TILANQIAO: Christ Crucified in China

 

By Theresa Marie Moreau

 

 

 

“N

umber 494! Number 495!” called Officer Zhang, standing in the middle of Xuhui District Police Station. “Pack your things! Today I permit you to see each other!”

Wenli Chen, Prisoner Number 495, packed his few possessions – underwear, comforter, towel, toothbrush, a pinch of soap and a white-enameled cup with a blue lip – into his barely used, 1950s canvas traveling bag. He stood inside his cell, waiting.

It was January 25, 1969.

“Go! Go! Go!” ordered Officer Zhang, after he unlocked the cell door.

Chen hurried outdoors, toward a large, olive-green Black Maria, with two doors in the back. The wagon resembled a World War II ambulance. He stepped inside and saw his best friend, Jijia “Joseph” Wu, Prisoner Number 494, who was thin, sort of short and wore eyeglasses that gave him the appearance of an owl.

Once the doors shut, the wagon sped off, with siren blaring.

“They’re coming!” yelled a boy on the road, among a group of youths who ran after the Black Maria.

At Jiao Tong University, Chen, Wu and several others were ushered into the auditorium. With their arms cuffed behind their backs, they formed a line up on the stage and faced an audience. Chen saw his tiny, gray-haired mother in the crowd.

A soldier stood behind Chen and pushed his shoulders down in a bow formation while pulling his hands up. Behind the soldier, a military representative read out the sentences in a shrill voice, with hits of staccato.

Chen heard his name called.

“Active counterrevolutionary criminal Wenli Chen, male, age 28, birthplace Zhongshan, Guangdong province, of bourgeois family background, student, unemployed, residence Number 354 Xinhua Road.”

“Active counterrevolutionary criminal Wenli Chen, from a bourgeois family, has had reactionary thinking ever since the Liberation. He has hated Socialism deep to his bones ever since the Liberation. Since 1956, he has used a radio receiver to listen to the stations of the enemies. He has scattered rumors everywhere, drumming up support and waving the flag and screaming and shouting for imperialism, revisionism and reactionaries. Since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution he has … actively recruited counter-revolutionary members and organized a current counterrevolutionary group. Criminal Chen has attacked the Socialist system furiously, attacked Zedong Mao Thought, that of infinite brightness, attacked and slandered our Great Leader Chairman Mao and the Proletarian Headquarters headed by Chairman Mao and Vice Chairman Biao Lin, as deputy. Criminal Chen’s crimes were serious. After the case had been uncovered, Criminal Chen set up a conspiracy of silence with the other criminals, compelling them not to confess their crimes. The criminals were investigated, and their crimes were confirmed…

“According to the law, Criminal Wenli Chen is sentenced to 15 years in prison.”

Minutes later, the shrill voice paused, and the hearing concluded. No lawyers. No judge. No court.

“All prisoners will be escorted to the prison now!” the military representative announced.

A muscular, post-military Chen climbed into the back of the olive-green Black Maria police wagon and sat on the floor next to Wu, his friend accused of being a member of Chen’s “counterrevolutionary group.” For a fleeting second the two made eye contact, and then Chen glanced out the front windshield.

Comrade Wang caught him. She was the head of investigations for Xuhui District’s Hunan Road Neighborhood Association.

“This one is real bad!” Wang screamed as she pushed Chen’s head down and jerked up his hands, cuffed behind his back. She screeched, “He’s still looking outside!”

Wang’s comrade, sitting on the bench, said to Chen, “Fifteen years is very heavy. In Tilanqiao, if you are good and willing to transform, we will reduce your sentence. If you are bad, we will increase your sentence.”

After a short ride, the wagon slowed down at a guarded entrance, almost stopped and Chen stole another peek. Mounted on the side of the front gate was a white sign with black, Chinese characters for shanghai city prison, commonly known as Tilanqiao for the surrounding area where the massive institution stood, at 147 Zhangyang Road.

Slowly, the wagon drove through one gate, then another and rolled to a stop inside the prison. The doors in the back opened, and the prisoners jumped down. Escorted into the reception building, where handcuffs were removed, Chen looked at his freed hands, swollen and red. One by one, the men were fingerprinted.

Chen gazed outside and saw Comrade Wang. A faint smile tugged at his lips, while he looked at her.

“You are real bad! Our investigation is not finished yet. We will add to your sentence!” she screamed, stomping the ground.

A prison guard in the front said loudly to Comrade Wang, “There is nothing for you to do. You can go now.” To Chen, he added, “Don’t worry about them. They are crazy.”

Chen, officially Tilanqiao Prisoner Number 6641, waited in a large room with many others, including his best friend.

“We’re capsized in a shallow ditch,” Wu, with tears in his eyes, whispered to Chen.

“Everything depends on God,” Chen said.

Just then another door opened, and a guard ordered the group of men, two by two, into the prison yard, where more guards stood.

“How many years?” a guard asked each one.

“Fifteen years,” said Chen, when it was his turn.

“Go! Go! Go!” the guard directed him toward Cellblock Number 3, where he and his friend, Wu, were separated.

Escorted into the five-story block building and up the stairs to the second floor, Chen heard shouting.

“Where are you coming from?” yelled a prisoner, from somewhere inside the bowels of the cellblock.

“New sentencing!” answered another prisoner, somewhere.

“You are not allowed to yell!” yelled one of the guards.

Chen walked down a corridor, lighted by dim, overhead bulbs dotting the ceiling every 10 to 15 feet. To one side, the outer wall with windows. To the other side, a row of dark cells. Escorted to the end, finally, around 4 p.m., he found himself at Cell Number 45.

Calmly, Chen entered the tiny cell, approximately 4.5 feet by 7.5 feet, made even smaller with a raised wooden floor recessed into the cement room to permit the inward swing of the iron-bar door. He sat down between two of his three cellmates.

To his right, next to the eight iron bars, sat Zhenhua Jin. Around 30, he was a Chinese doctor of acupuncture, a type of doctor that was also a fortune teller, an astrologer of sorts. He was in Tilanqiao, because he knew Mao’s birth date and checked the fortune of the chairman. Unfortunately, someone reported him to authorities, and he was arrested and sentenced.

Across from the acupuncturist sat Zhifang Xu, snug between the grille gate and the neiwu, the neat stack of inmates’ belongings. An old man, in his late 50s or early 60s, he had complained that the rations he received from the People’s Government were not sufficient, which meant that he was not happy with the Communists, which meant that he attacked Socialism, which meant that he was a counterrevolutionary.

To Chen’s left sat Wenbin Qing, around 50, who insisted on sitting in the corner, across from the bucket used for human waste. Before the Communists seized power on October 1, 1949, he had been a top-of-the-line Grade-8 Worker for a factory, where he had joined his co-workers, underground Communists who had agitated for more money. After the takeover, Qing was falsely accused of joining a pseudo People’s Liberation Army.

Chen’s first few months in Tilanqiao were dull and routine, even the day when his entire second floor moved up to the fifth floor. Most of the time, inmates sat in study groups, the daily brainwashing sessions. But occasionally, the daily boredom was alleviated during yard time, when the men were ordered to the basketball courts, bald patches of cement with sparse wisps of weeds. Between two cellblocks, they usually walked around and around the circumference of the yard, but sometimes they watched performing teams of prisoners.

Many artists found themselves behind bars, after the Communists rounded up and arrested them during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the regime’s attempt to rid China of the Four Olds – old culture, old customs, old habits and old ideas. Those arrested included dancers from the Shanghai Ballet Institute and musicians from the Shanghai Brass Orchestra, the Shanghai Choir and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.

Because they produced nothing for the State, musicians and artists were classified as bad elements, one of the Nine Categories of Enemies: landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rightists, traitors, spies, capitalist roaders and intellectuals, which was the Stinking Ninth. Not classified as criminals, the entertainers had been processed through the administrative system under the military administration, and most had been sentenced to labor-reeducation farms or factories. Only labor-transformation cases were classified as criminal and processed through the People’s courts.

Inside the prison walls of Tilanqiao, the entertainers marched and sang revolutionary songs, as they held up their “Quotations from Chairman Zedong Mao,” a pocket-sized book with a red plastic jacket slipped over plain cardboard covers.

A few times, Chen saw Haishen Lu perform. A famous singer in the Shanghai Choir, he was tall and thin and sang like an Irish tenor, with a rich tone and a vibrato that hinted of classical training. For the inmates, Lu performed the “Usuli Boat Song.” Normally, its stirring notes and lines celebrated the beauty of a simple life upon the Usuli River, but during the Cultural Revolution the lyrics had been perverted with political propaganda.

Tilanqiao inmates had their own in-house prison ballad, “Song of the Tilanqiao Prisoner,” which they would secretly sing among themselves:

One enters the prison, scared and trembling;

Two by two, in line;

Three meals, every meal is not enough;

Four seasons, without a jacket;

Five-story mansion;

Six relatives, you cannot rely upon;

Seven and a half feet is the size of the kennel;

Eight iron bars, each one strong and firm;

In the end, why am I here?

Really, I don’t know why!

 

†††

 

L

ife for Chen in Tilanqiao was miserable but bearable until one morning, when Xinwei Zhou walked over to his cell and ordered, “Wenbin Qing and Wenli Chen. Give me the ‘Quotations.’”

The two handed over their books to Zhou, the fifth-floor worker prisoner who assisted the guards in dealing with inmates.

They knew something was wrong.

One day during a simple chitchat, Qing told Chen about a previous cellmate, Yongjin Yan, who had been a guerrilla fighter in Jiangxi province. Yan had described his hideout deep in the mountains, then grabbed Qing’s “Quotations” and scribbled a nonsensical character on the cover.

“Show this secret code on your book, and you will be accepted inside the mountain hideout,” Yan told Qing.

“I will escape and meet you in the mountains,” Qing told Yan.

But Qing never escaped and was still locked up in Tilanqiao. When he told Chen about the mountain hideaway, he grabbed Chen’s “Quotations” and wrote the secret sign on the cover.

Someone must have reported their discussion to authorities.

“Everything is Yongjin Yan’s problem, not our problem,” Qing whispered to Chen. “You can only confess about Yan.”

That meant don’t talk about anything else except Yan, especially not the rude jokes they had made about Mao. They knew Yan had already been sentenced to death; it had been in the newspaper.

They waited.

Abruptly, Chen was removed from Cell Number 45 and transferred to Cell Number 7, closer to the guard’s desk. It was the
summer of 1969. He had been in Tilanqiao only six months, and already he was sinking deeper in the deadly Communist quicksand.

Chen entered the cell, settled down and briefly introduced himself.

“I worked for a Shanghai cable manufacturer as a technician. I was arrested for talking, but they accused me of being in a counter-revolutionary group,” he said, then turned to an older man in the cell and said, “I graduated from Tongji. Once you were my teacher.”

“There were so many students; I can’t remember you,” said Zhongyue Pan.

A professor at Tongji University, a civil engineering school, Pan had taught theoretical mechanics and mechanics of materials, but following the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956-57), he received the invisible “hat” of a rightist and was accused of hating the new society after China was “liberated” by the Communists. Subsequently, he was sentenced to work in the Labor Welding Machine Prison Factory. Years later, he was targeted during the Campaign to Purify Class Ranks (1967-69), just another movement created by the Communists to push their propaganda in a power struggle dedicated to the persecution and purge of their political enemies.

Daily, Chen attended struggle meetings around the guard’s desk, where inmates sat on small blocks formed from personal stacks of square, Chinese toilet-paper sheets tied together. Knowing he was in line to be struggled, Chen tuned out the meetings and let his thoughts dwell on ways he would handle the all-too-certain trouble he would face in the days ahead.

After the first week, as inmates were called out of their cells to attend the struggle meeting, Chen was stopped at the door.

“Stay inside,” Zhou, the worker prisoner, told him.

From his cell, Chen listened to the screamed demands of the strugglers coming from the guard’s station, on the other side of the fifth floor.

“Confess!”

“You have to be honest!”

“You have to confess!”

Chen didn’t know who was being struggled.

