An Empire of Tears, A Cathedral of Dirt

An Empire of Tears, a Cathedral of Dirt is a story about the early days of the Taiping Christian Church, giving some insight into life in mid-21st century China, and a sermon by Father Ying, who will eventually become an important figure later on.

## Story

The sky was dirty gray once again. Feng inhaled the dense, cloudy air; he could feel the particles being inhaled with every breathe. He exhaled, he inhaled and exhaled a few more times like this, and then devolved into a fit of coughing.

The environment wasn’t the best, but it was the best he could afford. And all around him were the cacophonous symphony of ill air, and ill health.

“Just 30 more minutes,” he thought, “And I can go home,” he said, sewing by hand a piece of fabric, he presumed it was a t-shirt, but he couldn’t tell. The needle threading in and out.

He was now 11 and a half hours into his 12-hour shift. He didn’t want to take this work, but he didn’t have any other choice, and according to his friends, he had been one of the lucky ones. Had to work to eat, had to eat to live, if he stopped working, the food stopped, simple as.

Beads of sweat emerged on his forehead. The warehouse where he worked in wasn’t the most ventilated, the government ran it with the coolers off to be cheap. Needle in, needle out, this one’s finished, move on to the next one.

He didn’t know what he was making, he didn’t care what it was, but he didn’t ask questions, and he continued to get paid. No time for thoughts, no time for life, just work, get paid for food, get food to live. The fits were settling in again, he coughed hard, nearly throwing up, he coughed into his hand, there was blood.

“Man,” he thought. “I lost so much time because of that, now I have to work even faster to catch up.”

There was a quota for how many t-shirts he could make, and now he was behind. His hands shook as he tried to steady the needle, he was deadly tired, he barely had enough to sleep, and needed expensive sleeping prescriptions to help him get through the long nights.

Needle in, needle out. Accidentally pricked himself with the needle, don’t matter, pain is temporary, but death is forever, you need the money to live, so Feng continues to sew. Feng was well into his 30’s now, no education, no wife, just a job and a shoddy apartment.

The clock struck 9 PM, but the damn alarm didn’t go off. And he was never dismissed until the alarm went off. He felt so tired, he could feel the grime which had built up on his face, on his body, everywhere. He had bags under his bags, and he felt he was chronically tired.

“As always,” he thought. “It’s always late.”

At 9:08, the alarm finally went off, and he was allowed to go home. He swore the manager was just squeezing every minute he could out of his sadly finite life. They made him get to the workplace early, and they pay him back by getting home late.

He pressed his palm into the hand slot at the ATM machine, it read the microchip implanted into his palm, and processed all of his forensic information.

“Hello, Feng Ling Shui,” the machine said. “For 11 hours, and 35 minutes of work-”

Rubbish, Feng thought.

“You have received, 152 RMB and 23 cents. Thank you, and have a good day.”

(152 RMB is about 23 US dollars.)

Whatever, Feng thought, and took the money home. At least he’d be able to get some takeout. He slogged out of the warehouse, his back defeated, as he looked out at the skyline around him.

He lived in Anqing, a foggy haze covered the skies, in the distance, faint glows of neon were covered in advertisements, as the young girl on the screen tried to convince him to purchase a new kind of ginger treat.

The sky rang with noise, restaurants, supermarkets, and street vendors calling out their advertisements to the city around them. Creating a cacophony of sound, drowning out the natural noise of the city. Cars clogged every street, the advertisements only drowned out occasionally by a parade of car horns. He passed by countless homeless people and children, without limbs and badly burned, begging for money.

Even if he did have the spare cash, Feng kept walking forward, and so did everyone else, leaving the pleading of the children unanswered. He knew that more often than not; these were a front for criminal gangs to extort money out of the average Chinese citizen. But seeing all of the people simply walking forward, ignoring what was happening around them, he wondered if there were truly some poor slipping through the cracks, plunging to the rancid bottom of society, never to recover.

He wandered over to a takeout shop; a sketchy street vendor lit by bright yellow lighting. It wasn’t quality, but it was cheap, and it was fast. He ordered his meal through the glowing screens, and scanned his right hand into the machine. He sat, admiring the dusty city around him, streetlights illuminating the darkened sky. The grinding noise of the city continued. He heard his name, the employee servicing the cash register practically shoved his meal into his hands, then went back to the back of the restaurant.

He took the crinkled paper bag, and walked the rest of the way back to his apartment. He walked up the stairs, and placed his bag on the ground, it was now dripping with grease. He put his hand into the scanner, the scanner read his palm, and the door to his apartment opened.

He lived in a one-bedroom apartment, bought with his parent’s inheritance money. After a life of grueling work, all they could leave to their only son was enough money to rent this apartment. The only solace he had was that in a few years time, he could sell it for an even smaller apartment, and buy much with the money earned from the rising housing prices.

