Thwarted by police in my plans to interview Reverend Yuan Xiangchen, a prominent figure in the underground Christian community in Beijng, I got hold of his second son, Yuan Fusheng, on March 3, 2004. Yuan Fusheng assisted his father in ministering to Christians who refused to attend the official churches operating under government scrutiny in the capital city.
It was a necessarily covert interview conducted in the relative safety of a crowded place, in this instance a McDonald’s near the Temple of Earth. We were both early and, having spotted each other, wandered separately in different directions for a while to make sure we had not been tailed. I had seen a lot of police on the streets as the National People’s Congress was in session. We crossed the pedestrian bridge and went into the McDonald’s, which was crowded with hamburger-loving teenagers. We found a table in a relatively quiet corner, and I got us each a Coke. I took out my tape recorder, put a napkin on top, and moved it closer to Yuan.
“It’s quite tense today,” Yuan whispered. “It’s always the same around this time of the year. My father’s been under close surveillance. I will do the interview on his behalf. My father hopes you can visit us again.”
I pretended to gaze at a young couple sitting at an opposite table and nodded at his words.
“My father is now organizing a vigil for a preacher, Dr. Xu Yonghai, who was arrested while spreading the gospel in Zhejiang province. At a service not long ago, my father said Dr. Xu is a proud example for all young Christians.”
I was glad to hear mention of Yonghai’s name. My eyes kept moving around the restaurant, scanning faces, alert to anything out of the ordinary. And so we talked for three hours.
Yuan Fusheng: My father’s name is Yuan Xiangchen. He was born in June 1914. He has forgotten the exact date but prefers to celebrate the day he was reborn, when he became a Christian—December 29, 1932. My father says every person should have two birthdays, one for the body and the other for the soul. My father was baptized by Reverend Wang Mingdao with the pure stream water from the Summer Palace, right behind the Wanshou Mountain.
My father was born in Bengbu City, Anhui province. My grandfather was a Guangdong native. As a young man, my grandfather worked on the construction of the Beijing-Guangdong railway and the whole family moved north with him, from Guangdong to Bengbu, and eventually settled in Beijing. My grandfather had received a Western-style education in a Chinese college, and after working with the Westerners helping to build the railway, his English was very good. So my father was born into a Westernized family. At the age of thirteen, he went to a school run by the YMCA, studied English, and memorized many passages from the Bible.
His teenage years were difficult. The constant moving by his parents left him rootless. For a while, he sank into a deep depression and attempted suicide twice by plugging a pair of scissors into an electric socket. He says two of his teachers had a tremendous influence on him. One was an American whose Chinese name was Xiao Anna and the other one was a Chinese, Shi Tianmin, both of whom were pious Christians. They taught him the new science and new social thinking advocated by Dr. Sun Yat-sen after the fall of the Qing dynasty and the birth of the new republic. They also spread the gospel. My father became interested in religion and was introduced to Reverend Wang Mingdao.
In the summer of 1934, my father finished his freshman year at a senior high school. His parents wanted him to continue with school, graduate, and get a stable job so he could get married, have children, and live a comfortable life. But my father resisted. He quit school. Inspired by the Bible, he enrolled in a seminary in Beijing. It was affiliated with the Far East College of Theology. He studied there for four years. In the summer of 1936, he joined two thousand other Christians and attended a national Bible reading and consultation retreat. In 1937 he began publishing inspirational articles and translated from English to Chinese a handbook for preachers.
In that year, Japan invaded China. It was a chaotic time. His future wife and my mother, Liang Huizhen, had fled her hometown and arrived in Beijing after the Japanese occupation. She was also a Christian, and the two met and fell in love. After my father finished his studies at the seminary, they became engaged and were married in Beijing in July 1938. The wedding was half Western and half Chinese—by that I mean he wore a suit and she wore a Western-style wedding gown, but they were driven to the reception on a Chinese horse-drawn cart. Many Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries attended their wedding.
