Chasing the Dragon (31 page)

He went off home and left me to walk down the streets alone. Past the prostitutes, past the blue films, the gambling dens and drugs. Past Ah Keung’s house, where I had sat with him on the night his father died, watching the body and listening to the howls of the dogs as they were beaten to tender flesh for the cook pots. Past the spot where one year previously I had witnessed the beginning of a vicious fight between two knife-wielding strangers.

“Stop. Don’t fight,” I had said, feeling sick. Two minutes later an emissary was sent along the street to calm me down.

“We are sorry, Miss Poon,” he soothed. “It won’t happen again. We did not know you were here.”

I walked out of the city and looked at the rubble where the Lung Kong Road house had stood and thought of Goko, who now lived in the opposite building. His wife had gone missing a few months earlier after gambling away a large amount of his money in one of his dens: She was too frightened to return, knowing that he would beat her. She stole the four-year-old son of his former mistress and hid out in an apartment house. When she phoned him, she said that she would return his son if he promised pardon. Goko was uncompromising. He promised no such thing and set his Triads to work tracing apartment houses, which would not take long through the Triad affiliations. His wife did not wait to be found, however; terrified of her husband, she drank poison and then forced the little boy to drink too, killing them both.

I made a point of seeing Goko about once a year, and when we next met for tea, I offered him my sympathy. He had lost weight. He sneered at the mention of his wife, but I guessed the hurt at the loss of his son. I saw the fear of being alone too, and because I wanted so much to reach him I told him I knew of his
fear. He was surprised but he also longed to confide in someone.

“How do you know? I’ve never before told anyone I am afraid,” he admitted. “I feel so lonely.”

A double funeral and a luxury burial had been held, as part of keeping face before his Triad brothers. Goko told me he never confessed his emotions to another soul.

Goko and Sai Di voiced similar attitudes about Christ, although their Canadian brother believed openly. “I’m not saying I don’t believe in Jesus—I’ve watched those who do. But I’ve also watched you Christians and noticed that most of you have jobs with poor pay. I cheat, lie and steal in order to provide for all my dependants, and I know Christians don’t do these things. So I’m not going to be one because I’d want to be a real one. I understand that Jesus can provide for me but I need to be sure He can support my followers.”

I have always respected the brothers’ position and have prayed for them to see God as big enough to care for all their needs. Certainly neither would ever make a commitment lightly. More than once in conversation with Goko, I have heard him say, “Okay, if that brother wants to be a Christian, okay. But let him follow Jesus good. I don’t want him gone tomorrow and back the next day. If he is to be a Christian, let him be a good one.”

I left Goko’s house behind me and headed back toward the Houses of Stephen, where those of the boys who continued to walk in the Spirit became fine and trustworthy men. Those who had known Christ but who left prematurely to follow their own desires got into trouble. One Chaiwan addict summed it all up when he applied to enter one of our houses: “I have heard that Jesus does the same miracle for each boy who comes to your place. But whether or not you choose to continue is up to you.”

16

OLD MEN’S DREAMS
¹

I
t is the year 2000, and down in South Wall Road sit two old men—I never knew their names, but they call loudly, “Poon Siu Jeh, Poon Siu Jeh,” so I stop and they lead me into nostalgia.

Quite clearly they have been inhaling beer for some time, for as I draw close to the noodle shop they huff fumes all over me and my friend. Now I recognize them, although it has been a dozen years since we often nodded to each other in the Walled City. The one with red rheumy eyes is very excited.

“Beer? Noodles? Anything. I invite you.”

I must accept something or there will be a street riot. He is waving his arms around and shouting. The traffic has stopped, and even though I do not feel like a foreigner after more than three decades in Hong Kong, the sight of one talking to a crazed local in a stained singlet draws the inevitable crowd.

“Thank you so much—I’ve just eaten. Just a drink,” and I sit down in the street with them although my host is still wildly gesticulating.

“We all want to thank you, Poon Siu Jeh. Do you know, do you know,” he turns to my companion, Margaret, “what happened in Walled City?”

