11

“I don’t want to be a potato farmer,” I said, sitting in Lao Wu’s home with the other new Christians the next morning. I took a sip of hot tea and scalded my tongue, but that didn’t hurt as bad as the thought of going back home without a degree. “Did you know telling people about Jesus is illegal?” I set the mug back on the coffee table and flopped back into the soft cushions of the sofa. The small living room was packed with wide-eyed students, including Heidi, Jack, and about a dozen other people. We’d begun meeting every week for Bible study, but this felt different than when we’d hung out there in the past. It felt dangerous.

“It’s not technically illegal,” Lao Wu said, moving a gigantic bowl of popcorn and picking up the newspaper it had been sitting on. “The authorities are just panicking.”

“I’m panicking,” Jack said.

Lao Wu traced his finger over the newspaper before landing on an article just below the fold. “Listen to this.” He put on his reading glasses and cleared his throat. “In Beijing, students now comprise over 25 percent of government-sanctioned Three Self Patriotic Movement churches.”

“It doesn’t feel like we’re an epidemic,” said Heidi. I looked at her, sitting in the apartment listening so earnestly to Lao Wu. Gratitude overcame me. I was thankful to have someone like her in my life, and even more thankful that she had also come to know the Lord. But in the back of my mind, I worried I wouldn’t be able to make a high enough salary to provide a nice lifestyle for her. Even though she came from a peasant village like I did, she deserved more than that. She was kind, beautiful, smart, and courageous. Every time I looked at her, however, I worried if I could take her as my wife considering all the problems I was facing.

“Reports indicate more Chinese students are becoming Christians than joining the Communist Party,” Lao Wu read.

We sat for a moment in silence. It seemed both shocking and perfectly natural that this religion—so foreign and unknown—was spreading like a fire through the various campuses. “So, it’s legal to be a Christian, but illegal to talk about it?” I asked.

“And doesn’t the Bible tell us to spread the good news?” Heidi asked. “Just like Jack told Bob?”

“Hey,” he protested. “I was just trying to stop Bob’s blubbering.”

“We just need to be careful,” Lao Wu said, his sober tone quieting the room. In silence, we felt the gravity of our situation, and one by one we bowed our heads. “Let’s pray.”

From that point on, our college Christian group went “underground.” Though we still told people about Jesus, we didn’t do it in such obvious ways. We attended church, but we didn’t go in one large group. Instead, one of our members went through the halls of the dorms on Sunday morning, knocking on the doors of the Christian students. We had a special knock, a rat-a-tat-tat, which alerted our friends that it was time to attend worship. Instead of attending the more popular late services, we worshiped during the early morning. Three knocks meant to meet down by the riverside instead. Also, we didn’t publicly use the word “God” or “Jesus,” but instead referred obliquely to “father” and “brother.” In fact, we stopped using the phrase “Bible study” altogether. We began calling our Bible study groups by three repeating letters. Our guys’ group read the Bible together, so we called ourselves “BBB.” The ladies focused mainly on prayer, so we called them “PPP.” Also, we no longer walked directly to Lao Wu’s apartment for Bible study. Instead, we took a back way into the foreign expert regiment area and climbed over a wall to reach his place unnoticed.

We did all we could to spread the gospel. Once when we were at church we saw our friend Craig, who was a dear Australian missionary friend. He was always trying to connect us with others to make sure new Christians received good teaching, theology, and support.

“There’s a new Christian I’d love for you or Heidi to call,” he said, slipping a business card into my hand. “He works at a travel firm, and I don’t think anyone at his agency knows of his faith. So be discreet.”

“When am I not discreet?” I asked. He looked at me and laughed.

And so we gradually spread the gospel from one person to another. Even though we had to sneak around, my new faith made my college life full of joy and gladness. I wasn’t completely sure how my dad felt about my newfound religion, as he never really addressed my Christianity in any of his letters. Even though I kept him updated about all of the activities of our Christian group, he always responded in the same way as he did when I told him about Heidi. “Just make sure your main focus is on academics,” he would vaguely respond.

Though I took that as tacit disagreement, I obeyed my father. As college came to a close, I had pretty good grades, though it didn’t really matter. No matter how much I studied, the Communist Party in the university conspired to keep me out of graduate school in international studies and I was unsure of my future. Excitement—and anxiety—permeated the atmosphere of the campus as academic life began to wind down. Students jockeyed to find the best possible positions for themselves after graduation and went through back channels to get good jobs back in their hometowns. Mainly, I regretted I’d have to leave the close bonds of fellowship with my new Christian friends and Lao Wu.

