Reflections on a Long and Blessed Life No 57: China-So Close and So Far Away

 Living in Hong Kong in the 1950’s-and 60’s was a wonderful and blessed experience. One of the elements that made it so fascinating was how living in Hong Kong was affected by what was happening in Mainland China. Geographically Hone Kong is a dot of a small peninsula and a bunch of small islands just off the southern coast of China. It was a   British Crown Colony ever since the end of the Opium War.

Life in Hong Kong was very different from life just 35 miles north. We had modern conveniences. We could worship as we pleased. We could exchange USA dollars. We had security. We had freedom of speech-including speaking English which was forbidden to be spoken in some parts of China. In these ways, we were we were far away from China-but always affected.

When Mao’s Communism took over China private land ownership was abolished. Landowners were executed and their property became state-owned. This became real to me as one of my 9^th grade pupils tearful explained how she was forced by the Communists to sit and watch as they arrested her grandfather, bound arms with ropes, made him kneel before them and then fatally shot him.

Many of my friends and teachers in our schools had been a part of General Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists Kuomintang. They did whatever it took to get to Hong Kong and thus save their lives. Of course, many of them brought nothing with them-and certainly not always their papers so when thy wanted to become registered teachers in our schools they could not prove they had graduated from college.

When Mao instituted his tragic Great Leap Forward in the mid-50’s he forced people out of their homes, out of their families and into communes where they lived a very regimented unbearable life. The goal of China producing as much steel as the USSR by melting down all iron pots, pan, fences, etc. was disastrous. The fields were ignored. Crops failed. At least 25 million people died of starvation. This became very real to us. Our friends kept receiving pleas from their relatives left behind in China: “Please send us food of any kind. We are all starving.” When our female amah (servant) went back briefly for Chinese New Year’s she loaded up all the food she could carry on the ends of the poles across her shoulders. She saved some family members from certain death and I am sure she had to bribe some guards who themselves were starving-to be allowed to get some of the food to her family.

China was building its alliance with Russia and wanted to imitate all things Russian. When I was teaching a college course in General Psychology the only texts available were Chinese translations from Russian behaviorism.

The terrible Great Leap Forward was followed be the equally bad Cultural Revolution. This was the time to destroy all the old culture, art, institutions, buildings etc. etc. Students took over schools, teachers were sent to live on pig farms. Intellectuals were imprisoned, tortured and killed. Any idea from the West was considered blasphemy, especially if it had roots in the arch-enemy of China, the USA. Riots even broke out again in Hong Kong. One immediate and far-reaching effect was that the newest school we were just beginning to operate changed its name from The American School to The Hong Kong International School.

One added burden that many of my friends and colleagues had to bear was that they did not know what had happened to family members they had left behind when they fled China. One dear friend had heard but could not prove that his wife had been killed and so he struggled as to whether or not he could marry a “new spouse” in Hong Kong. I

At our Missionary Conference, we had many discussions about whether or not our pastors could officiate at weddings where there was doubt as to whether or not the man was about to have more than one wife.

Sometimes I would drive out to the New Territories and look out across the border past the armed guards toward the small village called Shanzhen, never dreaming that after Ziao Ping decided to move China in the direction of free enterprise that spot would become home to millions living in modern China. But in that day that village just a mile away could just as well have been on the other side of a far away. ocean.