In 1939 my mother became pregnant with my eldest brother. Around the same time, my father was asked by the dean of his seminary to stay on as a translator, which would provide a modest income to support his family. But he turned it down, choosing instead to help spread the gospel in rural areas. So, with his wife and son, he followed an American evangelical minister to preach in southern Hebei province and parts of Shandong province. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, its troops rounded up Americans and put them in a camp in Wei County of Shandong. One night, the Japanese soldiers took away the American minister and his wife and two children. My father’s apartment was also looted. My mother was young and pretty and for many months smeared soot on her face to escape being noticed by Japanese soldiers. She and my brother hid in a cellar behind the church.
My father, unwilling to give up, moved his family to a village and lived and worked with farmers. The southern part of Hebei province was under the control of Japanese troops during the day. At night, a resistance movement organized by Communist guerrilla forces was in full swing. My father traveled to different villages on his bike to preach. He always carried two types of passes and currencies, one issued by the Japanese and the other by the Chinese Communists. Each time he ran into either party, he would have to pay a fee in their respective currency, though he declared himself neutral. His preaching reached a large number of villagers. He had totally transformed himself from an urban intellectual into a farmer—wearing black flea-infested cotton-padded coats and eating simple wheat and corn buns. He preached inside villages or on the side of the field. He was so devoted that when his own father passed away, he, the only child, didn’t even have the chance to go home and say good-bye.
In 1945, on the eve of Japan’s surrender, my father returned to Beijing to take care of his mother, who was gravely ill. He continued to preach at a church nearby and took up odd jobs to support his family. By then, our family had grown to seven members. My father was waiting for the situation to improve so he could return to the countryside, where he felt he was needed the most. However, after the Japanese troops left China, the Communists and the Nationalists were embroiled in a civil war. My father became restless. He prayed hard, trying to figure out God’s plan for him. During this time, he discovered a Japanese Christian church at 160 Fuchengmen Street. The Japanese pastor had fled China, and the Nationalist government had closed down the church. My father was able to persuade government officials to allow him to rent the church. The monthly rent was the equivalent of 150 kilograms of rice. He took odd jobs to provide financial support for the church and his family. In a way, it was a blessing. The experience strengthened his ability as an organizer as well as his independent spirit. He turned down any help from government organizations, insisting that the church should be a holy place supported by God’s followers.
In late 1948, as the Nationalist troops were on the verge of defeat, the situation in Beijing deteriorated. Many missionaries and Christians left China. My father decided to stay. On February 3, 1949, Communist troops entered Beijing and paraded past his church on Fuchengmen. Three weeks later, leaders of the various Christian denominations met to discuss how to survive under an atheist government. At the meeting, my father urged calm, because the Communists had announced that people could enjoy freedom of religion. He also believed that religion should be kept separate from secular politics. He used to tell us, “Chinese Christians should have our own independent church. We should move in the direction of self-reliance.”
At the beginning, the new government was busy keeping order and building support among all sectors of society. The religious sector was allowed to operate without disruption. One day my father led several of his followers on the street. They beat drums and gongs to attract people to his church. Soon he drew a large crowd. He also caught the attention of Communist soldiers who were patrolling the streets. The soldiers dispersed the crowd and took my father to the Military Control Commission. They interrogated him briefly. He cited the government’s “freedom of religion” policy as defense. When he argued with his interrogators, they told him politely, “You can certainly enjoy your freedom. We have just taken over and liberated the city. There is chaos everywhere. People with all backgrounds are floating around. You shouldn’t preach outside.” In the end, the military leader let him go without giving him any trouble.
Within the Communist Party, there was an internal policy at that time to restrict religious activities, reform followers, and eventually wipe out all religious practices in China. In the world of religion, not everyone was as holy as he or she claimed to be.
Liao Yiwu: You are referring to Wu Yaozong?
Yuan: Yes, I’m referring to Mr. Wu, as well as other religious celebrities such as Ding Guangxun and Liu Liangmo. Let me give you some brief background information on Wu Yaozong. He was born in 1893 and became a Christian at an early age. He studied at a seminary in New York City before returning to China as an ordained minister. When the Communists took over China, he became a big supporter and accepted the Communist ideology. He said he had experienced two major transformations in life: the first was to accept Christianity as his faith, changing from an atheist into a man of belief; the second was his acceptance of the Marxist social theories, which were antireligion. He unabashedly mixed his religious beliefs with atheist Communist ideology.