Then Zhou appeared again and said, “Come out.”

“Yes,” Chen said.

As he left his cell and started for the guard’s station, he heard a familiar baritone voice just around the corner.

“My arms will be paralyzed! My arms will be broken!”

It was Wu, his good friend, who screamed as inmates pulled his arms behind his back, so the guard could squeeze a pair of handcuffs onto his upper arms.

When Chen turned the corner, their eyes briefly met. Hunched over in pain, Wu walked between two prisoners escorting him back to his cell down the corridor from the guard’s desk. As he neared his cell, he hollered to Chen.

“Ah-Di!” Chen heard his nickname, meaning “Little Brother.” “Ah-Di! I’m so sorry, because I hurt you! And I’m sorry, again, because I will hurt you again!”

That was the last time Chen saw his good friend.

“Oooow!” Wu screamed as he entered his cell. “Both my hands will be paralyzed!”

Waiting, standing in front of the guard’s desk was Captain Lu. All guards were addressed as captain by the inmates. Mid-height, he looked very strong. With his gold-rimmed eyeglasses, he looked very educated, much more educated than the usual thick-headed cadres trucked in from the countryside with only elementary educations.

“Stand here!” Lu hollered. “Kneel down!”

Two prisoners sitting on their toilet-paper blocks jumped up. One grabbed Chen’s shoulders. The other grabbed his legs. They forced him into a kneeling position.

Lu hollered an archaic, Chinese curse, “Your mother dropped in coffin!” (Meaning: Your mother is in hell.) As he yelled, he slapped Chen, first with his palm, then with the back of his hand. Then he calmly walked around the desk and sat down.

“What anti-transformation activity have you done?” he asked.

“I didn’t do anything,” Chen said.

“Handcuffs!” Lu screamed.

The two prisoners, who had been standing by Chen, grabbed him and pulled his arms behind his back. Lu rose and slid the handcuffs into place on Chen’s upper arms.

Once the handcuffs clicked into position, the prisoners sitting around Chen started screaming at him, accusing him.

“You’re not honest!”

“You’re a reactionary!”

“Confess!”

“You must confess!”

“Confess, and you will receive leniency! If you don’t confess, you will be punished heavily!”

Chen said nothing. At first, he didn’t feel much pain, but as the minutes passed, vomit began to erupt from his stomach. His organs felt like they were convulsing. Then his whole body shook.

“What do you think now?” Lu asked.

The screaming from the crowd of inmates continued.

“I did nothing,” Chen said.

“You’re very stubborn!” Lu said. “Do you know that if the handcuffs stay on for 20 minutes, both your arms will be paralyzed?”

The screaming continued for several minutes. Chen gradually lost the feeling in his arms, and then he lost consciousness. When he woke up, he was back in his cell. The handcuffs had been removed.

Chen’s old professor called, “Captain! Captain!”

Lu walked down the corridor.

At the cell, he stopped, stood on the other side of the bars and said, “This time is only a warning. We are very kind to you. We didn’t leave the handcuffs on too long; otherwise, both your arms and hands would be dead. You have to consider confessing everything.”

Then he left.

Chen’s hands and arms were very swollen.

“I have a worn-out shirt,” the professor said, as he went to the neiwu stack and pulled out a threadbare white shirt yellowed with age. He ripped the material into long strips and knotted those into a rope. He told Chen to sit with his back to the bars, then tied his hands over his head, to the bars, to lessen the swelling. The entire night, Chen slept in that position. The next morning, the swelling had subsided. Still a little red, his arms could move, but his hands and fingers, barely. When the others went outside, Chen stayed in the cell with the professor.

“What happened?” the professor asked.

When Chen finished telling him about Wenbin Qing and the secret sign that he had drawn, the professor told him that a few days earlier, Qing had confessed everything when Lu ordered him to the front.

“If you don’t confess, it’s meaningless. He already told everything. You just protect him, and he’s not a good man. What do you want to do?”

Chen considered his options. The authorities already knew everything.

“I have no choice,” he said.

Pan shouted, “Baogao! (Report!) Captain Lu! Wenli Chen wants to confess!”

There was a struggle meeting going on, but Lu walked over to the cell.

“You have to write everything down,” he said.

By clutching the pen between his numbed thumb and index finger, Chen wrote his version of Qing and the secret sign on his copy of Mao’s book of “Quotations.” The entire episode filled only three pages of the authorities’ official onion-skin paper with the horizontal double red lines.

The next day, Lu picked up Chen’s confession and read it.

“That’s so simple. You’re so stupid. In the beginning, why did you refuse to confess? You begged them to torture you. You brought on your own suffering. Do you know that Wenbin Qing sold you out long ago?”

Whatever Chen wrote must have matched what Qing wrote, for the investigation was over. By the time the case was finished, it was sometime in January 1970, and he was relocated to the third floor, where he met Zixuan Li.

“I am an engineer,” said the old man with a Sichuan dialect, for he had grown up in Chongqing (pinyin form of Chung-Ching). “I worked as a technician in a turbine machine factory in Shanghai.”

“Why did you get arrested?” someone asked Li.

“During the Cultural Revolution, I was cleaning up the office, and I accidentally broke Mao’s porcelain statue on the table. I was investigated for that, and then, when the investigators found out that I ran a ferry that Jieshi Jiang took a few times, I was accused of being a counterrevolutionary and sentenced to 12 years,” he said.

Li looked at Chen.

“Oh, I see your face. It shows you are a good man,” said Li, who also dabbled in suan ming, Chinese fortune telling, which makes predictions based on facial structure and expressions.

“And I know you believe in the Man With the Outstretched Fingers,” he said, as he raised his hand and straightened his first two fingers.

“Yes,” Chen said, smiling.

“You are Catholic?” he asked Chen.

“No. I want to be Catholic, but I am from a Protestant family,” Chen said.

“I came from the French-priest school. I am Catholic. I can sing a song,” Li said, singing softly, “Veni, Creator Spiritus, Mentes tuorum visita, Imple superna gratia, Quae tu creasti pectora.”

Chen had heard the song before while listening to his black-and-brass, RCA shortwave communication receiver in his bedroom at his family’s home, located at 354 Xinhua Road, just west of Shanghai’s French Concession. He had always remembered the melody.

When Li finished singing “Veni Creator,” he warned Chen: “You will encounter danger, but you will pass it. In the most difficult time, do not do anything silly.”

Chen listened to the warning.

Another cellmate, Huanzhong Yu, also warned Chen.

“If you suffer a lot, stay fast to keeping your life. Don’t be disappointed,” Yu said.

In other words, don’t kill yourself.

“I’m giving to you this Hero fountain pen,” Yu said, handing the pen to Chen. “You have to keep the pen. It has a clip on the cap to put on your pocket.”

Before Tilanqiao, Yu, a Russian-language teacher about the same age as Chen, had been locked up in a detention center. While there, a young thief had taught him a trick. With a pocket clip from a pen, anyone could pick open handcuffs. The clip was a long piece that could be inserted into the mechanism of the handcuffs. By using the clip to push the teeth, the spring could be released and the cuffs loosened.

“A lot of people have fountain pens, but the clips are missing,” Yu told Chen, who later noticed it was true.

Summer passed. By the time Chen pulled his thick, winter coat out of his travel bag, he was moved down to the first floor in Cellblock Number 3. He didn’t know it yet, but his Big Case had already begun, and he had been reclassified as a confinement prisoner, which excluded him from the study group and eliminated all visitation rights.

After the move to his new cell, every day for a couple of weeks Chen was forced to stand at the head of a long table placed in the corridor under the windows. At times, he was ordered to bend over in the jet-plane position, an extreme bow at the waist, with his arms extended up in the back.

Inmates, seated on long benches on both sides of the table, screamed at him. But one in particular beat him. It was Ming Tang, one of his cellmates. And he was bad. He was a typical Party boss, for which the Chinese characters translate to Party stick, a perfect description for cadres, Communist tools who are professional strugglers, those who beat down others. But when Tang was struggled during the Cultural Revolution, he refused to cooperate and be struggled. For that, he was sentenced 12 years.

Tang had also been an officer in the full-scale Korean War, and he was very proud of his service. Chen overheard him bragging one day to the two younger cellmates.

“When you were in the Korean War, how were the American soldiers? Were they big and strong?” one asked.

“Yeah, but their size didn’t help them. Whenever we caught them, we used our cigarettes to burn their penises, and they confessed everything. They’re not brave. They’re timid,” he said, laughing.

Tang derived a sadistic pleasure from inflicting pain on others, including Chen.

“Confess!” Tang and the others screamed, as Chen stood, bowed over, at the head of the table.

“I already confessed!” Chen answered, thinking they were referring to the previous case involving Qing and the secret code.

“Confess that you joined a counterrevolutionary group,” the guard said.

“I don’t know about any group,” Chen answered.

“What is the name of your counterrevolutionary group?” the guard demanded.

“I don’t know of any group,” Chen repeated.

In extreme pain from bending over, Chen fell to the floor.

Someone began screaming. He was reading from Mao’s little red book, the chairman’s speech from August 1, 1945, “The Situation and Our Policy After the Victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan.”

“It is up to us to organize the people!” the reader screamed. “As for the reactionaries in China, it is up to us to organize the people to overthrow them! Everything reactionary is the same; if you do not hit it, it will not fall!”

When the reader reached the word hit, the others screamed, “Hit! Hit! Hit!” and used their fists to hit Chen.

The reader continued: “This is also like sweeping the floor – ”

Drowning out the reader, the strugglers screamed, “Sweep the floor! Sweep the floor! Sweep the floor!”

The reader continued: “ – as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish.”

Tang and the others chanted, “Use a broom! Use a broom! Use a broom!”

After a few weeks of daily struggles, in December 1970, Chen was moved from Cellblock Number 3 to Cellblock Number 1, where authorities sent the lifers, those who could expect to live out their days in Tilanqiao until death – either by old age or execution.

Perhaps his relocation to Cell Number 7 had been an early Christmas gift from the Divine Will. After his transfer, during the pre-study-group yard time for prisoners on the second floor, Chen saw one of the most famous prisoners in Tilanqiao.

“Ready for yard time! Ready for yard time!” Telian Shao, the second-floor worker prisoner announced as he walked through the corridor. Shao had been sentenced to life in prison, because he had killed his wife after he found out that she had a lover.

As the guard unlocked the cell doors, the inmates lined up, two by two, and waited for the order to walk to the basketball court between Cellblock Number 1 and Cellblock Number 2.

Prior to his transfer to Tilanqaio, Chen had been locked up in the Xuhui District Police Station, where one of his cellmates, Old Yu, had told him about executions in the basketball courts between the cellblocks.

Before he was arrested, Yu had been an investigator for the police department and had once been the supervisor of Officer Zhang, their jailer in the police station.

Yu explained that when Zhang worked for the Public Security Bureau, he zealously joined in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950-53). Day and night, he helped in the capture and interrogation of countless suspected enemies of the State.

However, the number of prisoners quickly surpassed the number of available cells. With not enough room in the jails, prisoners were liquidated, sometimes in the Tilanqiao basketball courts.

Like other executioners, Zhang enjoyed killing prisoners for the thrill of it. He would raise his pistol, only inches away from the back of the victim’s neck, and pull the trigger, sending the bullet into the neck and out through the mouth.

However, one time Zhang had either aimed a little too high or scratched the bullet on a rock for more explosive destruction. As a result, the bullet hit the back of the victim’s skull, and his brains and blood spattered everywhere around the basketball court, including Zhang’s face and clothing.

After that, Zhang began having nightmares, with visions of his victims haunting him in his sleep. Even during his waking hours, he feared that the dead would drag him into hell.

During exercise yard time, when Chen saw the basketball courts, he remembered what Yu had told him.

In the yard, inmates stayed in two-by-two line formation, walking circles around the court, nodding and smiling to one another.

“You see the first one?” whispered Chen’s cellmate Youzhen Hong, who was walking behind him.

