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.
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Zhang Bo-li, third from right holding banner, protesting in
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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.
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Zhang, right, reunited with friend and fellow protester Wang
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“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.
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Bo-li and Jian Zhang on their wedding day in 1997.
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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.
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Bo-li, Aaron, Jian and Little Snow Zhang.
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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.
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Zhang is now the associate pastor of “Home of Christian” church
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“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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