Birthday Celebration in Hong Kong Part VI

When I lived in Hong Kong in the 1950’s and 60’s my Chinese friends were often reluctant to speak about their difficult pasts and why they had to flea China. Students, too, were quite hesitant to get very autobiographical. But when I was in Hong Kong recently this had changed. I was surprised by how candid my former students were as they spoke of their youth. More than once they recalled the extreme poverty they experienced growing up. Especially when a group of us had finished dinner one night in Macau the group shared stories of their challenging background. I want to relate just a few of those stories here. I have changed all names and may have altered a few details to protect some identities.

Matthew started the conversation. ”We were all very poor,” he stated, “and I think I was among the poorest.” He recalled that his father had been killed on Christmas Day 1941 when he served in the British forces protecting Hong Kong and the Japanese invaded and just demolished them. So at about 5 years of age he and his 3-year-old brother were raised by his widowed mother. She found a few dollars to enroll him in Concordia Middle School But soon she came to the Dean and announced “I have to take Matthew out of school. I cannot pay both his tuition and still have money for his food.” The Dean said, ”We will help with tuition and he can just eat with me. At lunch time let him come to me and I will share my rice with him”. Incidentally the monthly salary of that dean was US$30.00 a month. Matthew studied and did very well. A few years later the Dean informed me that Matthew’s mother could now not even pay the reduced school fees.  So he and another colleague had asked her to iron their shirts and they would help with his tuition (and I found money to make up the balance of his school fees.) He graduated with highest honors-one of the top 5 in the entire colony of Hong Kong. Soon the Lutheran Church chose him to study at a Lutheran College in the USA. There he was supported by faithful Lutherans from a congregation in the small town of Walburg, Texas. Matthew served the Lutheran Church in Hong Kong then went into business as a major exec for an international conglomerate and ended up as a most senior officer in what is now the largest international insurance company in China. He never forgot God or the people who helped him, is a stalwart in the Lutheran Church and the community and was a primary host and benefactor for my visit.

Mary was an excellent student in Concordia Middle School-excelling especially in English. I even used her as an interpreter when my Cantonese was inadequate. She was also a person with a very disturbing past. She was a very young girl when Mao’s officials came to the farm where she lived with her extended family in South China. These officials came to take away her grandfather’s land and keep it for the Communists. It got worse. The officials tied up her grandfather with his arms ties behind his back. They took him outside and brought the entire family including little Mary and made her watch as they shot and killed him. That vision stayed in her head. Eventually she escaped to Hong Kong but carried with her the fear of what might happen to her when Hong Kong was to “return” to China in 1997.She badly wanted a USA passport as a safety net. Our son David sponsored her as an immigrant to the USA. She worked in the dress fur business and then in banking. She returned to Hong Kong as a successful businesswoman and teacher and supported her son through his graduation from Oxford University. She is forever grateful to those who assisted her and was the person most active in making all the arrangements and paying for my 90^th birthday in Hong Kong.

Mark was the best athlete at Concordia excelling especially in basketball and swimming. He studied very hard to excel is his academics. Unfortunately he was also very poor and lived in a tiny study and sleeping area-which also had poor ventilation. As a result he had barely finished his high school when he was struck down with tuberculosis-an all too common experience in Hong Kong in the late 1950”s. Fortunately space for recuperation was found for him at The Haven of Hope Sanitarium partially funded by The Wheat Ridge Foundation.

While there the gentleman in the bed next to him told the sad story of his young son. “He is very bright and talented,” said the father” but he is on the streets as I cannot afford to pay any school tuition because I lie here helpless in this bed.”: Mark suggested Concordia and said he would speak to his church friends to see if financial aid could be found. That worked especially also interested in making slide projections of Bible stories for use in Sunday School. Today that student is in Beijing after producing Mission Impossible II in the USA and is known world-wide as Andy Woo. And Mark, the person who got him started, was a successful teacher and stock manager and the person who paid for my son Tim’s airfare and for all our hotel bills (plus) while we were in Hong Kong.

