WANTED: Zhang Bo-li; male, 26 years old; Hei-long-jiang Province; scholar and professional writer, Chinese literature department, Beijing University; height: 175 cm., chubby, round face, up-turned nose, big lips; northern accent.

So reads China's description of the second-most wanted organizer of the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989. Of the 21 leaders on the list, Zhang Bo-li was one of the fortunate escapees -- but his freedom was only obtained after an agonizing journey and near-death experiences.

Zhang Bo-li, third from right holding banner, protesting in Tiananmen Square.

Now a Christian and associate pastor of the "Home of Christian" church in Hacienda Heights, Calif., Zhang told me his extraordinary true story.

On the eve of June 4, 1989, when the People's Liberation Army came to Tiananmen Square with tanks and their AK 47s, killing students and other protesters, Zhang and Wang Dan, who tops China's list of protest "criminals," led the students out of the square and back to Beijing University, where the demonstration had been conceived 54 days earlier.

By the time they arrived at the university, they were given a hero's welcome. Zhang and Wang had led the first group of students from Beijing University to Tiananmen Square where they were eventually joined by more than a million other students and citizens. There was not a dry eye in the crowd that welcomed the protesters upon their return.

Zhang, right, reunited with friend and fellow protester Wang Den in the United States nine years after Tiananmen Square.

"Do not forget what happened in Tiananmen Square," Zhang told the crowd in his last speech at the school. "If this is the Communist Party who killed our students, our people, I am ashamed to be part of it. I will abandon my membership with the party."

His wife came to him from the countryside, where the couple lived with their one-and-a-half year-old daughter, and embraced him as though she would never let him go. Some of the students suggested they leave the university because the PLA and police were killing and arresting people in the city of Beijing. So he and his wife rode their bicycles to a friend's house where they could shower, get a meal and hide.

On the way from their friend's house to the train station, Zhang saw PLA tanks charging up the street with machine guns firing at people, including him and his wife. As a tank barreled its way toward the couple, Zhang, having nowhere to hide, pushed his wife to the ground between the tracks of the armored vehicle. As the tank rolled over them, leaving the couple unharmed, it crushed his wife's bicycle.

Having survived the encounter, and with the long trek to the train station still before them, they decided to return to their friend's house to get another bicycle.

Arriving safely at the station, Zhang told his wife to go back to the countryside where they had left their daughter with friends. It was too dangerous to take his family, especially when the PLA would surely be looking for him.

"I will never leave you," his wife said. "I'll wait for you no matter how long it will be."

Most of the fleeing students traveled to the southern part of China, through Hong Kong, where they made their escape. But Zhang was from the northern part of China, so he decided to travel in the opposite direction of the throngs of other escaping protesters. That was the beginning of what would be a two-year trek.

"It was only by God's mercy and grace that I survived," Zhang told me. "I encountered Chinese policemen face-to-face more than seven times. Each time, God saved me from being arrested."

At one point on the journey to his hometown in the Hei-long-jiang Province, he was sitting in front of two policemen on a train. Zhang recounted a conversation he had with them after one officer said Zhang looked familiar.

Asking who it was he resembled, the officer replied, "Like those students in Tiananmen Square."

Zhang thought fast and asked, "Do I look like Wang Dan?"

"No," the policeman answered. "You look like Zhang Bo-li."

Immediately, Zhang responded, asking, "Did you guys already arrest him?" Their answer, discussed 11 years later, now causes Zhang to chuckle a bit.

"No, you don't understand this police business. The government said Mr. Zhang Bo-li escaped to his hometown, the Hei-long-jiang Province. It will not be easy to arrest him. He is a student of Beijing University -- he's very smart. We only have an elementary school education. If we catch him, we would be allowed to go to the university," the officer joked. "Besides, what good does it do us to arrest him? It only makes my captain's chances of getting promoted a little better. But we would get in trouble, because these college-educated students will someday be government officials. If history says they are right, then they will put us in jail."

