Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Han’s mother shakes her head. “Han, come to the church tomorrow with me and listen to our pastor. Ask him about his experience in the Cultural Revolution, and you would know what a great man he is.”

“What can he tell me that I don’t know?” Han says.

“Don’t be so arrogant,” his mother says, almost begging.

Han shrugs with exaggeration. They move slowly with the line. After a silent moment, Han asks, “Mama, are you still a member of the Communist Party?”

“No. I sent my membership card back before I was baptized.”

“They let you do that! You are not afraid that they’ll come back and prosecute you for giving up your communist faith? Remember, Marx, your old god, says religion is the spiritual opium.”

Han’s mother does not reply. The wind blows her gray hair into her eyes, and she looks despondent. A yellow cab drives in, and Han helps his mother into the backseat. A good son she’s got for herself, the cabbie compliments his mother, and she agrees, saying that indeed, he is a very good son.

LATER THAT NIGHT, unable to sleep from the jet lag, Han slips out of the house and goes to an Internet café nearby. He tries to connect to the several chat rooms where he usually spends his evenings in America, flirting with other men and putting on different personalities for different IDs he owns, but after several failed trials, he realizes that the Internet police have blocked such sites in China. It’s daytime in America, and people are busy working anyway. Han sits there for a moment, opening randomly any sites that are available. He feels sorry to have upset his mother earlier, even though she acted as if nothing unpleasant ever happened, and cooked a whole table of dishes for his homecoming. She did not mention the service for tomorrow, and he did not mention the gold cross, which he slipped into his suitcase, ready to forget.

Han is not surprised that his mother has become this devout person. In her letters to him after his father’s death, she writes mostly about her newly discovered faith. What bothers Han is that his mother would have never thought of going to the church if his father were still alive. His father wouldn’t have allowed anyone, be it a man or a god, to take a slice of her attention away; she wouldn’t have had the time for someone else, either, his father always requiring more than she could give. His father’s death should be a relief for his mother. She should have started to enjoy her life instead of putting on another set of shackles for herself. Besides, what kind of church does she go to, and what god does she worship, if the whole thing exists in broad daylight in this country? Han remembers reading, in The New York Times once, a report about the underground churches in China. He decides to find the article and translate it for his mother. If she wants to be a Christian, she had better believe in the right god. She needs to know these people, who risk their freedom and lives going to shacks and caves for their faith. Han remembers the pictures from the report, those believers’ eyes squinting at the reporter’s camera, dispassionate and fearless. Han respects anybody leading an underground life; he himself, being gay, is one of them.

But of course the website of The New York Times is blocked, Han realizes a minute later. He searches for the seminaries and organizations referred to in the article, and almost laughs out loud when he finds a report about the Chinese Christian Patriots Association, the official leader of all the state-licensed churches. The association is coordinating several seminars for a national conference, focusing on the role of Christian teachings in the latest theories of communist development in the new millennium. God on the mission to help revive Marxism, Han thinks.

AFTER TWO HOURS of sleep, Han wakes up, and is happy to find the printed article in his pocket, black words on white paper. He walks into his father’s study. His mother, sitting at the desk, looks up from behind her bifocals. “Did you have a good sleep?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“I’ve got breakfast ready,” his mother says, and puts down a brochure she is reading. Han takes it up, reads a few pages, and tosses it back to his mother’s side of the desk. It’s a collection of poems written by different generations of believers in mainland China over the past century.

“In your spare time — I know you’re busy in America— but if you have some time to spare, I have some good books for you to read,” his mother says.

Han says nothing and goes into the kitchen. He has accepted, in the past ten years, handouts and brochures and several pocket-sized Bibles from people standing in the streets. He lets the young men from the Mormon Church into his kitchen and listens to them for an hour or two. He stands in the parking lots of shopping centers and allows the Korean ladies to preach to him in broken English. He goes to the picnics of the local Chinese church when he is invited, and he does not hang up when people from the church spend a long time trying to convert him. He is never bothered by the inconvenience caused by these people. Once he was stopped outside a fast food restaurant in Cincinnati by a middle-aged woman who insisted on holding both his hands in hers and praying for his soul. He listened and watched a traffic cop write a ticket for his expired meter; even then he did not protest. Han finds it hard to turn away from these people, their concerns for his soul so genuine and urgent that it moves him. Other times, when he sees people standing in the street with handwritten signs that condemn, among many other sinners, homosexuals, he cannot help laughing in their faces. These people, who love or hate him for reasons only good to themselves, amuse Han, but it’s because they are irrelevant people, and their passion won’t harm him in any way. He imagines his mother being one of them; the mere thought of it irritates him.

She follows him to the kitchen. “You can always start with reading the Bible,” she says and puts a steaming bowl of porridge in front of Han. “Purple rice porridge, your favorite.”

“Thanks, Mama.”

“It’s good for you,” Han’s mother says. Han does not know if she is talking about food, or religion. She sits down on the other side of the table and watches him eat. “I’ve talked to many people,” she says. “Some of them didn’t believe me at first, but after they came to the church with me, and read the Bible, their lives were changed.”

“My life’s good enough. I don’t need a change,” Han mumbles.

“It’s never too late to know the truth. Confucius said: If one gets to know the truth in the morning, he can die in the evening without regret.”

“Confucius said: When one reaches fifty, he is no longer deceived by the world. Mama, you are sixty already, and you still let yourself be deceived. Wasn’t your communist faith enough of an example?” Han says. “Look here, Mama, I have printed out this lovely message for you. Read it yourself. The church you go to, the god you talk about — it’s all made up so people like you can be tricked. Don’t you know that all the state-licensed churches recognize the Communist Party as their only leader? Maybe someday you will even come up with the old conclusion that God and Marx are the same.”

Han’s mother takes the sheet of paper. She seems not surprised, or disappointed. When she finishes reading, she puts the printout carefully in the trash can by the desk, and says, “No cloud will conceal the sunshine forever.”

“Mama, I did not come home to listen to you preach. I’ve been in America for ten years, and enough people have tried to convert me, but I’m sitting here the same person as ten years ago. What does that tell you?”

“But you’re my son. I have to help you even if they’ve failed.”