Book Sample

DANTE’S INFERNO

1996, Wuran

                                                                                         

          My face was almost touching the taxi window, my eyes fastened on the scenes flashing by. Justin and I had come to Wuran for a five-day exploratory trip to see if we could arrange everything we needed in order to live here. We were seeing the city for the first time, and we hoped it would be our home for many years to come. 

Since it was a city of nine million, I had expected a trim expanse of skyscrapers joined by freeways. There were a few high-rises, but almost all the buildings topped out at seven stories. They were boxy, concrete structures with no character—like you see in pictures of third world countries, where the government was desperate to build somewhere for the population to live. The buildings, the roads, the cars—everything looked grimy.

          As we traveled toward our destination, I was shocked by what passed for traffic in this metropolis—horse-drawn carts full of lumber or bricks, and adult-sized tricycles attached to flat-beds, with merchandise stacked several times higher than the cyclists’ heads. Masses of slow-moving bicycles were creeping along both sides of the street. Yellow van-taxis spewed out black exhaust, with fumes so pungent they stung my eyes and throat, and so oppressive they made my head feel like it had been stuffed into a tailpipe. 

          I didn’t see any traffic lights; in fact, there seemed not to be any traffic laws at all. Cars sped toward us, in our lane, swerving to avoid head-on collisions.

          The sound of horns was so constant I could barely hear anything else, as drivers seemed to honk for every reason—I’m passing. I’m turning. I’m behind you. It wasn’t the frantic bearing down on the horn like Americans do, out of fear or anger; it almost sounded friendly—beep, beep, beep—except that every car was beeping all the time!

          We slowed down as we neared our destination. I gasped when we turned off the main road onto a dirt and gravel road. I’ve camped off of roads that were better maintained than this. You could almost fit a basketball in some of the potholes! Garbage and bricks cluttered the sides of the road, and the manhole cover sunk into the ground at a 45 degree angle. Everything looked shoddy. How could I live in a place like this?

          The driver turned right, drove past an old brick wall, and stopped. In front of a sooty, rectangular housing unit stood several tattered men, warming themselves around a three-foot-high barrel with flames skittering out the top. The place looked like Dante’s Inferno.

          The ground was bare, with no grass cover and almost no trees. I was trying to be brave.  Justin was excited and I didn’t want him to know I was about to cry.

          The driver motioned for us to get out. We didn’t think we were at the right place because Allen, a friend of a friend, who invited us to stay at his apartment, had described his housing complex, and this wasn’t it. We used hand signals to try to communicate with the driver that this was the wrong place, but he was surly and impatient. He waved his hand from us to the door. He didn’t care if it was the right place or not. He wouldn’t take us any farther.

          We hauled our two suitcases and backpacks out of the trunk and set them on the ground.  We stared silently at our dismal surroundings. We were lost in a city of nine million people, in a foreign country where we didn’t speak the language. We had Allen’s phone number, but no phone. In fact, there were almost no phones of any sort in Wuran in the year 1996. 

          As we tried to figure out what to do, a man walked up to us. He looked a lot better than the ragged men clustered around the fire. In clear English he asked, “Can I help you?”

          Hope! Had the Lord seen our predicament?

          “We need to call someone.”

          “I have a phone in my apartment on the third floor. You can use it.” He pointed at the apartment building behind the men warming themselves. He had one of the few phones in Wuran!

          I watched the luggage while Justin accompanied the man up to his apartment to make the call. I stood with my back to the building and the flaming barrel.

One man, then two, then a few more, until finally a dozen men came and stood in front of me, all whispering to each other and staring at me. I stiffened. They were very interested in something, so I followed their gaze down to my shirt. Not just one, but two buttons had popped open! Not only could they see me, they could see our whole stash of cash, which was stuffed into my bra—200 flame-red bills! All were 100 RMB (Renminbi) notes. Twenty thousand RMB was the equivalent of 2400 USD—four years’ salary for a laborer in China. We had thought that was the safest place to carry the money, but staring back at the men, I wasn’t so sure.

          There was nothing I could do but turn around and button myself up. The men lost interest and dispersed. I was shaken up. This was my introduction to the men of Wuran; and worse, it was their introduction to me! I couldn’t wait until Justin came back.

         When Justin returned, he told me, “Grace, I got ahold of Allen, but I couldn’t tell him where we are because I don’t know. He told me that’s no problem. He would find us somehow.”  Justin chuckled.

          We waited in that bleak place. It seemed impossible that Allen could locate us. 

As I looked around again, I hoped we would find a place to live that looked nothing like this. 

          About 10 minutes later a taxi drove up and a tall, smiling American jumped out.

          “How on earth did you find us?”

          “I went to a driver I know and asked him, ‘If a taxi driver thought he had driven my friends to my home, but the place he drove them to wasn’t my home, where would he have taken them?’ He brought me right here! Apparently the names are similar.”

          I held out until Justin and I were alone in the loft of Allen’s apartment, getting ready for bed. I didn’t mean to ruin Justin’s excitement about his calling and dream, but I couldn’t help it.  I broke down, and sobbed and sobbed.

          “What’s wrong, Grace?”

          I told him about the men who surrounded me, and then I said, “I hate it here! I don’t want to move here. I hate Wuran. And there are no trees!”

          Justin held me close and tried to give me hope, “Let’s see if things improve tomorrow.”