Wu was elected as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. He met with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai three times to map out the strategies for reforming Christianity in China. His plan was to sever all ties with “foreign imperialists” and to adopt the principles of self-governance, self-support—that is, free from foreign financial support—and self-propagation, which meant indigenous missionary work. These are the Three-Self principles. Soon after Wu’s plan was made public, China joined a war against the Americans in Korea. The Three-Self principles quickly turned into a patriotic movement. All Christians in China had to choose between “supporting their own country” and “supporting foreign imperialists.” It became fanatical. If you did not openly express your patriotism, you were a counterrevolutionary. About thirty-three thousand Christians in China signed up to support the so-called Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
Despite the political pressure, many Christians stood firm and rejected the Three-Self principles. At that time, there were about sixty Christian churches and organizations in Beijing. Leaders representing eleven churches openly aired their disagreement, saying that churches in China had long adopted the principles of self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. There was no need to sign up again. Those brave church leaders included my father’s friend Wang Mingdao.
My father wasn’t among the outspoken leaders, but he had long maintained that there should be separation of church and politics. His favorite phrase used to be: let God take care of his affairs, and Caesar tend to his. Our church shouldn’t be used to advance the interests of the Communist Party. His position alienated him from many of his followers, many of whom deserted him. Starting in 1952, government officials constantly came to engage him in talks, pressuring him to join their camp. My father rejected their requests and refused to participate in political study sessions.
At first, officials at the local religious-affairs office would visit, trying to persuade him to change. They acted a bit like those police officers at our home the other day. By 1955 the government’s tolerance ended. It turned out to be the largest calamity since the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, when more than twenty thousand Christians were murdered. In 1955 more than a thousand churches in China were burned down. Tens of thousands of Christians were arrested. Several thousand were executed on charges of belonging to a cult. In Beijing, the government thought rebellious religious leaders would be intimidated by what was happening in other parts of the country. Chairman Mao called this “encircling your enemies.”
Liao: Yet no one stepped forward to support the Three-Self movement?
Yuan: That is correct. On the night of August 7, 1955, Reverend Wang Mingdao and his wife were arrested, along with dozens of other preachers.
Liao: Those church leaders got long jail sentences.
Yuan: From fifteen years to life imprisonment. Under threat of physical torture, Reverend Wang wrote a confession and was released immediately, but he was haunted by his betrayal. Spiritual torture was more painful than physical torture, so he turned himself in to the police. He said, “I’m going to spend the rest of my time in jail so I can appease the wrath of the Lord.”
My father wavered too. Following the August 7 arrests, many preachers, including my father, bowed to pressure and took part in political study sessions. One Communist official told my father, “You are still young and have a bright future in front of you. You should try to reform yourself.” He encouraged my father to openly express his support for the Party’s policies at meetings, but my father chose to remain silent. Deep down, he was torn. Eventually, through prayers and self-reflection, he made up his mind, and in 1957, when called upon to declare his support for the Three-Self principles, he said the government’s religious policy was unfair. Freedom of religion was guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution, but Christians could no longer enjoy that freedom. Some Christians, the favorites of the new government, espoused the Three-Self principles, but they were hypocrites. When the Japanese came, they surrendered to the invaders. When the Americans came, they managed to get on their payrolls. Now, they ingratiated themselves to the new government. Those people were not patriotic. They were simply opportunists who took advantage of religion to serve their own interests. Afterward, Father said he had never felt so elated and liberated.
During the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, study groups were told that the government required each of them to identify four “Rightists”—people who had strayed from the Party line. Just like that, my father had become an enemy of the people.
