I met Merlin my first week at Web and could tell right away that he was smart - really smart. He also seemed really aware about social and cultural differences, the government and corruption in China and world news. Many adult Chinese businessmen I teach at Web are proud, loud, and can be a bit disrespectful, obnoxious and crude. Not Merlin. Merlin was always sensitive, soft-spoken and extremely polite and considerate to me as a female teacher. After class one day, he told me his story, which made me cry.
Merlin was educated in Nanjing (a fairly prestigious city in China) and became a doctor. During one surgery as a newer physician, he made a mistake which resulted in the patient dying. This devastated Merlin on a personal level but it also destroyed his career because he wanted to tell the truth about what happened to the patient's family. The hospital wanted to hide what happened (which is common practice here) and when they found out what Merlin wanted to do he was punished with heavy fines, prohibited from practicing medicine ever again and banished to working in the hospital's mail room. As a result of being treated unfairly, Merlin has continued to become interested in other areas of China's corruption as well as in the Christian faith.
Merlin doesn't have a lot of money and thus can only afford the group classes at Web. Sometimes, however, he gets lucky and is the only one signed up for the class which gives him the chance to talk to the foreign teachers one-to-one. We have talked many times together, but since Web installed microphones and cameras, our conversations have become much tamer. Before I left on winter break, I lent a few books about China (that are banned here) for him to read. He sent me an email while I was traveling about how he was doing and I decided to share a few parts with you.
Dear Sarah:
I have received the book and have read several pages. Thank you so much for introducing such a book to me. I think pages from 15 to 19 have provided me a penetrating answer to my personal experience. I am not saying I was innocent, I did make a serious mistake, which resulted in an unnecessary death. I mean the book helps me a lot to figure out what I should have known about when I was younger.
I think I have now recovered from the tragic depression, which has haunted me for a little more than one year. I have made my final decision（maybe actually I do not have many choices): to remain at my present place. Just as the book comments on Chinese people, I care about my family, I do not want to leave my family behind and, since my wife does not want to leave her parents, I will not force her to leave Changzhou together with me. I have tried several times and failed to find a job in some other hospitals in Changzhou, maybe due to lack of guanxi [connections]（I was astonished to see “guanxi”, the pinyin of the Chinese word for influential relationships, has become a formal English word in the book, indicating how notorious it is in eyes of foreigners), maybe because my gossip has already reached into the ears of leaders in those hospitals. Anyway I am determined to stay in this hospital, even at the price of destruction of my career as a doctor.
After I was transferred to my current office in September 2009, I began to possess a lot of free time. I had been engaged in too much learning and working before（our campus life is depicted in the book and does not need me to repeat). In October my wife got pregnant. In December I went to Web and began to learn English there. Because of the heavy fine I was imposed on, we had little money at that time. However my wife was considerate of me and approved of my decision to learn English.
Why do I learn English? My original purpose was to communicate better with the foreigners who go to the church in Changzhou and preach there regularly. All of them came from the US, and none of them were pastors. They work as teachers of English in schools in Changzhou and spontaneously go to preach in the church to a small group of less than 30 people, which is made up of spontaneous audience, and I have been one of them since I graduated from my university in Nanjing and came back to work in Changzhou in July 2005. However I wasn’t perfectly aware of my weakness in speaking and listening English at that time.
Living in a country which is ruled by Communist Party who believes in atheism, Christians may look strange and isolated from our society. My belief in Christ was conceived in 1999, the second year in my university. As an ordinary Chinese student, I received Theory of Evolution in middle school. Although I had little connections with the society outside campus, I could feel a lot of bad things or ideas from people（including myself, which I found later was called “sin” in the Bible). At about the same time, I learned a series of wonderful science like biochemistry, anatomy, histology and embryology, which made me hard to believe in atheism（Because human body is so wonderful! So perfect!). After I became a theist, I think going to church（secretly), reading Bible（secretly), listening to preaches（secretly); there is a famous Chinese pastor named Fengbingcheng living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not very far away from your hometown, (he is one of my favorite）and experiencing personal relationship（such as in my education, job and marriage）with God have contributed to my final choice to be a Christian.
