ze said and kept walking. After about three hundred more meters the road dead-ended in thick waist-deep cannabis plants and fragrant herbs. We found a side path that led to a tall ridge, and from that vantage point Ze swept his arm to take in five plots of corn in the middle of which stood an excavator, its metallic arm convulsing like the leg of a giant cockroach. “There,” he said, “is the missionary cemetery.”
We zigzagged our way down on a steep path, arms outstretched like birds to keep our balance, but I could yet see no sign of a cemetery. The excavator lifted its arm and struck the earth, lift and strike, lift, strike. “Are they renovating the cemetery?” I asked. Ze gave me a cynical laugh. “You may wish. They are extracting the headstones. High quality rock, much sought after by property developers.” As I looked down at the uneven ground beneath my feet, I could see broken and jagged pieces of stone and, as I focused on the pieces, groups of letters from the Roman alphabet and then whole words, in English, and crosses.
We found the foundations of the cemetery wall and managed to pace out two equal