He collapsed onto the bed, not even thinking about the takeout bag in his lap. He was so exhausted he just wanted to rest, to hell with everything else. He didn’t even remember the bag was there until the grease began soaking into his legs.

He got himself up, and opened the paper bag; the contents of the takeout box had spilled all over the bag. The damn bastards didn’t even bother to package his food right. He sighed, scraped the insides of the bag back into the Styrofoam container, and ate the now cold food off with a pair of chopsticks. He then tossed it into a trashcan, where the various garbage was now spilling over.

He couldn’t be bothered to take it out today, so he stood over the trashcan, and crammed it in until there was some more space left at the top. That’d buy him another day or so. He finished his takeout, and collapsed back onto the bed. Hyperaware of the flecks of peeling paint and dirt on his ceiling, he simply stared upwards: alone with himself and his thoughts.

Was this all there was to life? He thought. He thought of how many times he had repeated this cycle before, work, eat, take your medicine, sleep, repeat. Work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a rare moment of awareness, he became aware that he had repeated the same banal cycle for hundreds, if not thousands of days.

He stared at the ceiling wide awake, his brain was still too stressed and stringy, he couldn’t go to sleep without his pills. He pondered for a second, and came to the horrifying realization that he was now 33, and couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled. What did he have to live for? He had no wife, no kids, and even if he had the choice of getting one, he would not be able to raise them in an apartment the size of a broom closet. He worked 12 hours a day and for what, so he could repeat this same banal routine, eating the same crappy takeout food, as his muscles atrophied, and his health slowly decayed, and his body broke down?

Maybe he could pursue his dreams… If he even knew what they were. He couldn’t even remember what he wanted to do as a kid. It was always exam this, study that, keeping his head down for 18 straight years, never developing a personality or finding any hobbies. He came to an even more horrifying realization that he didn’t even know who he was anymore, and he had never known for 30 straight years.

Feedback loops were playing inside his head, the voices began to haunt and envelop him, as he’d keep coming back to the same moral quandaries. Is this all there is? Is this all he’s destined to do for the rest of his existence? Who was he? What happens when he dies, is that just it, that can’t just be it. Was he a good person? Did he leave an impact on the community? Would anyone notice if he was gone?

Suddenly, and violently, he grabbed the bottle of sleeping pills and choked down several at once. He knew this was way over what he was supposed to take, but he didn’t care, and needed to get these thoughts out of his head. He was knocked out, going unconscious, still dressed in his dirty work clothing.

…

He woke up with a throbbing headache. Hand clutching his forehead, his blurry vision was just able to make out the alarm. Even after all that, he had only gotten 6 hours of sleep. His aching head and tired brain wanted more than anything to go to sleep. But after futilely closing his eyes for many minutes, he came to the same conclusion he did every morning: that he would not get any more sleep, and all that was left was him to get up, and slog another day at work.

His brain went into its usual cycle, got to work to eat, got to eat to live, but for the hundredth time now he realized there was nothing happy in his life. Last night was not unusual, it was the norm. But this time he had woken up several hours earlier than usual, he had 4 or so hours before he had to get on a bus to work.

He opened his fridge, nothing but some leftover rice, some hot sauce packets from a restaurant, and a bottle of old hoisin sauce he swore had expired long ago. He stared blankly at it, as if he had any other option. To hell with it, he thought, it was the only thing in his fridge. He heated the rice, and mixed in both the hoisin and hot sauce into it. He ate the rice and sauce with his pair of chopsticks, its sickly-sweet flavor hitting him with every bite. He threw the bowl into the sink, and spat out the flavor of expired hoisin sauce from his mouth, before taking a sip of water and swishing it around, swallowing the rest of the acrid taste. Water was scarce in China these days; he couldn’t afford to use a whole glass just to get the flavor out of his mouth.

He pressed his microchip the scanner, this was how he could unlock the door so he could leave. If he ever forgot to pay the landlord his monthly rent, it would just simply lock him in the apartment until he paid up. He wandered through a corridor of identical looking apartments, briefly contemplating how so many of China’s youth must be stuck in the same situation he was, or worse. He wondered how anyone could raise a generation of kids in an environment like this, he had heard of a nation-wide baby bust, but couldn’t read any reports to confirm or deny it.

He walked outside, it was still dark, the streetlamps still illuminating the hazy fog. He’d typically use this time to take a short walk around the bus stop, it was only these moments he had to himself. He walked to his bus stop in a matter of minutes, but it was taped over, and a new sign was stickied to the post nearby.

“Sorry, this bus stop has been moved to 17th Avenue Street. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

He punched the pole which the sign was hanging off of. Great, 17th Avenue was a 15-minute walk away, even less time he had to live his life outside of work. He shuffled his way over.

