For One Chinese Voyager, an Answer to Prayers : Immigration: His companions endured a floating hell aboard smugglers’ ships in vain, but for Liu Jiang, there is hope of a new life in the United States. The young schoolteacher’s claim of religious persecution wins him the right to seek asylum.

EL CENTRO —  Liu Jiang is a fortunate pilgrim.

Last month, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter plucked him, and him alone, from a floating hell aboard three squalid smuggling ships off the coast of Ensenada.

It was the day of his epiphany. After the immigration officials told him he was going to America, after the Coast Guard sailors shook his hand, after he looked down for the last time at the three boats packed with exhausted and fearful Chinese emigres, he realized there was only one explanation for his good fortune.

“Because I am a Christian, maybe God has secretly protected me,” said Liu, a 22-year-old schoolteacher and religious activist from Fujian province. “Because in the ship I was the only one who was a Christian. . . . During the passage on board the ship, I prayed every day. When I was on board the ship, I knew that I would come to America.”

There were about 670 U.S-bound Chinese aboard the three smuggling vessels whose odyssey provoked an international incident last month when the Coast Guard intercepted them off Baja California. Mexico finally agreed to deport the passengers; they were hustled ashore July 17 and flown back to China.

But while diplomats negotiated, officers of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service were taking on the chaotic task of conducting interviews aboard the boats, a process that human rights activists criticized as unfair.

On the day before the Mexican Navy escorted the boats into Ensenada, immigration officers decided that one of the dozens of migrants asking for political asylum should be allowed into the United States to pursue his claim: Liu.

He is a longhaired, startlingly youthful farmer’s son from a small village where cars are an exotic sight, a devout Christian who says his evangelism incurred the wrath of repressive local authorities. Alleged religious persecution is the basis of his asylum case.

During an interview last week, Liu gave The Times the first personal account of the ill-fated three-month voyage. He recalled poignant images: Some passengers changed into their best clothes--some putting on ties--when U.S. military vessels appeared on the horizon, thinking their trip had ended triumphantly.

Liu described grinding despair--filth, fistfights, near riots--during the trip and 10 days of detention at sea. And he said fellow passengers singled him out for abuse because of his faith.

“It was very dangerous,” he said through an interpreter at the INS detention center in El Centro, where he awaits an asylum hearing. “The fact that I have lived until now was due to luck.”

The outline of Liu’s story fits the increasingly familiar pattern of impoverished Fujianese emigres making the illegal passage by sea, though his religious background makes his case stand out.

Liu did not complete high school; but in the village of Lian Jiang, the townspeople respected him as an educated young man. He taught Chinese classics and language to third-graders.

Christianity--ingrained in him by his Siberian-born grandmother--dominated his life. A leader of a small church without minister or denomination, Liu sought converts with priestlike dedication.

“I still haven’t had a girlfriend,” he said with a sheepish, disarming grin. “Being a Christian over there, it is hard to find a girlfriend.”

China’s Communist government tolerates private religious activity but frowns on overt practice, according to experts. Christians in particular have been targeted with harassment, according to Liu’s lawyer, Helen Sklar of Los Angeles.

Last year, representatives of the dreaded “cultural section” of the local government warned Liu that they would throw him in jail if the recruiting continued, Liu said. Others in the 50-member congregation, which received funding from an overseas religious organization, were also hounded by officials and by Buddhists, he said.

A year of harassment convinced the young teacher to join the exodus from Fujian. A well-connected friend arranged his departure in mid-April on the Long Sen I, a Taiwanese trawler-turned-smuggling ship, in exchange for a pledge to work off a $10,000 fee. The boat’s hold carried 169 cramped passengers--and had one air vent.

“It had been a place to store fish. The passengers were (crammed together) like fish.”

Mistreatment added to the misery of nauseating conditions and a lack of food, Liu said. The smugglers meted out beatings to migrants accused of stealing. Liu prayed and read the Bible--catching the eye of several fellow passengers, who set about tormenting him. They beat him up, took his food and threw his crucifix and Bible into the sea, he said.

“They had prejudice against Christians,” Liu said.

In early July, a U.S. military plane swooped overhead, followed soon by the Coast Guard cutters. A special Coast Guard team armed with shotguns came aboard, searched the Long Sen and took up positions on the deck. It was July 4th.

The passengers did not know that they were 100 miles southwest of San Diego near the coast of Baja California, marooned in a high-stakes stalemate between the United States and Mexico. They only knew that their goal appeared tantalizingly close.

The Long Sen rendezvoused with two other captured vessels. Days passed. The sailors with the guns said they were awaiting orders. The migrants’ initial euphoria gave way to spreading fear and disorder.

The sailors, Liu said, “tried to maintain calm, to prevent riots. The Americans were very nice.”

Immigration officers distributed questionnaires. But many wary migrants--conditioned to distrust uniforms and questions--refused to comply. Some even destroyed the documents that could have gained them a haven.

“Psychologically, they just wanted to land, on solid land,” Liu said. “Because they had been cooped up for three months.”

Liu was among 58 cases considered strong enough to merit closer scrutiny, according to U.S. officials. An INS asylum officer and a translator brought him to an upper deck and questioned him at length.

“My hopes were lifting up,” he recalled. His eyes fill with the suspense and intensity of the conversations; a listener can envision him pouring all he had into the opportunity, trying to talk his way out of a nightmare. “They asked me a lot of questions. I think my replies were good.”

The decision to grant Liu temporary entry reflects a trend, experts said: Chinese Christians claiming religious persecution tend to fare well.

(One other passenger was brought to San Diego earlier, a woman airlifted to a hospital for emergency surgery for a problem pregnancy.)

Officials declined comment on Liu’s case or on why they rejected the other applicants. The review was conducted while the migrants were in international waters so they would not reach U.S. soil, where they would have been permitted to remain pending asylum procedures. The United States enlisted Mexico’s help in the deportation for the same reason.

Liu’s Independence Day finally came--12 days past the holiday. On the morning of July 16, as Mexican military and police personnel mobilized to take custody of the three boats, U.S. officials spirited him off the trawler by boat to a nearby Coast Guard cutter. He did not say goodby to anyone; he does not know if the others even realized that he had left.

He was weak and ill from the trip. His memories unfold in a kind of delirium: the ascent of the helicopter, an awesome experience for a peasant who had only once seen a helicopter; the ride in a detention bus past the office towers of San Diego into the mountains and then the Imperial Valley desert floor.

Now Liu waits in a new, and comparatively comfortable, limbo.

Hardly anyone at the El Centro detention center speaks his language; the handful of fellow Chinese prisoners remain strangers. He chafes because his asylum hearing has been scheduled for April. But the INS has approved a requested change of venue to Los Angeles that could move up the date.

With the combined fervor of an immigrant and a believer, Liu hopes that his tribulations will earn his salvation.

“I think going to heaven and going to America are probably similar.”