Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China

by Lian Xi

Overview

The staggering story of the most important Chinese political dissident of the Mao era, a devout Christian who was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the regime

Blood Letters tells the astonishing tale of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist arrested by the authorities in 1960 and executed eight years later, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. The only Chinese citizen known to have openly and steadfastly opposed communism under Mao, she rooted her dissent in her Christian faith — and expressed it in long, prophetic writings done in her own blood, and at times on her clothes and on cloth torn from her bedsheets.

Miraculously, Lin Zhao's prison writings survived, though they have only recently come to light. Drawing on these works and others from the years before her arrest, as well as interviews with her friends, her classmates, and other former political prisoners, Lian Xi paints an indelible portrait of courage and faith in the face of unrelenting evil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541644236
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/20/2018
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Lian Xi is a professor of world Christianity at Duke Divinity School. The author of Redeemed by Fire and The Conversion of Missionaries, he lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 To Live under the Sun 11

Chapter 2 Exchanging Leather Shoes for Straw Sandals 33

Chapter 3 The Crown 63

Chapter 4 A Spark of Fire 91

Chapter 5 Shattered Jade 117

Chapter 6 Lamplight in the Snowy Fields 149

Chapter 7 The White-Haired Girl of Tilanqiao 177

Chapter 8 Blood Letters Home 205

Afterword 241

Acknowledgments 249

Notes 253

Bibliography 293

Index 319

Editorial Reviews

"Blood Letters is one of the most important books on the Communist-era rights movements to be published in recent years. It is not only the first biography of Lin in English, but also the first in any language to carefully sort through the sometimes overwrought and polemical writing inspired by her martyrdom... highly readable, deeply informed..."—New York Review of Books

"[Lin Zhao's] story is grippingly related... her fate was inevitable: death by a firing squad. But thanks to scholar Lian Xi, her words survive."—Washington Times

"Blood Letters is an unsparing, meticulously researched, moving but unsentimental look at a complex and heroic figure. Without shying away from the realities of Lin Zhao's personal flaws and inner torment, Lian Xi's work also recognizes her important legacy, making it widely accessible for the first time to an English-speaking audience... an important-even vital-book."—Christianity Today

"A moving account of astonishing human courage in the leering face of human cruelty."—Kirkus Reviews

This book deeply moved me: it is the story of the most harrowing and heroic martyrdom in the history of faith in modern China. Lian Xi's work of witness is groundbreaking.—Liao Yiwu, exiled writer and author of God Is Red, The Corpse Walker, and For a Song and a Hundred Songs

"China's achievements and failures are usually celebrated or condemned on the mass scale. The vivid individuality of the men and women who have fought bravely to change their nation can fade from view. Blood Letters is the most powerful antidote to that amnesia. Lin Zhao's story, nearly erased or forgotten, will live as an example of civic and personal courage to inspire people in her country and elsewhere."—James Fallows, Atlantic

"A few courageous Chinese dissidents—Wei Jingsheng, Liu Binyan, Fang Lizhi, Liu Xiaobo, and others—have become known to the world. Their actions and their stories were able to emerge once Mao Zedong was gone. Others, who fought back while Mao was still alive, received bullets in the back of the head and immaculate erasure of their stories. They included Lin Zhao, Yu Luoke, Zhang Zhixin, and uncountable others whose names we do not know. Blood Letters, the rescued story of Lin Zhao, shows us an indomitable woman who was both a martyr and true pioneer."—Perry Link, author of Liu Xiaobo's Empty Chair: Chronicling the Reform Movement Beijing Fears Most

"Lin Zhao is a great hero of the faith, a brilliant and courageous figure no less than Bonhoeffer and Solzhenitsyn, willing to give her life for the truth of God. May a thousand flowers like Lin Zhao bloom in the China of today!"—Eric Metaxas, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer, If You Can Keep It, and Martin Luther

"Blood Letters tells the story of Lin Zhao's martyrdom with the elegance her life demands.... Lian Xi's book will surely become a classic not only as we come to understand the struggle of Christians in China but also for how the story he tells helps us understand China." —Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law at Duke University

"Blood Letters is a genuinely exciting book. Lian Xi sheds a whole new light on an extraordinarily important Christian figure (and martyr) who has hitherto been utterly unknown outside a narrow band of specialists.... A masterpiece."—Philip Jenkins, author of Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World

"Blood Letters, carefully researched and timely, reveals the trajectory of a privileged girl who went from Christian to communist comrade to a Christian resister whose crime was being an 'impenitent counterrevolutionary.' Even told poorly, this would be a remarkable story. Xi tells it in memorable fashion."—Christian Century

From the Publisher

2018-01-08
A profoundly grim, sanguinary account of the suffering of a young woman during the days of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.Lian Xi (World Christianity/Duke Divinity School; Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China, 2010, etc.) begins with the 1965 sentencing of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist fighting "the dark forces of repression and injustice." She was executed in 1968; by law, her family then had to pay a five-cent fee for the bullet. Lin Zhao had been in political trouble through most of her youth. She had a constitutional inability to lie low and instead wrote fiery poems and letters to the press and smeared images of Mao with her own blood. Compounding all of her suffering was tuberculosis. She spent time in the prison hospital, though she sometimes refused treatment. She often wrote poems and letters in her own blood. As the author reveals, she had initially been a communist, then became a devout Christian, finding in that religion some context for her suffering—and her suffering was profound: TB, harsh life in a prison cell, and physical abuse by guards and other prisoners. Readers will be astonished that she survived so long and was able to hold fast to her opposition. Most of her writing survived in government files, and Lian Xi—determined and imaginative—read her works and interviewed key figures, creating an effective tribute to a remarkable human being. The text is academic in structure (including more than 60 pages of bibliography and endnotes), but the author's diction will appeal to general readers. He allows his own voice to emerge occasionally, most notably at the end, where he writes about his hotel room, not far from where Lin Zhao was imprisoned.A moving account of astonishing human courage in the leering face of human cruelty.

Kirkus Reviews