Chasing the Dragon (18 page)

We had discovered by this time that there was a remarkable similarity in our journeys to Hong Kong, since Jean and Rick too were called to the East through a dream and a prophecy. Their work in Hong Kong was in a completely different sphere, but meeting one of my boys changed this.

One day I was in Causeway Bay Magistracy listening to a case when I spotted David squatting in the dock. He was a friend of Ah Ming’s whom I had met on the beach at Winson’s baptism the previous year. David had planned to plead not guilty to his charges; however, when he saw me, he suddenly had a pang of conscience, began to pray, and pleaded guilty. After hearing his case, the judge decided to let him off, and David came out of the courtroom in a daze. “Coffee?” I suggested as we walked out. In deference to my choice, he and his colleagues bypassed the chicken’s feet, entrails and other delicacies displayed in restaurant windows and joined me at a coffee shop. David announced that he was ready to follow Jesus completely. Having seen the mess he had just emerged from in court, I thought we should inform his gang boss that he would be leaving the Triads, as it would be so much better if he could make a complete break with the criminal world.

“Who is your
daih lo
, David?” I asked. He looked terrified and shifted about on his plastic seat.

“He won’t want to see you.”

“But what is his name?” I persisted.

“His nickname is ‘Jesus,’” David said out of the side of his mouth, hoping that the others sitting there had not heard him reveal all. “But he won’t want to see you.”

“Why don’t you ask him? If you’re going to be a Christian, you can’t follow two different leaders called Jesus. You must decide which one.”

“Okay,” said David. “I’ll try to find him,” and he went to the telephone. While we waited, David’s friends ate pink ice cream
while I drank more cups of coffee. At last David came back, looking surprised.

“He’ll see you. You are to go to Block 20 of Chaiwan Resettlement Estate at midnight tonight and find the noodle stall. Someone will meet you there and take you to Jesus. But you must take 100 dollars.”

“Why the 100 dollars?” I asked curiously.

“Well, nobody in Chaiwan knows you, Miss Poon,” David replied. “It’s not as if it was the Walled City, where you are protected. Chaiwan is a very dangerous area at night, and you might get mugged. If you have 100 dollars, they will take it and leave you alone; but if you have nothing, they will be angry and beat you up.”

“Don’t be silly,” I reasoned. “I haven’t got 10 dollars, let alone 100. I’m not taking money. If I am on God’s business, then He will look after me. And anyway, if it would help you to understand how much God loves you, then I wouldn’t mind dying. I have nothing to lose.”

David looked at me incredulously for a moment and then said, “You’re crazy! You’re mad!” But he glanced at his friends and said, “We never met anyone who would die for us before.”

I arrived by minibus at 11:30
P.M.
and spent a little time looking around Chaiwan. This enormous area at one end of Hong Kong Island consisted of resettlement blocks where tens of thousands of people were housed by the government. Each family had one room to live, eat and sleep in, with communal toilets and showers at the end of each floor. The street level was humming with life—and at night—as hundreds of people sat on fold-up seats eating their
siu yeh
(bedtime snacks) at the shacks and portable noodle carts, which abounded.

Midnight came. I was waiting at the Block 20 noodle stall, which turned out to be down a narrow, dark corridor. Refuse had been tipped into the gutter below and there was a runnel of little gray noodles swimming past my sandals. I was so absorbed in the noodle race that I did not see my guide approach.

“What do you want?” The curly-haired Cantonese lolled against the wall and spoke through the cigarette stuck to his lips.

“Take me to your leader,” I replied, clutching my huge evangelical Bible firmly.

“Who do you want to see?” He was testing me.

“I want to see Jesus.”

“Why do you want to see Jesus?”

“I want to tell him about my Jesus.”

The man looked amused and then laughed to himself. “Are you
sure
you want to see Jesus?” He meant to sound sinister, but it all felt like part of a bad film to me.

“I’m sure.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to tell him about my Jesus,” I repeated.

The man changed legs and shut his eyes, and then with a camp gesture thumbed himself as he grimaced—“You’re talking to him.” It was a very ham B movie.