However, once my father was declared a Rightist, he didn’t have to pretend to be politically progressive and stopped attending political study sessions. He stayed at home and kept up with his routine of prayer and Bible study. He preached. “The head of the church is Jesus, not an official at the religious affairs office,” he said when friends urged caution. Pastor Qi, an old friend of the family, told my father at dinner with us:
“Brother Yuan, I want to offer you some advice. I know you won’t listen, but as a friend, I feel obligated to say it. You are in a very precarious situation now. Under this new roof, I advise you to bend your head and control your own temper. If you can’t, you should at least pretend to be compliant and keep attending political study sessions. If you continue to be stubborn and stick with your own views, you could face unimaginable consequences. Just do it for the sake of your family. You have to take care of your ailing mother and your children. If anything happens to you, what do you expect them to do? Your children will carry the black label of a counterrevolutionary for the rest of their lives. It’s not fair to them.”
Pastor Qi became emotional as he talked. Tears slipped down his face. My father was not moved. In the end, Pastor Qi said, “If the Communists require us to support the Three-Self policies, we have to do it. What choices do we have?”
At the end of 1957, the government reached out to my family one last time to “save” my father. A director at the local Public Security Bureau called my mother, asking her and my grandmother to show up at the local religious-affairs office. When they arrived, the deputy director greeted them with some harsh advice: “I’ve invited you over with the hope that you could talk with Yuan Xiangchen and change his mind. Like the Chinese saying goes, ‘Rein in the horse at the edge of a cliff.’ We can’t put up with his difficult attitude any longer. He is still young, only forty-four years old. You should assist the government in rescuing him. Don’t mistake our benevolence for weakness. If we want to lock him up, we can, in an instant. When that happens, your whole family will suffer.”
Liao: “Rein in the horse . . .” was used during the Cultural Revolution as an ultimatum.
Yuan: My father knew immediately what those words meant.
Liao: Couldn’t your father make some concessions for the sake of his family? There was no justification for your father to put his family through such suffering.
Yuan: He had thought carefully about such questions. He had also taken counsel from many friends. But the biggest misfortune for a Christian does not lie in the calamity that befalls him in this world. It is the betrayal of God for the sake of secular things on earth. Even if you are able to protect your relatives or your material possessions, your soul will forever be locked in darkness, without any prospect of salvation. My father believed that was the most terrible calamity.
Liao: I was in jail for a long time, but I still can’t see myself as determined as your father. If the authorities had used my relatives and friends as hostages to threaten me, forcing me to give up my faith, I would have written confessions, lied, done whatever was needed.
Yuan: But you wouldn’t chop off your right hand and swear never to write again, would you?
Liao: Of course not.
Yuan: It’s the same principle. My father would not betray his faith, because it was his life. When a person loses his life, then what does he have left for his family?
In those long sleepless nights, my father would kneel and pray for courage. He faced two paths: he could express his willingness to change and join the government’s Three-Self church, or he could accept imprisonment and separation from his family.
My father prayed for ten days, during which time no one came to bother him. He started to think that the government might change its mind about arresting him. At about eleven o’clock on the night of April 19, 1958, police came for my father. They knocked politely on the door first. Two policemen from the local ward stood outside. They “invited” my father for a quick meeting at the local Public Security Bureau office. There, several policemen were waiting for him. They read his arrest warrant and handcuffed him. He was charged with being “an active counterrevolutionary.” At the same time, a group of soldiers ransacked our house, sweeping copies of the Bible, hymnals, and other Christian reading material onto the floor and trampling them. They opened and emptied trunks, went through every cupboard. With iron bars, they searched for hiding places under the wooden floor and in the walls, tearing out sections whenever they heard a hollow sound. They even scoured the pond used for baptism rituals. They found nothing out of the ordinary for a preacher; no gold nuggets, no anti-Communist materials. At four-thirty in the morning, the soldiers left with a truckload of books and everything of any value. We children stood and watched. I shall never forget that night.
My father did not come home again for twenty-one years and eight months. Mother, now the wife of an active counterrevolutionary, was stripped of her job as street committee director. My seventeen-year-old brother, who had been elected leader of a Communist youth organization, was removed from that position at school. My family was forced out of Fuchengmen Street, and eight of us crammed into a tiny fifteen-square-meter house on Baitasinei Street, ironically part of what used to be the west wing of a Tibetan lama’s residence near the White Tower Temple.
