By Becky Holland
Chai Ling is not a name that many people born after 1988 will remember, in fact, there are many who will not know who she was, until you say the words, "Tiananmen Square" and "student protests."
In 1989, for 54 days or more, Chai Ling, a young married graduate student in Beijing, the daughter of two military doctors, was one of the most prominent leaders of what started out as a peaceful movement by a multitude of Chinese students and ended up in one of the most horrific tragic scenes, thanks to the Chinese military and government.
For Chinese people, it was days of agony and concern, as they were glued to their televisions and radios and newspapers to find out the latest. It has been compared to what American's experienced during and days after September 11, 2001.
Chai Ling, herself, explained in her book, "A Heart For Freedom," published by Tyndale House Publishers in October of 2011, that the students gathered were concerned about gaining knowledge about their country and about having a freer "China."
"In 1989, I became a leader of a student hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, a peaceful movement for a better, freer and more loving China," she wrote.
"I was born at the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution. Like all Chinese children, I was taught to love my country, sacrifice my own needs and be ready to give up my life for a greater good. We were not allowed to know God."
And now, more than 20 years past one of the most historical moments in Chinese and world history, Chai Ling is excited about knowing God and sharing His love with people, as well as continue to helping China become a better, freer China.
Chai Ling is married for the second time and has three children and lives on the East Coast in the United States. Nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize for leadership, Ling is the founder, president and chief operating officer of Jenzabar, Inc., a leading higher education software services provider. She received her masters of business administration from Harvard Business School, a masters in public administration in public affairs and international relations from Peking University. Ling also is the founder of All Girls Allowed (www.allgirlsallowed.org), an organization dedicated to restoring life, value, and dignity to girls and mothers and revealing the injustice of China's one-child policy.
And she is a professing, excited Christian. Recently, Ling shared her testimony during a service at Saddleback Church at the request of pastor, Rick Warren. Her book, "A Heart for Freedom: The Remarkable Journey of A Young Dissident, Her Daring Escape, And Her Quest to Free China's Daughters," has been deemed more than a memoir, but a chronicle of her journey through some of the most darkest times to the brightest time in her life - becoming a Christian.
On January 25, 2012, Chai Ling, in her offices in Boston, had a gentle voice on the phone as she humbly accepted thanks for consenting to an interview, then she asked, "Before we begin, may we go to the Lord in prayer?" Ling's actions confirmed what her own written words have stated, that in her life God is first.
Coming from a country and a time where God wasn't taught or accepted, that seemed ironic that now she is so centered on God.
In fact, the reason that Ling decided to write her book, which brought out some very intimate details of her life - some that many her family and communities didn't know - the fact that she had had abortions and the behind-the-scenes details of the planning and actual protest, was "out of pure obedience to God."
Ling stated that she had felt a leading to write the book for a long time, but other things kept her busy.
She said that she had felt the need since May of 1989, in the middle of the events at Tianamen Square, "to record my experience there for posterity. I've long felt there was a much deeper meaning and reason for what happened at Tiananmen, but for twenty-two years, I had been unable to articulate it. In 1995 and early 1996, I wrote more than two hundred pages of an initial draft but could not finish it. I sensed there was a precious story and truth to be told, but for two decades, I could not capture the essence of it."
Ling continued, "It was like a free bird - I could hear it singing and feel its presence and heartbeat, but I could not quite grab hold of it. Like the sparkle of sunlight on a river, I could not capture it and put it down on paper."
Through working on Capitol Hill and at the UN, as a student at Princeton and Harvard, and even through her work in investment banking and consulting industries, in self-help books, etc., and even founding her Internet company and beginning her foundation, Ling searched for it, but couldn't find the answer that "would quench my thirst."
Then it began for her, on the morning of October 7, 2009, making a trip on plane from Boston to Washington, D.C., to help "celebrate a major victory in the life of one of the survivors of the Tiananmen movement."
Her life had changed drastically from those events and for the better, living in the "cradle of liberty - Boston - ironically the site of another historic massacre in the cause of freedom and democracy." Her relationship with her father, detailed in the book as tense at times, was better and he had given his life over to Christ.
"What I have experienced is far beyond what any country girl from a fishing village in China could ever have expected," Ling said.
On this plane, on a beautiful day, she woke up from a nap, not able to breathe. A doctor on the plane said that she was having an anxiety attack.
She said, "I felt the wind being sucked from my sails."
In December of that year, Ling gave her life to Christ, and over a year later, she began to face her fears and write her book.
"You can't ignore the urging of Christ."
While writing, she began to wondering if she wanted to share about her abortions, for people in her family, her father, her new husband and the community would read them, and then she was reminded of the story of the woman in the Bible, "who had a bleeding disease and all she wanted to do was touch the hem of Jesus' clothing, for she knew she would be healed. She could've and probably wanted to, slip away in the crowd, and He wouldn't let her ... He told her to share the love of God with others."
She knew that many "wanted to forget the Tinanamen Square incident, but there are few that choose to remember."
In reflecting on the protests and movements that happened in 1989 in China, today as a Christian, Ling said, "I don't want to take away from the heroic courage of the students or even the Buddhist priests who stepped out and helped us escape. Just because you don't know God, doesn't make you a lesser person ... He loves us all."
On thoughts of where she was headed now, Ling said, "We feel that God has called us to help end gendercide and the one child policy law in China, and to help people come to know God as we do."
Ling said of her book, "This book, which started out as a simple memoir for my American-born children to know their mother's history of coming to freedom, has become a hope to record and reveal what might have been in the mind of God all along - to free China, to get free girls and women under the oppression around the world."
Concluding, she added, "But for you to see and believe, we will have to start at the beginning of the journey ..."
To view a book review of A Heart's Cry for Freedom, visit: http://www.examiner.com/books-in-macon/tinanamen-square-student-leader-o....
