Rachel Reed stands in Tiananmen Square in front of Mao Tse Tung's tomb. She has written a book, "A Wonderful Preparation," about Christian missionaries in Communist China.
"A Wonderful Preparation" by J. Rachel Reed. Paperback. Christian Aid Books. 160 pages. $14.99.Rachel Reed long knew she had a touch of wanderlust and later discovered a love for history.
So when offered the chance to spend 10 days in China with a man who was once the Dalai Lama's closest companion, there was little chance of a "no" from Reed, a 1991 graduate of Boyd-Buchanan High School.
It also helped that her trip came through Christian Aid Mission, an international organization whose focus is to support indigenous missionaries around the world. Officials at Chrisitan Aid, located in Charlottesville, wanted Reed to write a book about missionary work in China, whose government has, since the Communist Revolution in 1949, been decidedly un-Christian.
The result is "A Wonderful Preparation," a book that traces three generations of the Lius, a Chinese family devoted to Christianity, as well as the struggles Christians have endured in a country that tightly controls religious activity.
One of the Lius was a close friend of the Dalai Lama before he fled in 1959. Even today, Christian churches in China must be government sanctioned.
Reed says the story of how she came to find herself traveling through China is as long as the trip itself, but she insists that it was divinely driven.
"It was a God thing," she says.
At the time, Reed, who grew up in LaFayette, Ga., was living in Virginia, raising her family and doing some freelance writing, but she wanted more.
"I was doing work I enjoyed, but I didn't feel fulfilled," she says. "I asked people to pray for me at church to help me find my talents that would glorify God. Two days after that I got a phone call from Christian Aid."
The organization's work includes commissioning books and supporting orphanages, schools and businesses that help people better their lives through Christianity, according to President Cynthia Finley.
Finley was looking for a way to tell the story of missionary work being done in China, particularly in Tibet, which was incorporated into the People's Republic of China in 1951. She was especially interested in the work started by well-known missionary Hudson Taylor in the mid- to late 1800s. Taylor had worked with Gao Cheng Liu, whose family lived on the border of Tibet and has done mission work for three generations.
"We thought, 'Let's put forth the Chinese side [of the story] and the Chinese who worked with them [missionaries],'" Finley says. "They suffered a lot of persecution in their lives, so that was the theme.
"With the Lius, you have three generations of the family and they ended up in Tibet, which is a very unreached [by Christian missionaries] nation, so that was appealing, as well.
"Then we found Rachel Reed," Finley says with wonder in her voice. "It was such a God thing that we found her."
Reed entered the picture after an employee of Christian Aid was in the congregation on the Sunday that she made her prayer request, and that person told Finley about Reed. At first, Reed seemed almost too perfect, Finley says, because the person to write the book had to fit certain requirements and Reed pretty much fit them all.
"It took a particular writer because they had to go to Tibet. I mean, the altitude is very high, so you have to be healthy, first of all. It's not easy to get there," Finley says. "What we needed was someone to go to China and get those oral histories, so she was perfect.
"And she was willing. She was made for us."
Even before going to China, Reed had experience taking oral histories.
After graduating from Boyd Buchanan, Reed entered the Air Force for four years, then studied liberal arts at Arkansas State University before studying history at James Madison University in Virginia. While a student at James Madison, she interned at the George C. Marshall Archives at Virginia Military Institute where she was an archivist, taking oral histories from soldiers.
"I developed a passion for that and for writing, especially World War II history," says Reed, who lives in Shenendoah, Va., with her husband, Wayne, son, Jacob, and several dogs and horses.
She made her trip to China in 2012, spending 10 days with the Liu family, whose story began in the mid-1800s with Gao Cheng Liu and his association with Taylor. The two worked as missionaries in China and Tibet, and the Liu family continued those efforts through the two Sino-Japanese Wars (1894-1895 & 1937-1945), the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1900), the rise of communism at the turn of the century and Mao Tse-Tung's communist conquest and brutal regmie after 1949.
Gao Cheng Liu operated a cotton company called Obeying God Cotton Co., which provided work and rehabilitation for opium addicts. Dr. A. Liu is the current family patriarch and he spent nearly 20 years imprisoned "because he would not deny Christ," says Reed.
The Liu family had ties with the Dalai Lama through their work in Tibet, where they operated a Christian orphanage, among other things. As a young man in his late teens, Dr. Liu knew the current Dalai Lama before he fled to India during the Tibetan uprising of 1959, Reed says.
"[Dr. Liu] lived in the [Potala] Lhasa palace with the Dalai Lama and was his closest companion," Reed says. "He [Liu] would have been 19 when he lived in the palace."
While in China, Reed traveled with Dorothy Sun, a Chinese-born interpreter who had also spent 20 years imprisoned by Chinese communists for refusing to renounce her Christianity.
There is a strong underground movement among Christians in China, she says, and while practicing the religion is not currently illegal, the Chinese government demands that citizens worship in government-approved churches. Those in the underground fight that and meet secretly in private spaces, which are often raided.
"The government makes it hard for them to meet and does all they can to frustrate them," Reed says.
There were times during her trip that her hosts told it wasn't safe for her to be there or to visit certain places. For the safety of the Lius, she has not tried to contact them since her visit, but she has heard through sources that they safe.
"They were very nervous for me," she says.
After the visit, Reed spent a year doing further research before writing "A Wonderful Preparation" and another year to get it edited and published, which was done by Christian Aid Publishing.
Her next project, which she's researching and writing now, involves taking the oral histories of 30 men who were part of a unit that worked with dogs during the Korean conflict.
"There were originally about 80 men and 150 dogs. There are about 30 odd survivors and they meet every year and asked me to serve as their official historian," Reed says.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.