Blood Letters by Lian Xi

Author:Lian Xi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2018-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

Accustomed to long nights as springtime wears away,

I take along wife and son, my temples turning gray.

In dreams dimly I see my loving mother’s tears;

Over the city gate often a different “royal” standard appears.

How unbearable to have seen friends newly go down to the shades!

In a rage I search for a short verse among bristling bayonet blades.

Chanting it over, I lower my brows—no place to write it down.

Liquid moonlight glitters on my black gown.63

Like most writers of her generation, Lin Zhao’s literary sensibilities had been formed in the crucible of revolution, in which the line between good and evil, between “a short verse” and “bayonet blades,” was always clear. Her imprisonment as a political dissident and the repeated abuse she endured behind bars only reinforced that simple division, making her the “spring’s silkworm” and a burning “wick of the candle.” Her experiences also made it difficult for her to achieve the nuance and moderation of more reflective and philosophical protests, such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Fortunately, she was able to find occasional relief from her single-minded “battle.” In addition to her handicrafts, she also sketched her favorite Disney characters on a flattened toothpaste tube, using a small nail she had found: Mickey Mouse with his violin and Minnie Mouse holding up a corner of her skirt.64

On Christmas Eve, she “joyously sang those beautiful Christmas carols” as she welcomed a dinner of carrot and napa cabbage with rice soup. Sixty years earlier, when the newly built Tilanqiao was run by the Westerners, a Chinese inspector of the prison had found fish, beef, pork, and beans included on the menu. Now Mao’s regime had replaced erstwhile imperialist indulgence with revolutionary rigor. Inmates were served porridge in the morning—containing about 100 grams of rice—and steamed rice for lunch and dinner, 150 grams apiece. On top of the rice was often “a layer of bok choy cooked without oil,” one inmate recalled. The meals were placed in narrow, oblong metal containers—about an inch and a half wide, three inches high and eight inches long—that could be delivered through the iron grille of the cells.65

The Christmas Eve dinner was not lavish, but the carols Lin Zhao sang that evening lifted her spirits and inspired her to pen a “spirit-filled short essay entitled ‘Christ Is Still in This World,’” using her own blood. She hoped to compile this and other short pieces into a volume to be called “Devotional Reflections.” “Grant me inspirations, Heavenly Father!” she asked. “I would be truly grateful if I could produce something like Streams in the Desert.” A collection of daily devotional readings written by American missionary Lettie Cowman, the book was published in 1925 and translated into Chinese in 1939. It became the most popular devotional of the twentieth century among Chinese Christians.66

On January 13, 1966, Lin Zhao coughed up a large amount of blood and was given an intravenous injection of agrimony extract to staunch her internal bleeding. But she refused to go to the prison hospital or to take the prescribed vitamin K.

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