27

The Chinese Road Trip

Arriving in the next city, I noticed a man who motioned to me. At least I thought that he had motioned to me. His movements were so subtle that I couldn’t be sure. He glanced my way a couple of times and seemed to be marking my progress as I walked down a row of parked vehicles. Other than his slight attention to my presence, he showed no signs of welcome or recognition. None of the other men standing around him even turned their heads in my direction. I concluded that maybe they were waiting for someone else.

Now I wasn’t so sure that the man had motioned to me at all.

There in the airport, I didn’t feel that I was in danger. All of a sudden, however, I felt unsettled and wondered if there would be a problem finding my contact.

I had just landed in another major Chinese city with a name that I couldn’t begin to pronounce or spell. I likely wouldn’t recognize the name of the city on a map today. I didn’t know a single person there, and I didn’t even know who had been sent to find me. It dawned on me then that no one in the world knew where I was at that particular moment. And I am not sure that I even knew.

Even worse, I didn’t even know how to make contact with Ruth or anyone else in the States. I guessed that I would have been welcome in a local house church, but a local house church would have been difficult to find. On the other hand, I realized that in a country of 1.3 billion people, I was unlikely to be alone for long.

I worked up the courage to approach the men clustered beside the van. I wasn’t exactly wary, but I was certainly curious and filled with anticipation.

The man that I had first noticed finally turned to acknowledge my presence. “Dr. Ripken?” he asked quietly. The other men slipped around to the side of the van, opened its doors, and began to climb in. I thought, “Surely this must be the contact that David arranged. Who else could possibly know my name?” I decided not to press the matter any further. At this point, there was no turning back.

I nodded and offered my hand. The man nodded and gave me a polite smile. We shook hands briefly as he introduced himself. He did a quick visual survey of the parking lot, and then reached for my bag. “I will hand this back to you after you get in,” he told me as he gestured toward the still-open side door of the van. “The rear seat will be yours.”

The other passengers now smiled a warm welcome as I stepped up into the van. We all shook hands and introduced ourselves as I slowly wedged my way past them toward the rear bench seat of a twelve-passenger van. The men seemed friendly enough now. I was still hoping that they weren’t secret police.

My bag got back to me about the same time I found my seat. Even then, I still wasn’t sure whether or not I was among friends. I felt much better seconds later when the leader of the group slid into the driver’s seat holding a cell phone to his ear. I heard him say, “Our visitor has arrived. I picked up all the others first. We are pulling out of location number two now and should arrive at location number eleven at time number seven.” It was the same basic house-church security protocol that I had encountered before. I began to breathe a little easier.

My sense of calm did not last long, however. The driver turned back toward me and, in a rather apologetic tone, said: “We have an eighteen-hour drive before we reach our destination tomorrow. You will need to lie down and stay out of sight. We cannot afford to have the authorities see you. While we travel, you can rest and even sleep if you like.”

“Okay,” I responded as cheerily as possible. I tried to nestle down into the least uncomfortable position I could find as we pulled out of the parking lot. I couldn’t help thinking, “Good grief! Eighteen hours slumped down in the back seat through a lot of China that I’m not going to see sounds like a miserable road trip!”

When I had last talked with David Chen, he had promised that he would be waiting for me at my next destination. He had also told me that my next destination would be very different from the big cities where I had already been. He had said that it would be “very rural, but also a very scenic part of China.”

It looks like I’ll have to take David’s word on that, I thought. Crammed into the back seat, I managed to see only the sky and the tops of the buildings, light poles and trees that we passed. Those partial clues, combined with the feel of the pavement beneath us, the blare of horns and other traffic sounds outside, plus our plodding, stop-and-go pace, told me we were still in the city. But that was about all I knew.

Ordinarily I would have used this travel time to get to know some of my fellow passengers. Under the circumstances, however, any substantive conversation was obviously going to have to wait. Mostly, I spent the time thinking.

I thought about the places that I had been in China. I tried to picture in my mind the face of every believer I had met and interviewed. Already, there were too many to remember.

My China trip had already been the most grueling travel experience of my life. And I had come to a few new and unanticipated conclusions regarding culture shock. Perhaps these truths should have already been obvious, but I was learning them day by day. First, the greater the differences between cultures, the more culture shock a traveler must endure. And, second, the greater the culture shock, the greater the energy that is required just to make it through each day.