Zhang traveled through his hometown to a border town directly across the Hei-long-jiang River from the Soviet Union. Arriving at the home of a sympathetic farming family, Zhang was very sick and exhausted from the journey he'd made on foot and passed out.

Upon waking, he saw the farmer's wife, in her late 50s. She had obviously been caring for him, and Zhang worried for the family's safety. If the authorities learned of his whereabouts, he would be sentenced to death, and the family would be imprisoned for life.

Zhang told the woman she would be punished if she was caught harboring a fugitive. Her answer surprised him.

"So what," she said. "If I'm doing the right thing for Christ and they put me in jail, that will be a good testimony."

Zhang did not know what the woman meant, but the family's generosity did not escape him. A poor farming family, they had very little. But what they did have, they shared, nursing him back to health.

One day, the farmer's wife asked for a favor. Zhang expected to be asked for something, for Chairman Mao had said, "There is a purpose for hate and a purpose for love." No one gives this kind of generosity and attention for free.

The woman handed him a book. "I don't read and write," she said. "I am uneducated. Would you read this book for me?"

"Sure," Zhang answered. "All I know how to do is read and write. But I don't know how to cut wood," he quipped.

"I was shocked when I saw the book," Zhang told me. "It was a hand-written copy of the book of John. Obviously, the person who copied it was uneducated, judging by their handwriting, but they had taken great care when copying the text. During the cultural revolution, Chinese communists burned all the existing Bibles. The Christians in China had to write out the books of the Bible from memory. That book changed my life."

"The first sentence stunned me," he continued. "It said, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' I began to read it to the farmer's wife, but I was the one who received the message. Because it was wintertime, there was nothing the farmer could do. Men would get together to play poker and women would get together and do needlework."

The farmer's wife asked Zhang to stay in the basement so no one would know he was there. He heard the family and their friends sing songs he had never heard before -- they were hymns.

"One song brought a tear to my eye. It said, 'God knows how many hairs are on my head. God knows the burden on my shoulders. God took the burden and fears from me. And in my heart, I am at peace with the Lord, Jesus Christ.' It was so simple, and they kept singing it over and over again. I began to understand."

The farmer's wife taught Zhang how to pray, saying, "If you pray, the Lord, Jesus Christ will save you. But every time you pray, conclude by saying, 'In the Lord Jesus Christ's name I pray, amen.' Otherwise your prayer is useless."

"On Christmas Eve of 1989, at 3:00 a.m., I decided to cross the Hei-long-jian river into the Soviet Union," Zhang told me. "I chose that hour because it was the coldest moment of the day. Even the PLA border patrol was afraid to come out because it was so cold."

As he began crawling over the frozen river, he heard the farmer's wife say, "Remember to pray! The Lord, Jesus Christ will save you!"

He turned back, saying, "I will. Thank you, and good bye." It took him six hours to cross the river to the Soviet Union.

"I was so happy. The most-wanted list was of no consequence there. The bullets of the PLA could not shoot me there. I was free."

But what he did not yet know was that there were no settlements for 30 miles. Finding a huge pile of hay, he jumped in to hide from the cold. But the sweat from his journey had frozen, encasing him in ice. Before he lost consciousness, he remembered the farmer's wife telling him to pray.

"Lord, please save me," Zhang whispered. "In Jesus' name I pray, amen." He wanted to be absolutely sure his prayer would be heard, so with every sentence, he added, "In Jesus' name I pray, amen."

"Lord, if you save my life from this, I will give my life to you to serve you. In Jesus' name I pray, amen."

"That was the prayer that changed the direction of my life," Zhang said.

When he regained consciousness, three Russian farmers were shouting for him to wake up. They took him to their home and fed him strong, hot black coffee.

The farmers said Zhang was lucky to be alive -- they were not scheduled to pick up the hay stack for three more days. But another winter storm was on its way, so they went early.

