Chasing the Dragon (9 page)

It was highly decentralized, with each area gang leader looking after his particular patch. However, they could call on each other for help when needed; they all knew the main office bearers and referred to members of related gangs as “cousins.” Within a matter of minutes, a Triad could call out a dozen brothers, and within hours several hundred could be ready for a fight.

Whereas the non-Triads slipped in and out of the place, praying not to be stopped, those committed to the 14K or the
Ging Yu
walked abroad only in their own territory. I used to pick my way over all the streets and made a point of learning every exit until I was more familiar with the place than the gangsters themselves, who were necessarily limited to one half of the city.

The Triads that I knew were certainly criminals, but to some extent they followed the old maxim that there is honor among
thieves. In return for absolute obedience, the
daih lo
promised to look after his
sai lo
. If the little brother was imprisoned, the big brother made sure that inside prison he got food, drugs and protection. Not that all Triad members took drugs; drug taking was frowned on, because it lessened their usefulness. In fact, it was our shared concern for the addicts that would later place me at the same tea table as some of the Triad bosses.

It was no surprise to me when I learned that Christopher was about to be initiated into the 14K. How else could he walk on certain streets if he belonged to no gang? How else could he retaliate when wronged without a group of brothers to fight for him?

Christopher had been attending the Youth Club regularly, but he now carefully avoided me. Every time I tried to approach him, he disappeared into the maze. He had started to gamble and was hanging around well-known criminals. However, he had a conscience about this, and he did not want to let me see what he was doing. There came the day, though, when I trapped him. We met head-on when I was carrying my heavy piano accordion, which was large enough to prevent Christopher from passing me. We were in one of the tiny passages where retreat was impracticable; he was wedged in, and I asked him to carry the instrument for me to the repair shop.

As we walked, I talked to him in my pidgin Cantonese. I asked him, “Christopher, who do you think Jesus came into the world for?” He did not reply.

“Was it for rich or poor people?” I continued.

“That’s easy—I know that one. He came for poor people.” His schoolteachers would have been happy.

“But does He love good people or bad people?” I probed.

“Jesus loves good people, Miss Poon.” It was a dismal catechism; he was hating this walk, this talk.

“You’re wrong.” Luckily, as he was carrying the accordion, I could wave my arms about. It helped to fill in the gaps in my vocabulary. “Do you know, if Jesus were alive today, He’d be here in the Walled City sitting on the orange boxes, talking to the pimps and prostitutes down there in the mud.” You are not
supposed to tell Chinese people that they are wrong because they will lose face, but I was longing for Christopher to understand. This was no time to be playing conventions. “That’s where He spent a lot of His time. In the streets with well-known criminals—not waiting in a neat, clean church for the nice guys to turn up.”

“Why did He do that?” Christopher asked incredulously. It sounded as if he really wanted to know.

“Because,” I said slowly, “that is why He came—not to save the good people, but to save the bad ones—the lost ones—those who have done wrong.”
¹

Christopher stopped suddenly. He was clearly overwhelmed by what he had heard. By this time, we had walked out of the Walled City, passing the street market where people were hawking everything from plastic slippers to pressed duck. He said he wanted to hear some more, so we left the accordion in the repair shop nearby and found a public bench by the traffic roundabout. I told him the story of Naaman, the army commander afflicted with leprosy,
²
and finished up by saying, “It’s so simple—all you have to do is come to Jesus to be washed clean.” I turned to Christopher to see if he understood.

The traffic was roaring past us; people were yelling as they always do in Hong Kong. Another plane came in to land, flying a few feet over our heads as it skimmed the flyover and thundered onto the runway. Christopher heard nothing; he had his eyes shut and he seemed to be talking quietly. He was not talking to me; he was admitting to Jesus how he had failed in his life and was asking Him to make him clean. Sitting by the dusty, noisy roadside, he became a Christian.

There were many problems in store for Christopher. The next Saturday, he came back to the Youth Club. Bravely, he stood up in front of the others and said that the week before he had not believed in Jesus; now he knew Him. The announcement was greeted at first with silence—it was so extraordinary a thing to say. Then came the jeers and taunts. Boys from bad homes did not become Christians; that was for good, educated,
middle-class students. He was joking; he was mad.

Christopher was not. He now refused to carry on with his Triad initiation. He already had the book of poems, laws and ceremonial dialogue to be learned before he could be accepted. He sent it back. To make such a stand was both very firm and very courageous; such a thing had never happened before among those people. His decision was a breakthrough for me, too; now I knew that it was not true about there being a “cloud of unbelief” over Hong Kong. Jesus was alive in Hong Kong just as much as in England, and those who looked for Him could find Him.

The change in Christopher was remarkable. He worked so well at his factory that he was promoted to the rank of supervisor. Instead of gambling sessions with the Triads, he now spent his time at the Youth Club, and on Sundays he came to the evening service in the little Oiwah church.

As I continued praying in the Spirit in private, the results became apparent when more boys like Christopher made decisions to become Christians; we met together for Bible study and prayer anywhere we could—in the Youth Club room, in teahouses, in the streets or in my home. One day when we were praying, one of them had a message in tongues. We waited, and then Christopher began to sing the interpretation.
³
Astonishingly, this beautiful song came in English, which he hardly spoke. This is what he sang:

Oh God, who saves me in the darkness,

Give me strength and the power

So I can walk in the Holy Spirit

Fight against the devil with the Bible

Talk to the sinners in the world

Make them belong to Christ.