“What are you going to do after graduation?” a friend asked me one day close to the end of school. “Do you know whom to bribe to get a good job?”

“Bribery’s not for me,” I responded. I’d tried it before I’d given my life to Christ, but even then it had felt wrong.

“I’ll keep you in mind if I ever need to buy some potatoes.” He laughed.

“I don’t want to be a farmer, but I don’t want to be a teacher either.” For as long as I could remember, my goals were pretty simple: get my degree, go to graduate school, and make money to send home to my family.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re a troublemaker so you can’t get into grad school,” he said. “Why aren’t you rushing around? You have more to lose than anyone else by not angling for a better future.”

“My future’s not dependent on bribery or the whims of a university,” I said. Though I knew this last-minute maneuvering would affect paychecks for the rest of our lives, I didn’t feel compelled to rush around. For the weeks leading up to the end of school, peace surrounded me, even though I didn’t have a clear directive.

“Okay,” he said, chuckling. “Well, I’ve got to go deliver five bribes this afternoon!”

I walked back to my dorm with a heavy, confused heart. I knew God was all I needed, but I wasn’t sure what that meant for the next steps of my life. I also didn’t understand why God would shut the door to graduate school when that’s all I’d ever wanted to do. A large stack of international textbooks sat on top of my bed, and I plopped them onto the floor as I made room for myself. I’d studied these books on my own time, preparing for graduate school. It felt a little like it’d been stolen from me.

“Lord,” I prayed aloud while burying my head in my pillow. “What would You have me do?”

I listened, but all I heard was the sound of people laughing outside my dorm room. A dog barked off in the distance. Friends chatted as they walked by my door. Life, in other words, was going forward as per usual for everyone but me. I sat up in my bed and looked out the window at all the happy people living their lives. Off in the distance, carrying a stack of papers, was the dean of my English department. I looked again. He was walking toward my dorm.

Hurriedly, I slipped on my shoes, ran my hand through my hair, and bolted down the stairs. Certainly, if anyone knew a good path for me to take, he’d know. He was very open-minded and had been supportive of the students’ movement. However, after the massacre, he had to follow the official line. Behind the scenes, he’d invited me to his home and tried to persuade me to give up. “If we invited Gorbachev, Thatcher, and Reagan over here, do you think they could manage China as well as the Communist Party? Could they win the popular vote in China? Don’t think of a Westernized China because we have our own historical tradition,” he’d said.

But even though he thought I was too idealistic, I could tell he knew I’d been wronged. I ran down the stairs two at a time until I reached the main floor with a thud. Then I tried to slow down my breathing and walked sedately in his direction.

“Oh, hello!” I said as I neared him, acting surprised. “What brings you over to the dorms?”

“Everyone is filing last-minute recommendations. I got behind, so I’m hand-delivering some,” he said. “What’s next for you?”

“I can’t go to graduate school to take the exam,” I began. “Because of my . . . problems.”

He gave a pained half-smile and placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry, Xiqiu. I know how much you really wanted that post-grad degree.”

“I heard there’s another program, a double bachelor degree,” I said. “Do you think I could qualify?”

His eyes were instantly filled with compassion and pity. “Well, the People’s University of China recruits people with your academic background, but there’s no way you could pull that off. It’s one of the most prestigious universities,” he said, clearly straining to keep incredulity out of his tone. “Which means it’s also one of the most exclusive. You have to compete against other students nationwide just to take the exam.”

“That’s what I’d like to do,” I said.

“It’s not a matter of what you’d like to do,” he said, much like a parent trying to protect me from unrealistic expectations. “You need to focus on what’s possible for you to do.”

“So . . .” I said, with a sheepish grin, “if I managed to pull it off, you’d give me a letter of recommendation?”

The dean laughed out loud. “Listen,” he said quietly, after he collected himself. “I know you’ve gotten a raw deal here, but that doesn’t mean you can expect a miracle. Students across the country have been studying for years to take this test, and they only select a few.”

“But if I did . . .” I smiled, prompting him to relent.

“All right, sure,” he said, tossing his hands up in the air. “Don’t forget I warned you.”

Few things clear the mind like desperation. As soon as the dean gave me this sliver of hope, I ran back up to my dorm room, packed my bags, and headed to Beijing. I had a friend there, who offered me a bunk and a quiet dorm room. Though my chances of succeeding were certainly improbable, at least I had a small window of opportunity. All I had to do to score well on the exam was to master English, Chinese literature, international relations, and political science. In four weeks.