Chen looked toward the front of the line, where he saw a short man wearing a government-issued policeman’s uniform, different from the usual prisoner clothing. He wore a blue, thick cotton jacket with four pockets in the front – two at the chest and two at the waist, thick cotton pants and army-issued thick cotton shoes, commonly called the big-head shoes. The white cloth badge he wore over his chest indicated that he was Prisoner Number 28234.

He is wearing government clothes. He must not have any family visit him, Chen thought.

“That is Pinmei Gong,” Hong whispered.

Chen had heard about Shanghai’s Roman Catholic Bishop Pinmei “Ignatius” Gong. He respected the man.

Gong and several hundred other Shanghai Catholics had been arrested on September 8, 1955, in a big round up of those who had refused to renounce the authority of the Pope and join the Three-Self Reform Movement. With its three principles – self-government, self-propagation and self-support – it was the regime’s Communist, Marxist, atheist version of the Roman Catholic Church. Unsuccessful at winning over converts, the Movement had been replaced by and integrated into the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, on July 15, 1957.

After his arrest, in 1955, Gong wasn’t sentenced until nearly five years later, on March 17, 1960, along with 12 other Catholic priests, after a two-day “trial” in the Court of Criminal Justice, Shanghai City Intermediate People’s Court, Zhong Xing, Number 162.

In part, the verdict and subsequent sentencing read as follows:

“Defendant: Pinmei Gong, alias Tian-Chueh Kung, male, born in 1901, Chuan Sha County, Shanghai City. Prior to his arrest, he was the Roman Catholic bishop of the Shanghai diocese, and concurrently bishop of the diocese of Suzhou. Former residence in this city’s Sichuan Road South, Number 36. Now under arrest…

“On the basis of the evidence for criminal activities on the part of Pinmei Gong’s counterrevolutionary and anti-government organization, our court is perfectly cognizant of the fact that the accused, Pinmei Gong, is the leader of this counterrevolutionary and anti-government organization, hiding under the cloak of religion. He is collaborating with the imperialists in the betrayal of his motherland, and has served as an important tool for the imperialists to overthrow the People’s democratic political rights of our country to such an extent that he has accomplished serious violations of the country’s interests. In this case, each defendant has infringed the People’s Republic’s law against counterrevolutionary activities…all of which criminal activities are punishable by law. Our court, in accordance with the concrete circumstances of the defendant’s criminal activities, and with respect to any expression of repentance on the part of the accused subsequent to their arrest, has decided to pass the following judgment:

“The accused, Pinmei Gong, is the head and leader of the counterrevolutionary and anti-government organization; he is in league with the imperialists, betrayed his motherland, and his crimes are of a very serious nature. But after his case had been brought forward, when confronted with actual circumstantial evidence, he did not deny his role, and furthermore he had something to reveal on the subject of how the imperialists under the cover of religion plotted subversive actions. Under the magnanimity of the law we hereby sentence him to lifetime imprisonment, and hereby strip him for life of all his political rights.”

During his incarceration, Gong had never been allowed any visitors. His mother and other relatives made countless attempts to see him, but authorities never permitted the bishop any visitation rights. His family also made endless efforts to get care packages to him, even through the Red Cross, but he never received a single one.

Gong had lived in isolation in a cell on the first floor of Cellblock Number 1, until the Cultural Revolution erupted, then he was moved up to the second floor.

Chen stared at the bishop of Shanghai, forced to wear a shabby, policeman’s uniform. Barely 5 feet tall, the old man symbolized the strength of the Roman Catholic Church, not only in China, but in the world. His courageous strength and endless faith in God and Pope made him one of the most hated, most feared men by the Communists.

Yes, Chen had a great respect for Bishop Gong.

 

†††

 

A

fter a supper of steamed rice topped with a few shreds of boiled Chinese cabbage, Chen sat on the wooden floor in his dimly lit cell. With his back against the cement wall, he listened to the general din inside Cellblock Number 1.

From one of the upper floors, someone asked, “That’s your stuff?”

Then a very distinct baritone voice, with a clear and articulate pronunciation, answered, “Yes, yes, yes. That belongs to me.”

Chen recognized the voice immediately. It was his best friend, Jijia “Joseph” Wu.

Every evening, worker prisoners made their rounds, noting with chalk on the iron bars each prisoner’s next-day rice account. Rations were 2 ounces for breakfast, 3 for lunch, 3 for supper. Prisoners were allowed to decrease the amounts, but never to increase.

“I want to change 3 to 2 for tomorrow’s lunch,” the same deep voice resonated.

Again, Chen heard his friend. But it would be the last time. For Wu, who had been a medical surgeon at Shanghai’s Central Hospital of Hongkou District, would take his own life some time later. Like others in Tilanqiao, who fashioned rope from rags to hang themselves or who sharpened found pieces of metal to cut open their veins, the “Alcatraz of the Orient” would prove too much for the man. Never would he reunite with his fiancée, who waited for him in Hong Kong.

But Chen wasn’t the only one to hear Wu’s voice. So, too, did one of his new cellmates, Zhian Ying, the cell’s duty prisoner ordered to keep an eye on Chen and to report to authorities all his activities and thoughts. He knew that Chen and Wu were involved in the same case.

“Did you hear something?” asked Ying, whose nickname was “Twisted Mouth,” because his lips were deformed and twisted.

“No,” Chen answered, pretending he had heard nothing.

Like a lot of prisoners, Ying was repulsive, but even more so than the others. When he opened his mouth wide enough to speak, his gums appeared infected and inflamed. His eyes were blood red and always looked watery.

“I need medicine for the trachoma in my eyes!” Ying would call out whenever Xuexing Ye, one of the prison’s doctors, walked by.

“Your eyes are not just trachoma. Your eyes are trachoma from syphilis,” mocked Ye, who was also a prisoner, convicted of being a counterrevolutionary and sentenced 12 years.

But Ye would give Ying the medicine for his eyes and some clean gauze for the open sores on his body. Chen and his cellmates looked on in horror, as Ying removed his underwear and old bandaging then wrapped the fresh gauze around his penis, which was entirely covered in bloody sores, dripping with yellow and green pus.

“You are so dirty and diseased. You are scattering germs everywhere!” complained a disgusted Youzhen Hong, normally a compassionate and timid person. Hong had been arrested during the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, because he had been a Nationalist officer.

“I don’t have any disease, only a skin rash,” a defensive Ying replied.

A tool of the authorities, Ying pried into Chen’s life, to find out about his bourgeois background.

“Your family was very rich before?” Ying asked, with his mouth twisting.

“My father was an artist and did not run a business,” Chen said.

“Your grandfather must have several wives and own a lot of property?”

“You are wrong. My grandpa and my family are very upright and honorable people.”

“Oh, I knew that you came from a foreigner slavish family and that you’re a believer in foreign religion.”

“Hmp,” was all Chen said in response.

But it was Chen who found out about Ying.

Every year in January, each prisoner was required to write a “Year-End Summary of My Thoughts,” a curriculum vitae detailing his course of life, from birth to the present. It had to include the transformation of spirit and thinking, transformation from the old man to the new man, from life in the old society to that in the new society.

Ying was busy writing his year-end summary when Shao announced, “Time for self-study! Duty prisoners go to front desk for meeting!”

As the duty prisoner of the cell, Ying had to immediately respond when the guard unlocked the door and ordered him out and to the front. As for his writing, without time to put it away, he had to drop it where it was and leave it out in the open.

No sooner had Ying disappeared down the corridor than Chen leaned over and peeked at what his cellmate had written: Born in 1913, he came from a dilapidated landlord family in the Jiangsu countryside. As a teenager, he traveled to Shanghai, became a trainee in a newspaper and joined the Communist Party in 1930. In the early 1930s, he was promoted at the newspaper to clerk, then staff member, then chief of staff. In 1935, he joined the Guomindang’s Central Committee of the Investigative and Statistics Bureau. In 1939, he became the chief of the Zhenjiang (pinyin form of Chen-Chiang) Station, under the Japanese-controlled Political Security Bureau. In 1945, he joined the Nationalist’s Loyalty Salvation Army. In 1948, he joined the People’s Liberation Army.

Chen couldn’t believe what he was reading. Sure, Ying was a Communist. All the old-timers in Tilanqiao knew that. And he had always described himself as a “special-duty officer,” which meant only that he was a spy. But the real shocker, Chen learned from reading the summary, was that Ying was no ordinary spy. He was a triple spy, a triple agent – not only for the Communists, but for the Nationalists and the Japanese, as well.

That was as much as Chen had time to read. When he heard the approach of Ying’s footsteps, he quickly resumed his seat and acted nonchalantly as Ying reentered the cell and settled down on the floor.

Chen learned more about Ying later while sharing gossip with other inmates:

When the Communists gained control in China, Ying finally went public as a Communist and was awarded the position of a high-ranking officer in Shanghai’s Public Security Bureau. Not long after his great promotion, he was given a list with 11 names of Nationalist spies who had gone underground. He would be the one responsible for rooting them out and arresting them.

Excited to be part of the hunt, Ying ordered his men to arrest the 11 underground Nationalist officers. After every last one was caught, Ying proudly reported to Fan Yang, chief of the Public Security Bureau and also deputy mayor of Shanghai.

“Good,” Yang said, “but missing one.”

“Oh, nobody is missing. All the names on my list are caught,” Ying said with confidence.

“Missing one: The name is Zhian Ying.”

Ying was immediately arrested and labeled an enemy of China, accused of being a spy for the Nationalists and Japanese. He was sentenced to life in prison. The Communists had no more use for him. He knew too much, and the best place to keep someone who knows too much is always in prison. But even in Tilanqiao, Ying was a loyal Communist. Whatever the Reds asked him to do, he did it. He reported inmates’ activities and thoughts to the authorities, and his reporting on others gained him many merits. In the 1960s, his life sentence was reduced to 15 years.

Ying always had one eye on Chen, who was not yet aware that authorities had fabricated a story about an in-prison counterrevolu-tionary group, of which he was labeled the mastermind.

In February 1971, official questioning began.

One night, around midnight, Chen woke to the sound of a heavy-duty skeleton key turning in the cell-door lock, three 360-degree turns. Ordered from his sleeping spot on the floor near the toilet bucket, he was escorted by two guards to the fifth floor, the top floor. Inside one large cell, comprised of three or four conjoined cells, authorities had set up an interrogation room behind steel bars and a single gate of iron bars.

Several officials gathered in back of a simple, kitchen-sized, four-legged table, behind which stood two or three chairs. Some officials sat. Others stood.

Chen was ordered to sit on a very low stool, shaped like a Geta, a traditional Japanese wooden sandal, but only slightly larger.

In the beginning, one of the interrogators announced the Communist Party’s policy splashed everywhere in Tilanqiao on large-character posters: 坦白从宽，抗拒从严.

“If you confess, the government will be lenient; if you resist, the government will be harsh,” he threatened.

The interrogation was to give Chen a chance to confess his “sins,” his “crimes” against the People. When he failed to give them the
confession they wanted, the officials insulted him, questioned him, then insulted him some more.

“Your problem is just like a shallot mixed with tofu. Do you know the meaning of shallot mixed with tofu?” one asked.

“Yes, I know the meaning. It means a big mess,” Chen answered.

“What? How do you explain that?” one shouted.

“Tofu is light and tasteless, and a shallot has a very strong smell. You could pick all the shallot pieces out with a pair of tweezers, but the smell of the shallot would still be in the tofu. Just like the saying, ‘You can’t wash yourself clean, even if you jump in the Yellow River.’”

“What is the name of your organization?” asked Captain Chen.

“I don’t know any organization.”

“What! This son of a mongrel is real bad and reactionary. Handcuff him!” shouted one of the interrogators.

Chen’s hands were cuffed behind his back, with one arm over his shoulder, the other from below his waist. When he lost consciousness, they removed the cuffs, threw cold water on him, then began the process all over again, which was repeated for several hours.

Finally, a guard escorted Chen out of the interrogation room and back to his cell.

“Don’t let him sleep,” the guard told Ying, then slammed the door shut.