While he was walking, his eyechip began to beam with life, showing various rating and advertisement information for restaurants he walked by. As he walked by various buildings it’d beam him information about the building’s history and foundation and whatnot. He’d turn it off, but he had no idea how.

He passed by an abandoned shack. There was a little paper sign that said, “Plentiful Taiping Church of Christ”. Strangely enough, when he scanned it with his eyechip, he couldn’t get any information about it. All churches in China had to be registered with a national registry, and had to fall into one of 5 categories: Buddhist, Taoist, or one of the state-controlled versions of Catholicism, Islam, or Protestantism.

With nothing better to do, he decided to check it out. He heard that religion may be a way to get answers for his moral questions. As he entered, the entrance led to a long hallway, going deep down into the basement. He figured this was a way to soundproof the church and prevent their sermons from going too far outside of the church itself.

He noticed little tabs of bread and what looked to be grape juice. Given that he had eaten expired hoisin sauce for breakfast, he didn’t mind having a second helping. He took a tab of bread and grape juice and sat down in one of the rickety chairs. He saw the exhausted populace around him. One looked to be covered in coal soot, his muscles atrophied and his limbs weak, he could not have been any younger than 50. Another was thin as a skeleton, carrying a walking stick, his face was dirty and disheveled. Another was wearing a clean office worker uniform, but he was dozing off to sleep, the bags under his eyes looked like he hadn’t slept well in months.

All around him, the tired, the poor, the overworked, the suffering masses of the Chinese population crowded around him. Coming into the door was a young girl, he recognized her from the ginger commercial. She also looked like she hadn’t slept in months, and kept a makeup bag on her, quickly applying it to try and smooth out the wrinkled bags under her eyes. Factory workers, construction workers, manual laborers, all came to find solace in this house of worship.

The director of the church service had come in, she was a woman, who surprised Feng. He had thought female church pastors were a big controversy in the Christian world. She directed everyone to stand up and sing worship songs. Feng had heard of some of the churches in China before, they all used the same state approved worship music, but this was different.

“No matter how we may suffer in this life,

Your promise still holds true,

Your son died for our sins,

Heaven waits for all of us.”

He noticed that there were lyrics which could not possibly have flown past the censorship board.

“No matter what worldly powers bind us down,

Christ is our eternal king,

Forever you will reign,

Above this sinful world.”

There were even more strange lyrics involved, which he couldn’t help but think meant something.

“The red dragon shall be condemned,

The sinful eagle shall be cast down,

Assert your reign over this Earth,

Let your kingdom be remade.”

The clunky lyrics, the simplistic structure of the rhythm, he believed this had to be something the church members had to write down themselves. If he lived in America, perhaps it would remind him of folk music.

But the energizing effect of the music around him was immediately apparent, the people of the room glowed, the old man with a walking stick stood up and sang, even as his arms began shaking supporting his body weight. But most impressive of all was the young girl, who sang the song in pitch perfect harmony. Many people clapped to the rhythm of the music, as it seemed if only for that moment, all of their worldly sorrows melted away. Feng included, he didn’t quite understand what it was yet, but it was enough for him to sing along and clap a little.

By the end of the 3 song chorus, Feng had forgotten his struggles, his suffering, he was simply one with the music, feeling the presence of whatever it was the church was teaching. He didn’t know who Jesus was, but he had found community in this little chapel in the rough.

When the music stopped, Feng gestured to the young girl from the commercial. “Your singing voice is beautiful.”

“Thanks,” she blushed. “Before I was a model, I wanted to be a singer.”

Her face swelled up with solemn regret, Feng thought perhaps she still wanted to be a singer.

“Now, for our normally scheduled morning service,” the worship director said. Pushing a cart with a radio on it to the front of the room. She turned some dials, and then sat down.

“-Good morning members of the Taiping Heavenly Church, I am your pastor, Father Ying, broadcasting from somewhere in Anqing. For those who are joining us for the first time, I know your struggles, I have seen them, walking down the streets of this city. The tired and lonely faces of the population, the hopelessness in the eyes of our youth. But I tell you, not all is lost, for when Jesus died on the cross, all of our sins went with him. So even if we struggle in this life, there is eternal hope and happiness on the other side of the veil, Amen?”

“Amen.” The entire church answered.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re hungry, you’re tired, your joints ache from the pain and struggles of this life. I do too, it has been a long time since I’ve been able to eat much of anything, the government keeps me in hiding, and I live off the secret donations of my congregation. Whoever left the bag of dumplings at my door yesterday, God bless you, you are a very good cook.”

Ying paused, the radio simply played soft static, the background noise when he was not speaking.