No matter, I told myself. Education wasn’t the most important aspect of my life anymore, and I trusted that God could help me get through this. If I was successful, I would get my bachelor’s degree in law, which would be a nice continuation of my years of self-study and would give me the chance to do something to help change China’s policies in some way. It would also help me make enough money to support my family back home. Though time was of the essence, I rolled out of bed every morning, got on my knees, and prayed for a couple of hours. I spoke openly and freely, laying my fears at God’s feet, praising Him for revealing Himself to me through that booklet, and asking Him to show me mercy for my future goals and dreams.

Only then would I turn my attention to studying. Since I was already pretty strong on the other three subjects, I decided to focus on Chinese literature. Of course, this was no small task since China’s prose, poetry, philosophy, and history spans over three thousand years. However, there’s an ancient Chinese proverb that says, “One step at a time is good walking.” So every day I took steps, memorizing until my head was so full of facts I thought it might explode.

One afternoon, I squinted my eyes and shut the book I’d been looking at for hours. The lines on the pages were running together. I got up, stretched my legs, and cracked the window open just a bit. I needed some air, a chance to breathe. How can I compete with people who’ve been studying this stuff for years? I wondered. No one regarded me as the student with the highest IQ. I was the troublemaker and the naïve idealist, not the scholar. “God, help me,” I muttered under my breath as I walked to the mailbox for a distraction.

I got a stack of mail from the box and laid the letters on my friend’s desk. But there, on the top, was the familiar handwriting of my father. That tiny piece of home caused tears to fill my eyes. I wiped them with my sleeve and opened the envelope.

“Dear Xiqiu,” I began reading as I sunk down into a comfortable chair away from all of my books. “Much has been going on here in our area.” He told me of the weather, the local gossip, and any local construction. Then he added, “Also, I met with Zhou, and we’ve been having some interesting conversations.”

Zhou was a legendary elder Chinese individual, about eighty or ninety years old, who had always been perceived as a wise and mysterious practitioner of feng shui and Chinese fortune-telling. As I sat there in that chair, however, it dawned on me why he was so famous. He was using parts of Deuteronomy, Proverbs, and other parts of the Old Testament to tell people things about construction and how to live. Since no one was familiar with the Bible, they believed he had access to age-old truths of which they’d never even heard.

Which, in a very real way, was true.

Was my father telling me he was now my brother in Christ? I folded the letter and placed it into one of my textbooks. I’ll get this out when I’m feeling down, I thought as I got back to studying. Instead of feeling sorrow and stress as I had just minutes ago, I felt peace and joy.

When the day of the test finally arrived, my mind seemed to be completely blank. After so many weeks of cramming, would any of the information be there when I needed it? I got out my pencil, turned over the paper, read the first question, and breathed a sigh of relief. I knew the answer. I wrote out my response as neatly as I could before moving on to the next question. Thankfully, I knew the answer to it too. And the next. My pencil flew over the papers, one by one. It felt very supernatural, almost surreal, because I knew how to best answer every single question. It was almost like I had a photographic memory, because I could easily retrieve the necessary information from pages I’d read about Confucianism, Daoism, and Mohism. Plus, I already knew all the international studies answers because I’d prepared for that portion of the test since childhood. I tried not to laugh in delight or cry in relief as I wrote. And when my results came back, I knew God had delivered me.

“I was accepted,” I said to the dean, after bursting into his office. “The college only accepted eighteen students, and I was number three!”

He leaned back in his chair and threw his head back in disbelief. “How did you manage this?”

“It was the Lord’s grace,” I said. That had to be the only explanation.

“Well, I’m sorry I doubted you, but no one else in our college got accepted,” he said. “And they’d been studying for years!”

As news spread across the campus that I’d been accepted into this prestigious program, people marveled and said it was a miracle.

I was thrilled to tell the news to Heidi. She’d been so patient with me through my trials. Even when I worried I couldn’t get my degree, she was right there by my side. Even when all of my other friends betrayed me, she remained loyal and true.

“I did it!” I yelled when I saw her across the cafeteria. I couldn’t wait until we were actually next to each other. Plus, I wanted everyone to know. “I was accepted.”

When she turned to face me, I saw her eyes narrow a bit in disbelief. “Really?” she asked as she walked closer to me. “You’ve already gotten the results?”

“Yes, I’m going to Beijing!”

She was thrilled that I no longer had to go back and teach. “That’ll show Joseph and the others,” she said. “Success is the ultimate revenge!”

I smiled. Heidi resented my friends’ betrayal even more than I did.

But in spite of all that we’d been through, I just hoped our relationship could survive the distance.