Chasing the Dragon (23 page)

When his uncle found out about his nephew’s addiction, he made Ah Fung live at home for two months under strict supervision. Ah Fung agreed to this voluntary imprisonment but insisted that they never bother him at night; he claimed that if he was woken, he could not get back to sleep again. Secure in the knowledge that he would not be disturbed, he made a dummy figure for his bed and every night would slip out of the house unnoticed. Having found his nightly fix, he would then slip back into the house.

It finally dawned on the family after two months that Ah Fung was still hooked, and they threw him out. Unhappily, he cheated his uncle and himself, because he really did want to get off drugs. He sought professional treatment; later, he made the sad claim that he had been in every drug treatment center in Hong Kong. He even went to Taiwan and Australia in an attempt to live and work, but he was still addicted.

When I met Ah Fung, he had been in prison six times, was spending HK $180 a day on heroin and seemed a hopeless case. He came to my Walled City room. “Miss Pullinger, what are the procedures required for entering the Society of Stephen?” he asked. It reminded me of the old woman looking for a burial spot. “Where do I have to register, how long do I have to wait, and how much does it cost?”

“Well, Ah Fung, it’s not quite like that,” I answered. “You see, we are not a drug treatment center. We are a group of Christians who are concerned that your whole life should change. If you simply want to get off drugs, I can recommend a center. They will keep you for a few months and then you can leave—and go back
to drugs if you like. But we don’t want you at all unless you are really serious about changing and are prepared to stay at least one year.”

Ah Fung nodded; he would agree to anything. Some of the boys sitting in the clubroom told him enthusiastically about Jesus Christ: His life, His death and His resurrection. Ah Fung nodded dumbly and agreed to pray with them.

The next day, we took him into Third House. He arrived tanked up, having smoked the entire “withdrawal” money that he had conned off his landlady, stating that we charged. On the second day he felt the twinges, which indicated he was beginning to go through withdrawal. He refused to pray and demanded to leave. His pains grew worse. He still refused to pray.

Jean and Rick were sitting down to dinner in their Kotewall Road flat when an urgent phone call came from one of the helpers who said that Ah Fung was still obstinate, shouting and struggling to escape. Rick went down to the boys’ house and spoke strongly to Ah Fung as a father. He told him that whatever happened he would not be allowed to leave for eight more days and that he was ashamed of his behavior.

The voice of authority calmed Ah Fung, and he prayed with Rick. When Rick laid hands on his head, he said that he felt a glow all over and that Ah Fung’s pains subsided. He and Rick prayed together in the Spirit until he fell asleep.

The next morning when he awoke, he felt the pains coming back and remembered what had happened the day before.
It might work again
, he thought to himself. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, he laid his hands upon his own head. Nothing happened. He decided to pray instead. And it was when he prayed that he was delivered.

So Ah Fung learned that it was not Rick but Jesus who had healing hands. He stayed not one year but two in our houses and became very helpful and responsible with the other boys. He was just one of the 75 boys we took in during the first 20 months. Each had his fascinating story, and all, without exception, came off heroin without pain and trauma.

The boys all knew the reality of a living Lord and the power of His Spirit; those who followed Him were evidence of an incredible transformation. Ah Fung himself quoted the Chinese proverb, “It is easier to alter the features of the country than to change one’s disposition.” He recognized a God who could move mountains.

12

ENTERTAINING ANGELS

T
hey might have been 20 years old; they might even have been 60. There was no way of telling. They had given up all pretence of trying to look pretty or attractive. Their heads hung down as they squatted or propped themselves up against the wall and waited for customers.

The prostitute who had bought Maria as a baby was preparing to retire. Now she either stood outside the blue film theater, urging the voyeurs to sample the juvenile delights promised upstairs, or sat by the cubicles where the young girls were contained and counted up the money.