But when the guard finished his shift and left, Captain Xingming Yu took over and made his rounds. As he walked by Chen’s cell, Ying gave a dozing Chen a shove to wake him up.

“No. Don’t wake him,” Yu said.

“But the guard who just left told me not to let him sleep,” Ying said.

“He has to sleep to confess his crimes. If you don’t let him sleep, how can we get the information out of him?”

Yu was different.

Early one morning, after Chen endured hours of interrogation and torture, he was escorted to his cell by Yu. On the way back, in the stairwell between floors, the guard talked in a low voice to Chen, so no one else could hear.

“Chen, Wenli, why are you so stubborn? You have to scream; otherwise, it will hurt your heart. If you try to show you are strong, they will hate you. The more you show you are strong, the more they will hate you,” Yu whispered.

Chen listened and realized that Yu had described prison authorities as “they” not “we,” revealing that he didn’t consider himself to be like the other guards in Tilanqiao.

Back in the interrogation room later that night, Captain Chen continued to ask, “What is the name of your organization?”

“I don’t know any organization.”

“You’re real dishonest and cunning. How can you say that you don’t know the name of your counterrevolutionary organization? Do you remember once, when you went to a movie in the auditorium, and somebody asked you about the lid on the sewer?”

“Yes. He asked me, ‘What is the meaning of SMC?’ I was feeling very regretful, because I have a big mouth and am too honest and always helping everyone, and that I should simply reply, ‘I don’t know,’” Chen said.

“What did you say?”

“I told him, ‘SMC was the abbreviation of Shanghai Municipal Council.’”

“Why did you emphasize the letter S?”

“I didn’t emphasize anything. He asked me, and I explained it to him.”

“Hmm. What else did he ask you? You’re very dishonest! Why do you never confess completely?”

“That is because you’ve interrupted me.”

“We don’t interrupt you! Continue!”

“And then he asked me, ‘What is the meaning of PWD?’”

“What did you say?”

“I explained to him that PWD was the abbreviation of Public Works Department.”

“Why did you explain to him like that?”

“I just answered his question.”

“No! Your answer had another meaning! You’ve emphasized the letters S-D-P. This is with the connection of your organization! What does the letter S stand for?”

“Social?”

“Almost. Remember! Another two letters, D and P.”

“Oh! Yes! Is it Social Democratic Party?”

“You have known it all along! Why didn’t you confess it in the beginning, rather than beat around the bush with us?”

Oh, my God. How could I know it all along, when I just now realized, by your hints, what you want, Chen thought.

“Go back, and write your confession!”

Understanding that the authorities had already fabricated a story for their own political purposes, Chen returned to his cell, determined to give them what they wanted. He pulled out his copy of the Red Banner magazine, which guards had, somehow, overlooked and left behind when they had removed his belongings. It was a special issue of the 9th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and it proved quite useful to Chen, who copied the inside information nearly verbatim when writing his “confession” regarding the make-believe Social Democratic Party.

Busy writing in his cell, from out of nowhere someone screeched his name.

“Chen, Wenli! I want to shoot your brains out!” Military Representative Zhang shrieked in a high-pitched voice, as he stormed by Chen’s cell.

Because Tilanqiao was under martial law at that time, Zhang was the highest-ranked authority in the prison.

Several months after the official questioning had begun, Chen finished writing his tell-all piece of fiction in the summer of 1971.

It was during that same volatile period when Chen and other inmates were ordered to the auditorium to attend a Big Lesson, during which authorities would deliver the monthly Situation Report. First, they would report on the situation in the world, and how horrible imperialism was. Second, they would report on the situation in China, and how wonderful Communism was. Third, they would report on the situation inside Tilanqiao, and how horrible the prisoners were and how wonderful the authorities were.

 

†††

 

S

ometime after lunch, Shao made his first trip around the second floor of Cellblock Number 1, announcing, “Okay! Ready for Big Lesson!”

Then, with a list in his hand, he walked around a second time, from cell to cell, announcing the names of those ordered to attend.

“You, Wenli Chen. You, Zhian Ying,” he called out.

The two stood up. Ying grabbed a notebook to take notes, to show what a model prisoner he was. A couple of minutes later, a guard walked down the row and unlocked the cells, one by one. Prisoners stepped out and lined up, two by two, waiting for the guard to lead them across the yard to the auditorium, a recent addition.

Tilanqiao, opened in 1903, was built by the British. But in the 1930s, the Japanese gained control when they occupied parts of Shanghai, including the Hongkou District where the prison stood. With the end of World War II, in 1945, the Japanese evacuated from Shanghai, and the Nationalists moved in. And, finally, the Communists gained control, after they conquered the city of Shanghai, on May 27, 1949.

Adjacent to the prison had been a vacant field, seized by Communists, who used the property as one of many execution grounds in Shanghai, in the mid-1950s, when they liquidated counter-revolutionaries during the regime’s Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries. Chen heard from old prisoners that they had heard gunshots coming from the field every day during that period, before the auditorium was built atop the blood-soaked field.

Inside the very large auditorium, Chen and the others followed the instructions of the guards, who ordered them to sit, row by row, on the bench seats, which resembled church pews. The auditorium was, in general, laid out like a large traditional Catholic church, with an aisle down the middle, from front to back, and down both sides. There was also a transept in the middle, from side to side.

Chen sat down in the front, right section. Ying sat to his left.

Several guards were seated on a platform, raised like a theatrical stage. Facing the prisoners, they peered from behind a long wooden table, topped with a crisp, white tablecloth, meticulously draped to the floor. All wore the same style uniform: moss-green tunic jacket, cobalt-blue pants and a moss-green field hat, from which gleamed, in the middle above the brim, the national badge of the People’s Republic of China with its five stars – the single large star representing the Communist Party and the four smaller stars representing Mao’s four social classes: proletariat, peasant, petit bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie.

Military Representative Zhang sat in the middle. To his right sat Captain Xu, who, at the beginning of the Big Lesson as usual, read the list of “Do Nots,” the rules of the meeting:

“Do not look around. Prisoners must follow the instructions of correctional officers.

“Do not talk. Prisoners must listen to the speech carefully.

“Do not leave your seats. If a prisoner needs to go to the toilet, he should report to the correctional officer first and receive permission from the officer.

“Do not break the rules. If any prisoner breaks the rules, he will be severely punished.”

In his poor Mandarin heavily laden with the sensuous Suzhou dialect, Xu then gave a rundown of the international political situation, periodically glancing at notes jotted down.

“We support the Pakistan people’s struggle against Zionism,” he said, continuing, “American imperialism already has become a street that crosses the rat.”

Chen snickered to himself. Xu was always good for a malapropism, especially when he misspoke Pakistan for Palestine. And as for the expression, “The rat crosses the street,” he never once said it correctly.

Xu announced the great progress with the Cultural Revolution, the huge increase in production, the resulting bumper crops, and, finally, he reached the situation in the prison.

“The majority of the prisoners are being transformed, but there is a handful of anti-transformists sabotaging the atmosphere of reformation, such as – ”

Zhang, sitting in the middle, grabbed the microphone that rested in its stubby stand on the table, yanked it toward his mouth and screeched with a very shrill voice, “Chen, Wenli! I want to shoot your brains out!”

Ying whispered out of the corner of his twisted mouth, “He does not want to kill you. He wants you to confess your sins, and the People’s Government will forgive you. He wants to save you.”

Zhang, tall and big, continued sitting and addressed the prisoners.

“We feed you so good, you grow white and fat, but some prisoners are still blaming us. You’re shameless! Now, there are some prisoners who are still adhering to their superstition, such as some kind of Catholic!”

Raising his voice, Zhang screeched, “Gong, Pinmei! You! Stand up! Immediately!”

Chen saw someone, sitting six or seven rows ahead of him, stir in his seat. It was the bishop. Already a septuagenarian, he placed his hand on the back of the bench in front of him and pulled to help himself rise and stand. Steady on his feet, he released his grip on the bench back and stood still.

“How is your thinking nowadays?” Zhang asked, holding the microphone. His voice echoed in the otherwise dead-silent auditorium.

“I keep the same religious beliefs,” Gong said, facing the cadre, answering calmly, speaking in the Shanghainese dialect, softly, yet loudly enough for everyone to hear him.

“Ah! You are really reactionary!” Zhang screeched, then ordered, “All prisoners with Catholic beliefs stand up immediately!”

That was a mistake.

Chen watched as a very thin, elderly man, sitting a few rows in front of him, stand up immediately, very fast. The old man, wearing a traditional Chinese jacket, was a Catholic priest, Father Xibin “Matthew” Zhang (pinyin form of Hsi-Pin Chang, 1909-90), and he did everything very fast, as if in a rush.

Around the auditorium, others stood.

Then Chen stood. He feared nothing; after all, he was following the instructions of the cadre. More and more stood, until at least one-third of the prisoners were on their feet in the auditorium. Chen knew that not all of them were Catholics.

At the table, the tenser the situation, the harder the guards puffed on cigarettes, creating a gray cloud above their heads.

Using both hands, Xu leaned over and covered the microphone, which was still in front of Zhang. Other guards rose from their seats and hovered around Xu and Zhang. All panicked, whispering among themselves.

All, except one.

Captain Zee remained sitting at the far right, a position at the rostrum called the “step aside,” which showed that he had at one time held a high position in the prison administration; however, he had been criticized during the Cultural Revolution and fell into political disgrace. He was later “rehabilitated,” which meant only that his name had been cleared and that he was able to resume working for the State.

Zee didn’t move.

Silence spread through the auditorium.

“See how antagonistic these anti-transformists are! They cause much trouble to the government!” Ying said in a whisper loud enough for all those around him to hear.

Behind Ying stood a prisoner who softly said, “The emperor himself is not nervous, but eunuchs are filled with fear.” (Meaning: Ying is on the government’s side, like a servant, and whenever the government gets in trouble, he gets nervous.)

Finally, Zee leaned over, slowly stretched out his thin arm, wrapped his bony fingers around the microphone and leisurely pulled it toward himself. Even though a few inches shorter than the rest, he looked very composed, with his high forehead and thinning hair.

“Sit down. Sit down,” Zee said, who spoke Mandarin with a Henan dialect. “What do you want to do? The policy of our Party is, persistently, freedom of religious believers. But we do not allow anyone to use religion to perform counterrevolutionary activity.”

Zee saved the meeting.

Everybody sat down, and a sense of calm settled over the auditorium.

Xu dragged the microphone back in front of himself and said, “Now, I declare that the struggle with the Get-Rid-of-Theism study group is a complete victory!” He continued, “Prisoners, mongrels, raise your dog ears! Listen carefully! If you do not honestly obey, we will increase your sentences! Chop your heads off! The hands of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat will never soften!”

Whenever Xu finished his speeches, he always punctuated the end with threats, a signal that the meeting was nearly done. Prisoners didn’t care what he said. He always threatened to chop off their heads.

Xu completed his speech with, “You’re dismissed!”

The prisoners remained sitting until signaled that it was time for their row to stand, line up two by two and return to their cells. On the way back, Chen saw the elderly man, who was the first to stand up after Gong. About 15 people ahead of him in line, he walked with his back straight and his head held high, joyful with victory.

Ying, walking in line beside Chen, whispered aloud, angrily, to everyone around, “Look! How reactionary Xibin Zhang is!”

Back in their cell, Ying scolded Chen, “Xibin Zhang is really reactionary. You saw how many anti-transformists disturbed the Big Lesson. Why did you stand up, too?”

“It was the military representative’s command. I’m a Catholic!” Chen answered, fibbing.

“But you should not have stood up. How much trouble has it created for our People’s Government?”

“Oh, you’ve underestimated the People’s Government. Should a government, which is armed to the teeth, be disturbed by a handful of caged prisoners?”

“Hm. I will see your end!”

“I’m sure that you’ll see to it that I am shot and that the bullet will break my skull in half. I believe it may happen, but you won’t see it.”

Furious, Ying grabbed some paper and started writing a report about Chen’s remarks.

