LIAN Xi. Blood Letters: the Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's
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Lian Xi, blood story: the untold story of Lin Zhao, a martyr in Mao's China, A Martyr in Mao’s China. New York: Basic Books, 2018. 352 pp.,ISBN 9781541644236 This page was generated automatically upon download from the Globethics.net Library. More information on Globethics.net see https://www.globethics.net. Data and content policy of Globethics.net Library repository see https:// repository.globethics.net/pages/policy Item Type Book review Authors Lee, Joseph Tse-Hei Publisher Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, Chung Chi College, Shatin, Hong Kong Rights Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, Chung Chi College, Shatin, Hong Kong Download date 05/10/2021 14:36:03 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/4047974 © Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture Ching Feng, n.s., 18.1–2 (2019) 197–203 LIAN Xi. Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, A Martyr in Mao’s China. New York: Basic Books, 2018. 352 pp., hardback, US $30.00, ISBN 9781541644236. Individuals who find themselves trapped by dramatic events often tell compelling stories about their personal experiences. Their stories can provide a unique lens through which to contextualize important events in modern history. Filled with tears, heartbreak, and drama, Lian Xi’s Blood Letters is an extraordinary account of Lin Zhao (林昭 1932– 1968), a female progressive Christian and Communist activist, who joined the socialist revolution during the 1940s but who ended up as an enemy of the Maoist state. Lian narrates the life story of Lin Zhao, who attended the Methodist-run Laura Haygood Memorial School for Girls in Suzhou before 1949, and after the Communist Revolution, partici- pated enthusiastically in the local land reform campaign. As a journal- ism major at Peking University, Lin wound up on the wrong side of the political purge during the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1957) and was labeled as a rightist. In 1960, she was arrested for publishing an under- ground magazine critical of the Maoist regime. It was during the im- prisonment that her Christian faith sustained her through endless inter- rogation sessions. Before her execution, she left behind many poems, family letters and essays—some written in her blood—that throw light on the complexities of faith and politics. Central to Lian’s investigation are questions about how an ordinary believer such as Lin Zhao reacted to Maoism critically and came to grips with the traumatizing experience of incarceration as part of a broader spiritual and political struggle, and how China today should make sense of her story to explore faith and agency in an increasingly hostile environment. A closer look at Lin Zhao’s tragedy enables us to capture faith-based resistance at an individual level, and to contextual- ize the particularities of each persecution in modern China. Thematically, there are three major takeaways from this book. The first is the complexity of memory production in China. Biography (or autobiography) is a major mode of constructing historical memory. This literary genre dates back to early imperial times as a way to pro- mote state-sanctioned Confucian values through exceptional role mod- els. With the rise of nationalism inherent in the May Fourth Movement 198 Joseph Tse-hei Lee (1919), modern intellectuals used this genre to attach the individual self to the collective national body. This was exactly what Hu Shi called the “little self” under the “big self.”1 Driven by the fever of nationalism and the need for mass mobilization, both the Republican and Maoist regimes deliberately mythicized historical figures in order to submit the autonomous self to the collective national body. The Maoist govern- ment went further by subordinating the autonomous self to state mobi- lization. The best example was the telling of the Lei Feng story, which represented the concerted effort by the Communist authorities to pro- mote absolute loyalty and altruistic sacrifice among citizens during the 1960s. The Reform Era, however, saw a flood of personal memoirs re- calling persecution and hardship suffered during the Cultural Revolu- tion, including Rae Yang’s reflection on her experience as a Red Guard and Harry Wu’s moving account of his suffering in a labor camp.2 These memoirs provided an outlet for healing psychological scars as- sociated with traumatic turmoil. With a similar emphasis on trauma, the stories of Christian political prisoners, such as Lin Zhao’s, reveal both the lived experience of individual believers and their ongoing struggles with a totalitarian state. Thus, Chinese Christians are determined to reclaim alternative histories long submerged under the dominant offi- cial Communist historiography of Western imperialism. The account of religious persecution and martyrdom entered the Chinese Church’s hagiography, providing Christians with a shared cultural resource that transcended denominational and theological dif- ferences. These hagiographical writings, however, which are aimed at churches critical of Communist religious policy, are highly problematic because they emphasize the saintly character of these faith leaders without addressing the larger context in which they interacted with the Maoist government. Such romantic representations, often constructed in a strong rhetoric that expresses the hope of martyrdom, are reminis- cent of the heroic stories of Communist revolutionaries, sharing a pro- 1 Martin T. Fromm, “Invoking the Ghosts of Blagoveshchensk: Massacre, Memory, and the Post-Mao Search for Historical Identity,” in China’s Rise to Power: Concep- tions of State Governance, ed. Joseph Tse-hei Lee, Lida V. Nedilsky, and Siu-keung Cheung (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 139–64, and Borderland Memories: Searching for Historical Identity in Post-Mao China (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2019). 2 Rae Yang, Spider Eaters: A Memoir (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), and Harry Wu and Carolyn Wakeman, Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My Years in China’s Gulag (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994). Book Review 199 gressive linear narrative. By subscribing to the same narrative model of linear progression, Chinese Christian leaders participate in their own mythmaking. When they interpret the memory of prison ordeals, they transform it from a period of bitter suffering and hardship into a unique experience of survival and try to extract theological insights for faith consolidation. The latest research by Chloë Starr highlights an affinity between these Christian narratives of saints and Communist heroic sto- ries.3 From this perspective, Lian sets a new template for Chinese church historians to delve into the traumatic past in order to problematize the role of a patriotic Christian in a socialist state. Drawing on Lin Zhao’s own words, Lian begins each chapter with an overview of major socio-political controversies in China and sets the stage for the narrative. This approach places Lin Zhao’s story within the wider context of domestic and international politics, as well as within the development of Christianity in China. He writes clearly and fluently, giving those unfamiliar with contemporary China a sense of its shape, dynamics, and change. Amply illustrated by just a few black and white photos, he succinctly captures the pain and suffering at different stages of Lin’s young life. We follow Lin Zhao as she grew up in a well-educated Chinese family, received a prestigious Protestant mission education in Suzhou, and joined the Communist resistance movement. We become more engaged in the story as Lin ended up as a political prisoner from 1960 to 1968. Her religious conviction, commitment to justice, and support from family and friends strengthened her through the years of imprisonment. Through Lin’s remarks, we see the challenges facing political and religious dissidents during the early decades of the People’s Republic. We certainly admire Lin’s courage to adhere to her faith in the most unbearable circumstances and strongly feel that the Chinese government owes her and other dissidents an apology. Although China has not followed in the footsteps of other countries by launching truth and reconciliation commissions that address the painful effects of political upheavals on citizens, this extraordinary book offers a unique perspective on the differences between pluralistic and repressive approaches toward truth-telling. The second lesson concerns the extension of Christian spiritual sov- ereignty in modern China. Since the early twentieth century, Chinese 3 Chloë Starr, Chinese Theology: Text and Context (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). 200 Joseph Tse-hei Lee Christians and foreign missionaries have debated about whether Chris- tianity should be a principle of personal conscience or a motivating force against injustice and corruption. The period of the 1910s and 1920s saw an intense discussion about the privatization of religion, an idea thought to benefit church growth. Many Christians were con- vinced that in the Republican era, without a state religion or a central- ized ideology, there would be an autonomous space for Christianity to grow and thrive. This actually brought the Chinese Church closer to the Western understanding of secular modernity. Yet, this emphasis on the privatization of the religious sphere backfired in the revolutionary up- heavals of the mid-1920s, when radical activists and progressive mis- sion school students criticized this otherworldly Christianity for lacking political and social significance.