Again, those conclusions might seem obvious. But in all my travels I had never experienced the culture shock that I experienced in China. I had spent time in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, and many other places—but China seemed like a different world to me.

Even with my experience and aptitude for languages, I could seldom pick out and understand any spoken words. The words and symbols of directional signs, advertisements on buildings, newspaper headlines, and even menus were indecipherable to me. I had always enjoyed a wide variety of ethnic foods. On this trip, however, I had eaten foods that I couldn’t recognize by sight, smell, taste, or texture.

So many personal adjustments had to be made—and the need for adjustment seemed so constant—that each day seemed to last forever. The physical toll was immense. At the same time, I was so overwhelmed and excited by what I was seeing and hearing that each day I went back and forth between emotional/spiritual exhilaration and physical exhaustion. Some days I survived on pure adrenalin. By evening, I often felt like my internal engine had drained its gas tank and I was barely chugging on fumes.

In biblical terms, my spirit was willing, but my flesh was weak.

Now, relegated to the rear seat of a van full of strangers at the start of an eighteen-hour drive, I realized that the failure to anticipate the amount of stress created by the culture shock was just one of the miscalculations that we had made in planning this trip. In pursuit of efficiency and frugality, we had sorely overestimated where I could go, who I could meet with, and what I could get done in one trip. We had underestimated the distances, the climate, the terrain differences, and the host of other logistical and physical challenges to be encountered traveling in China.

It had been easy to draw lines on a map. It had been relatively easy to reserve bus, train, and plane tickets. Doing that, we had failed to realize that China is almost exactly the same size as the entire United States.

The friendly banter and frequent laughter among my fellow passengers told me that they were already well-acquainted. Evidently, they were also happy about this opportunity to fellowship together. They were enjoying themselves on our trip. Clearly, I was an outsider and, at this point, could not experience the joy of their camaraderie.

In that moment, I sensed again the aloneness and loneliness of being an alien in a strange land. I had felt this when I first entered China—and that feeling had stayed with me. I had been unable to shake the feeling of being constantly watched by someone whatever I did or wherever I went. More likely, it wasn’t someone who was watching me—it was everyone! There was also that subtle, but unrelenting, stress that came from the realization that if any of my meetings were somehow compromised, my hosts would go to prison simply for being with me. I wasn’t terribly worried about my own safety; I would simply be escorted to the nearest airport and told to go home. But I carried the weight of their safety like a heavy burden.

We finally picked up speed and I began seeing only treetops. Now, there were few buildings or streetlights. I knew that we had left the city. Certain that no one could be expected to lie down and out of sight for eighteen hours, I slowly sat up to see more of where we were. If our driver ever looked in his mirror to see me sitting up, he wasn’t concerned enough to say anything. And I thought I knew why.

He had been extremely cautious driving at slow speeds through the heavily populated city. Here, driving much faster in the bright daylight, it was unlikely that anyone could have seen through the tinted windows and discern my ethnicity. I stayed alert and was ready to hide at a moment’s notice. But I was finally able to relax a little. My emotional health improved immensely at the simple thought of being able to sit up and actually see what was happening outside (and inside) the van.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t as comforting as I had anticipated. Looking out of the window, I discovered a rather disturbing cultural distinctive. It seemed that the Chinese concept of personal space is pretty much the same on the country’s highways as it is on the pedestrian-packed sidewalks and in the crush of the crowds in the markets. As long as they weren’t being physically jostled or touching someone else, Chinese people seemed to believe that they had more than enough space.

The same thing proved to be true on the roads. I hadn’t realized it before, but we were driving down a two-lane road with a steady stream of traffic going both directions over one hundred kilometers per hour. Every time we met another van or truck, the mirrors on the side of those vehicles came within centimeters of ours. My companions, including the driver, kept laughing and chatting. They seemed to pay no attention at all to what was for me the most terrifying road experience in my life. Lying back down out of sight suddenly seemed to be much safer. It probably wasn’t any safer—but it felt safer.

A little later, I felt our vehicle accelerating. I raised my head to peek over the back of the seat to see that we were now on what looked like a four-lane American interstate. We were traveling at least one hundred and forty kilometers an hour. The road looked new, smooth and safe. I settled back down thinking that maybe I could fall asleep for a while. Before I could drift off, however, we suddenly swerved so violently that I had to grab the back of the seat in front of me to keep from being rolled off of my bench onto the floor. This time I didn’t even peek. I assumed that maybe it would be better not to know.