Just then, Shao passed by and called out to the adjoining cell, Cell Number 6, “Ready to move!”

To Ying, Shao said, “Xibin Zhang is moving in.”

Youzhen Hong, Chen’s cellmate who had pointed out Gong to him during yard time, said, “Ah, Xibin Zhang is a foreign monk.”

Ying responded, “He is the most reactionary one! He is more reactionary than Pinmei Gong. Pinmei Gong listens to him, everything that he says. You guys have to be careful!”

Chen heard footsteps in the corridor and looked out. It was the elderly priest, Father Zhang, with a white badge on his chest – Prisoner Number 28258. He passed by, and the two made fleeting eye contact.

That day was the most exciting day, ever, in Tilanqiao for Wenli Chen.

Zhang had been arrested, on September 8, 1955, the same night that Gong had been arrested. And then, on March 17, 1960, the Feast of Saint Patrick, the two were sentenced with 11 other priests, after a two-day “trial.”

In part, the verdict regarding Zhang’s charges and sentence read as follows:

“Defendant: Xibin Zhang, alias Teng-Ja Chang, Tien-An Ma, male, born in 1909, citizen of Shanghai City. Prior to his arrest he served as councilor for the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Shanghai, and concurrently as parish priest for the Ta Tung Road Saint Theresa Church. Former residence at this city’s Ta Tung Road, Number 370. Now under arrest…

“The accused…and Xibin Zhang and…are guilty of taking an active and positive role in the Pinmei Gong counterrevolutionary and anti-government organization, of planning to overthrow the People’s democratic political rights, of being in league with the imperialists, of betraying the motherland and other criminal activities, and they are therefore guilty of very serious crimes. In accordance with the law, they are sentenced each to 20 years imprisonment, and we hereby strip them of their political rights for 10 years.”

Before Gong and Zhang were arrested, Shanghai Mayor Yi Chen invited them to his home. He had a long history with the Chinese Communists, going back to the 1920s, and was the first mayor of Shanghai after the Red takeover. He had been in Beijing with Mao, on October 1, 1949, when the chairman announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China. And when Chen later died, in 1972, Mao reportedly made his final public appearance – wearing pajamas – at the memorial services.

After conversing for a while, the mayor said to the two visiting priests, “Today, you are my guests on the high seat – ”

Gong interrupted and said, “I know your meaning,” and he completed the Chinese saying, “Tomorrow we will be your prisoners under the stairs. Please, go ahead.”

Two days later, Gong and Zhang were behind bars.

 

†††

 

S

urrounded by fluffy piles of loose thread, Chen tugged at a piece of scrap material, unraveling the loose strands, as he listened to the chitchat of his cellmates.

The small talk centered on a decision of the authorities, that Tilanqiao’s prisoners should study philosophy, in particular, that of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, known in the People’s Republic of China as the Great Revolutionary Teachers.

“Hey, Ying. What is philosophy?” asked Jiaren Fu, undoing the weave in one of the rags cascading from a bag of cloth beside him.

“Oh, it’s a very complicated topic,” answered Ying. “Proletariats have proletariat’s philosophy. Capitalists have capitalist’s philosophy. There are all kinds of different philosophies – ”

Chen interrupted Ying.

“You’re missing one. There was Shaoqi Liu’s philosophy of survival,” he said sarcastically.

Stung by the ridicule, Ying stuttered, fumbling for a retort.

The conversation stopped.

Since his transfer to Tilanqiao, in January 1969, Chen had read several pieces in the People’s Daily, which claimed that Liu – formerly the Number 2 man in China – surrendered to the enemy in order to survive. His downfall accelerated in a power struggle, after he publicly criticized Mao for his failed policies of the Great Leap Forward, which was launched, in May 1958, and caused the subsequent Great Chinese Famine. Mao waited years to retaliate, but he did, with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, during which Liu was humiliated and tortured until his death, on November 12, 1969.

Still pulling at the threads, Fu sought out an expert, Zhang, the elderly priest in the next cell.

“Hey, Zhang,” Fu softly called out. “What is philosophy?”

From his cell, Zhang answered like a professor.

“The word philosophy came from the Greeks. In ancient Greece, scholars divided knowledge into three categories: Philosophy, to distinguish authenticity. Humanities, to distinguish between beauty and ugliness. Ethics, to distinguish between good and evil. It’s very simple.”

Impressed, never had Chen heard such an exact definition of knowledge.

“Were those the words of Socrates or Aristotle?” Chen asked.

“Oh, I don’t remember,” Zhang answered, chuckling.

Intelligent and lighthearted, Zhang was held in high regard by many. When some of the men in prison didn’t understand something, they would ask Zhang, who was esteemed as educated, articulate, kind-hearted and virtuous.

Nianchuan Xie was one of those who often sought Zhang’s opinion. Sentenced to life in prison for trying to flee to Hong Kong to escape from the Communist regime on the mainland, Xie was well-read, eloquent and loved to show off his knowledge. But what he loved even more – was to learn.

“Zhang, what is the logic of debate?” Xie called out softly from Cell Number 5, next door to the old priest in Cell Number 6.

Chen sat on his toilet-paper cushion, in Cell Number 7, and eavesdropped on the conversation.

“The purpose of debate is to sort out the facts, to increase knowledge,” explained Zhang. “Debate should be logical. Logic is the way of thought. It should be reasonable; otherwise, someone’s mind is out of order.”

“What is formal logic, and what is dialectical logic?” Xie asked.

“Concept, judgment, reasoning are the three basic elements of formal logic. During the debate of formal logic, one has to debate according to facts and reason. Changing concepts, verbal abuse and personal attacks are not allowed; otherwise, it means the individual failed,” Zhang answered. “About dialectical logic, it is a very funny term. As a matter of fact, dialectics was a type of method or verbal skill in debate. It did not define the rules, so it was a totally different concept of logic.”

“I have found one example of human attack,” Xie said, with book at hand. “It is in the next-to-the-last paragraph of Engels’ ‘Anti-Dühring.’”

In 1877, Engels wrote, “Herr Dühring himself was once a young barrister, and he lives in Berlin, where even in my day, 36 years ago, to say nothing of lieutenants, Referendarius used often enough to rhyme with Schurzenstipendarius!”

From his cell, Xie softly said, “Engels wrote that Dühring had been a referendary, and he also wrote that Referendarius was with the same rhythm as Schurzenstipendarius, which is petticoat pensioner, slang for pimp in England.”

His comment implied that Engels had failed in formal logic.

Xie had also read Engels’ unfinished work, “Dialectics of Nature,” which asserted that man, from his labor, created himself. Communists – materialists and vowed atheists – promote the ideology that God does not exist, that God is merely a superstitious belief; therefore, God could never have created man.

One of the most popular slogans posted everywhere by the Chinese Communists was labor created the world, taken from “Dialectics of Nature,” in which Engels attempted to apply Karl Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism to science. More specifically, Engels applied it to the theory of evolution, in the book’s Chapter 9: “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man”:

“Labor is the source of all wealth, the economists assert. It is this next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is also infinitely more than this. It is the primary basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labor created man himself.”

Xie broached the topic of evolution.

“Scientific phenomenon, scientific research, means every new research result is compared to the old result. Sometimes it adds something, sometimes it subtracts something, and sometimes it proves the old conclusion was wrong.”

Xie paused.

“So recently, the result of the research is not perfect. It could even be wrong. So how can you use the imperfect or absurd result to prove a truth? Evolution is only a result.”

He continued.

“Right now, we find out that evolution is a species that can change. In evolution, the species can change gradually over time, but all species have inside a live secret code that cannot be changed. So that means that evolution is not perfect, so evolution is not a truth, so maybe later on, the live secret code is not perfect.”

One of Chen’s cellmates, who tapped into the conversation, added, to ingratiate himself with Zhang, “And maybe the live secret code is created by God.”

“Oh, no. God wouldn’t create such things,” Zhang answered, implying that God would never create something imperfect.

Neither Xie nor the others would have been so open in their conversation if Ying had been around, but the old Communist tool had been transferred. He had been replaced by Yongqian Ma.

After supper one evening following his arrival, Ma blurted out, “We, all of us, are willing to be reformed, but we have to expose our reactionary ideas, so we can criticize them, and then we would progress. Isn’t that right?”

A very suspicious statement. And for some odd reason, he was affecting the soft and tender Suzhou dialect, even though he was a Jianbei, from the north side of Jiangsu province, considered the wrong side of the Yangtze River by those from the more affluent, culturally rich Shanghai, south of the river.

“You know, I’m a person who is very timid. No! I am the most timid person. I am very easily scared. Everybody knows that my bladder is the smallest,” Ma said, referring to the belief in traditional Chinese medicine that those with the smallest bladders scare the easiest.

“Your case is very small,” Jiaren Fu joked, referring to Ma’s crime, that he had “hatched a chick,” street slang for polluting the purity of a young girl.

“Talking about our cases is prohibited!” Ma snapped back, but he took a breath and continued, “Now, let us expose our reactionary ideas to each other. I want to do it first. Now, I’m starting. Oh, no! I’m afraid! This is a very terrible reactionary idea, but I have to expose it!”

Chen cringed at the unbelievable show Ma was putting on.

“Shush, shush, shush! It is really terrible!” Ma continued. “You guys have to listen carefully. I have to encourage myself for my transformation. I have to expose myself. Now, last evening, I got an idea suddenly. Oh, it was really terrible! I’m scared! Now, I’ll tell you. I thought, if possible, I would have a bowl noodles, a bowl of plain noodles! That’s it! Now, it’s your turn. Tell us what reactionary idea you have.”

Trying to seem very sincere, Fu asked, “A bowl of noodles is reactionary?”

“Oh, sure. Right now, to have a bowl of noodles is impossible. Thinking impossible things is reactionary, such as capitalist restoration is impossible,” Ma answered.

Just then, Captain Xingming Yu passed by.

“Why are you talking about capitalist restoration?” Yu asked.

Fu jumped in, “Ma said that thinking of having a bowl of plain noodles is a reactionary idea and that the idea is the same as capitalist restoration.”

A flustered Ma tried to cut in, but Yu interrupted him and said, “I, Captain Yu, just had a bowl of plain noodles. Do you mean that I, Captain Yu, just did a reactionary activity?”

“Oh, no! No! No! I didn’t mean that!” Ma said, panicked.

“Yes, you did. You meant that reactionaries should be put in jail. So you think I should be put in jail!” Yu said, walking away with parting words to the others, “Tomorrow, let him explain why he wanted to put me in jail!”

Neighboring prisoners yelled from their cells.

“Ma is a reactionary!”

“Ma tried to put our captain in jail!”

“Ma is bad!”

“His thought is bad!”

“He wants old society to come back!”

The next day, Ma was suddenly moved out of the cell and was the target of a serious struggle meeting.

One afternoon, Shao walked from cell to cell, ordering, “Hand over your copy of the ‘Quotations of Chairman Zedong Mao.’”

When Shao returned later with the books, Chen opened his copy and noticed that a single page had been torn out, the one on which Biao Lin (old form of Piao Lin, 1907-71) had written the preface, “Study Chairman Mao’s writings, follow his teachings and act according to his instructions.”

“Divorced! Divorced! The wedding picture has been torn,” sang out Fu, Chen’s cellmate.

After a lengthy power struggle, Mao ousted Lin from his inner circle in July 1971. On September 13, 1971, Lin boarded a plane to defect from China, after a rumored failed attempt to assassinate Mao. Lin intended to save his own life and those of several family members; however, the Trident crashed in Mongolia, and all nine onboard perished. Sources in Beijing reported the plane ran out of fuel. Sources outside China reported the plane was shot down.

That explained why, sometime in the fall of 1971, the high-pitched screech of Military Representative Zhang was no longer heard in the corridors, storming by the cell and threatening, “Chen, Wenli! I want to shoot your brains out!”

Zhang had been a subordinate of Weiguo Wang, who had been a subordinate of Biao Lin. Wang, a political commissar in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, had been accused of being the appointed gunman who was to shoot and kill Mao. So when Lin was knocked down, so were his subordinates, including Military Representative Zhang.