Martha was living in a squatter hut which the terrible Shek Kip Mei fires of the early 1950’s suddenly made tens of thousands of refugees homeless once again. Her parents found another very minimal place to live and she found her way to Concordia, getting up at 5:00 each morning to grab the public busses which got her there. After graduation she was blessed to get married into an old-time Hong Kong family which had the resources to have one of her children get a PhD and become a cancer research specialist. Another is a medical doctor with major responsibility. A third is an attorney in England. She hosted us wonderfully, provided all our Hong Kong and Macau transportation and made generous contributions for all the events.

John’s family was also made homeless by the fires mentioned above. His mother was relentless in getting a teaching position and pushed and advocated for her children. John was an outstanding student, studied at Concordia Chicago, ended up returning to HK and headed up the multi-multi million dollars a year Lutheran Social Services of Hong Kong and was able to secure funding from multiple sources including HK’s Jockey Club. His sister is a widely admired surgeon in HK and his brother owns a business in England. He was co-chair of the committee that planned all the events and was most generous.

When I knew these kids they had to launder their school uniforms as soon as they got home from school so they could wear them again the next day because they could afford only one set of clothes.

The list goes on: Paul was the head Chinese for introducing MacDonald’s into China. Timothy, a top professor at Hong Kong Chinese University, got his PhD at Yale and headed a major world-wide evangelistic education agency. Ron heads a Cancer Research Institute. And the list goes on and on.

--> They are all blessed products of the conviction that under God, with hard work, solid education, multiple sources of encouragement and endurance lead to untold opportunities and blessings – and then they thank their old friends and pay it forward for the next generation.

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90th Birthday Celebration in Hong Kong Part V: Places and People

I did not go to Hong Kong to go sightseeing or to explore places. I went there to be with people and to celebrate schools and churches. But the place of Hong Kong continues to be amazing. Now considered a part of China if is classified as being part of one country-two systems. Hong Kong is no longer a manufacturing center. All of that is either in the Mainland or in Vietnam and other Southeastern China countries. Nevertheless it is a bustling never go to sleep business metropolis of some 7 million energetic, ambitious, success driven people. Its business is business. All the major finance companies of the world have offices there. It is a favorite place for shoppers from the Mainland to come and secure both ordinary and luxury goods. Wherever we went over the weekend we were engulfed by people from the Mainland carrying suitcases full of stuff to take home.  And they all spoke Mandarin, not the local Cantonese. When we visited both the Chinese schools and HKIS it was stressed that while English is an important language there is now an emphasis that everyone also needs to learn to speak Mandarin

When I lived there 50 years ago it had no bridges or tunnels to connect the Kowloon peninsula with island-now there are three massive tunnels flowing with tens of thousands of cars. The underground metro system is inconceivably efficient, clean and economical. Where rice patties or steep hills formerly lay we now find high-rise after high-rise.

Hong Kong is expensive It is on par with Manhattan. Housing is unbelievably costly and people cram into very small spaces and often struggle to afford that. Even families with more than one wage earner may live in less than 800 square feet of home space.

The Hong Kong Peak, which Tim visited, has not changed much, but the scenery is very different. The harbor keeps getting filled in with massive high-rise structures now standing where we used to catch the ferry. But the faithful Star Ferry is still there and Tim and I rode it even being lucky enough to be there on free ferry-ride day”

Nathan Road in Kowloon is not much changed. We went to the old section of Hung Hom with its bustling clogged streets, looking very much like it did 50 years ago. The Peninsula Hotel with the Bentley and Rolls Royce cars sitting in front remains unchanged. The Hong Kong Golf Club where I got in 18 holes of poor golf now allows pull-carts though my host insisted I use a caddy.

Macau is an entirely different world from what I knew. It is the Las Vegas of the Orient with all the Vegas Gambling Casinos and Hotels reproduced and even done up more ostentatiously than in Nevada. When we stopped for cocktails in the Wynn Casino it felt like Vegas.    

