Crossroads: A Journey from Communist China to Christ

By Bob Blundell and Melanie Juneau

Imagine living in a time and place where lawlessness and violence flood the streets like a raging river. It's a time of rebellion, uncertainty, and chaos. This story is about a man raised in that world, in 1960s China. As a child living in an atheist country immersed in turmoil, he witnesses atrocities and suffering most of us could never imagine.
Hoping to get away from the horrors, the man flees to America with limited financial resources and minimal English skills to be educated as a psychologist. Though he physically escapes the clutches of the country where he was raised, the traumas of his childhood remain with him as a dark cloud of depression and despair.
Crossroads provides a glimpse into a time in China's history most of us never knew. This man, a survivor of that tumultuous period, spends thirty years of his life seeking peace and understanding. His travels take him across the world as he explores dozens of faiths. When traditional religion fails him, he seeks hope through shamans, mystics, and the supernatural.
Crossroads is not as much about one man's struggles as it is a testament to God's love and commitment to remain with each of us throughout the storms of our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Feb 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781666788433

Bob Blundell

Bob Blundell is a former mid-level manager who spent his career in the oil industry. Since returning from a pilgrimage to Israel in 2018, he has rekindled his passion for writing. He has written over a hundred works published in both Christian as well as secular magazines and journals and is a winner of the 2021 Christian Writers Award. Crossroads is his first solo book effort. Bob and his wife Dee live in the Houston area.

Book preview

Crossroads

A Journey From Communist China to Christ

Bob Blundell

Foreword by Melanie Juneau

Crossroads

A Journey From Communist China to Christ

Copyright ©

2024

Bob Blundell. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-8841-9

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-8842-6

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-8843-3

version number 113023

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Book One—China

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Chapter 2: Beijing 1966

Chapter 3: Cleansing of the Minds

Chapter 4: The Seed of a Dream

Chapter 5: The Escape—Beijing 1985

Book Two—America

Chapter 6: Author’s Journey

Chapter 7: Arrival

Chapter 8: The Search Begins

Book Three—Pursuit of Peace

Chapter 9: The Greatest of Gifts

Chapter 10: Discovering God

Chapter 11: Return to China

Chapter 12: Buddhism

Chapter 13: Shamanism

Chapter 14: Parapsychology

Chapter 15: Discovering Catholicism

Chapter 16: The Fish Place

Chapter 17: God Moments

Chapter 18: Author’s Spiritual Journey

Chapter 19: The Journey’s End

Epilogue

Bibliography

Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

—Jer 6:16

Foreword

As the editor-in-chief of Catholic Stand magazine, one of my tasks is to choose promising new writers and encourage them to hone their skills. I am delighted when an author like Bob Blundell moves on to write a book, especially when it reflects our mission. In a world where many nations are not nations that turn to God, it is easy to become numb and desensitized to the turmoil as the news media inundates us with visions and images of suffering and persecution.

But in his book, Crossroads, Bob Blundell deftly cut through my malaise with a personal, moving account of the torture and starvation millions suffered under the two-decade rule of Mao Zedong, Chairman of China’s Communist Party. Almost all their stories have never been told. The truth died with them, but Bob brings one of those stories, the story of John Ma, into the light. It is not a detached account; John has been Bob’s beloved friend and brother in Christ for more than seven years.

Crossroads is not simply a first-hand account of suffering at the hands of one of history’s most brutal regimes but a story of redemption and hope. Readers will be inspired by the power of Divine Love to heal and restore. It is a reminder that only God can defeat evil. As St. Francis of Assisi said, All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle. Crossroads is one of those lights, helping to banish the darkness within each of us, within our world. This story is powerful, with the potential to change you.

Melanie Juneau

Preface

Peace. Such a simple concept yet many of us spend our lives in fruitless pursuit of it. In Proverbs it is written, Many are the plans of a human mind, but it’s the Lord’s will that prevails. These words should be a roadmap for us to follow. But some inevitably stumble and fall, as they embark upon journeys of their own creation.

This is the story of one such man, who’s spent his life in search of peace in this broken world. He is an intellectual, born in Beijing, China, in the sixties. Raised beneath the dark cloud of communism, under a regime that much of the world has long forgotten, his journeys have taken him across five continents and nineteen countries. He has explored over a dozen religions and cults. Each leg of his odyssey was intended to fill a void in his heart and understand the meaning of his existence.