When we swerved again a minute or so later, I sat up far enough to look out of the back of the van to see that we had just dodged a two-wheeled donkey-cart piled high with produce of some kind, driven by a farmer dressed in traditional Chinese peasant garb.

Our driver laughed and talked as fast as he drove. He seemed to be driving as fast as the house churches were growing.

Eventually, we exited the “expressway” onto smaller country roads. After dark, we drove several miles on dirt roads until we turned down a long dirt driveway and pulled to a stop behind a two-story farmhouse out of sight from the road. Our driver explained, “Friends are letting us stay here tonight. We will continue the trip tomorrow morning and we should reach our destination before dark tomorrow night.”

A middle-aged woman who seemed to be expecting company opened the door, welcomed us into her home, and served us cups of tea. Then she led us upstairs in what was the nicest, and by far biggest, home that I had visited since I had arrived in China.

Slipping out of bed just before dawn the next morning, I quietly and quickly washed and dressed for the day. I was hoping to be out of the way when the others awakened. I tiptoed down the stairs and into the kitchen. There was just enough daylight to see a uniformed man across the room. We both froze. I had no idea what kind of uniform he was wearing, but his bearing was one of great authority. I stood and stared right at him. His eyes seemed to be looking right through me, focused on something behind me. It was as if I wasn’t even there. I certainly wished that I wasn’t.

Neither one of us said a word or acknowledged each other. He turned abruptly on his heel, took something off of the counter behind him and disappeared out the kitchen door. My heart was pounding and my knees were trembling long after I heard the start of an engine, followed by the crunch of gravel as a heavy vehicle slowly rolled onto the road at the front of the property.

When our driver came into the kitchen a few minutes later, I told him what had just happened and I asked if he knew who the man was. Instead of answering my question, he told me that they should have warned me not to come downstairs by myself early in the morning. I apologized. I told him that I had not intended to do anything to endanger him or the others. He, however, seemed more concerned for the man that I had encountered.

He went on to explain why the officer had chosen not to speak to me or even to acknowledge my presence by looking right at me. If the question ever came up, he could honestly say that he had never met, spoken to, or seen anyone like me at his house that morning. “He is a very good friend and a supporter of our house-church movement,” the driver said. “We know that we are safe when we stop here because the government would never think that such a high-ranking military official is a believer. But he and his family allow us to use their home as a safe house at great risk to themselves.”

The second day of our journey was much like the first. The only difference was that when we passed through a big city in the middle of the day, we saw enough foreign tourists on the sidewalks that my companions decided that it would be safe for me to go into a restaurant with them to eat lunch.

I was so exhausted that I actually fell sound asleep sometime in the afternoon. I didn’t awaken until it was almost dusk when I felt the motion of the van change. I sat up and looked out to discover that we were driving down a long two-track dirt road. Lush green trees were close at both sides; their branches sometimes formed a canopy overhead that nearly blocked out the sky.

After four or five miles of nothing but trees, we suddenly emerged into small clearings of farmland divided into dozens of fields clustered around a farm compound. The compound was surrounded by a ten-foot, whitewashed fence.

Our van followed the two-track between the fields. As we approached the structure, an old rusty gate swung open and our driver pulled into a typical rural dwelling for that part of China. It was not a farmhouse exactly, but a residence of individual “rooms” built along and around the inside walls of the compound. On closer inspection, the walls seemed to be crude, but effective, protective barriers constructed out of rock and stone. Every few feet, long, upright wooden poles were sunk into the ground to help anchor the fence, and the entire structure was then whitewashed. This place had none of the forbidding, high-security feel of a walled compound in Somalia. This felt more like a safe place of welcome. It felt like someone’s home.

Sure enough, David Chen was already there to greet me. He was there to greet me along with about one hundred and seventy of his closest house-church friends! They were sitting or standing in small groups all around the farmyard, chatting and curiously noting our arrival.

After introducing me to a couple of the leaders of the movement, David accompanied us to interpret the brief guided tour that the local hosts wanted to give me. The enclosed compound covered maybe a quarter of an acre of packed dirt and trampled-down grass. An open kitchen and several other individual rooms were built right up against the outer wall. Since the rooms weren’t connected, it was necessary to come out into the farmyard to get from one room to another.

I looked at the size of the little rooms and quickly surveyed the courtyard full of people. I asked, “Where are all these folks going to sleep?” One of the guides replied, as David translated: “Right out here, where they are sitting and standing now.”