Several months later, Chen started noticing changes within the prison walls. Not only did the guards have on brand-new uniforms, but they were always smiling. The superficial change in atmosphere was in anticipation of American President Richard Milhous Nixon’s visit to China, February 21 to 28, 1972. Everyone in the prison was in a heightened state of alert – just in case Nixon were to visit Tilanqiao.

“Fix your neiwu!” Shao ordered usually every morning before breakfast. But with the hoped-for up-and-coming visit, he walked the second-floor corridors, reminding inmates several times a day about the neiwubao, the house rule that required everything be kept neatly in a stack: inmates’ traveling bags on the bottom, folded comforters on top of the bags, all wrapped with a blanket into a square block, with Mao’s books displayed on top, in a place of honor.

Nixon never did visit the prison; however, after the American president left China, for some reason, life in Tilanqiao became more tolerable. For meals, meat was actually served every day, not just rice with small bits of bok choy. Guards were less strict. Fewer struggle meetings. Inmates were allowed more frequent bathing. More yard time. More movies, even though they were the same revolutionary model films shown over and over again.

It was almost a miracle.

But still, Chen’s Big Case had not been concluded. He waited for his sentence. And for his execution.

Unexpectedly one day, a new guard, Captain Zhou, called Chen to the guard’s station. From across the desk, Chen noticed Zhou’s Eurasian features and white skin. Chen heard from a prisoner, who had been a childhood playmate of Zhou’s, that the captain’s father was a Chinese Communist who had gone to study in Russia, where he met and married a Russian woman.

“What is your recent thinking?” asked Zhou, from his chair.

“I am waiting for execution. But don’t worry. I won’t commit suicide, because I am a religious believer,” Chen answered.

“I’m not asking you to think like that. If you could, would you consider your future?” Zhou asked, with a smile that Chen felt was sincere.

“I don’t think I will have any future in this world,” Chen said.

The guard shook his head and smiled.

“You have to watch your future.”

“How can I watch my future? I have no future.”

“There is no future in this world,” Zhou said. “Between you and me, the only difference is that you are inside the gate and I am outside the gate. I have no right to do anything. I’m a cadre. Right here is a place of class-struggle dictatorship. If you report anything to me, I will report to boss. I will report everything. I am not a priest. If you report to a priest, God will forgive you. If you report to a teacher, the teacher will correct you. I am not a teacher. I just report everything, and you will get punished. I will tell you the truth. You will not be put to death, but don’t tell anyone. You have to consider about me.”

“I understand,” Chen replied.

Zhou looked seriously at Chen, then said, “You’re dismissed.”

And then Gaoming Wang moved into Cell Number 7.

 

†††

 

“N

ow, you have to be very honest with me,” Wang threatened Chen. “I am not like Zhian Ying. He is educated and too gentle. I’m not educated, and I’m not too gentle. If you are not honest, I will beat you.”

Chen didn’t respond.

Wang had the well-earned reputation of a brutal struggler. To prepare for the sessions of public humiliation, mental cruelty and physical torture, he always slipped into his favorite pair of sandals, made with thick wooden soles and single straps across the insteps. In the heat of the struggle, he would whip off one of his sandals and beat the victim, helpless to protect himself.

A short and skinny thief, Wang was rumored to have stolen everything he ever had and had spent his life in and out of prison. During one of his arrests, in the 1940s, he made an attempt to escape, but pursuing guards shot him in the leg, leaving him with a limp for the rest of his days.

On his way to the struggle sessions in Tilanqiao, Wang’s odd gait, resounding with the clippity-clop of his wooden sandals, could be heard floors away.

It was Wang who had beaten Zhang, the old, sickly priest, during the Get-Rid-of-Theism study group, which, during the Big Lesson, Captain Xu had declared a complete victory. The struggle sessions had extended over many months, during which the targets had been Gong and Zhang. Because Gong had been the object of international concern, authorities seated the bishop to the side and did not force him to speak; however, Zhang had to actively participate in the debates.

For the opposing debate team, authorities chose Trotskyites, old Party members, Party bosses and a few in-prison thugs, including Wang and his wooden sandals.

But Zhang did very well against his opponents when he faced them. Every time, except once.

During one particularly intense session, those who spoke for the Communist side proved that their verbal and mental skills lacked clarity, depth and substance. Their arguments contained contradictions and no logic.

Then Zhang stood up. He asked a simple question that threw his opponents into a fury against one another. Enraged, Wang grabbed one of his sandals, jumped up and beat the priest.

“Stop!” yelled a guard. “Why do you hit him? Do you know our Party’s policy does not allow beatings?”

The guard then turned and spoke to Zhang.

“I don’t know how to help you, if you are continuously against transformation, irritating these prisoners who require transformation. They beat you, because they are angry. Sometimes, I can’t stop them immediately. Do you understand?”

Yes, Zhang did understand, and so did the others. The guard implied that he would not be held responsible if someone beat up the priest or even beat him to death.

Wang’s temper flared up with the slightest ignition. After moving into his new cell, he and Chen were cleaning up one evening after supper. Chen used an old rag to mop the floor, but he accidentally wiped too close to Wang’s shoes.

“You wet my shoes, you anti-transformation!” Wang hollered. “You tried to bully me. I’m not gentle. I will beat you!”

“I will beat you!” Chen threatened in return.

Chen moved fast and grabbed Wang by his clothes, pushed him into the corner, then thrust the dirty rag into Wang’s face, rubbing viciously. And Chen didn’t stop there. He picked up one of Wang’s wooden sandals and pounded his head and face until his skin turned a bright red. Only then, Chen released him.

“Prisoner beat me!” Wang screamed.

“They fight each other!” cellmate Jiaren Fu hollered.

Warden Jingen Li, the squadron officer in charge of Cellblock Number 1, rushed down the corridor.

“I didn’t fight him. He beat me!” Wang blurted.

“You say that only he beat you and that you didn’t fight? Who believes that?” Li said.

After opening the iron-bar door, Li removed Wang from the cell and handcuffed Chen’s hands behind his back, which remained cuffed for a week. But, thankfully, he still had the Hero fountain pen that Huanzhong Yu had given to him a couple of years before. At night, Chen removed the clip from the cap, inserted it into the mechanism of the handcuffs and used the clip to push the teeth, which released the spring and loosened one of the cuffs enough for him to slip his hand out and sleep comfortably.

The day after the fight, Wang balked when it was time to go out for exercise. He was so bruised, he feared public humiliation.

“No. You have to go out,” Li ordered.

In the yard, inmates laughed at him.

Someone yelled out, “Look at the big-headed baby!”

Not long after, Li ordered Chen to an office on the first floor to take a look at a malfunctioning audio amplifier, needed for a meeting scheduled to start immediately. While checking over the equipment, he was alone for a few minutes and noticed a file with the names of the guards, which he quickly thumbed through before returning to the amplifier and finding a resistor that had burned out. It was replaced, and the meeting began on time.

A few weeks later, Li ordered Chen to look over the same amplifier, which was not functioning again. Chen asked for a multimeter and discovered another bad resistor. Without a replacement readily available, Chen was able to get the amplifier working, and the meeting started as scheduled.

“You’re a real expert!” Li told him.

But not long after, Li’s mood changed toward Chen.

Shao, the worker prisoner, was commanded to walk down the corridor and order, “Fix your neiwu!” to Chen and his cellmates, but to no one else in any of the other cells in the row.

The next day, Li went to Chen’s cell and told everyone inside to put everything outside of the cell. Li and Shao grabbed up and hauled away all the items, including the toilet paper. In exchange, Chen and his cellmates were given new prisoner uniforms and new government-issued bedding.

The change frightened Chen’s cellmates. The rest of that day and all through the night, they worried about what was going to happen.

“Oh, bad! We will have a disaster. We will be sacrificed!” Fu said, nearly in tears.

Chen tried to comfort Fu and the others, consoling them that he would never cause them any trouble, even if he were to be executed.

“Don’t you guys trust me?” Chen asked.

His cellmates consoled him, saying that if he were to die the next day, they would go – if they were ever freed from prison – to visit his parents, most certainly.

The next afternoon, Chen was ordered out of the cell. Li escorted him to a room on the bottom floor, where there were a few officers from the Public Security Bureau’s Discipline Department, including Captain Yang, Captain Chen and a short man – with an air of importance – who sat in the middle, behind the table.

Beijing had not been happy with Chen’s confession, which had confused them with its fabrications. It had wasted a lot of their time.

“Sit there,” one of them said, indicating for Chen to sit on a regular-sized bench. It was much different from the tiny stool that he had sat on while being interrogated on the fifth floor.

Captain Chen began the questioning. He was the one who had questioned Chen about the Social Democratic Party.

“What are your thoughts?” he asked.

“I am waiting to be executed.”

“Executed? What are you thinking? We don’t want to kill you. We want to investigate the case more thoroughly. We will not wrong a good man, but we will not let a bad man escape, either,” he said.

“This is your business. I really don’t care. I’ve already finished writing my entire confession. If you want to kill me, please, do it as soon as possible,” Chen said.

“It seems you are very angry. Calm down. We don’t want to kill you. We just want you to write your entire confession again. Does this sound easy enough for you? You’re very clear about what you had done.”

“Do you men enjoy making fun of a person facing death? The terrible interrogations I experienced. Do you want me to go through that again?”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed the short one in the middle, and he began to say, “I’m from the Department – ”

But Captain Yang interrupted him and asked Chen, “Do you know where the military representative is now?”

“No. I don’t know,” Chen answered.

“His situation is the same as yours. Understand?”

Chen understood. Yang meant that Military Representative Zhang had been arrested.

The short one grabbed control of the meeting.

“Just forget about the Social Democratic Party. I want you to provide the material about your interrogations. How they questioned you. How they tortured you. If you remember their names, just write them down, or mention what they looked like. I believe you have a very good memory, so you can do a good job. Remember; do not give your writing to anyone, including the cadres. I will pick it up myself. For certain, do not give it to anybody else.”

Chen smiled and nodded to the short man sitting in the middle.

“You may go back to your cell,” Captain Chen said.

Upon his return to Cell Number 7, Chen was greeted with great happiness from his cellmates.

Fu celebrated with a Chinese proverb: “Faced enormous disaster and did not die! In the future, there will be great happiness!”

Chen began rewriting his confession that day and had already finished a few pages when, after supper, Li moved Ying back into his old cell, and old ways.

“What are you writing?” Ying asked, with his twisted mouth.

“Supplementary material,” Chen said.

“You’ve already completed your writing, a long time ago. Your case should be closed already. Why does something need to be added? Let me see. I want to take a look at your writing,” Ying said, reaching.

“You have no right to see!”

“Warden Li gave me the right,” Ying said, as he started to snatch Chen’s writing.

Chen grabbed Ying’s outstretched arm and gave it a twist.

Ying screamed, “Confinement prisoner beat me! Confinement prisoner is writing material reversing his confession!”

Reversing one’s confession was a major crime. Only authorities could reverse a confession.

“Fighting is not allowed,” said Fu, as he pulled Ying back.

Li, along with Captain Bian, appeared at the cell.

Give me the paper!” Li ordered.

“Warden Li, have you forgotten that the officer told me that he will pick up my writing, himself?” Chen asked.

“What are you talking about? He said no such thing. If you don’t obey me, I’ll handcuff you!” Li threatened.

Bian shouted a long string of obscenities at Chen, as Li grabbed his key ring and stuck the passe-partout in the lock, turning it, just as someone shouted from far away.

“Stop! What are you doing?”

It was the short man, accompanied by Captain Yu, walking toward the cell.

“What happened?” the short man asked Li.

“Oh! I heard somebody report that there was fighting inside this cell, so I just came to take a look.”

The short man ignored Li and turned toward Chen.

“Your writing, give it to me,” he ordered Chen, who readily handed over his pages.

Then the short man turned to Li, “I warn you. Don’t play tricks in front of me!”