His footsteps have carried him to places most of us could only imagine. And though the roads he’s traveled are extreme by most standards, he is like many of us. A child of God, seeking only tranquility and peace in his life. But more important than this man’s struggles, is an overarching message of God’s never-ending love and commitment to watch over us. Always there. Waiting.

This man is my friend, and my brother in Christ who I have come to know and love over the last seven years. To understand his story, one must get a glimpse of the world he grew up in. For it was that world that shaped him, molding him into who he is today. That world began in communist China.

Introduction

At some level within each of us lies a desire to understand the truth and our reason for existence. We often spend our lives traveling down paths in pursuit of that truth, only to find pain and disappointment. This is the story of one such man, born in China in the 1960s, amid the turmoil of a society rampant with violence and insurrection.

As a child, his parents were imprisoned in a reeducation facility designed to change the ideological values of those deemed a threat to the communist party. During their captivity, he and his sister lived alone while armed militia roamed the streets creating chaos and fear. Living in an atheist society, they knew no God. They only had each other to protect them from the lawlessness and terror of the world around them. 

He and his family were later exiled to a labor camp where they spent the next three years. Living conditions in the camp were harsh, and he witnessed atrocities most of us could never imagine. Twenty years after his parents’ imprisonment, he escaped China with limited financial resources and only remedial English skills. He studied at an American University and ultimately became a psychologist. But understanding the science of the mind did little to answer questions about his own existence. Nor did it provide a cure for the depression and PTSD that plagued him since his childhood. 

Crossroads provides a glimpse into a society and time most of us never knew. It takes the reader to the heart of the largest country in the world, on the heels of a communist takeover and the most devastating famine in world history. It was a period when innocent people were taken from their homes and imprisoned, tortured, or summarily executed. Violence, rebellion, and hopelessness were all part of the political landscape as this man grew from child to adult.

Mass starvation, stemming from inept government policies such as the Great Leap Forward, claimed the lives of over thirty million people. Millions more perished through suicide and senseless beatings, precipitated by the government to revolutionize the people of the most populous country on earth.

Though this man physically escaped the clutches of China, a part of it remained with him, like scars on a wounded warrior. Only his wounds were of a less subtle nature. They were psychological scars that followed him through the course of his life. He traveled the world examining dozens of religious faiths and cults seeking peace and healing. It was a long and sometimes arduous path that took him from Buddhist temples in the Far East to the jungles of the Amazon. Like a wandering vine desperately seeking light, he rambled, often finding only disappointment and despair at the end of his search. When conventional religions failed him, he turned to shamans, mystics, and the supernatural. 

By most standards, his journey would be considered unique if not extreme. But in the end, he is no different than any of us. A child of our almighty God seeking happiness in a flawed and troubled world.

Book One—China

Chapter 1

The Beginning

Since the beginning, there have been leaders whose legacies have been marked by the brutality and suffering they left in their wake. In ancient times, names like Genghis Khan and Atilla the Hun sparked terror in the hearts of the Eastern world, leaving over forty million dead. In the last century, Hitler’s Final Solution was responsible for the senseless deaths of over seven million innocent people. And in the Soviet Union, Stalin’s Great Purge of those that opposed his communist ideals accounted for twenty million dead during his reign of terror. 

Yet there is one name often forgotten, whose actions resulted in the deaths of millions of his countrymen. That name is Mao Zedong, Chairman of China’s Communist Party for over twenty years. Historians estimate between 1958 and 1962, the number of Chinese that died prematurely was more than twice those murdered by Hitler and Stalin combined.

The fact the United States was engaged in its own struggles to face the Soviet threat of global communism may explain our ignorance. Or that many of those who lost their lives due to hunger, suicide, or executions were poor Chinese peasants living in the distant reaches of the most populous country on earth. But the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s flawed plan to catapult China into an agricultural and industrial leader, resulted in the untimely deaths of over forty-five million Chinese citizens, and triggered the greatest famine in world history. 