To support the family, my mother went out and got a temporary job at a construction site. It was a hard-labor job that nobody else wanted. My mother was grateful for any job, even though it hardly paid anything.
Liao: Between 1955 and 1958, Christian ministers were arrested and churches nationwide were closed down. In Beijing, more than sixty churches were combined into four, and those four were shut down in the Cultural Revolution. In a way, the government got what it wanted, the elimination of all religious activities in China.
Yuan: But they could not control what is in people’s hearts. In those difficult years, we would join our mother in prayer every day. One day, my mother couldn’t find anything to feed her six children. She knelt and prayed, “God, we don’t have rice. We don’t have flour. We don’t have anything to eat. It’s going to be like this tomorrow. If you think we should suffer like this, we will accept it. I will feed them with hot water . . .”
The next day, a woman came to our door. “Is this Brother Yuan’s home?” she asked. My mother nodded. The woman took an envelope from her pocket and handed it to my mother. Inside the envelope was fifty yuan. Mother looked up to thank the woman, but she had gone. Fifty yuan was enough to feed the family for two months. Mother knelt and offered her thanks to God. Over the next two decades, we regularly received anonymous cash in the mail.
Liao: When did you learn your father’s fate?
Yuan: We had no news of his whereabouts until November 1958, when a clerk from the local court came to our house and handed my mother a copy of the court’s verdict. We learned that he had gotten life imprisonment. When facing persecution from secular authorities, Christians never appeal. So my mother followed this tradition. It would have been futile anyway.
In December my father sent a postcard to us from a prison in Beijing, indicating the date of our first allowed family visit. So my mother brought me, my youngest sister, and my grandmother to Zixing Road.
The waiting room was packed with visitors. Small groups were allowed in for thirty minutes at a time. Father’s head had been shaved and he looked feeble. We were so excited to see each other. We simply held hands and didn’t know what to say. My mother meant to tell him that more Christian brothers and sisters had been arrested, but a guard stood by our side throughout the visit.
Liao: Did your father meet any fellow Christians in prison?
Yuan: Yes. One night in 1959, the prisoners were watching a propaganda film outside, when he noticed that sitting in front of him was his mentor, Reverend Wang Mingdao. They looked at each other for a few seconds. Neither said anything, but they both looked up at the sky—referring to their Lord in heaven.
Sometimes, my father might run into a Christian he knew, but he became very cautious. While he was at a detention center, a former Catholic reported to the authorities that my father continued to preach during incarceration. He was punished.
At the end of summer in 1960, there was famine in many parts of China and crime rates went up dramatically. Prisons in Beijing were overcrowded. So the government decided to send prisoners with long sentences to the labor camps in Xingkaihu, in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, along the border with the then Soviet Union. My father was one of them.
When they first arrived, they slept in tents fenced in with barbed wire and made bricks to build their own prison, after which they slept side by side in dormitories on a single fifty-meter-long bed.
In the winter, the temperature in Heilongjiang dropped to minus thirty degrees centigrade. While working in the field one day, a fellow prisoner noticed that my father’s nose looked discolored. Father ran inside to warm up and was spared any serious damage to his nose. Some people, who were not as fortunate, lost their ears in the cold. Father had seen several prisoners frozen to death, like bare tree trunks in the field. It’s hard to imagine how my father, a thin and physically feeble intellectual, managed to live through the long cold winters. He said he never got sick. In 1962 China and the Soviet Union officially ended their friendship and prepared for war against each other. The camps were closed. Among the more than two thousand prisoners, fifty were counterrevolutionaries—the most dangerous of criminals—and they were sent to Beijing. My father considered that to be a blessing. He would be able to see his family and the food would be better. In Heilongjiang, prisoners got by on bread made of corn chaff or wild vegetables. In Beijing, he could at least have sweet potatoes. Families could also send extra food to supplement the meager prison ration.
In October 1965 I graduated from high school and was assigned to a military farm in the northwestern province of Ningxia. Before I left, I visited Father. He grabbed my hands and held them for a long time. “You are eighteen already and will start a new life in the countryside. You should learn to take care of yourself. Are you confident about your faith? Do you know how to sing hymns?” When I answered yes to all of his questions, he smiled. I could tell he was very happy. I didn’t see him again for fourteen years.