Maria was 13, and when her stepmother wanted her to begin work in the Walled City brothels, she rebelled. It was not that she found sleeping with different men morally repugnant, but the idea of having to sleep with old men for a fee did not attract her. Having been raised in a brothel, she thought it merely a way of earning a living and was indifferent to its social disadvantages. She was a very attractive, perky child with beautifully clear olive skin and expressive eyes, which she soon learned to use to her advantage. However, she was looking for love and attention and enjoyed flirting with the boys she met at the Youth Club during its early days. So she ran away.

Maria became a ballroom girl at a ballroom in Kowloon, there being little alternative for a teenage Chinese girl on her own. A ballroom girl was a much higher class of prostitute; indeed, she did not think of herself as a prostitute but more as a hostess. Men paid for every dance they had with her; if a man chose to buy all her dances he could, and he would have to pay
a further fee to take her home for the night. Every ballroom girl had a protector, or “ponce,” who collected her earnings. Should the girl wish to change her man, a transfer fee of several thousand dollars had to be paid—either by the girl or by her new protector.

I did not know where Maria was; all I could find out was that she had run away from the Walled City. She could have gone to any of the hundreds of ballrooms or brothels throughout Hong Kong and Kowloon … the longer she was missing, the more I worried. Eventually, one Sunday afternoon after praying about her, I wandered off up the Jordan Road, asking God to lead me to where she was.
Walk straight on. Do not turn to the left or to the right
. It was the first occasion since I had been baptized in the Spirit that I had experienced another of the spiritual gifts: the word of knowledge.
¹
I did not hear a voice or see a white cloud, but I knew quite surely where God wanted me to go.

I walked ahead, crossed the main road and then understood just as clearly:
Stop here
. I was standing outside of a tall multi-apartment block that had many flats with windows boarded up, posing as “massage parlors,” “music halls” or “hotels.” At this point, completely denying the knowledge I had been given, I said, “Lord, this is a silly game. I’m not playing spiritual detective anymore,” and went home.

A few days later, I dreamed of Maria and saw clearly the room she was living in and the man she was living with. I woke up crying, for I did not know how to find her and tell her that I cared about her. The only way for me to discover her whereabouts was through the Triad network; because of their control of the vice rackets, they were usually able to locate missing girls within days.

I did not need to resort to black society methods, however, for a few months later Maria telephoned me herself. She said that she had been trying to contact me for ages too, but that she did not dare go back to the Walled City and did not know my new telephone number. She gave me directions on the phone, and I went to visit her. It was the same block outside of
which I had stopped on that Sunday afternoon months earlier. It was the same room I had dreamed of, except that around the walls and on the ceiling there were many mirrors.

After that, I visited Maria every Sunday afternoon; she told me how she loved her man and how she was in debt to her ballroom. Ballroom girls were issued with beautiful dresses and taught to dance, but the ballroom took the cost out of their future wages. Because of these debts, a ballroom girl could not leave her ballroom without paying quite a large sum. Maria was trapped. She felt that one way out of the trap was to become pregnant, so she became pregnant by her protector, but then had the baby aborted. She became pregnant a second time and went to live with her protector’s mother; after the baby was born, she got a job in a factory. But her protector’s family, friends and even her protector himself looked down on her because she had been a ballroom girl. Eventually, the lack of friendliness made her feel that it was not worth being a good girl and working hard in a factory, so she decided that she might as well go back to the ballroom.

Her baby girl stayed with the granny; she was called Jackyan, after me. I put savings into the bank for the baby’s schooling, but sadly Maria and her protector spent the money on themselves, as they had no ability to think of the future.

Maria found a new protector, but she still was not content and became more and more unhappy. Every night she danced and danced; to keep going she used pep pills, and when the dance hall closed, she could not sleep as she was far too revved up. She went off to the gambling dens with the other girls and the inevitable happened—she ran into debt and was forced to borrow money from a loan shark. Many loan sharks in Hong Kong charge 20 percent interest daily; soon she was hopelessly insolvent. The loan shark then demanded that she become a “snake”—his property as a prostitute for two years—while he kept all her earnings to pay off her debts.

