When we received the
“call” to Hong Kong we had no idea where it was. The atlas soon identified it
for us: a speck of land on the southern coast of China. We learned that is was
in fact a Royal Colony of Great Britain. It had gained that status as a result
of the Opium War in 1841 and a few subsequent treaties. On Christmas Day 1941
it had fallen to the invading Japanese. By 1956 when we went it had reverted to its British Colony status. It’s a
small area of only 427 square miles including a main island (Hong Kong ), a
built-up peninsula called Kowloon and a rural area called The New Territories.
At the end of WWII Hong
Kong had a population of 600,000. Then
in the late 1940’s as Mao Tse Tung forced China into Communism people fled to
Hong Kong at a rate of some 100.000 a month! By the time we arrived its
population was 2.5 million. Some of those who fled brought with them
considerable financial resources. The vast majority came with nothing but the
clothes on their backs. There was no place for hundreds of thousands to live.
So they just lived in whatever situation they could create. Multitudes slept on
the street. Others thronged the hillsides building their tiny shack homes out
of whatever scrap they could find. Flat roofs and stairwells of buildings were
filled with sleeping mats.
While our consciousness
was overwhelmed by these realities we moved into a 2 bedroom apartment to live
with two female missionaries We were
urged to begin studying Cantonese and to teach classes through an
interpreter. So within 10 days Jane and I made several trips a week to Hong
Kong University traveling by bus, then ferry, then bus again for the 90 minute
each way trip and I was teaching a Wednesday night class on Christian Education
to teachers in the already existing Lutheran schools.
Two experiences of those
first weeks are forever embedded in my memory. As I returned to my apartment around
10:00 pm after teaching my course, I walked past many street sleepers and
beggars. However one situation hit me in the face. A father’s searching eyes
found mine He held in his arms a boy of about 12. He was starving. It was the
first time I had actually seen with my own eyes the extended bloated stomach of
a person dyeing of starvation. I reached into my pocket and gave the man a one
Hong Kong dollar bill. He looked into my eyes with such overwhelming gratitude
that I still feel its piercing impact. All I had done was give him one HK
dollar (worth about 15 US pennies!
Two weeks later things got
even closer to home. As I left my Wednesday night class I thought there was
more turmoil and anxiety than usual on the street but I thought it was just
part of my getting used to a new situation. Within a block (by now I was in the
middle of the street because the sidewalks were all blocked) a gentleman came running
up to me and waved a bag with a bottle in it right in my face. I was surprised
to see a drunk on the street because I understood that that was one thing one
did not find on the streets of Hong Kong. It was just a minute or more later that
I caught on. That was not liquor in that bottle but an inflammable substance
and maybe some type of firebomb. Kowloon was in the midst of a full-blown riot.
I made it home through the next few blocks. The people in my class were less
fortunate as they were unable to leave the building. The classroom in which I
had just been teaching had bullets come through the windows. Those who had been
in my class did not dare to try to walk home. Especially tragic was the news
that the car of the Swiss Consulate General had been attacked in front of where
I had been teaching and tragically his wife had been killed.
The riot was a battle
between forces loyal to Chiang Kai Shek and those opposed to him. We listened
to the news as the fighting continued, not daring to go to bed. The next
morning we heard more commotion below our apartment and we sneaked to the
window for a look, The police had rounded up hundreds of rioters and were
marching them down the street below us. They were taking this mass of people to
jail which was right at the end of our block. In this last block they suddenly
forced he people to run. This was an intentional and successful effort to have
the arrested person lose their wooden clogs so they could not be used as
weapons. Ironically within minutes those clogs were all gone as residents
hastily slipped out of their apartments and secured those shoes for themselves.
Businesses, schools and
public transportation were all closed down for a couple days and then calm was
restored. We did not see such turmoil again at any time during the next ten
years. For that I am grateful. Immersion does not be need to be repeated.
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