They took Zhang to a KGB post on the border. When the KGB confirmed Zhang's identity a week later, a Soviet general, a colonel and a major -- who spoke perfect Chinese -- came to the post. Zhang had requested political asylum and said he wanted to go to the United States.

His request was denied. Though in a KGB prison, there was a heater, warm clothes and good meals, but the young scholar decided to fast and pray.

The KGB general came to him after the first day of his fast and said, "Zhang Bo-li, you cannot hunger strike. You can do your hunger strike at Tiananmen Square -- that's not our business. But you are here in the Soviet Union. If you hunger strike to death, it's our responsibility."

Zhang explained to him that there was a difference between fasting for prayer and a hunger strike.

"I don't care!" said the general. "The result is the same -- you are not eating."

But when Zhang said his reason for fasting was because of his belief in the Lord, Jesus Christ, the general seemed to understand.

Two weeks after his escape from China, Zhang was blindfolded and taken by the Russian colonel and the Chinese-speaking major to the border in the middle of the night. When they removed the blindfold, Zhang asked, "Where are the Chinese officials to take me back to China?"

The colonel said, "Zhang Bo-li, please understand our situation. You have my great respect. I'm going to let you go back to China without notifying the Chinese and United States governments. On your right hand side, six kilometers away, there are 500 PLA border patrol officers. On your left, 4 kilometers away, there are 200 PLA soldiers. If you go from here, no one will find you."

With a tear in his eye, the major said, "Please understand, we are just following orders. I don't want to send you back into danger. If we give you back to China, America will protest. If we give you to the United States, the Chinese will protest. So you must go back the way you came -- quietly. You were never here."

Zhang crawled back over the river to China and began two years of life in the Chinese wilderness. Over the course of those two years, he befriended a puppy he named "Little Black Guy," and a small deer he named "Mei-mei." The two animals followed him everywhere.

He soon contracted a skin disease that caused his entire body to itch. The only way he could deal with the itchiness caused by the disease was to run around in the wilderness like a crazy man until he collapsed from exhaustion.

He hadn't talked to another human being for three months, until, finally, he sneaked back into the Chinese border town and contacted the farming family that had helped him.

The family provided him with tools for survival, including an axe and seeds for planting vegetables. Zhang returned to the jungle where he would be safe from patrolling police.

Over time, he developed his own rice field, vegetable garden, fishpond and even a small shelter that served as his house. But through it all, he lived with the tormenting skin disease.

Finally, he gave the farmer's wife 300 Chinese dollars and asked her to go to the city to a medicine shop where a friend of Zhang's was located. He instructed her to use the money to buy medicine for his illness.

She returned with the medicine, a letter and 3,000 Chinese dollars. The letter said, "My dear friend, the merchandise has been in storage for two years. It is no good for the business. We need to export this merchandise ASAP. If you agree, we should make a contract now."

Zhang understood the covert message and was very grateful. He came to the village and saw an old Chinese newspaper with his name printed in it.

"No way! The Chinese government is still after me after all this time?" he thought. But the ad had not been placed by the government -- it was from his wife.

It read: "Zhang Bo-li, in three months you have to come settle a divorce case with me. Otherwise, you will be treated as absent and will lose your rights."

"I was shocked," Zhang said. "I had been thinking since that night under the tank about my wife and my daughter named 'Little Snow.' She was born just after a light snow. I had been thinking of them night and day for the last two years. How could this happen to me? I can only say that my heart was broken, but I understood that, under the circumstances, she had tremendous pressure from the Chinese government. I wrote her a letter, saying that I understood and asked her to take good care of our daughter."

Zhang went to the city, ending his exile in the wilderness, and began his final escape from China.

Through the efforts of many different people, including government officials, policemen, mafia members, professional writers and others, he was able to meet his mother and his daughter before he left the country. Little Snow had been left by her mother at a farmer's house, and the family there was raising her.