The genesis of the Great Leap Forward began in 1957. Mao had returned from Moscow where he had attended the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution. He arrived in Beijing determined to thrust China into the forefront as the leading communist country in the world. His strategy was to mobilize its massive peasant workforce and collectivize private property for the good of the state. Mao’s vision was that China would quickly become a world leader in agriculture and steel production, surpassing the export levels of its competitors. 

On the surface, the concept may have appeared technically sound, but the leader’s appetite to show immediate, substantial improvement drove many officials to exercise drastic steps to appease him. It became clear to his followers, failure to meet aggressive goals would result in being removed from their positions or even executed. Many of those responsible for coordinating the massive effort were corrupt. They lined their own pockets, and money and food promised to the workers did not get disseminated to those who needed it.

They forced many people across the country to give up their belongings and live in communes operated by the party. Over twenty-five thousand communes were built in the first year, with most housing over five thousand families. Commune life was harsh, with incredibly crowded conditions and little to eat. The state confiscated most production from workers living in the communes. Many of the houses in rural areas of China were constructed of mud and straw, ingredients rich in soil nutrients. In the first two years of the GLF, over 40 percent of the country’s privately owned homes were taken away from citizens and destroyed to create fertilizer, roads, and other items deemed vital to the state. 

Mao’s government set strict grain and wheat quotas, and officials faked production numbers to hide their failure. Unfortunately, those false production levels were the basis for taxation. Soon common workers were overwhelmed with debt. The government could not feed its people and most citizens had no food for themselves. The Great Leap Forward quickly floundered, and the country began to starve. 

To exacerbate an already strained labor force, Mao also attempted to implement massive steel production increases, which would align China with other leading producers. The goal was to double output in the first year, primarily through the construction of backyard furnaces in thousands of villages and towns. These furnaces were poorly designed and produced little steel of marketable quality. The government forced farmers to melt down pots, pans, tools, and even farming machinery to bolster steel production. Soon, there was no grain to feed the people, and no farming equipment to till the soil. The Great Leap Forward became the Great Famine as starvation set in on millions.

Before Stalin’s death in 1953, the Soviet Union sent thousands of technical experts of various disciplines to China to build and design factories, roads, bridges, and irrigation systems, and help progress agricultural advancements. But when Nikita Khrushchev assumed Stalin’s position, he openly criticized Stalin’s policies in favor of new initiatives. This criticism antagonized Mao, who had been a staunch supporter of Stalin, and soon the love affair with the Soviet Union began to dissolve. Over the next several years, the relationship between the two countries degraded until Khrushchev recalled all the technical experts to the Soviet Union in 1960. This loss of know-how was yet another blow to the already staggering economy. Many blamed Mao’s stubbornness and ego for the loss of what could have been critical resources to aid in China’s development.

Meanwhile, as much of the country starved to death, many citizens who opposed Mao’s ideals met a different fate. Millions were thrown into work camps, committed to reeducation facilities, tortured, or summarily executed. Mao’s reeducation camps were intended to deprogram people, remaking them into the communist image. Over one thousand camps were constructed, modeled after Soviet gulags made famous by Stalin.

Much like Hitler’s reign of terror, intellectuals and citizens deemed to have ties with the West were ostracized as revolutionaries and imprisoned or killed. Mao believed the intellectual was the greatest threat to communism. In a moment of arrogance and naivete Mao once wrote, "To read too many books is harmful."¹ Teachers, writers, doctors, and others were the targets of this program. Mao did not attempt to hide his disdain toward intellectual thought when he once penned, He [Emperor Qin Shi Huang] buried 460 scholars alive—we have buried 46,000 scholars alive.² Between 1958 and 1962, three million accused anti-revolutionaries lost their lives.

Public beatings, known as struggle sessions or denunciation rallies were part of the landscape during the initial years of the Great Leap Forward. They were often carried out by militia members, a part of the one hundred million-strong body of revolutionaries that were formed in various parts of the country. Militia groups received training and arms from the military and were charged by the party to root out subversives using whatever means were available.

Those deemed to be counterrevolutionaries and enemies of Mao were marched into public squares where they were beaten or tortured in front of hundreds of spectators. These were intended to inflame public support for the party and send a terrifying message to those who opposed them. The concept stemmed from a similar practice in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. They often pitted students against teachers. Neighbors, friends, and even family members were pitted against those deemed unworthy. In many cases, they enlisted those people to participate in the actual beatings