“Jesus” and I sat in a cafe while I opened my big Bible and told him about my Jesus. Something happened while we were sitting there. He understood what I was saying. He simply understood it all. It was almost as if the Holy Spirit had come down over our formica table. He sat there with the tears streaming down his cheeks, quite oblivious of his surroundings, including the pretty waitress. He prayed, asked Jesus into his life and was baptized in the Spirit in the midst of our coffee cups.

It was about 3
A.M.
when I left Chaiwan to catch a van back to Kowloon City and my neglected flat. Just before the van left, I remembered my discipleship training.

“Oh, by the way, you are supposed to tell at least one other person that you have believed in Christ today.” I sped off after having fixed an appointment with him for the next day.

When I saw “Jesus” the next afternoon at a friend’s apartment, I hardly recognized him. He looked bright and keen, unlike the seedy villain of last night’s movie.

“Did you tell one person that you believed last night?” I asked eagerly.

“No, I didn’t,” he replied. Disappointment gonged in my heart. But he continued, “I told my whole gang. We stayed up until 6 in the morning looking at the verses you underlined in the Bible, and now they all want to believe, too.”

The prostitute kissed Jesus’ feet and poured perfume on them. The demon-possessed man who was healed sat dressed and in his right mind at Jesus’ feet. The woman who had been bleeding for 12 years touched His cloak, and when it was discovered that her bleeding had stopped, fell at His feet trembling.
¹
There are as many descriptions of encounters with Jesus as there are Christians, but no one who has not made that encounter for himself will ever understand the wonder. I wanted to jump, sing, dance and join in the celebration that was going on in heaven in front of the angels—big bold braying brass and spiced woodwind striving with millions of desks of strings in a wonderful symphony of praise …

However, I was still in Hong Kong and very much on Earth, and standing before me the clear-eyed Triad looked expectant. He had brought a
sai lo
, Sai Keung, with him, who had been there at the dawn discussion. Sai Keung did not want to discuss any more; he wanted to know how he could receive the power of Jesus like his
daih lo
, so he too received Jesus and the gift of His Spirit. I always told the boys that as they believed, Christ would give them the gift of a new tongue to help them pray, but I no longer expected it to happen automatically as in Winson’s case. These new believers accepted easily that if they were going to follow a powerful God it would be quite in character for Him to give them a new language to help them talk to Him. Every single one received this gift, so there was no confusion about some being more spiritual than others. To avoid problems, whenever possible I avoided laying hands on a young man myself but encouraged other Christian boys to do this so that they would know that the gift came from God Himself and that even young Christians could pray with others to receive.

Sai Keung looked radiant. He was a short, stocky individual who was not given to long speeches, but he warmly encouraged me to go back to Chaiwan the next night to talk with the others.

I went back the next night and many nights afterward. We met in the back of a photograph shop or in the concrete park, and the number of enquiries increased dramatically. We had Bible studies at noodle stores, prayer meetings in camera shops, and evangelistic meetings on tenement staircases. Some of the Chaiwan gang joined the Lung Kong Road home and others joined the Willanses’ meetings. The work was expanding beyond the borders of the Walled City to reach people in other areas.

As was my custom, I asked “Jesus” (now renamed “Christian”) to introduce me to his own big brother. I had the usual response.

“He won’t want to talk to you. He’s much too important. He controls many different areas besides Chaiwan and has hundreds of followers. If we want to speak to him, we don’t even know where to find him. Sometimes we don’t see him for weeks. He’s too busy. Forget it.”

I learned that this emperor among gang leaders was named Ah Kei. I agreed that I would not try to force a meeting with him, but Christian was under instructions to pray for him, and Jean and Rick also put in overtime on his behalf. We all had a feeling that Ah Kei was to be an important part of our ministry. I carried around sets of Bibles, ready for any emergency.

The time was 12:15
A.M.
, the location a Chaiwan street stall, the cast Miss Poon, Christian and the Chaiwan believers. The fluorescent lamps cast a hard pool of light against the blackness of the night. Ah Kei emerged from the shadows. He was in a belligerent mood.

“Poon Siu Jeh,” he challenged—although no one had introduced us—“if you can convert me, I’ll give you 1,000 disciples.” He enjoyed thus throwing down the gauntlet; indeed, it was almost as if we were preparing for a duel as he stood there in his black leather gloves, sneering.