“This is not none of my business. This was a prisoner’s indiscriminate report,” Li attempted to explain, as the short man walked off with Yu, without listening to the excuses.

Li turned on Ying.

“You old spy! How dare you sow dissension between government cadres! Tomorrow you will be struggled severely!” he threatened, as he and Bian turned and left.

The following day, Ying was removed from the cell and struggled for the next two weeks, when he was severely beaten by those inmates he had targeted during his years in prison.

Within a few days, Shao showed up at Chen’s cell.

“Warden wants to talk to you,” he said.

As Chen walked out of his cell, Shao whispered, “Congratulations!”

Li stood near the stairs at the end of the row of cells and escorted Chen down to the bottom floor, to the same room where Chen had first seen the short man from the Discipline Department.

Captain Chen spoke first, “Since you came to prison, you have committed very serious crimes. You have written a huge amount of fake material, seriously disturbed our routine work, causing us to lose enormous material and human resources – ”

“It’s ridiculous,” Chen said, raising his hand. “The material, you forced me to write.”

“Please, don’t interrupt me. Let me finish my words. You will have plenty of time to talk later. We, Communists, are always looking forward. Though your transformation performance was very bad in the beginning, after the interrogation, you have changed your behavior. On the current situation, we can say you are better. So, according to the reason that everyone knows, the government did not blame you or hold you responsible. But in the future, if you anti-transform again, the government will blame you with the new and old accounts.

“Now, I announce the decision the government has made: to rescind your confinement and to restore your family visitations. You may pack your belongings and get ready to transfer back to Cellblock Number 3. Now, this is your turn to talk. What do you want to say?”

Shocked to learn that he would be leaving Cellblock Number 1 and be separated from Bishop Gong and Father Zhang, Chen had to think fast.

“According to the words you’ve said, ‘the reason that everyone knows,’ I fully understand your decision. The reason I had a better behavior is because of the good leadership of Warden Li. I believe that I could have a better transformation atmosphere in the Number 1 Cellblock, so I wish to stay,” Chen said.

“Well, I accept your request. Anything else?” Captain Chen asked.

“That is all, and I wish to have a special family visitation. My parents haven’t seen me in quite a long time. They might be very anxious.”

“Warden Li will help you.”

“Why don’t you thank the leniency of our great Party?” Li asked.

Yang added, “You see, we have cured your arms. If you feel any discomfort in the future, we will treat you with the best doctor in the world.”

Captain Chen waved his hand and dismissed Chen, who was accompanied up to his cell by Li.

“How good our Party treated you. From now on, don’t fight anymore,” Li said, then turned and ordered, “Shao, give him the postcard for a family visit.”

It was June 1972. His Big Case – opened in November 1970 – was finally closed, and his confinement restriction was at long last lifted. Chen hadn’t seen his parents in nearly two years. For the special visit, he was escorted by a guard to a small room with concrete walls and a single window backed by iron bars wrapped with curly strands of barbed wire.

“Your visit has started,” the guard announced, as he took a position in the corner to watch Chen and his parents greet each other, with only a barrier of bars and chicken wire to separate them.

“What happened, exactly?” his mother asked him.

“I didn’t do anything. In the beginning, they suspected that I did something wrong, but now everything has been cleaned up, so they let me see you. How is your health?”

“We’re fine,” said his mother, as she shook her head slowly from side to side.

“What happened to your hair?” his father asked.

“It fell out,” Chen said, as he looked at his parents, who looked older, grayer, sad.

With restrictions in speech, they continued with small chitchat. Then they had nothing more to say.

“You don’t need more time?” the guard asked.

“No. The time is enough for us,” Chen said.

Then it was time to go.

With his visitation rights reinstated, every month after that, Chen helped Zhang walk to the visitors’ room, where each had a 10- to 15-minute visit with family members. Chen’s parents always visited him, and Zhang’s three sisters always visited him. One was a teacher, Zhebao “Cecelia” Zhang. The other two were nuns in the persecuted, underground Catholic Church, Sister Liangbao “Gertrude” Zhang and Sister Yabao “Matilda” Zhang.

After each visit, Zhang walked slowly back to his cell, holding gifts. Sometimes a bath towel, other times an enameled basin, but whatever it was, it always had the figure of a fish.

With his hand on Chen’s arm, to steady himself, Zhang explained, “In the early Christian Church, under pressure from the Roman Empire, the Christians used the figure of the fish to show their Christian faith. The word fish in Greek contains the first letters of the words in the sentence, Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.”

Zhang had endured persecution for the faith and had undergone intense interrogations while he had been held in the Number 1 Detention Center, before he was sentenced and transferred to Tilanqiao. He had been excited to have his chance to fight for Christ, and, although weak in body, he had felt full of strength and wisdom.

Because Chen’s confinement status had been lifted, he could meet with his study group, once again. For his first day back, he joined the men seated on the floor in the corridor. Everybody greeted him, and he sat beside Zhang, which gave them an opportunity to communicate.

Duty prisoner Shifeng Wang read from the People’s Daily an editorial about how life under the old society was so tragic and about how fortunate life was for everyone under the ruling of the Communist Party.

Chen turned to Zhang.

“Does that mean having his hand to the plow and looking back?” Chen whispered to the old priest, referring to Saint Luke 9:62.

“Dreams of paradise on Earth will result in hell on Earth,” Zhang whispered back.

 

†††

 

P

risoners referred to Warden Jingen Li with derision as the “Smiling Tiger,” because he always smiled when he spoke with them. Not that he was nice. He wasn’t. He just wanted inmates to reveal to him their true thoughts, which he would use against them.

Although he was clever enough to outsmart most, he was definitely not clever enough to outsmart Gong and Zhang, who were much too quick-witted for Li.

One day, Zhang noticed that a cellmate, from a very poor family, wore a threadbare shirt. Sympathetic, the priest gave one of his T-shirts to him; however, prisoners were forbidden to give anything to anyone.

Li ordered Zhang to report to the guard’s desk.

“Zhang, I know you are a Catholic priest. A Catholic Church member is not allowed to tell a lie; otherwise, he is going to apostatize. Am I right?” Li asked.

“You’re right,” the priest said.

“Now, I ask you: Have you ever bribed anybody?”

“No. I have never bribed anybody.”

“Ah! You have apostatized! You are telling a lie!” Li shouted, thrilled with himself.

“No. I did not tell a lie. My words I told you were true. I said that I have never bribed anybody.”

Li opened a drawer, removed the T-shirt, held it up and said, “This is the evidence. You cannot deny!”

“Yes. I recognize this T-shirt that I gave to someone, but you can’t say that I was bribing and that this T-shirt I gave was not a gift.”

“How can you explain that?”

“According to the ancient Chinese culture, giving a gift means I want something back. Furthermore, bribing definitely has an intention. But when I gave to him this T-shirt, I didn’t want anything in return. As a matter of fact, he is in dire circumstances and can’t give anything back to me. This was a kind of relief, such as when the government sometimes gives prisoners winter clothes. Could you say the government bribes prisoners?”

“I will tell your sisters that they’re working hard to earn money to buy you clothes, but you actually give the clothes away as gifts.”

“Do you know, I believe my sisters will support me and agree with me, because, actually, I’ve received some spirit transformation under your good management. I’ve become not so selfish. And, by the way, they will thank you, too.”

“Go! Go! Go! Go back to your cell! You’re talking all this sophistry!”

“Warden Li, please, give him back his T-shirt. He really needs it,” Zhang asked, as he left.

Again, Li went after Zhang, after someone reported that the old priest used his fingers to count.

First, Li walked over to Gong’s cell.

“Do you know what the tradition is in the Catholic Church of counting on fingers?” Li asked Gong.

“I have no idea,” Gong responded.

Disappointed, but not daunted, Li asked another prisoner, Rongsheng Ji, who was also a Catholic.

“Do you know what the tradition is in the Catholic Church of counting on fingers?”

After thinking awhile, Ji answered, “Oh, you have reminded me of a way to say the rosary. This is a real good way. I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it.”

Tipped off, Li went back to Zhang.

“You’re still performing superstition in the prison,” Li said to Zhang.

After studying Marxism, Zhang understood Li’s meaning.

“The meaning of superstition is when someone believes as fact something he does not thoroughly understand. But I thoroughly understand the Bible, so it’s called religion. It is different from superstition,” Zhang said.

“You’re saying rosary by counting your fingers,” Li said.

“Warden Li, who told you that? I did not tell you that. If another Catholic prisoner uses this way and tells you and you tell me, you are the teacher, isn’t that right?”

Exasperated at being outwitted yet again, Li resorted to threats, “Your performance is not good for you!”

Relentless, Li persisted and switched tactics. He stupidly attempted to pit one priest against the other.

“You’re in violation of your religious rules. You don’t fast on Friday,” Li said to Zhang, one day.

“According to the rules of our Church, it is no use to fast when under the difficult period of the Church,” Zhang said, subtly implying the Communist persecution of Catholics.

Then Li went to Gong.

“Zhang said it is no use to fast under the difficult period of the Church, and you may do so as well,” Li said.

“Father Zhang’s saying is correct. It is no use to fast when under the difficult period of the Church. But you are real cunning. I tell you clearly; I will not be fooled. If I listen to you and stop fasting, you will say, ‘Hey, Gong gave up his religion. From now on he doesn’t obey the rule of his Church anymore.’ I will not give you the opportunity to slander our Church!”

In reality, Li the Smiling Tiger was just Li the Paper Tiger, unable to sink its claws into either Gong or Zhang. Despite all of his attempts to make them betray the Church, he failed. The priests lived within the prison walls, peacefully accepting their special apostolates as great gifts from the Divine Will.

Chen, who was in the cell next to Zhang’s, heard on a few occasions someone unlock the old priest’s iron gate and order him over to the guard’s desk. No one could hear what the guard and Zhang talked about, but everyone believed that the authorities were trying to convince the priest to give up his Catholic faith.

Everyone was wrong.

Some guards were interested in learning about the Catholic faith for themselves. Some of them were even baptized by Zhang.

For baptism, Zhang’s catechumen would wait for the last whistle, at 8:30 p.m., when all prisoners were ordered to sleep, and only two guards would be on duty in the cellblock. One would sit at the desk on the first floor near the gate, giving an opportunity to the other, who made the rounds, to unlock Zhang’s cell door.

Zhang and the guard would then quietly climb the stairs to the fifth floor, where the neophyte had already secreted away the items Zhang had requested: a white table cloth, wine, clean water, unleavened bread and a candle. Everything for the altar. After the Sacrament of Baptism, the guard collected everything and escorted Zhang quietly back to his cell and locked the door.

While behind bars, Gong baptized some, as well, but he also had a special mission among those inmates who would never walk out of Tilanqiao alive.

Shijin Du, who had spent time near Gong’s cell, witnessed the bishop’s gifts to the condemned. After moving into Chen’s cell, in October 1973, Du described what he had observed when he watched prisoners on their way to their executions.

“Sometimes prisoners were sent to Bishop Gong’s cell,” Du told Chen. “Before they went in, they were frightened. But after, they were calmed down.”

Chen and others believed that the bishop bestowed upon the condemned inmates the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, the Last Rites.

Du was a very happy-go-lucky man and very easygoing. He was also very good with his hands and taught Chen how to knit, using yarn made from the thread collected while unraveling the scrap material during light labor.

On Sunday, the one day off from their brainwashing study groups, inmates remained locked in their cells. In the morning, Shao, the second-floor worker prisoner, handed out to each cell a pair of scissors and sewing needles, so the men could mend their shabby clothing.

With the scissors, Chen scratched the end of bamboo chopsticks into points, to form knitting needles, which he hid. He was not supposed to have knitting needles, let alone make them. Knitting was considered a waste of time for the inmates, who were supposed to study Chairman Mao and reform their ways.

Du knew the basics of knitting, but another inmate, Guosuan Shen, helped the inmates refine their rudimentary skills.