Liao: How did the guards treat his religious belief?
Yuan: The guards were indoctrinated with Communist ideology. In their minds, there was no difference between religion and superstition. Monks and preachers were the same as witches and shamans. One day, a prison officer handed out some pamphlets on how to eliminate superstitious practices in China. My father stood up after receiving the material and said, “I don’t engage in any superstitious practices. My faith is true.” Those around him grew nervous. But the prison officer was curious: “You claim that you have true faith. Monks in temples are considered authentic believers of Buddhism. Were you a monk?” My father answered in a serious tone, “No, I wasn’t a monk in a native Chinese temple. If you really want to use a monk as a reference, I will say I’m a monk with hair in a foreign temple.” The prison officer burst out laughing, and after that my father’s nickname was “foreign monk.”
Liao: That officer seemed to be open-minded.
Yuan: Compared with those in other provinces, prison officers in Beijing were much more educated and civilized. Conditions were also better. But the good days didn’t last long. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution started and many intellectuals and former government officials were branded counterrevolutionaries. Within a short time, prisons in Beijing were full and the authorities again relocated prisoners with long sentences to Heilongjiang. My father was sent to a different farm. They had to start all over again—making bricks, building new dorms. By the end of 1966, even prisoners were mobilized for the Cultural Revolution and were told to expose each other’s anti-Party thinking and activities. My father was a “lackey of the foreign imperialists” and transferred to a jail for stricter supervision, which meant he had to attend political study sessions every day, listen to political speeches, and write confessions. In the area of politics, my father was an illiterate. Even though he sat through many political study sessions, his mind was elsewhere. He never paid attention. One day he was listening to a news broadcast with a group of prisoners when, absentmindedly, he wondered out loud, “How come we never hear President Liu Shaoqi in our daily newscast? Has he lost his position? Does it mean there is political infighting within the Communist Party?”
Liu Shaoqi had been purged by Mao, and my father’s remarks were reported. He was accused of “harboring evil intentions” against the Party. During interrogation, he kept his answers short: “Yuan Xiangchen, do you still believe in God?” “Yes, I do.” The officer thought he had heard it wrong. He repeated the question, and my father said calmly, “Yes, I do.” The officer became furious. “You are a damn obstinate, incorrigible, and extreme counterrevolutionary. Your problem can no longer be resolved through study sessions. You deserve severe punishment.”
My father was locked up in a small, dark cell, measuring about two meters long and two meters wide. There was no window and no ventilation. My father said it was like being sealed in a grave. Twice a day, someone would push food through a small opening at the bottom of the door, the “dog feeding hole.” My father lived in there for six months. He was ordered to sit, back straight, and reflect on his mistakes. He was monitored by the guards. If he did not sit straight, they would beat him.
As the political situation deteriorated outside, more people were purged and thrown in jail, and the prisons grew quite overcrowded. In order to accommodate the rising number of “bad” people, the prison forced my father to sometimes share his tiny cell with another inmate, but most were only being given extra punishment for a few days and would soon leave. My father was a permanent resident.
He was in the cell for six months—six months without washing, without a change of clothes, without seeing the sun—and when he emerged, he looked like a skeleton, filthy and so weak he could barely walk. When he stood up, the floor was showered with fleas. Sunlight blinded him for a long time. But he slowly recovered.
Liao: When I saw your father the other day, I couldn’t believe that he was almost ninety. His hair remains dark, and he looks strong and energetic. He bears no mark of having suffered so much.
Yuan: His longevity and good health are much commented upon. This may sound strange, but his jail sentence actually sheltered him from more severe persecution in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution, many pastors were beaten to death by the Red Guards. Beijing was at the center of the turmoil. Luckily, the situation in the northeast wasn’t as intense.
In the spring of 1969, my father’s jail was overcrowded, so he and other serious offenders, about a thousand prisoners, were sent to the remote Nenjiang region. Again, they built their own dorms and resettled.