“I can’t convert you, Ah Kei,” I replied. It was obvious whom I was talking to by the awed reaction of our seconds. “If you believe in Jesus, then that is your decision. And you cannot tell your
sai los
to believe in Jesus; they will have to decide this for themselves.”

We were in for a long night. Ah Kei had heard rumors of what had been happening in Chaiwan. If there was going to be a revival, he wanted to control it. Sitting down at our table, he ordered dishes and dishes of expensive food and drink. He scattered his largesse, conspicuously inviting all around him to eat. He would make sure that we all knew how many hundreds of dollars he spent—how generous he was. He ate nothing himself and cared little if I were hungry or not; this was an exhibition.

I showed him pictures of Ah Mo looking fat and healthy now that he was off drugs. Ah Kei knew him well, as they used to deal together. He became rather thoughtful, and after the meal he invited me to accompany him alone to a secret destination where he had something to show me.

We began to walk toward the shantytown area, whose vice Ah Kei controlled. He was carrying his mackintosh slung over one shoulder. Turning to me suddenly, he said, “Poon Siu Jeh, do you look down on drug addicts?”

I thought that a difficult question to answer without appearing condescending.

“No, I don’t, Ah Kei, because they are the people Jesus came into the world for.”

“Are you willing to be friends with one?” he asked, and both he and I knew to which one he was referring.

“Actually, the people in the Walled City criticize me because I am more willing to be friends with an addict than with someone who thinks his life is all right,” I replied.

By this time we had come to an unlighted path that led through the shanty shacks. We walked on in silence until Ah Kei stopped by the outside of a tin hut. The darkness outside gave no hint of the brilliant lighting inside, and when Ah Kei pushed through the blackout material curtain, I found myself
staring at dozens of surprised gamblers. The door watchers came up to us. Although this was one of Ah Kei’s own dens, they were obviously worried by the presence of a strange Western lady at three in the morning. Ah Kei held up his hand for silence; there was a hush.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “She doesn’t look down on us; she’s a Christian and has come to tell us about Jesus.” He then gave me the floor and invited me to preach.

Afterward, he took me into his opium den next door. Inside the den was a terrible spectacle—there were little gray and yellow old men lying on a low platform covered with grime and slime. There were half empty cups of green tea and large spittoons filled with sordid saliva and sediment. The men lay like giant stick insects, more limbs than body, and half of them were insensible. The “weatherman” sitting at the door looked very alarmed until Ah Kei spoke. He repeated what he had said before: “Don’t be afraid. She doesn’t look down upon us. She’s a Christian. She’s come to tell us about Jesus.”

All those who were actually conscious listened carefully to what I had to say, and when I left, I gave them a pile of my Chinese Bibles and translations of
The Cross and the Switchblade
.

To have spoken about Jesus in two of these dens was amazing in itself, but after this Ah Kei became a determined evangelist; he insisted that together we visit more of his empire of drug, vice and gambling dens. We traveled from Chaiwan to Shaukiwan and then visited Lyemun, Kwun Tong and Ngautaukok. In each place he introduced me as a Christian, and each time I was heard with respect. It was an amazing journey into vice. I scattered Chinese Bibles as I went.

In one of those dens, they brought me a man doubled up with pain. His face was contorted with suffering.

“Poon Siu Jeh, are you a doctor? Are you a nurse? Do you have any money? Can you take him to hospital? He is in agony.” They thought every Westerner was either rich or medically trained.

“No, I’m not a doctor or a nurse and I don’t have any money to take him to hospital—but I tell you what I can do. I’ll pray for
him,” I said. They sniggered at this, but they agreed to find us a little room at the back where it was quiet. Then they stood around waiting curiously to see what I was going to do.

“I’ll pray for him on one condition,” I announced. “No one is to laugh, because I’m going to talk to the living God.” Complete silence.

I laid my hands on the sick man and prayed for him in Jesus’ name. His stomach immediately relaxed and he got up, looking surprised. He had been completely healed. Everyone else looked a bit surprised, too; one of them asked, “Is this the living God—the One you’ve been telling us about?” They began to believe, because they saw through His works of power who Jesus was.