By Qian Jin
“Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me” (Psalms 23:4).
I’m a Christian. I worked in a hotel. One day in the summer of 1997, I had just finished my lunch when three thirty-year-old policemen sprang before me. One of them pointed at me and said: “You, come with us!” Not knowing what had happened, I asked him: “On what basis are you arresting me?” Being puzzled, my leader and colleagues also asked: “Which law has she broken? Where will you take her?” Those policemen snarled at them: “What law has she broken? She believes in God. That alone is reason enough to arrest her.” Then, they put a black hood onto my head, half dragged and half pushed me out of the hotel and into their car.
Soon, they took me to the police station and then left for meal, having cuffed me and locked me up in a dark room. At the moment, I was extremely scared in my heart and so I prayed to the Lord: “Lord! I’m very scared and I don’t know what they are going to do with me. Lord, please be with me and keep me! In the Holy name of the Lord Jesus. Amen!” After praying, my heart settled a little. Thinking of the cursed outcome of Judas who sold his Lord and friends, I prayed to the Lord asking Him to keep me from being Judas. A little while later, a policeman came in and said to me fiercely: “Be honest! How many people are there in your church? Tell their names!” At that moment, I kept saying silent prayers to the Lord and didn’t utter a single word to him. My reaction caused him to grit his teeth and he cuffed my hands behind my back, chained my feet, hung me upside down against the wall, and then clutched my head and bashed my head on the wall as hard as he could. The fierce bangs made my head swim but I still didn’t say anything. Seeing this, the policeman stormed off. Then came another policeman shouting angrily at me: “Will you speak? How many people are in your church? What are their names? Report all their names!” Being interrogated, I still said nothing. Then he began to swear at me: “You filthy woman! You don’t believe in the communist party! You believe in Jesus!” As he swore, he burned my lips, my tongue, and my throat with the burning cigarettes and he sneered at me saying: “Call your Lord Jesus to save you. Why doesn’t your Lord come and save you? You can only believe in the communist party. Hurry up, tell me their names!” No matter how he interrogated me, I just kept silent, so the policeman continued to burn my lips and throat and they were broken. Following this, he grabbed my throat with his left hand and wildly inserted the electric baton into my mouth with the other. Immediately, an electric current went through my entire body: All my muscles were twitching sharply and uncontrollably; my mouth, my throat, and my tongue were seared; blood was pouring from my mouth. As if being gnawed by the ants and pierced by countless arrows, I almost fell into a coma. Apart from this, the policeman threw a cup of boiled water onto my cuts; the pain was so unendurable that I couldn’t help crying out, therefore he stuffed paper into my mouth, not allowing me to cry out. But in my heart, I kept calling out to the Lord: “Lord! Please save me, please keep me, I would rather die than be Judas. Hallelujah, Amen!” After I prayed, I felt some comfort when thinking of the Lord’s words: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Matthew 5:10–12). I also recalled the scene that the Lord was whipped and abused by the soldiers, and was crucified on the cross. To save us humans, the Lord really suffered many hardships. Therefore, we must walk the path the Lord had walked and drink from the bitter cup He had drunk from, and I deserved the pain I was suffering this day. Thinking of this, I had strength and I felt the pain in me was lessening somewhat. At this moment, the policeman took off the paper in my mouth and kept trying forcing a confession out of me; seeing that I still didn’t say anything, he slammed the door and left.
After the policeman left, in came a forty-year-old policewoman. Seeing that I was still hung upside down, she put me down to the ground, unlocked my handcuffs to strip all my clothes, then cuffed my hands to the iron chair, and left me lying on my back. Then she trod on my ankle with leather shoes, fiercely saying, “China is an atheistic country. Why believe in God? You can only believe in the communist party. Tell me all the people you know, quickly; if you don’t say today, I’ll fix you to death!” Saying this, she wildly beat and stuck my face, my breasts, and my belly with the electric baton. The surge current once again made all my muscles twitch and jump involuntarily and I felt the torture of being gnawed by the ants and pierced by countless arrows. Suddenly, one of her random beat fell onto my nose and blood gushed from my nose and mouth. Seeing this, the policewoman used some herby handkerchief to stop up my mouth. As she did this, she abused me: “Why did your mother give birth to you? Since you were born, you should enjoy your life, why believe in Jesus?” Then, she picked the electric baton up to violently stick my private parts; she even jabbed the baton into my private parts and spun it with all her strength, and while doing this, she gritted her teeth saying, “I’ll jab your womb out.” Instantly, the blood and urine flowed out and I fainted under the unendurable anguish. I didn’t know after how long a time I was woken up by the awful pain. I found the policewoman holding a basin beside me and my naked body completely soaked in searing pain (I was only able to know later that she had poured salt water onto my body). At that time, it hurt so bad but I could only shed silent tears because my mouth was blocked and I was unable to let out a cry. Then that policewoman turned me around to make me lie on my stomach. She used the electric baton to jab at my body roughly and she even jabbed it into my anus and this gave me the pain of my anus being torn to pieces. At this point, I was really frightened of being afflicted to death by the policewoman, therefore I kept praying to God in my heart: “Lord! Save me! I can’t stand it any longer. I’m dying! Save me!” After my prayer, the Lord’s words floated into my mind: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). I was sobered up all at once: That’s it. The CCP government can kill my body but they can’t kill my soul. Besides, it’s the Lord that has given me this breath and controls my life and death, so what’s to fear? Thinking of this, I had the determination of pledging myself not to betray the Lord. Quite miraculously, as if my body were numb I suddenly felt no pain. I knew it was the Lord’s miraculous work: He is showing mercy to me and protecting me. An unspeakable gratitude of mine to the Lord stirred from the depth of my heart. I also clearly saw why the CCP government hated the believers in God so much. In fact, it was the Lord that they hated, so they would cruelly persecute and afflict anyone who believes in the true God. Just as the Lord Jesus said: “If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). While I pondered over the Lord’s words, that policewoman began pricking my whole body with needles and she didn’t stop it until five p.m. Then she left.