With the help of his network of friends, he was able to ride in a high-speed boat to Hong Kong, which was still under British rule. Before he jumped into the boat, which was provided by a smuggler, a mafia member said, "Mr. Zhang, we also have a conscience. The Communist Chinese government can arrest the students one-by-one, and we will save them one-by-one. Human efforts have been exhausted. The rest is up to God."

"At 12:09 p.m. on June 13, 1991, I landed in Hong Kong," Zhang said. "I thought about my mom, my ex-wife, my Little Snow and the Tiananmen Square students. I got on my knees, faced China, and said, 'Motherland, I will be back.'"

He soon came to the United States as a visiting scholar at Princeton University, just as Zhiming Yuan -- a fellow Tiananmen Square fugitive -- had done. Soon he was diagnosed with liver cancer and had kidney failure. But God saved his life again -- the cancer disappeared. After four years, he transferred to Logos Evangelical Seminary in Rosemead, Calif.

But God had even more plans for Zhang Bo-li. A woman named Jian, who had a Ph.D. in chemistry, came from Shanghai to study in the United States. Jian became a Christian after she survived the sudden death of her 31-year-old, college-sweetheart husband. Her testimony was sent to Zhang, who was helping edit a book called, "Testimonies of Overseas Chinese Scholars."

For three months, the two of them talked long distance on the phone. They were married, and the two of them lived with Aaron, Jian's son from her late husband.

Bo-li and Jian Zhang on their wedding day in 1997.

Then, 11 years after Tiananmen Square and two days before Zhang was graduated from seminary, the Chinese government released his daughter, Little Snow.

"All I can say is praise the Lord. Thank you, God," he said.

Bo-li, Aaron, Jian and Little Snow Zhang.

Like fellow escapee and good friend Zhiming Yuan, Zhang's heart grieves for China.

"As a student in Tiananmen Square, I thought democracy, high technology and a good economy was the way to solve China's problems. I was wrong. Love from Christ is the only way to solve the problems in China," he told me.

"In the last three or four years, I've been doing a lot of preaching to Chinese students here in the United States. More than 3,000 of them have become Christians. You have to understand, Johnny, they are the top scholars from China. Those students will become government officials in the very near future, and I hope they will change the system to a system of love, not hate. In 1949, there were only 82,000 Christians in China. Today, there are 82 million Christians. This has never, ever happened in Chinese history.

Zhang is now the associate pastor of "Home of Christian" church in Hacienda Heights, Calif., a well-known congregation by Christians in China.

"The Chinese government calls them the 'underground church,' but they call themselves, 'China House Church.' They are not only expanding inside China, but they are also going into the bordering countries to be missionaries."

Today in China, about 30 million Christians meet in private homes to study the Bible and worship together. Zhang recently met with a group of Christian leaders of the 30 million members of China House Church in a bordering nation near China where he stayed for two weeks.

"I can see the Christian love on their faces and in their eyes," said Zhang. "I can see they need a lot of spiritual and financial help. I am going to do whatever I can to help them."

In response to his visit, Zhang has set up ChinaHouseChurch.org, which will be active in about two weeks.

"I, Zhang Bo-li dedicated myself to the Lord, Jesus Christ when he saved my life on that cold winter night and then again from cancer. I will do everything to be a good servant to him and to save as many souls as I can for the rest of my life. I hope my story will be a good testimony to glorify the Lord, Jesus Christ."

Zhang Bo-li and Zhiming Yuan have humbled my heart. The work they began in Tiananmen Square more than a decade ago continues -- but not in the way they had originally planned. Through Zhang's work with China House Church and Yuan's project of China Soul for Christ, the giant communist nation is continually being lifted up to the Lord for healing.

Christians in the United States often cite a Bible verse as the hope for an America they believe has lost its moral compass. The same verse can be applied to China -- a nation longing for a God it does not even acknowledge.

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

So said God, the Father Almighty, to Solomon, as recorded in 2 Chronicles 7:14. May the Lord, Jesus Christ hear our prayer and extend his healing hand to China.

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