          We had come to Wuran to arrange several things. We needed an affordable international school for our boys, and we had to rent an apartment. We also had to find a university for Justin and me to study Mandarin that would offer dependent visas for the boys and allow us to live off campus. Both the dependent visas and permission to live off campus were impossibilities. At that time China didn’t offer dependent visas for kids if the parents came on student visas, and in Wuran, foreign students weren’t allowed to live off campus. The police wanted to keep tight tabs on foreign students to make sure they weren’t sharing the gospel or teaching the Bible, so they required them to live in the dorm. But Nigel was 13 and Adam 11, and we were not going to raise them in a dorm.       

          We had only five days to arrange the five things we needed. If the Lord wanted us to come to China, he would have to open the ground before us.

          The next morning I was willing to try again. Right after breakfast, we flagged down a taxi and flashed a card in the driver’s face—“Foreign Language Institute.” Off we sped into the exhaust fumes and honking.

          The campus of the local university wasn’t pretty, but it was prettier than anything I had seen in Wuran. A brick wall surrounded a myriad of buildings that had at least a little style to them. And there were a few old, gnarly trees in beds of grass, an oasis in this barren city.

          We found the admissions office and talked with the admissions officer.

          “Yes, we offer a Mandarin language program.” “Oh, you want to live off campus? I’m sorry, there’s no provision for that.” “You have children and want dependent visas for them?  We don’t offer dependent visas. Don’t bring your children with you—leave them in America!”

          Leave them in America? We weren’t about to do that. We didn’t know any other universities with a Mandarin language program, but maybe we’d get a breakthrough somewhere, so we soldiered on.

          Justin called the international school to make an appointment with the principal. This school in Wuran was the cheapest international school that we could find in all of China that was large enough to be suitable for the boys. But tuition for our two sons would still be one and a half times our annual salary!

          However, we didn’t even get to discuss tuition. “I’m sorry, the principal can’t meet with you. He’s away for the next five days.”  

By the end of the fourth of our five days in Wuran we had succeeded at nothing. I knelt at the edge of the mattress on the floor of the loft of Allen’s apartment, “Lord, we want to move to Wuran, but there is not one door open. If you want us to live in China, you have to arrange the five things we need to be able to live here. We only have one more day. If you don’t give us all these things tomorrow, we’re going to leave the next day and we’re not coming back. It’s up to you.”

          We got a call. “A board member of the international school can meet with you at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.” I couldn’t stop grinning. 

The next day we met with the board member. We never told him directly that we were missionaries because the place was probably bugged, but it was obvious to him. Why else would a couple in their 40s with a teenager and a pre-teen move to Wuran to learn Mandarin?  “People in your situation get a 75 percent discount on tuition.” We couldn’t believe our ears! It was only 9:30 a.m. and God had already answered one of our needs.

          Doug, someone we had met at the International Fellowship, told us he could help us find a university. He told us to meet him at 10 a.m. at the gate of the Institute of Technology. 

          The Institute of Technology was all asphalt and imposing Soviet-style cement buildings.  Almost no trees. Doug led us around the buildings and into the Foreign Student Affairs Office.

          Everything in the office was in tattered disarray. About five worn-out desks cluttered the center. Directly ahead sat a frayed, olive-green couch.

          A beautiful advertisement for the university hung from the door. It showed the school nestled in a lush, verdant forest. I turned to an office worker and asked, “Where is the forest? I haven’t seen it yet.” He shrugged. As I studied the pictures, I recognized the forest; it was the rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula just west of Seattle!

I turned away, disappointed, and we sat down on the couch. Doug explained our situation in Mandarin to Mr. Wang, the admissions officer. 

          Mr. Wang turned to us and in passable English said, “We have a Mandarin language program.”

          Justin said, “It’s only four months until school starts. Is there enough time to get our transcripts to the school so we can be accepted?”

          “You already are accepted. Just bring your tuition in U.S. dollars.”

          What kind of school was this? He didn’t even know our names!

          “We have two sons. We need visas for them.”

          “No problem. Just bring the tuition in U.S. dollars.”

          “And we need to live off campus because of the ages of our sons.”

          “That can be arranged. But remember, U.S. dollars!”

          We almost danced out of the Student Affairs Office. 

          Doug turned to us, “We just rented an apartment. We are told that the police will allow three foreign families to live in our apartment complex. We and another American family are moving in. You could be the third. Do you want me to take you over there?”

          We taxied to a garbage and brick-strewn, pot-holed road. At the end was a run-down, sooty, U-shaped building. The chipped and scuffed bare cement of the stairwell led up to a fifth-floor apartment.

          We entered the cement shell of the apartment—a large, dreary, windowless living/dining area with two bedrooms shunted off. I headed straight to one of the bedrooms to look out the window to see if there were any trees. The view was depressing. All I could see were blackened cement buildings that had no soul. There were almost no trees in sight. I tried to see the street, but where the street must have been, all I could see was garbage. I stared in shock—pigs were rooting through the garbage! And what was that smell? Rotten shrimp? It smelled like it was coming from the garbage on the street.   

And outside I could hear the constant pecking on car horns—beep, beep, beep.

          Four months later, shortly after we moved in, I explored the apartment complex. On the road I found potholes so big you could almost fit a basketball in them. A manhole cover was sunk in at a 45 degree angle. Rounding an old brick wall I saw a three-foot high barrel, now cold. We had moved into Dante’s Inferno! That’s what the Lord provided.
          But we were happy; the Lord had paved the way for us to live and minister in Mainland China. And we knew it was his will for us to be here because on the last day of the exploratory trip he had given us all five needs that I prayed for.       

From: 

Dragon Ride: True Stories of Adventure, Miracles, and Evangelism from China
© 2017 by Grace Jacob.

Available on Amazon