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Thomas Nelson Publishers of Nashville, Tenn., a religious house, agreed to produce the million copies. Photographic plates of a Union version Bible, first translated into Chinese in 1919, were forwarded to the U.S. from Hong Kong. The printing bill for the leatherbound, 629-page volumes of the complete Scriptures was $1.4 million. The Bibles were transported last spring to Hong Kong in a container ship.
A specially chosen 20-member international crew began to practice dry runs on secluded Mindoro Island in the Philippines. A special 100-ft. barge was built, and, for $480,000, the tug Michael was bought in Singapore. Finally, the assault party sailed for Hong Kong to pick up its illicit cargo. At the last moment, a planned Easter Sunday landing at Swatow was scrubbed by Van der Bijl because of concern that Chinese authorities might be alerted to the plan. Two months later, the crew sent a cryptic message to agents in Swatow: "We are going to have a dinner party, expecting so many people that we have arranged 21 teacups and cooked 18 bowls of rice." Dday, in other words, would take place at 2100 hours, June 18.
The show was on. The Michael weighed anchor, feigned a southward course toward Manila, then swung north up the Chinese coast. At one point, a typhoon threatened to engulf the frail expedition, but fortunately, the storm veered out to sea. Entering the harbor at Swatow, the crew had another bad moment when a Chinese gunboat approached, only to pass by harmlessly. The unloading process went smoothly as villagers snipped packets of Bibles from the submerged barge with rope cutters supplied by the smugglers, then carried them to waiting bikes, buses and trucks (Open Doors clandestinely had supplied $75,000 to hire the vehicles). But about four hours after the departure of the Michael, an army patrol turned up unexpectedly in Gezhou village. The patrol stormed the beach, arresting hundreds who were still at work carting off the Bibles. Subsequently, according to Hong Kong reports, most of the prisoners were released.
Open Doors now estimates that some 60% to 80% of the Bibles wound up in the possession of house church groups, some as far as 3,000 miles away in Heilongjiang and Xinjiang provinces. So far, Peking has remained silent, but the illegal distribution of Bibles is certain to rankle the hierarchy of Peking's official religious establishment, the Chinese Three-Self Patriotic Church. It has attempted to bring the house churches under closer control by printing its own Bibles, although it has delivered only 135,000 copies since 1979.
Project Pearl, meanwhile, already has inspired calls from potential donors willing to finance massive new Bible-smuggling ventures to China or behind the Iron Curtain. —By Russ Hoyle. Reported by Bing W. Wong/Hong Kong