God Is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China by Liao Yiwu, translated by Wen Huang (HarperOne, 2011)
After reading Liao Yiwu's The Corpse Walker, I knew I had to order God Is Red. Being pressed for time Having grandchildren to play with, I'm going to take the lazy way out with this review and quote the dust jacket:
When journalist Liao Yiwu first stumbled upon a vibrant Christian community in the officially secular China, he knew little about Christianity. In fact, he'd been taught that religion was evil, and that those who believed in it were deluded, cultists, or imperialist spies. But as a writer whose work has been banned in China and has even landed him in jail, Liao felt a kinship with Chinese Christians in their unwavering commitment to the freedom of expression and to finding meaning in a tumultuous society.
Unwilling to let his nation lose memory of its past or deny its present, Liao set out to document the untold stories of brave believers whose totalitarian government could not break their faith in God, including:
- The over-100-year-old nun who persevered in spite of beatings, famine, and decades of physical labor, and still fights for the rightful return of church land seized by the government
- The surgeon who gave up a lucrative Communist hospital administrator position to treat villagers for free in the remote, mountainous regions of southwestern China
- The Protestant minister, now memorialized in London's Westminster Abbey, who was executed during the Cultural Revolution as "an incorrigible counterrevolutionary"
This ultimately triumphant tale of a vibrant church thriving against all odds serves as both a powerful conversation about politics and spirituality and a moving tribute to China's valiant shepherds of faith, who prove that a totalitarian government cannot control what is in people's hearts.
Because I can't resist and in order to make this a little more personal, here are a few quotations.
The surgeon's story is particularly interesting.
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 ... 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. ... 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.
Why does this description of the medical problems in Communist China sound just a little too familiar?
I couldn't work [at the big government-run hospital] out of conscience. Say a patient, tortured by illness, sits in front of you, staring at you, hoping you can find a cure for him. What kind of medicine should you prescribe? Many meds do the same thing, but their prices can vary sharply. I would prescribe the cheapest and most effective. But if I continued to do that, the pharmacy and the hospital would be upset because I have undermined their profits, disrupting the cozy deal between pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. When you break hidden rules and harm the collective interests of hospitals and doctors, you find yourself very alienated. ... As a Christian, I have to tell my patients the truth. I cannot lie to get more money out of them.
American television isn't all bad. Who'd have thought M*A*S*H could be an answer to prayer?
I told the minister that I would do [breast cancer surgery] for free, that I had done far more complicated surgery than what was required here, and he needed to trust me. He looked at me in disbelief, as did the villagers gathering around us. I'm not sure which of my assertions they had the most trouble believing.
I wanted to take the woman back with me to Kunming so I could use a proper operating room, but she didn't want to leave her home. That night, I knelt and prayed, and as I was praying, an old American TV show popped into my mind—a team of cheerful doctors doing surgery while cracking jokes, a mobile army hospital, tents in an open field, the war in Korea. ... I felt inspired. The next day, I bought some basic surgical instruments to supplement the ones I carried with me, and we did the operation in her bedroom. Her bed was a wooden plank; no table necessary. ... The room was very dark; even after we opened all the windows, it was still pretty bad. I tied four flashlights together and had the grandpa hold them as operating lights. That grandpa was strong and in great health. He stood there for hours without moving, holding the light steady. ... It was a sweet feeling to be there with the poor villagers and to do God's work, though I never thought I'd ever have to perform surgery in quite those conditions.
From another man's story of life under Chairman Mao, evidence that if some of China's ills aren't that far from ours, some are almost unimaginable.
You are too young to understand what it was like. We were treated much worse than animals. People would torture us whenever they felt like it. During the peak of the campaign, the government work teams fanned the sentiment of hatred. Even the nicest and kindest peasants began to wave their fists and slap or kick us. Toward the end, revolutionary peasants didn't need a reason to kill a landlord. At public denunciation meetings, people became carried away with their emotions and would drag someone out and shoot him on the spot. ... Nobody questioned this ruthless practice or took responsibility. ... The work-team members didn't dare ignore the voice of the people. Once people became brainwashed by Communist ideology and by Mao's propaganda, their thinking became chaotic. All humanity was lost. At its peak, even the work team found it hard to rein in the fanaticism.
Let me explain. In this area, it was rare to find anyone who was not addicted to opium or gambling. Only those who had embraced God had the stamina to kick their habits. When I was a kid, I remember that people in this area didn't grow crops. Instead, they grew poppies. ... They also gambled heavily. This was a very strange phenomenon. People's wealth switched hands very quickly. In the afternoon, the person might be a rich landowner. By evening he was homeless, having gambled everything away—his land, his house, even his wife.
When the Communists came, they banned opium smoking and gambling, and they banned Christianity. Apart from working in the fields, people didn't have anything else to do in the evenings. Political campaigns turned into a form of entertainment. They devoted all their extra energy to beating up people, killing people, and confiscating the property of others. Those homeless drug addicts and gamblers suddenly became loyal revolutionary allies. They didn't have to pay off their debts; their gambling and drug habits, their poverty, the practice of pawning their wives and children for drug money, their homelessness, everything was the fault of landlords exploiting poor revolutionaries.
Poverty became a badge of honor, and the children of the poor became the offspring of the true proletariat. They felt superior to everyone else and were well fed and clothed. They didn't even have to take any responsibility when killing someone at public denunciation meetings. That was more fun than smoking opium and gambling, don't you think?
The Communist Party's policies might have been well meant, but the people who implemented them took a lot of liberties and interpreted them in their own way. Random killing was quite liberating.
The stories of those whose faith saw them through the impossible years is humbling and inspiring. As in The Corpse Walker, Liao Yiwu is careful to place more blame on past administrations than present, but he does give a glimpse into the struggles of the modern Church in China, including the friction between the official, state-controlled churches and the house church movement. Perhaps the attitude of this new convert is also eerily familiar.
[T]hree religions are practiced in our home. Everyone does his or her own stuff. Why can't they form a uniform family religion so we don't have to fight all the time? It's kind of strange. As a kid, I would go with my dad to Buddhist temples and mimic the gestures and facial expressions of the Buddhist statues. ... When I was with my mom, I would attend services at an old church. People sang hymns. It was kind of grand and cool.
I prefer Christianity. Buddhism is too regional, secular, and not cool. Those old men and women, those wealthy businessmen or government officials, go to the temples, burning incense and praying for trivial stuff, such as more money, more promotions, and more luck. Taoism is way too highbrow, not attainable. I think Christianity is the only one that's all encompassing. ...
People in your age group are too political. You guys are too interested in politics. It's different with my generation. Sometimes it bothers me. I attended a house church one time. When we were reading the Bible, a minister or a church elder suddenly stood up. Without getting everyone's approval, he started to deliver a political statement and then asked eveyrone to pray for so-and-so who had died for the Lord, and then so-and-so who had been arrested by the government. He also asked us to pray for the sins of the government. He totally changed the mood of the gathering, making it depressing and tragic. Several members started to cry after hearing his political plea. I guess I was too young and didn't have that much experience. I felt awkward. I thought, Why don't we let God do God's work and Caesar do Caesar's? Why do we always mix the two? The government wants to politicize religion, and some Christians are doing the same thing. These things kill my spiritual appetite.
