Read God Is Red for Free Online Page B

reflection at the bottom of the bowl; it looked like an egg yolk. Bishop Liu used to joke that a drawing of an egg was better than no egg at all, and my aunt would cup the bowl in her hand and say, seriously, “We are eating the sunny egg broth offered by the Lord. I’m sure the broth in this bowl has more nutrients.”
    Pretty soon, there was nothing left. We had to search for food in the mountains. We looked for wild vegetables, grass roots, moss, even tree bark. Some of the villagers were so desperate, they dug up dead bodies and feasted on the flesh. Even Buddhist monks hunted and ate rats. Let me tell you, there was chaos everywhere. Had the famine lasted much longer, I’m sure the villagers would have eaten us. Thank the Lord we survived.
    We prayed—on the road, climbing a hill, at home. We had all spent many years reading the Bible, and God’s words were etched, stroke by stroke, on my mind and in my heart. No matter how hard the government tried, those words couldn’t be erased. When we felt dizzy from hunger, we never asked for help, because they couldn’t even save themselves. We prayed that the Lord would grant us peace.
    One day, I joined other villagers combing an area in the mountains for food. Almost half a day had gone and I hadn’t found anything. I was exhausted and fell to ground and could not get up again. That’s when I noticed some colorful wild mushrooms near me. Those were the poisonous ones that nobody dared to touch. Hunger weakened my will and judgment. I snatched the mushrooms and put them into my mouth. I grew up in the region and knew the terrible consequences of swallowing poisonous mushrooms. Oh well, if I had to choose between death from hunger and death from poisoning . . . I simply picked the latter and prayed for God’s forgiveness. Several minutes later, I had a severe stomachache. I poked my fingers deep down in my throat, hoping I could throw up. But because there was nothing in my stomach, the poisonous mushrooms were digested and absorbed very fast. My hands and feet began to tremble. My whole body began to shake. I wrapped myself around a tree and kept praying. If I was going to die, I wanted to die in prayer.
    When I woke up, the moon was out. I managed to stand. I was still very hungry, but my stomach pain had gone. “Amen,” I murmured to myself. “Amen. Thank you, Lord, for your protection.” I was alive when I know I should have been dead.
    Liao: All three of you survived.
    Zhang: During the Cultural Revolution, Bishop Liu was taken to somewhere in Haidong for more interrogation. He was beaten many times. His health deteriorated a lot. In 1983, when the Party reversed its policy on religion, we were reunited. The local Religious Affairs Bureau found us a two-bedroom house across the street from the old church. So the three of us moved in there and tried to persuade the residents and the school authorities to give us back our church and the church’s property. Bishop Liu cited Party policy in his negotiations and told them, “Even though we are old and feeble, we are not giving in—this is God’s church.” The residents told him, “To hell with your God.”
    Next we tried to persuade officials at the local Religious Affairs Bureau. Carrying my aunt on my back, we went to the Dali Prefecture government building, but nobody wanted to talk with us. So I walked out of the building and put my aunt down on the stairs outside. I sat next to her, fasting and staging a sit-in protest.
    Liao: How old were you then?
    Zhang: I think I was seventy-five or seventy-six. My aunt was close to ninety. We would come home in the evening and go there again in the morning. My aunt had asthma and could hardly breathe. I told her to stay home, but she refused. “The Lord belongs to all of us, not to you alone, she said.” In the 1980s, the road from the old section of Dali to Xiaguan, the prefecture