No sooner had I entered Web, the small window through which we Chinese populace with very limited outlook have the opportunity to look outside at the world（and also look at the genuine China itself), than I felt it was worth the tuition of more than ¥20,000. I like to listen to foreigners’ views on everything, and I like to listen to American English（British English doesn’t sound very clear to me). There were three American teachers there at that time, one is Adam*, the other two have already quitted their jobs in Web.
While learning English, I was also wondering why my life had turned this way, whether I should insist on trust in God, and what does God want me to do, etc. Then YOU appeared. I think in our eyes you represent a classic example of American person: straightforward, independent, and robust. I remember in the first several English corner classes you gave us were about self-introduction, American marriage and American campus life. My wife is not a student in Web, but I managed to bring her into your English corner class about American marriage. She is poor in English and cannot understand a single sentence, so we sat in the far back and I leaned over and kept whispering translation of your every sentence to her during the whole class. I think you have the ability to make your classes lively and vivid, to arouse our interests and expectations. Besides, I have noticed that you are a warm-hearted person and ready to help others, unlike many other people I have seen. You have told us your family is religious and your brother is a missionary. To be frank, Sarah, I think it is not very safe to claim to be of religious beliefs like Christianity in public in China.
After I made the medical mistake on April 26th , 2009, patient Z fell into a state of brain death. His treatments before April 26th added up to around ¥100,000（He does not have any medical insurance and has to pay the money by himself or his family. His treatments of another 10 days in ICU（intensive care unit）cost ¥60,000. His family gave up on May 5th because of too much cost and too little hope. When being asked about the reason why Z’s life went that way, the hospital leaders hid the truth out of understandable reasons. In fact their explanation was rather unconvincing, which was doubted by one of Z’s relatives. Out of humanitarianism, our hospital exempted his family from ¥40,000 altogether. His family was unsatisfied and tried to resort to a special committee and ask the local Health Bureau to solve the problem but finally retreated, maybe because they came to realize the mutual shielding and supports between hospital and government.
While Z was still sleeping in ICU, my department leader asked me to write down my thoughts about my mistake. Out of deep sorrow to Z and out of latent self-pride in my Christian belief（which I discovered later), I wrote I was a Christian and decided to tell Z’s family the whole truth someday in the future. I wrote this partly because I did not think it was all my own fault. This was the first time I decided to tell others my belief in public. My department leader directly presented my paper to our hospital leader, who, actually did not believe what I had written at first（maybe because few Chinese people believe in Christ and theism seems stupid to most of them), pointed out ironically that if Z’s family knew the truth, I would be in prison for at least one year.
In the end, I did not tell them the truth of course. After my gossip spread around the hospital（and even out of the hospital), many people told me my heavy penalty came from the fact that I had broken the hidden rules of the game, and I believe they were right. There are quite a few serious medical accidents taking place in our hospital every year, but I am the only one who is forbidden to be a doctor. Many colleagues including leaders advised me to get back to my previous position with bribery, which I am not very familiar with but is quite common in our society. I did not, however, because our hospital leader told me sincerely that I am not fit to be a doctor after my bad record was cleaned of recently.
Before April 26th 2009, I had thought I was a devout Christian. Even on April 26th morning I sent text messages of Psalms to one of my colleagues, persuading him to get along well with his wife. After that accident happened I came to realize how weak my confidence in God was. But when looking back on my experience today, I think God has answered me in Hebrews 12:5-6,“…because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
I always remember your English Corner classes and thank you for the books and the help you have given me. Here are photos of my wife and son. One was taken 24 days after my son was born, the other two were taken when he was around 100 days old. May God bless you and your family!
Sincerely,
Merlin
that's an amazing tale.