Before he can continue I fill her in a bit. This old man was a guard, a “tin man
toi
” in the days when the city was in its heyday, when illegal gambling, prostitution, drug dens and blue films made it a haven and a magnet for criminals and gangs. Now the Walled City’s walls have come down, and the city itself, too. Now he has to sit outside and look at the beautiful new park with memories of wonderful old squalor. Now he is
unemployable. Today drug pushers use mobile telephones and hide in proper apartments. His day is gone; he has neither. But he remembers. And with maudlin passion, he enthuses some of our story to Margaret.

“She cared about us, and miracles happened. People who could not change were changed. It was that Jesus.”

I am surprised by him. I cannot recall ever talking to him about Jesus. He used to sit in the
congee
shop, where the poor old men ate the cheapest food. It was where the unsuccessful lawbreakers hung out and for a dollar or so could spin out hours in the familiarity of the Dark City.

“All these people, Goko, Johnny, Geui Jai, Winson, many, many, all changed by Jesus. You know maybe one day I will believe, too. That has to be the true God. Can I find you?”

As he speaks he wipes his eyes, which are leaking yellow, and the other old man gulps and joins in too. Then our potential evangelist includes the noodle seller in his oratory, and suddenly the whole street is challenged to believe in a God that he has seen change a city, a gang boss and many hearts.

“Excuse me,” I am leaking tears, too. “But could I introduce Him to you now?”

It is a struggle between the alcohol and the Spirit.

“Could I reserve that hope?” he finally compromises.

It was unfair, most moving and totally embarrassing. I had never done anything for this ex-guard. I had never spoken to him, helped him personally or been involved with his life. His toenails were still black, yet there was a fuzzy hope in his heart that he somehow attributed to me and Jesus. That was the awful wonder. Long after the walls crumbled, the desire for glory still smoldered in his heart.
²
I tried to tell Margaret that it was over the top, an intoxicated exaggeration of my importance in his life, but it was still there.

So we were present at one of those times in history when the past blares, intruding the present, and I am in them both. I often tell visiting mission teams of this unjust phenomenon. It is fashionable nowadays to visit Asia, China and the poor for
a few days, weeks or months and call it outreach.

Over the years we have had hundreds of short-termers who want to get the picture immediately—if possible, on video—so they can show it to their home church and have an inspired evening. I have begged them to love the people and stay, just like Sai Di did of me 30 years ago. The disadvantage of short-term missions is a wrong perspective based on this generation’s need for instant results.

Many have stayed with us and lived in our new houses, now called St. Stephen’s, which currently house over 300 men, women, teenagers and children all over Hong Kong. Sometimes everything goes well and there are real conversions, healings and glorious glimpses of changed lives. The visitors leave and wonder why it does not work at home. They wonder why everything seems so easy in Hong Kong. At other times nothing goes right, even here. The man who prophesied last night beats up a helper the next morning, or the whole house runs away. Then the visitors leave disillusioned.

“It is nothing like she wrote in her book. We had a hard time.”

The remarkable fact that after so long we still see most addicts who come to us believe in Jesus, pray in tongues and detoxify from drugs painlessly does not obscure the fact that they need a changed mind. So the voyeurs leave. They have their video clips, but they never saw. It was either all too good or all too bad, and neither was accurate. We love our people whether they turn out well or not, and the successes do not vindicate our ministry nor do the disappointments nullify it. What is important is whether we have loved in a real way—not preached in an impassioned way from a pulpit.
³

And then there is time. If God meant a child to grow slowly and safely in a loving family for up to 18 years, why should we be angry at those who do not change at our pace for the sake of our statistics, furlough or, sadly for some, funding? All the unreasonable benefits came for me after nearly 20 years. People
I had spent time with so long before never forgot, even though we lost each other for a while. Suddenly, someone from the past would appear again, and it would turn out that he had not killed the memory of a love that was so extraordinary that the giver spent Himself in giving until He died. So we have been the delighted, sobbing representatives of the Father whose prodigal son crawled or rushed home after all.

Our summer missionaries did not stay to see this, although we hoped they might yearn for it somehow. Stay for the party. The fleeting volunteer sometimes catches a course—sweet and sour—but no one savors the whole menu like me.

“Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink,” said the master of the banquet when He called the bridegroom aside, “but you have saved the best till now.”
⁴

Grandpa Chau Bat used to live in the same South Wall Road. He had a cubicle, a “cage,” which was one tier of a three-level bunk bed enclosed by wire netting so that he could keep himself and all his belongings in and intruders out. The wooden shelf was heaped with his life, such as it was, and there was just enough room for him to lie down. He was the “actor” I had noticed in court years earlier. And he had a bad cough. He had fallen on bad times since the opium dens became too smelly to deter detection dogs and detection men. Even the Walled City had been affected by the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) in the 1970s, and Chau Bat’s role as the actor who was tokenly arrested in the many reported raids became obsolete. He had to switch to heroin, less detectable but more expensive, and he constantly hawked phlegm. I often passed his street and, seeing him wheezing, offered to pray for him.

“No need. I am an idol worshiper,” he politely responded, but I persisted and blessed him anyway.

Some time later, I was walking down a neighboring street on the outskirts of the Walled City and they told me he was looking
for me. I hurried to his patch, where he looked annoyed. “I was waiting for you. I have been waiting for days.”

Then he pointed to his leg, obviously poisoned with escaping pus.

“Why didn’t you see a doctor? This is serious,” I asked.

“I was waiting for you.”

He admonished me as if I should have known. So I hurried him to a doctor I knew for advice. We learned that the infection needed hospitalization and prepared for the journey. Again, it was an old Walled City brother I invited to ride with us in a taxi to the Haven of Hope hospital. As we traveled, I preached as usual.

“When you feel withdrawal pains from the heroin, just call on Jesus. He will help.”

“
Yau moe gau chor
. You must be joking.”

He became churlish and tetchy. He was in pain.

“No, it is true,” said my brother. “Lots of people like me have tried, and we got off drugs without pain.”

It did not appear that the testimony had penetrated the distressed old man, and we said no more except, “Just remember.” Some days later, I visited the hospital and saw a radiant figure with a healed leg.

“What about the heroin? Did they give you medication?”

“No, I am fine. I did what you said. I called on Jesus and it all went away. I am fine. No pain.”

He was off drugs. So then, what to do? He had no family in Hong Kong, as they were in Mainland China. He had no future in the Walled City or South Wall Road. I invited him to live with us. By this time we were all over the place. The former Houses of Stephen had merely rehabilitated the hopeless for a while but gave no permanence for the future. Helpful Hong Kong government individuals had offered a variety of old locations, which were unusable for their purposes at that time but where we could continue to grow up our old men and prepare them to help others or give them time for re-entering society.

Hang Fook Camp was a worn-out tin-hut area meant as temporary lodging for those waiting for government-subsidized accommodation. There were 12 long huts comprising of 10 or so units, each already past their use-by date. We loved them and enthusiastically repaired the multiple rooms. Tiny spaces had formerly contained whole families, but we now housed several men in each. We made a couple of huts into a huge sanctuary by stripping the sides and erecting a plastic roof courtesy of the British Army. It was like a tent with open boundaries, so as many as several thousand would come to worship and gawk, too.

Grandpa Chau Bat became as famous as Hang Fook Camp. He got new teeth and clacked about most possessively. He called me “my daughter,” and we adopted each other. Now I had a Chinese mother and father.

“Here is my offering.”

He handed me most of his government old-age allowance. Times had changed, and now he had our help as well as local assistance. With the rest of his monthly sum, he bought buns and bananas for me and my secretary. We passed them on secretly to those who liked buns and bananas.

“I need to see my daughter in China.”

His leg had been healed in the hospital and his heart’s desire for love and acceptance had been met by Jesus and us. He had been healed by Jesus in many ways. We helped him apply for his daughter, who he had not seen in decades, to stay with us for a month in Hang Fook Camp. She came and saw her father—the craggy-faced, occasionally toothless, geriatric patrician—and she also saw his Lord. And then she became our heart responsibility, too. And her family. And her village in China. Equally poor. Hundreds of them. I had dreamed of the hundreds and yet could hardly cope with the few.