Maria rang me up in a panic, and her voice was high with terror. To be forced to be a snake was for her the ultimate
humiliation; as a ballroom girl she was independent in a way, but now she was to be a prisoner to a ruthless man who would extract every penny she earned. She wanted me to produce HK $1,500 to save her from this fate, but I did not even have HK $15. My greatest concern, however, was whether she was sincere; she had prayed to receive Christ in the past but had not made any serious effort to follow Him. I had no intention of paying money to a girl who was not serious about changing her life, for she would just soon end up in the same mess again. But clearly I had to go and see her, and I decided to take Ah Ping with me; he had been in her world, and I needed his worldly discernment to know if she was exploiting me.

Together, we prayed about it. When I reviewed my material assets, I thought of the only thing I had in the world of any financial value: a very precious and favorite oboe. I had played it for years in the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and, like all oboists, regarded it as a personal friend—handpicked and almost irreplaceable. Knowing nothing of my secret riches, Ah Ping had an interpretation of a message in tongues. He said, “The Lord Jesus Christ gave up His most precious possession for you, even His very life. Why do you store up your treasures on Earth; you should rather store up treasure in heaven.”
²

If Jesus had given up His life, what was an oboe in comparison? What could I say?

“All right, Maria,” I told her. “I will pay the money on two conditions. The first is that you let me hand over the cash in person; the second is that you leave this kind of life. I’ll help you find a job, a room, anything you like—but if you remain here, you will soon be in trouble again.”

“They will never agree to deal with you,” argued Maria. “Michael is a very exacting money lender and very particular about his debts.” However, she had no choice, and so set up a meeting in a tearoom on Jordan Road for two nights later at half past midnight.

I sadly sold my oboe and filled a brown business envelope with fifteen HK $100 notes. I arrived at the restaurant and
chose a central table, where Maria and I drank coffee while we waited for Michael the sharp-toothed loan shark.

Squealing tires heralded the arrival of the collecting agents. Michael had not come himself but had sent four men, who slouched into the room Chicago-style while their engine growled outside. Barely glancing at us, they picked up the envelope and, after checking the contents in the manner of a gambler checking a deck of cards, walked out again without speaking.

I was very disappointed. They had played the scene too quickly. They were about to go through the door when I called out, “Hey, wait!” One of them looked back, raised his eyebrows, and said disdainfully, “What do you want?”

“I want to see Michael,” I replied.

“What do you want to see him about then, huh?” The spokesman sounded extremely condescending.

“I have got a very important message for him.”

“Well, you can give us the message.”

“No,” I replied. “I have to give this message to him in person.”

“What is it?”

“It is a very personal message; I must tell him myself. How can I find him?”

Slightly to my surprise, they gave me his telephone number; even more surprising, when I rang him up he agreed to see me. I was summoned to a skyscraper in a smart part of Kowloon; Michael’s nightclub was on the twenty-first floor. It was clearly very exclusive; the doorman let me in with a golden key at least three feet long after having vetted me through a spy hole. I was expected. Inside were thick carpets and soft lighting, and everywhere there were enormous teddy bears—on the bar, on the tables, around the walls. Each table had a telephone connected with the cubicles upstairs; the members sat with their drinks downstairs, and when they wanted a girl, they dialed her number. This, then, was the club that Maria would have had to work in had not the money been paid. I sat at one of the downstairs tables and waited … and waited.

Various minions were sent to offer me drinks; I was assiduously attended to. Eventually Michael himself deigned to grant me my interview. He was a real smoothie; he looked very pleasant and well groomed as he sat down opposite me. He spoke with glib eloquence about the terrible problems of living in Hong Kong and how without this loan business he could not afford to send his 11 brothers and sisters to school. As it was, he was able to support all his family, including his mother, on the proceeds. Indeed, he felt that he actually had a service to provide to the community; when parents lost their children, they often asked Michael to help, and for a fee he could usually find missing children within 48 hours. He knew all the clubs, bars and ballrooms and could trace them through his Triad contacts.