My hosts must have noticed the surprise on my face because they quickly assured me, “But you will sleep over here in this room—and while we are meeting and training the people out here in the yard, you can do your interviews in the same room.” They led me over to one of the enclosed rooms to show me my accommodations. It was a tiny room, but I would be able to be comfortable there. “Now, come with us” they said “and we’ll introduce you to the three of our senior leaders who will share the room with you.” I was just glad that it was only three.

David Chen had told me that this particular house-church movement was one of biggest and most diverse in the entire country. Many of its congregations and their leaders, like those who rode in the van with me, were urban, educated and comparatively sophisticated in the modern ways of the world—or at least in the modern ways of China.

At the same time, a significant percentage of this regional movement had sprung up and spread among people in places so provincial and so remote that much of the twentieth century had passed them by. Some of the church leaders from the most rural areas had little knowledge of the outside world.

In light of what David had told me, I was somewhat prepared for the curious stares during supper that night. But I was profoundly surprised after supper when I was formally introduced to the group. One of the local pastors raised his hand to ask a question. What he wanted to know was this: “Do the people in other countries also know about Jesus—or is He still known only in China?”

I had never been asked that question before—or even considered that point of view. For several long seconds I gathered my thoughts, trying to figure out where exactly to begin my answer. Then, with David interpreting for me, I told the group that millions of Americans and even more people in different countries around the world knew about and followed Jesus. I then told the group that believers in other parts of the world also knew about them—the Chinese believers in house churches. I told them that believers in many parts of the world prayed for them and their churches.

“Wait, wait!” people cried out. They could hardly believe what I was saying. One man responded this way: “Do you mean that people in your country know that we believe in Jesus? Do you mean that they know that some of us are suffering for our faith? Do you mean that they haven’t forgotten us and that they pray for us?”

I assured them: “Why yes, we have always loved you. And we have never forgotten you. For a long time, we have prayed for you.” It was a holy moment as these believers realized that they were recognized, remembered and prayed for by fellow believers around the world.

One of the younger women in the group asked, “Since Jesus is known in other countries, are the believers there persecuted like we are?”

I told them about the experience of believers in two very oppressive Islamic counties. The entire gathering of house-church leaders in the farmyard became strangely still. Just minutes before, they had been clapping and shouting and asking questions. Now they were completely silent and still. They sat expressionless.

I attempted to enliven the group by sharing about Muslim-background believers we were close to—people who had exhibited inspiring faith under the most oppressive circumstances. But there was still no movement and no questions. When I had told a number of such stories, I felt half-dead myself.

I lowered my voice and I said to David, “That’s it. I’m done. I’m drained. I have nothing more to say tonight!” I stepped off the little stage in the middle of the compound and headed for the room where I was to sleep.

At 6:00 the next morning I was awakened by screaming and shouting outside in the compound. My first thought was that the security police had come.

As my eyes adjusted to the daylight, I saw that there were no security police swarming into the compound. What I saw were those Chinese house-church leaders and evangelists scattered around the farmyard, either lying or sitting on the ground, crying, screaming and yelling hysterically (or so it seemed to me). Many of them were pulling their hair or clutching at their clothes.

I spotted my friend David across the way and I rushed over to him. I demanded to know: “What in the world is going on?”

He told me to be quiet and to listen.

“You know that I don’t know a word of Chinese,” I told him. “What do you mean ‘just listen’”?

Again he insisted, “Just be quiet, Nik!” Before I could protest again, he took me by the arm and began to walk me among these people who were crying and screaming. Because I was now silent, I actually began to hear and recognize the names of the two Muslim countries that I had told them about the night before. The names of those two countries were being repeated again and again in passionate and anguished prayer.

When David stopped and turned to look at me, there were tears streaming down his face. He said, “They were so moved by what you shared last night about believers who were truly persecuted, that they have vowed before God that they will get up an hour earlier every morning to pray for those Muslim-background believers that you told them about in ______________ and ____________ (and he named the two nations*) until Jesus is known throughout their countries.”

In that instant, I could see why the number of Chinese believers had gone from a few hundred thousand to perhaps hundreds of millions!

*Even today, more than a decade later, security concerns prevent me from naming these specific countries. If the normal security apparatus were to read this, let alone Al Qaeda or other jihadists, they would search out believers in those countries or use my mention of them here as an excuse to kill people they oppose.