Shen was in Chen’s study group, but he never participated in the daily brainwashing sessions, because he was always too busy making seals – carved stones used as name stamps – for the guards. A former student of the very famous artist Baishi Qi, Shen had made a seal for a Nationalist officer and was subsequently charged with being an historical counterrevolutionary.

“Chinese ladies hold their needles on the bottom, which is not easy, but foreign ladies hold their needles on the top, which is more easy and more efficient,” he instructed.

Shen also taught them how to make their work look more professional, beyond the basics. He showed them that by simply winding the yarn the opposite way around the knitting needle, they could create the purl stitch, which was a beautiful contrast to the basic knit stitch.

Du finished his piece first. It was a watch cap that he gave to an old prisoner, Zhonglie Chen. The former Nationalist general loved his new hat, made from navy blue, gray, yellow and maroon nylon yarn.

After watching Du, Chen began knitting a hat for Zhang. Although he knitted in secret, his first two attempts were confiscated. Finally, his third effort was successful, and he presented to the old priest a beautiful knit cap, navy and maroon.

The idea of using green yarn for a hat never entered their minds. An old wives’ tale in China is passed on that if a man wears a green hat, his wife has taken a lover. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, there was a poster of Mao in a uniform with a green field cap, about which people would joke, “There’s the green-hat picture.” Because of the suffering in China at the hands of Mao, he was hated by countless who loved to insult him.

Other prisoners were also very good with their hands.

Gong, a patient and steady man, had a talent for needlework. When he mended his clothing, his stitching looked just like the stitching of a sewing machine, if not better. Once, he transformed an old, torn shirt into a very beautiful gray-colored brimless skullcap, like the kufi commonly worn in West Africa.

But some men were not so handy with a needle.

Every month, prisoners received an allowance of 6.50 yuan. They never received any of the money; it was simply a balance in an account. With their “money,” once or twice a year, prisoners could purchase items such as garlic or salt or even medical gauze, which some men stitched together to make underwear.

Shanghai, known for its unbearable summers, was so hot at times that the prison authorities permitted inmates to wear tank tops with shorts or thin pants. Sometimes they could even wear a long tank top with just a pair of underwear underneath.

One summer during yard time, when it was so very hot, Chen and the others on his floor were walking the mandatory circles around the basketball court between cellblocks, when out walked Shoulin Liu, wearing a new outfit made with medical gauze, which he had stitched together by hand.

Liu had tried to make shorts and a tank top, but he had not been too successful. His white gauze shorts were very short-short and very baggy and looked like a ballerina’s tutu. His white gauze tank top was made with an insufficient amount of material, so it only reached to the bottom of his chest and looked like a ballet dancer’s top, actually, more like a bra.

Everybody stared at Liu, who was a very skinny, very tall old man. With his newly sewn outfit, he looked like an old, gangly, rumpled white swan ballerina.

“How ugly you are! Go back to your cell!” a guard ordered.

After that, whenever Chen’s cellmate Fu saw Liu, he would joke, “Look. It’s the Old Swan.”

Around August 1974, prisoners were moved around again, and Zhichuan Wang was moved into Chen’s cell. A young man, in his early 20s, he had been a fishmonger in a grocery store when he had been accused of attacking Mao. His speech crime was regarded as an oral problem with a dental ill, and he was sentenced to 20 years.

During his incarceration, he had undergone atheistic indoctrination that had been highly successful. When in Chen’s study group, he often ridiculed Christianity and insulted Zhang, who smiled and ignored the insults.

But not always.

One day, Wang said, “Religion is bad. Nuns kill babies. Priests rape nuns.”

At that, the priest defended himself, “I have never done that!”

“You did! You did! You are a rapist garbed in a religious coat!”

“We are not discussing this! We are on another topic,” said study-group duty prisoner Shifeng Wang.

After the session ended, the duty prisoner stood outside Chen’s cell and used the opportunity to ask the young man, “Why do you always attack the priest?”

“I hate Catholic priests,” he said.

“You cannot say that. Xibin Zhang is a real good man, a real gentleman. He has been here a long time, and everybody respects his high morals,” the duty prisoner explained.

Chen told the young man, “You were wrong to accuse someone without any basis. And, by the way, your 20-year sentence was for saying that Mao suffered hemorrhoids of the mouth; whereas, the priest was imprisoned simply because he insisted on his religious faith. You both are the same. Innocent.”

Because Chen had been in the People’s Liberation Army, the young man admired him.

“I will listen to you and admit that I have been stupid, and I will apologize to the priest tomorrow,” he said.

The next day, when the young man saw the priest, he apologized immediately.

Zhang responded in kind.

“I have to say sorry to you, because yesterday I was angry at you. As a Catholic, I should not be angry, because anger means hatred. Afterward, I begged God to forgive me. Now, I beg your pardon,” Zhang said.

“I feel really ashamed,” the young man, looking very embarrassed, whispered to Chen.

Wang’s attitude changed. At first, he had only been interested in talk about movies, food and Chen’s life in the army. But then, he began to ask about the classic writers and even inquired about the Bible. Chen told him stories from the Old Testament, about Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and more.

Eventually, Wang asked, “How can I become a Christian?”

“Talk to Zhang,” Chen told him.

While held in the Number 1 Detention Center, Wang had heard from a former cellmate a story about Zhang, which he shared with Chen.

Zhang, he explained, had used buttons from his old, worn-out shirt to make prayer beads. And because the doors in detention centers were generally solid, with only little peepholes for the guards to peek through, the inmates never knew whether the guards were on the other side of the door, watching them. One day, a guard caught Zhang praying with his beads.

“Give up religion!” the guard told Zhang.

Zhang refused.

The guard then put handcuffs on the priest and said, “Whenever you give up your religion, I will remove the handcuffs.”

But Zhang did not give up religion and remained handcuffed. During meals, no one dared to help him, so with his hands cuffed behind his back, he picked up the aluminum dish, poured the food on a newspaper, kneeled down on the floor and ate like an animal. When he had to relieve himself, he had to do so by himself.

After nine months, the guard asked the priest, “What are your thoughts?”

“I have done my penance for nine months,” the priest said.

The guard reluctantly removed the handcuffs and said, “I don’t want you to continue your penance.”

Wang, who had previously been in a cell near Gong’s, also shared with Chen a conversation he had overheard between the bishop and a few high-ranking cadres inspecting the prison after President Nixon had visited China, in 1972.

Walking through Tilanqiao, the cadres stopped in front of Gong’s cell.

“You know, during Richard Nixon’s visit, he asked about you,” a cadre said. “The door of the prison is always open for you. We don’t want to keep you forever, and we do not request you to give up your faith of religion. The only thing we ask is, you have to cut off the relationship with the Vatican. We will release you immediately. You may learn from Luxian Jin. He realized, and we performed magnanimous act immediately.”

Father Luxian “Aloysius” Jin had been arrested on September 8, 1955, the same night that Communists swarmed on Shanghai Catholics and arrested hundreds, including Gong and Zhang. The three were sentenced together on March 17, 1960. In a photograph of the legal proceedings, Jin was the only one who appeared to bow in submission to authorities.

To the high-ranking cadres, Gong answered, “You men look like the people standing outside a full theater, waiting for a return ticket. I tell you honestly. This ticket you can never get, even if you wait your whole life.”

Wang reminded Chen of a similar incident, when after Nixon’s visit, a few high-ranking cadres stopped in front of Zhang’s cell.

One said, “Zhang, I tell you frankly, unmasking – ”

“Captain, please,” Zhang said, interrupting the cadre. “Do not unmask diorama; otherwise, you have nothing to play.”

The cadre laughed and said, “I want to know your opinion of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.”

“This policy for the religion is just like your policy of business Socialism reformation. The public-private partnership of Church, limiting, using and reforming religion, for the purpose of eliminating religion.”

“You’re very vicious!” the cadre said.

But Zhang survived in prison, and he never surrendered.

Before 1975 rolled around, marking the end of his prison term, the authorities required him to write a summary of his 20-year transformation. When he finished his first draft, he passed it to everyone in his study group and asked for their opinions. Everybody complimented him on his work. So with only a few minor modifications, Zhang finished his summary, then asked Chen, whose Chinese characters were beautiful, to make a copy for him, to keep as a memento.

Chen readily accepted the task. He began with the priest’s early life, his birth in Shanghai, in 1909, to a merchant family, and his education at Saint Ignatius College, a secondary school. In 1925, he joined the Archdiocese of Shanghai. In 1928, he attended Aurora University, where he studied three years of liberal arts, three years of philosophy and three years of theology. Upon his graduation, he served as principal of Aurora secondary school in Yangzhou, Xinxin secondary school in Xuzhou, and Youyuan secondary school in Suzhou. In 1949, he served as the principal of the College of Liberal Arts of the Marist Brothers, while simultaneously serving as pastor of Saint Theresa Catholic Church in Shanghai, until his arrest on September 8, 1955.

About his crime, Zhang wrote that the Communist regime’s ideology was atheist and that to believe in God is criminal. Although the law of the People’s Government expresses freedom of religious faith, it only means freedom to believe in atheism.

Using ancient Chinese characters, Zhang ended his summary:

“Time flew like an arrow; sun and moon shifted like shuttles. Today, it is 1975. Goodbye 20 years. Reluctant to leave, future will be vague. What do I have? What do I want? My shape will be in this space for how long? Why not let bygones be bygones? Looking back to the process of my transformation, the way was circuitous and bumpy, just like a wrecked wagon with an old buffalo, every step was difficult.

“Looking forward to my future, more than 60 years of age, physical weakness and obstinate diseases are wrapping my body. Should I quit by facing difficulties, or should I go forward? Of course, I should choose the latter. I shall forget my old age, muster my remaining courage, step on my new journey, use all my strength, dedicate my life until death; otherwise, I don’t have another way!”

A week or two after he had finished copying Zhang’s summary of transformation, authorities ordered Chen to pack his belongings. He was leaving Tilanqiao and heading for the western province of Qinghai for a labor camp, for laogai, for labor transformation.

It was February 1975. As he waited outside his cell, Chen and Zhang stared at each other for a long time.

Finally, Zhang broke the silence.

“Don’t be sad. I’m sure we will meet again. Otherwise,” and he pointed toward the sky, “we will talk to each other every day.”

And then someone by the stairs shouted, “Come! Come! Come!”

It was time for Chen to leave. He picked up his scuffed and scarred, 1950s canvas traveling bag stuffed with his belongings. He turned and rushed down the corridor.

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Addendum

 

† Wenli Chen was released in the autumn of 1978, and he quickly sought out Father Xibin Zhang, who baptized him and gave him the name of Philip. On May 1, 1979, Chen left Shanghai for Hong Kong, and, in May 1980, he left Hong Kong for America. In 1985, Chen married Zhang’s relative, Teresa, and they have one daughter, Cecilia.

† The Reverend Father Xibin “Matthew” Zhang was finally released from Tilanqiao in the autumn of 1978. In November 1981, Zhang was rearrested and locked up in the Number 1 Detention Center and later released. Six years later, in November 1987, he was arrested yet again. While under arrest, he suffered heart problems and was transferred to Tilanqiao Prison Hospital. After receiving treatment, he was moved to the Shelter of the Shanghai Archdiocese. Officially described as a nursing home for elderly clergy, the Shelter was, in reality, where priests were held under house arrest. Zhang and the other priests were closely monitored and subsequent reports about them were filed with the Public Security Bureau by Father Luxian Jin’s secretary, whose nickname was “Madame Bishop” because of her very close relationship with Jin, who had been illicitly consecrated the bishop of Shanghai, without papal mandate, by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. Zhang died on May 30, 1990.

† While still in prison, the Most Reverend Pinmei “Ignatius” Gong was secretly, in pectore, elevated to cardinal, in 1979, by Pope John Paul II. In 1985, Gong was released from Tilanqiao, but held under strict conditions of house arrest, until his nephew Ming-Chuan “Joseph” Kung was able to arrange for his uncle’s release, to receive medical care in America, in 1988. On March 12, 2000, the cardinal died, at the age of 98, a free man, forever faithful to Christ and Pope.