In 1937, after Japan invaded China, Cai Yongchun and Wu Shengde, two professors from Huazhong University in the central city of Wuhan, relocated to Dali and founded the Dali Episcopalian Church. In 1943 the two founders received funding from the dioceses in Shanghai and bought twenty buildings and houses on one and a half acres of land. They converted the properties into a chapel, an orphanage, and an elementary school to accelerate the spread of the gospel. In 1948 Hou Wuling, a young priest, took over the church. In 1964, during a political study session, Reverend Hou took out a cross hidden in his breast pocket and slipped to the ground. He died of an aneurism.
Wu Yongsheng, The History of Christianity in Dali
Who was this young priest, Hou Wuling? His mention in Wu Yongsheng’s book was so brief that it didn’t shed much light on the man’s life or the circumstances surrounding his death. How could such a religious leader, for he clearly was that, pass like a meteor, flashing momentarily and then disappearing with scarcely a trace? What happened to him under Communism? What prompted him to bring out the hidden cross at that political study session? I was intrigued; I like a good mystery. I began by examining existing church records but could find nothing about Hou.
In Wu’s book, I also found a brief mention that when the government reversed its verdict against Hou, Wu was responsible for reaching out to Hou’s family. Wu had told me that Hou headed the local Episcopalian church in Dali but refused to give me further details. Was he dodging a political landmine?
I contacted Kun Peng, who seemed to know everyone who mattered. I needed more information and hoped Kun could point me in the right direction. I particularly wanted to find Hou’s family members. Kun called me back a few days later. He hadn’t managed to trace Hou’s daughter but found three other elderly Christians who might know something about Hou’s life. I interviewed all of them and obtained some details.
Hou did take charge of the Dali Episcopal Church in 1948, a time when the country was embroiled in civil war. He was responsible for the assets that the church had accumulated over the years but was mainly concerned with ministering to the thousands of followers who lived in constant fear of the war. He was in his prime and diligent in his duties. Wu remembered that Hou had tried to keep the church neutral in the war between the Communists and the ruling Nationalists and divorced from politics after Mao Zedong’s victory in 1949. But the new Communist government considered foreign missionaries as hostile forces. Religious networks of all faiths crumbled. Christians renounced their faith at public meetings as “a shameful chapter” in their lives. Hou was devastated by the turn of events. His refusal to renounce his faith made him a political target. At a conference held by the United Front Department, one official confronted Hou: “Are you trying to challenge the power of the revolutionary masses?” He remained silent; his answer lay in his actions—he continued to follow the Lord and was guardian of his church. He was nicknamed “The Silent Lamb.”
With each successive political campaign, Communist officials made him a target. In 1953 the government wanted him to surrender the Huiyu Elementary School, which had been founded and operated by the Dali Episcopal Church. Officials proposed changing its name to Dali No. 2 Elementary School. Hou refused to let government officials enter the school. They countered by sending him a bill for the school’s utility fees and repair costs. With all funding sources cut off under the new regime, Hou couldn’t pay, so he disconnected the electricity and told students: “Our hearts are open and lit by truth; we don’t need electric lights.”
While Hou was praying by candlelight in the school’s chapel, local militiamen broke in and took him away. They accused him of sabotaging school facilities and engaging in counterrevolutionary actions. After the government raided his church and reviewed his finances, they charged him with counterrevolutionary corruption. Soon after that, the government brought another charge against him—raping underage female orphans. With one accusation after another directed at him, Hou was arrested and held for a year, but there was insufficient evidence for a conviction, so he was released.
As Hou stood watch over his flock, he remained in conflict with the Party. One day a Christian woman named Li Huijun showed up at his door with her ten-year-old daughter. They were escaping from her rural village, where her family had been persecuted as members of the “evil landlord class.” Hou and his wife took them in. A few months later, Li’s daughter, who had tuberculosis, died. Subsequently, the street committee noticed Li’s presence in the church and, having ascertained her family background, sent her back to her village. Li escaped again. The local militiamen hunted her down and brought her back. In 1954 she ran away for the third time and hid in the church. Her captors followed her to Dali. She was found in a room next to the church library. Li had hanged herself.
In the same year, Hou was asked to support and join the newly formed Three-Self Patriotic Church. He refused, calling it “collective surrender.” Local progovernment religious leaders held a conference and “unanimously” voted that he be stripped of his title and barred from participating in any religious activities. In 1957 he was labeled a Rightist. In 1958 the local government in Dali officially seized the Dali Episcopal Church land and converted it into a chemical plant. Hou was threatened with imprisonment if he refused to move out. He was assigned a bed in a dorm for factory workers. His wife and a daughter went back to Chengdu to live with her parents.
Hou was a regular at public denunciations, which continued even as famine swept China in 1959. A Christian survivor told me that people were too weak to beat up class enemies, so instead, the masses would pinch and bite them. He remembered seeing Hou covered with bruises.
In 1963 the government under President Liu Shaoqi adopted a series of policies to curb Mao’s radical industrialization and nationalization programs and help alleviate the famine situation. Mao retreated. Persecution of Christians abated, and there was more food. In 1964 Mao countered with his “Socialist Education Campaign,” and Hou was called to attend a weeklong political study session with forty other Rightists and counterrevolutionaries at a segregated building guarded by soldiers. He was forced to answer question after question until he simply stopped talking and dropped to the ground, dead. There is no official record on the specifics of his death, and those in attendance suffered collective amnesia. All I have to go on are the lines from Wu’s book: that Hou took out his cross, slipped to the ground, and died of an aneurism. The interrogations, public denunciation meetings, and political study sessions were over for him.
We know Hou’s body was cremated several hours after he died. No autopsy was performed. Several days later, Hou’s wife arrived from Chengdu and took an urn of his ashes home. According to Mr. Wu, she never dared ask how her husband had died. Maybe it was good that he had died before the Cultural Revolution, Wu said.
In 1980 the United Front Department of Dali issued a notice officially exonerating Hou of any wrongdoing. Wu accepted the notice on behalf of the Hou family and then mailed it to Hou Mei-en, the daughter in Chengdu. He is certain that Hou’s wife and daughter are still alive, though he has heard nothing from them in thirty years. I asked if the government had compensated the family for its suffering, and Wu shook his head, “Not a single penny.” Church assets were sold off by the government to private developers. The state-run chemical plant built on the church property went bankrupt and was closed. The land is now occupied by the Internal Medicine Department of Dali’s No. 2 People’s Hospital.