Of Protest and Frailty

By Xiao Zi

Lu Xun's dreams were nightmares...
Xu Zhi-mo and He Qi-fang's dreams were full of grace...
Rou Shi and Ying Fu's dreams were soaked in blood...
Shen Cong-wen and Xiao Hong's dreams were wide grasslands...
Qian Zhong-shu and Zhang Tian-yi's dreams were skeptical bubbles...
Lao Shu and Ba Jin's dreams were of both sorrow and joy

1. China in the twenties and thirties.

I keep thinking about the China of the twenties and thirties.

Those years really fascinate me. There was challenge, there was radical change, there was compromise between the old and the new; there was enlightenment and there was shame; there were protests and there was silence; there was utter darkness and there was shining light; there was intense hatred and there was love. What a remarkable era it was!

Most importantly, it was an era that determined the outcome of the Chinese nation.

At one time my bed was piled high with books by the writers of that period, and night after night their books drew me into the atmosphere of those years, exploring the different dreams of the Chinese people as they described them and struggled through them. Lu Xun's dreams were nightmares full of utter darkness. Xu Zhi-mo and He Qi-fang's dreams were the graceful, gentle and fragile patterns of master-designers. Rou Shi and Ying Fu's dreams were soaked with blood seeping into parched soils. Shen Cong-wen and Xiao Hong's dreams were wide grasslands which, speechless as the forests, carried with them a persistent hope. Qian Zhong-shu and Zhang Tian-yi's dreams were skeptical bubbles. Lao She and Ba Jin's dreams bore sorrow as well as joy... I saw the dreams tossing up and down in the waves of history, until the brighter dreams grew bigger and bigger, and many of the gentler voices became weaker and were eventually swallowed up in the rushing torrent.

I often ask myself: If history could repeat itself, should China have chosen a different path?

The choice China made in the twenties and the thirties was fundamentally a choice between hatred and love. Two western ideologies had entered China: one was atheism and the other was Christianity. The first featured hate and violence, and the other promoted love and transformation. Actually, during that period Christianity was quite fashionable and many Chinese people had found answers in Jesus. Many others, however, discovered that they were no longer able to love. There was hatred between countries and feuds between families; there were civil wars. So graciousness had become synonymous with weakness.

Finally China chose Marxism. In the choice between love and hate, China chose hate.

And so China hated and fought in order to achieve a better world. But has it not always been the tragedy of the human race that we try to seek love by means of hate ?

If Jesus had lived in China in the twenties and thirties, faced with our battered and wasted land, what would he have given us?

2. The first century Jews

Then my mind strays back to the Judah of the first century, when Jesus lived.

History presents us with many striking similarities. Like China in the twenties and thirties, in the first century A.D. Judah also faced difficult choices.

At that time, Judah was not really a country. It was a colony under the Roman Empire. As God's chosen nation, the Jewish people could never forget the humiliation of being cast into slavery. In fact, even before the rule of the Roman Empire, the Jews had already suffered several foreign invasions. Their own ruling class, the priests and the teachers of the law, had often imposed taxes and religious rituals on the Jewish people. The people were suffering both outwardly and inwardly and they had become helpless. They were all eagerly awaiting the advent of God's salvation - the Messiah. Some had run out of patience and formed their own political parties, like the Zealots mentioned in the Bible. These were determined to overthrow the Roman government by force, in order to restore traditional religion and establish a new free country.

The Messiah, Jesus, did finally come. But he did not remotely resemble the ideal the Jews had been anticipating. They had asked God for a strong and noble leader. In contrast, Jesus was humble and gentle as a lamb. Nor was he willing to talk about politics. He had compassion for human sufferings and he cured the sick, but he was slow to practice other miracles. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law continually questioned him and criticized him, but Jesus refused to do anything that would meet their conditions for recognising him as the Son of God. Instead, he rebuked them for shutting Heaven's gates. They themselves refused to enter the gates of Heaven, and they were hindering others from doing so. When Zealots followed Jesus, he taught them to love their enemies and to pray for those that persecuted them. When some people challenged him on the sensitive issue of paying taxes to the Roman Empire, Jesus simply replied, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

What Jesus requires first of all is that we get rid of all the "if"s, "but"s and conditions, and instead repent and follow the Lord with our whole hearts. For it is only if we ourselves are willing to follow God's leading that we can ever view our own situation from the perspective of eternity, and only then will we be able to change the world by His power. We are so short-sighted and we always prefer our own way of doing things.

"If you do not act according to our ideals, then you are not the Messiah!" said the Jews.

"You do not line up with our expectations, therefore you are not God!" Such was the logic of the priests and teachers of the law. So they accused Jesus of blasphemy.

In the choice between life and death, again, Jesus' choices were radically different.