Liao: How many times did he have to build his own prison?
Yuan: That was his fourth time. Soon after he arrived at his new place, he ran into an old friend, Wu Mujia, one of the eleven church leaders who refused to endorse the Three-Self policy. Wu was serving a fifteen-year sentence. My father spotted him when he was working in a vegetable field. The prison rules forbade inmates talking to each other. So my father began to hum loudly a hymn as a way of greeting. Wu heard the tune, looked up, and recognized my father. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Wu turned away. My father thought that Wu would join him in humming the hymn. But Wu did not, and my father was shocked by his friend’s reaction. The two of them used to be friends and had gone through a lot in life. My father later found out that Wu had given up his faith. That news made my father quite despondent.
Liao: Wasn’t it the case, though, that while some caved in under political pressure, more became determined to endure? I remember a Christian preacher with the name of Ba Fo in the northwestern city of Yinchuan who was jailed for many years. When Chairman Mao died, he was released ahead of schedule. In his release papers, the authorities claimed that he had confessed to his crimes. He had not, and Ba Fo wanted them to correct the record. “You don’t have to release me. I’ve never confessed my crimes.” His request was rejected, so Ba Fo asked to be sent back to jail. They refused. So he built a small shed outside the prison and lived there, fasting five days a week to appease what he called the wrath of God. He lived inside the shed for twenty-some years before his death.
Yuan: My father’s belief sustained him spiritually, enabling him to live on. None of his family members thought he would survive. Under normal circumstances, many people who got life imprisonment would end up either committing suicide or going crazy. My father underwent terrible physical tortures, but he survived. He even jokes that he should be thankful. At a labor camp in the northwest he had to carry baskets of dirt balanced at the ends of a pole, but the roads were icy and he had to keep his back straight or he’d fall flat on his face. Now he walks with a straight back, rather than hunched over, and he doesn’t suffer shortness of breath, unlike other people his age.
On December 20, 1979, after Father came back from the field, an officer came into his dorm and handed him a sheet of paper, which said: “Criminal Yuan Xiangchen has been granted parole. During the parole period, which starts from the date of his release to 1989, he shall not leave his residence in Beijing. Yuan shall report regularly his activities and his thinking to the local public security bureau.” With the parole paper in hand, he packed immediately and walked three kilometers to the bus stop, caught a train at the next town, crossed three provinces, and arrived in Beijing. His telegram saying he was coming home had been a complete surprise.
My eldest brother had written to the local court, saying that my father had been wrongly accused by the fanatics in the Mao era and asking the judge to follow government policy and reverse my father’s verdict and clear his name. My brother was told that Father was the ringleader of a counterrevolutionary clique and the verdict would stand. He was given a form letter stating: “We have carefully reviewed your request. We believe that the original verdict reached by our court against your father still stands. The charges against him remain unchanged.” The letter, dated November 16, 1979, bore the court’s stamp.
Liao: And barely a month after that, your father is out on parole . . .
Yuan: The Communist Party can be capricious.
We were all at the station to meet him, but, eager to get home, he didn’t linger and took a late night bus at the Baitasi stop. He walked around the neighborhood, trying to find our house, and began shouting my mother’s name. My sister-in-law was home and heard my father call. It was the first time they met. By the time we got home, Father was soaking his feet in a basin of hot water.
Liao: How did your father adjust himself to life outside prison?
Yuan: It wasn’t easy. He was completely out of touch with the realities of modern life, but while he had to reconnect with the physical, he remained in tune with the spiritual. If anything, his faith had grown stronger. After 1979 many people who had been jailed for religious beliefs were released. If they openly expressed support for the government-sanctioned Three-Self churches, the Religious Affairs Bureau would assign them jobs, offer them compensation, and allocate housing. Wu Mujia joined a Three-Self church and got a teaching job at the Yanjing Theology Academy. He lived a very comfortable life. My father didn’t even bother to ask the court to clear his name and soon resumed his religious activities.