PEOPLE: It’s the people of Hong Kong generally and those whom I got to know personally that most inspire me. This time more than ever many of them grew nostalgic. Over and over and over they recalled the early days, the days they were newly arrived refugees and my students. They lived in squatter huts. They lived in stairwells. They slept on the corridors of huge resettlement estates. They got burned out. They went hungry. They had no shoes. When they got sick they could not afford medical care. The had T.B. They had skin diseases. Even teen-agers lost hair due to malnutrition. I heard those stories over and over. And now they are well fed, they may be crowded in small apartments but they own them. They are teachers, principals, money managers, medical doctors, nurses, attorneys, fashion designers, newspaper writers, pastors, and professors. It was all incredible. And one after another after another came and told me their story and expressed heartfelt thanks for the opportunity to go to school and get an education.

One of the most moving moments of my whole trip came on Sunday after worship. Four different older women came up to me. Each one of them told me that that their only opportunity to learn to read (they were very poor) was to come to a special evening school we had started that charged only 50 cents month tuition. One of them came to me just before I left. She pressed into my hand a tiny very, very low cost piece of plastic /glass beads. “These are for you, with my thanks!” she said and quickly stepped away. That is the most wonderful way for me to celebrate my 90^th that I could ever imagine.

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Birthday Celebration in Hong Kong Part IV: Gifts

Birthday Parties mean Birthday Gifts! And for the celebration of my 90^th in Hong Kong GIFTS is spelled in capital letters!

Birthday Parties mean Birthday Gifts! And for the celebration of my 90^th in Hong Kong GIFTS is spelled in capital letters!

It all began when a former student and teacher on my staff, Margaret, heard that I was turning 90 this year. Her immediate response, “You must celebrate in Hong Kong and I will pay the air fare for you and Jane to come.” This was followed by a message from her husband David (also a former student), “And I will pick up the hotel bill!” Who can turn down an offer like that? Well, actually Jane could and did. She knew what the pace of activities would be in Hong Kong and she knew what it feels like t take that 14 hour non-stop flight from San Francisco to HK and return. So she wisely chose to celebrate only vicariously and that turned out to be just the right decision. Our son Tim decided to go and the hosts said, “No problem. We will pick up all his expenses” and they did. Just to make the air flight a little easier, a couple from my home church, Calvary in Solana Beach, upgraded out flight to Economy Plus!

Public transportation in HK is excellent but we were going all over the place with a very tight schedule. So immediately another female graduate, Tam, spoke up. “I am making available my Mercedes and my full-time driver. She will take you wherever you need to go at whatever time you need her.” We grabbed that opportunity.

When we got off the plane the driver together with Tam and friend John were waiting at the airport in the chauffeured car. We had barely sat down when each of them handed me envelopes. Inside was cash both US and HK dollars to cover expenses and a so-called “Octopus Card” which provides access to all forms of public transportation. And when we got out of the car at our hotel we were loaded down with 4 bottles of outstanding French wine!

As indicated in an earlier BLOG all our meals were more than covered, some by the persons already mentioned above, another by Heman, the Oxford graduate attorney son of Margaret and David and by Paul who hosted a major dinner in Macau with Tam, of course having purchased the firs=class ticket on the hover-craft that provided passage between HK and Macau.

At the first birthday party each table gave a gift, which ranged from a pen, through a lovely little statue of the goddess of longevity, to more little red envelopes, each of which contained cash. At the end of our visit the Concordia School principal presented me with a wonderful photo album plus a remarkable flash drive wrist band which, when plugged in my computer carried complete photo coverage of my entire visit plus photos of the history of the school, including shots of me with the graduates for each of the years I was there. The church at which I spoke gave tee-shirts with the Luther words, “Here I Stand’, and appropriately logoed umbrellas, photo albums and a new Chinese Bible. During the previous day another pastor had given me a book stand in which the Chinese characters of the 23rd Psalm had been beautifully etched.

Naturally, gifts of jewelry, purses and wads of cash were sent along for Jane.

The evening before we left I totaled up the content of all those envelopes. The combined total HK and USA dollars was astounding. The total was not in the hundreds of dollars but was in the thousands! I sat there alone for a few minutes but then sang out loudly in both English and Chinese the immortal words of ”Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow!”

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