To modern scholars, Jesus appeared to be a political dissident with a band of followers. Like any other political leader facing persecution, he would have had two choices: one was to lead his followers into a political uprising and to overthrow the government by force; the other was to go into exile and continue to promote his ideology from there.

Jesus did neither of these.

He turned himself in.

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing," said Jesus on the cross.

The choice Jesus made, even by today's standards, appeared to be simply an act of foolhardy heroism. And yet multitudes of people, in some cases entire nations, believed in him and his cross. This in itself is a miracle. History marched on, and as we look back into that history, what are we to say of those nations that accepted him as well as of those that rejected him?

3. The sobriety of the nineties.

What a transformation has taken place in China between the twenties and the nineties!

As a young person of the nineties, however, my youthful eyes have scanned the world around me and I have been amazed.

Recently I read in The Reader's Digest an article in remembrance of Lu Xun and the writer made an interesting observation. He said he had finally realised that the current era of the nineties was little different from that of Lu Xun.

Although at present we suffer neither foreign invasions from outside nor political unrest from within, the China of the nineties is still fundamentally the same as the China of the twenties or thirties ! There is the same sense of national humiliation, intellectuals are still destitute, there is the same sense of powerlessness and apathy among the general public, the same complaints about corruption and inflation. Once again it is gold which is the brightest color, while the men and women of fashion still splash out socially ...

One thing is very different though. In the twenties and the thirties, China was wakening up, whereas in the nineties, China is sober.

When you wake up, you either look for solutions or you dream new dreams. When you are sober, however, there are no more dreams.

Recently I read one of Ding Ling's articles, A True Man's Life. It was a preface to Selected Works by Hu Ye-pin. Ye-pin was Ding Ling's lover when they were young. They both wrote about China's dreams in the full-bloodedness of their youth. Although Ye-pin came from a poor family in those critical years he refused to remain soft. Pregnant with their first child, Ding Ling tried to make a living by writing, while Ye-pin went off to join the revolutionary party. When the child was born, Ye-pin was arrested. It was his tragic death that strengthened Ding Ling's beliefs. Eventually she too joined the revolutionary party.

This article was written in the fifties. Over ten years later, during the Cultural Revolution, Ding Ling herself ended up in jail. She was considered an anti-revolutionary.

I hope Ding Ling is no longer alive. If she had lived into the nineties, she would have encountered even more scorn and rejection.

How cruel history is! How much we need God's mercy !

4. Everlasting blessings.

But what about Jesus' choice of the way of humility ?

Since leaving China, I have lived in England for six years. Although I am still quite oriental by nature, I have already been heavily influenced by the culture of the west. I realize that many of China's difficult dreams are common in England too. Here is a country with advanced industry and technology, yet here you rarely see urban areas totally covered with tall buildings and smothered in black smoke. Beautiful scenery is common here. We used to give the English the label of notorious capitalists, but to me these same people seem fairly honest. There is a social prosperity and a social justice which ensure that ordinary people do not to have to fight for status and power. They seem to have plenty of time to enjoy themselves and at the same time they are generous in helping charitable organizations.

This is a country with Christian traditions.

Wherever you go in the world, you will see that most countries with a Christian culture enjoy peace, order and prosperity.

This is not to say that these countries are without sin. In the whole world there is no absolutely perfect country. Relatively speaking, though, it is hard to deny the strength of these countries and the near perfection of their societies. And the foundation of these countries was built upon the teachings of Jesus. From the beginning of their history, confidence in God has been reflected in every part of their life. And this is certainly no coincidence.

Sometimes I have complained to God, "Oh Lord, it isn't fair! Didn't Great Britain ship opium to China? Why haven't they withered away? And why does China always seem to fail to make any progress?"

Once I was on vacation in Wales and I stepped one day into a shabby little church in a country village. There I saw a worn plaque recording the name of a missionary who had traveled thousands of miles to preach the Gospel in this village. The tablet also recorded the names of a series of ministers over a span of hundreds of years. As I walked out of the church into the bright sunlight and the peaceful backdrop of trees, cattle and a few old village homes a Bible verse came into my mind:

"I will show love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments."

It suddenly dawned on me that this country was able to enjoy lasting blessings because thousands of its ordinary citizens had managed to keep the commandments of God.

"The weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." The choice Jesus made on the cross was a choice of faith. He expects us to have faith in God's salvation, and, in the choice between love and hatred, he also expects us always to choose love.

Hatred may make an immediate impact, but it does not last. Love, on the other hand, may seem weak, but it is longlasting. This is because God is love.

So much for protest and frailty. It is humility and hope which must prevail.

The author came from Shanghai. She earned an MA degree in English literature. She now lives in England.