He turned our house into a church. Initially, he preached to ten people at our house. Within a few years, his congregation was three hundred and his house church was the biggest in Beijing. Our house was certainly too small to accommodate such a number—we would dismantle our beds to make more room—and soon the whole alley was packed with followers when he preached. We used to have a joke: “We are short of everything at home, except Bibles and benches, and we were given those.” My father still holds that the government and the church should be separate and that the church should also be self-sustaining. Several foreign Christian organizations such as Open Doors have offered help by donating Bibles. Father doesn’t believe his house church should be registered as a nonprofit organization as that would place him under government authority. Our house has been ransacked several times, and we are being constantly harassed, but my father’s position remains unchanged. He continues to preach and the number of his followers has increased many times over. Several years ago, we moved into a new apartment. That was the one you visited.
Liao: I decided to visit your parents because I saw them interviewed in a recent documentary film, The Cross: Jesus in China. There is a scene where your father sang a hymn in his hoarse but excited voice on camera: “So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross / Till my trophies at last I lay down / I will cling to the old rugged cross / And exchange it some day for a crown.” With your mother humming along, he waved his arms in the air and his face exuded excitement. It was hard to believe that he was approaching ninety and that he had been locked up in jail for so long. It was very touching.
Yuan: The name of the hymn is “The Old Rugged Cross.” My parents are young at heart. I should mention the night of June 3, 1989, when fully-armed soldiers took over the streets and began their crackdown on the student protests. We could hear nonstop gunfire from our house. My father was not intimidated. He insisted that church services should go ahead without any interruption. The next morning, he got up at five o’clock. There was no bus service, so he biked fifteen kilometers to my sister’s house and preached to Christians there. During the sermon, he condemned the government’s action against students and citizens. He invoked the Word of God to console victims of the massacre. Looking back, it was quite scary for him to travel alone that day. There was still random shooting by soldiers on the streets, but my father, who was already in his eighties, went out calmly and fearlessly.
Liao: What’s the government reaction to your father’s activities now?
Yuan: We get harassed all the time. Every year, the police will accuse my father of organizing illegal gatherings and threaten to put him in prison again. The frequency of police harassment tends to coincide with the political situation in Beijing. For example, when the Party Congress or the legislature is in session, or during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, or on National Day, or when heads of state from major countries visit China, we will be under round-the-clock police surveillance. Our home phone will be tapped, or cut off altogether. They make it hard for fellow Christians to gather and hear my father’s sermons. If President Obama or heads of religious or international human-rights organization visit China, the police will take my parents away and put them in a hotel somewhere to make sure my father doesn’t talk with foreign media or do anything that could embarrass the government. Other times, we are okay.
Liao: I think many dissidents in Beijing get similar treatment.
Yuan: Unlike other dissidents’ activities, my father’s action is not intended to be antigovernment. He is here to do God’s work.
Liao: How does your father handle this harassment?
Yuan: Years of incarceration haven’t changed him a bit. Actually, he is becoming tougher and more determined. Each time the police show up at our house, he will step forward and confront them. “If my fellow Christians want to come, I can’t stop them unless you put a padlock on my house and arrest me. I’m a person with faith. When the country’s religious law contravenes my faith, I’m sorry that I have to follow the Word of God.” Often, police officers can only shake their heads. As you can see, my father refuses to be swayed by secular power.
Liao: I heard that U.S. president Bill Clinton once invited your father to participate in an annual White House Prayer Breakfast attended by Christian leaders from around the world.
Yuan: Yes, but my father turned down the invitation because the U.S. government had also invited leaders of China’s Three-Self churches. He had no intention of praying in the same room with those who bowed to power and gave up their faith. In addition, he didn’t want to attend religious activities organized by the government, be it the United States or China. Last, even if he had accepted the invitation, the Chinese government wouldn’t have issued him a passport. My father doesn’t feel compelled to ally himself with money and power. It’s not easy nowadays, but our whole family rallies around him. We are all Christians and, despite the challenges, I think the future looks bright here in China.
Epilogue
Reverend Yuan Xiangchen passed away in 2005 at the age of ninety-two. He had six children, all of whom are pious Christians. His son, Yuan Fusheng, whom I interviewed for this story, continues to be active in the Christian community in Beijing.