When the night came, a policeman on duty came to me. In leather shoes, he trod my waist with all his weight and smirked at me: “Now you feel pain? Well, tell me the people you know and then I will make you a policewoman here.” I was nauseated at seeing him, feeling him a beast in human clothing. I believed in the Lord to be a good person and I didn’t do bad things; then why did they torture me with cruel means at will? I really hated them to the core. But I was unable to make any voice then, so I just stared at him. He lashed me with a leather belt and I didn’t know how many lashes I had received. Then he began to splash wine onto my body and while doing this, he laughed wildly and said: “Why do your Lord Jesus not save you? If you had married me, I would have already deserted you.” Afterward, he gave me an injection in the hip with a big-sized needle and then began to loosen his leather belt. I was very scared, thinking: What he wanna do? Is he going to humiliate me? I cried incessantly to the Lord: “Lord! Please save me. He is a demon Satan. Please don’t allow him to humiliate me.” After I finished praying, I saw him shivering all over and run out. I realized that it was the Lord’s another keeping for me and that warmed my heart a great deal. Before long, I started to lose consciousness and didn’t come to my senses until the next morning.
The next morning, at eight o’clock, two police came saying: “We have fixed her so hard, but she still let out no single word. We really can’t do anything with her.” After saying this, they went out. At about nine o’clock, a colleague of my husband came, saying to them: “I’m coming to receive her because her husband is in hospital.” A policeman came up uncuffing me and asked me to leave. But I couldn’t stand up because my whole body was swollen; neither could I utter a word, nor could I know where my clothes and trousers had been put by the policewoman, so I was totally naked. Then they found a piece of cloth to wrap around me, and took me to the car. Seeing that I was dying, my husband’s colleague sent me to hospital and I stayed there for a whole week, surviving through a blood transfusion because I had lost too much blood due to their tortures, and living on fluid transfusion because I even couldn’t swallow water with my badly burnt tongue and throat. One week having past, I was only able to drink a little water and milk. Later on, since I had no money to pay for my medical treatment, my unit paid the total expenditure of 27,500 yuan for me, which was out of God’s love and God’s mercy for me, I knew. Afterward, I went out of the hospital to recuperate at home; at that time my private parts and my lips were still bleeding. And as long as I bled, my chess would ache. After I arrived home I got to know that the police had ransacked my house and taken away my Holy Bible. Before long, my rental house was to be demolished, but my unit leader settled me in the unit and my colleagues took turns to take care of my life. All this reminded me of the Psalms 23:4: “Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me.” I thought: Yes. It was the Lord’s mercy and protection that enabled me to come out of the police station alive. Now when I’m most painful and helpless, the Lord sends my colleagues to look after me, letting me see His love for me and that He is always accompanying me by my side. Although my body began to pick up half a year later, yet the after-effects have been with me for 18 years: I still often have blood clots coming out of my private parts (this put me into forced menopause at forty years old), sometimes my anus also bled, and every time they bled, my chess would ache. In addition, I often felt dizzy and my head often ached and my mind also became blunted.
Not long after I left the hospital, the police had come to my unit to look for me twice and for each time my leaders were asked about my whereabouts, they just told them that I wasn’t there, so the police didn’t come again after that. Having experienced the persecution and tribulation, I seemed to have walked through the valley of the shadow of death. I know it was the Lord that personally led me through it, and it was the Lord that supported me with His rod and staff, so that I don’t fail but have further appreciated the Lord’s mercy and love are so genuine and great!