“But this suffering is naught in the eyes of the Father! I had a good life, once. Before I was a pastor, I was a stockbroker, trading away my life in Shanghai, worshipping money rather than the Almighty. But then on that day, 2042, I lost it all. But when I climbed up to the tallest building I could find, ready to jump, God came to me in a vision, and I’ve been called to spread the gospel ever since.”

Another pause.

“Oh, man, I’m getting off topic again. Forgive me fellas, we only have an hour together today, and I spent 5 minutes going off on a personal anecdote. We have nearly completed our full reading of the Bible, which we have been going over for many months. Today we continue the last book of the Bible. And the question of today is, how do we find hope in a time of sinfulness? Open your books to Revelations 6.”

There was a pause where everyone scrambled to find their Bibles. Some were in okay condition, some were tattered, one man didn’t even have a proper Bible, but instead an old notebook which looked like he had jotted half the New Testament into.

“The times were not so different from ours. Christians, true Christians, were under the persecution of the Roman Empire, far west of where we are today. To encourage the early Christians to continue through this path of thorns and weeds, John wrote a book to encourage the early Christians to press forward, by showing what would eventually become of the world.”

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, at the end, it will be God who destroys it. What comes from dust must return to dust, but he who is baptized by the Holy Spirit will never die. Revelations deals with a time when the world is corrupted, when the followers of Christ are persecuted in every corner of the world. When Satan himself will manifest in the world, and rule over it. And the Mark of the Beat will be on the unbelievers, embedded into their hands and foreheads. And people will be unable to buy and sell without these marks. Does that sound familiar?”

Feng paused, reaching for his microchips, they were embedded in his palm and forehead.

“My friends, I do not know when the end times will happen, that day is only known to The Father. But I believe it to be soon. Israel is at war, Jerusalem is under siege, against the combined might of the Muslim heathens, I believe it will soon fall. The 7 seals will be broken, and all hell will be let loose on Earth.”

“Revelations says it all! Nations rising up against nation. Cataclysmic fires and apocalyptic nights. Great floods and long winters. The dragon of wrath will face the eagle of pride, the Whore of Babylon shall rise, continents enveloped by nuclear hellfire.”

“My friends. There is something I have not told you about up until now. When I saw that vision of Christ, Jesus led me to something else, he showed me a vision of a grand kingdom, one which would be established to endure the apocalypse. One of great marble spires and golden pagodas. A place where God’s children can roam free, and live full, healthy lives. It was a place built for the children of Han, and inscribed in big golden letters, was “Chinese Heavenly Kingdom”.”

Father Ying paused for another moment.

“The red dragon is faltering. It has been on a decline since the market crash that sent me to this position you see me today. Today, Anqing is a city of sin, a hive of debauchery and ungodliness. But I have a dream, when it becomes a glorified city in the name of our Lord. The day will come when God casts down our sinful society, just as he has cast down many societies before us. Take note of the Israelites, and take note of the eagle, they were loyal once, but because they betrayed God, God cast them down. If we do not follow in the commandments of God, if we cannot show love to our fellow neighbors, if we do not exemplify the qualities of Christ in our everyday lives, God will cast us down too. We have failed, we have all failed, but God is a God who is quick to love, and slow to anger.”

Father Ying paused again.

“Oh God, please forgive me God. For I have failed you in so many ways, please, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

It was quieter than usual, perhaps a confession to himself.

“As you leave the service today, I ask of you to do one thing. Show love to your neighbor, help people with their groceries, or at least give them a smile and a handshake. You may be tired, but everyone is tired. Life is hard, and the only thing that sometimes makes it easier is the support of our community. And a smile from you may be the difference between life and death… Unfortunately in the cases of those who commit suicide, literally. Ask yourself, what would Christ do in this situation, how can I help my neighbor today, and how can I make this world just a little better?

The time will come one day for the establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom. Our movement is far larger and deeper than you can ever imagine. I have received hundreds of letters and donations as far away as Beijing and Hong Kong. I estimate a quarter of this city’s population are secret Christians, and I implore you to stay hidden. The government does not take lightly to disobedient faiths, and I would never ask you to risk your life until the time is right.

Wait patiently, until I give the signal, when the time is right.

And we can all create the Heavenly Kingdom together.”

## After the Story

Canonically, after the story, Feng would continue his civilian job in the manufactories, but becomes much more able to tolerate life due to the church he went to. He is generally happier, though he remains stuck in the same lower middle class life. He would play the radio, awaiting Father Ying's signal, his church would get raided and closed down several times, but always able to reorganize and pop up somewhere else.

He eventually found someone, had kids and became happy. Feng would ultimately die a statistic, being one of those killed during the uprising when the signal finally did come. He would only live to see the beginning of the Chinese Heavenly Kingdom, and not the perverted nightmare it would become. He would die with dignity in his heart, truly believing he had sacrificed himself for a greater cause.