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    Liao: How did you manage to survive?
    Zhang: We grew our own crops and vegetables to support ourselves. When we left the church, we weren’t allowed to bring anything with us. We walked all the way to the village, and before we even had a drink of water, the local leaders dragged us to a public denunciation meeting. They paraded us around in the village, along with some Buddhist monks and nuns, Taoist priests, and several leaders of the local Protestant churches. We were ordered to stand in three rows in front of a stage. We faced hundreds of villagers with raised fists shouting revolutionary slogans. Some spat at us. Such hatred. As the leader worked up the crowd, a peasant activist came up and slapped Bishop Liu on the face. My aunt stepped forward. “How dare you slap him.” The activist used to be a poor farmer, and when the Communists confiscated the property of landowners, he was one of the beneficiaries. He pointed at my aunt and yelled back, “You are a counterrevolutionary and we have defeated you. You are the lackey of the imperialists who exploited us.” My aunt said, “We are not. We came from poor families and we’ve never exploited anybody.” The activist shouted again, “You are still stubborn and won’t admit your defeat. You need to be punished.” Fists were raised and the crowd began chanting, “Down with the counterrevolutionary nun!” My aunt wouldn’t back down. She said to her abuser, “Slap me if you want. If you slap me on the left side of my face, I will give you the right side too.”
    Liao: Turning the other cheek . . .
    Zhang: Those guys had no idea what my aunt meant. We had to endure many more political meetings, but after a while the humiliating remarks or beatings didn’t bother us anymore. We became smarter. We learned how to protect ourselves. All of those campaigns, whether to denounce the landowners, Buddhists, Catholics, or intellectuals, were all the same. People would shout slogans—“Down with so and so!” “Beat Liu so he can never stand up!” “Long live Chairman Mao!” “Long live the Communist Party!” “Long live the victory of whatever!”—and each time, we were made to confess. It got so we knew it by rote; all we did was change a few words.
    Liao: What was it like living in the village?
    Zhang: The village put us in a stone house with two rooms, which were very drafty. It was more like a pigsty than a house. The new life was really hard for Bishop Liu and my aunt; they were both quite old. I was relatively young. So I went to the village leader and asked for pots and pans, some grain, and bedding. He made me sign a piece of paper, saying I would pay them back after I earned enough money.
    What followed was hard labor. The farmwork wasn’t that difficult, but you had to have enough physical strength. I did most of the farming. My aunt and Bishop Liu assisted me. When there were no public denunciation meetings, we were allowed to live our life quietly. The village lent us an ox so we could plow the field. We also raised pigs and chickens and grew vegetables. We pickled surplus vegetables and would sell them, and eggs, at the local market. With the money we got, we bought vegetable oil, soy sauce, that sort of thing. Life was hard, but we got by, and soon we could breathe a little more easily.
    Liao: Then, of course, came the Great Leap Forward . . .
    Zhang: We all went up on the mountains to cut down trees to fuel the backyard furnaces making iron and steel. We were all told that if we worked hard, China could become an industrialized nation in two to three years. In the village, we had to hand over everything, including our cooking utensils. But nobody took care of the crops. Famine arrived. So many people died—it was really, really horrible. We lived on thin corn broth, almost as clear as plain water. Under the sun, you could see its