Another boy, Bobby, had the same interpretation, but in Chinese. He did not understand Christopher’s English song, and so he did not know that what he spoke was a confirmation of God’s message.

Although the Christian group was growing, not all of the Walled City boys were so clear about why I was there. Many of them came to the Youth Club for what they could get out of it. When we went on Saturday picnics or camps, I did not make them pay. I paid for the coach, rubber boats, football boots, roller skates, and even for the picnics. They were not grateful; they considered themselves underprivileged people and, imagining that I had a wealthy organization behind me, they wanted to squeeze me for anything that was going. They regarded this as their right and were demanding and aggressive. Such was true of Ah Ping.

During the months and years, I got to know Ah Ping very well. He came to the Youth Club a lot. He was often with us on walks and expeditions. I learned that he had been initiated into the Triads when he was only 12, four years before, and that he already had a great reputation as a fighter who had started to collect followers (
sai lo
) of his own.

One night when he was hanging around in the street outside, I came to the Youth Club room feeling very depressed and needing a kind word. He sensed that I was feeling a bit down and said, “You’d better go—you’d better leave this place, Poon Siu Jeh. You’d better go, because it’s no good you working here. You should find a nice group of nice students to work with; you find some well-behaved school kids to preach to; they’ll make nice Christians. We’re no good—we never do what you want us to do.” I listened without replying.

“Don’t know why you stay here—you find us school places, and we don’t go to school. You find us houses, and we muck them up. You find us jobs, and we lose them; we won’t ever change. All we do is take—we take you for every penny you’ve got, and we kick you around. So why do you stick at it? What’s the point?”

“Well, I stick around because that’s what Jesus did for me,” I replied. “I didn’t want Jesus, but He didn’t wait until I wanted Him. He didn’t wait until I had promised to reform. He didn’t wait until I got good. He died for me anyway. He died for me
when I hated Him, and He never even told me off on the cross; He just said He loved me and forgave me.
⁴
This is the Jesus that came into the world and made dead people rise; this is the Jesus who came into the world and did miracles.
⁵
This is the Jesus who only ever did good, and He died for me. They said He was the Son of God, and He loves you, too, in the same way.”

Ah Ping did not answer at first; then he said, “It couldn’t be—nobody would love us like that. I mean, we …” his voice faltered, and then he continued, “I mean we have to rape and we fight, and we steal, and we stab. Nobody could love us like this.”

“Well, Jesus did. He doesn’t love the things you’ve done, but He loves you. Really, it doesn’t make sense; but all the wrong things that you’ve done He said were His. When He died on the cross, Jesus pleaded guilty to your crimes.
⁶
That’s really unfair, isn’t it? He said that your stealing and your stabbing were His; if you give Him all the bad things you’ve done, He’ll give you His new life, His righteousness.
⁷
It’s sort of like giving Him your dirty clothes and getting back His clean ones.”

Ah Ping was shattered. He could hardly believe that there was a God like that. He sat down there on the stone steps to the street and told Jesus that although he could not understand why He loved him, he was grateful. He asked Jesus to forgive him and change him.

Ah Ping was the first gangster from the fully initiated Triads to join the Christians. When he was only 14, a young bargirl had offered to “support” him in return for his protection. He had even sought my advice over it. Now his lifestyle changed dramatically. Each night, he brought his brothers to the clubroom and asked me to tell them about Jesus. More and more known crooks turned up to shake me by the hand or thump my arm muscle. The few remaining straight types, the students, left the club because they felt discriminated against. It must have been the only Christian club in Hong Kong where the good guys felt less welcome than the bad ones. However, I felt that there were dozens of places all over Hong Kong where the nice boys were catered to, so I let them go. It was not for some years that we
were able to bring these two groups together and break down the wall of separation between them.

Some of my friends in Hong Kong met Ah Ping and invited him to tell his story in church. “Be careful,” I warned him as we came out of the clubroom at midnight into the black street. “Satan doesn’t like people talking about Jesus, so he’ll probably have a go at you before Saturday. Go straight home tonight and don’t stop along the way.”

“All right, all right, Miss Poon,” he said, nodding sweetly. But as soon as I had gone, he exploded.
Tchs. The Devil. Ha. What rubbish! I know these streets like the back of my hand. What, me worry?
And he wandered around instead of going home.

As if from nowhere, seven men jumped out of a black alley and attacked him. They were Chiu Chow gangsters, big for Chinese, and wild fighters. There was no reason for their attack, but that did not stop it from coming. Later Ah Ping told me, “As they came at me, I had two thoughts. First of all,
Huh, it’s all Miss Poon’s fault
; and then,
You’re supposed to pray.”
So he prayed as the wooden bats beat him unconscious into the ground.

“Didn’t do you much good praying, did it?” scoffed one of the club members when he heard the story.

“Yes, it did,” retorted Ah Ping. “I’ll tell you why. As soon as I began to pray, my father came down the street, and when the Chiu Chows saw him, they ran away. Otherwise, I would have been killed.”

As it was, Ah Ping was left on the ground with a gash in his back and a hole in his throat. His father summoned help from his gang brothers from the 14K. They found him and took him to a doctor who gave his professional opinion that Ah Ping’s injuries were so bad that he would not be able to walk or speak for at least two weeks.

Ah Ping’s brothers determined to seek revenge on his behalf. They held a council in their gang pad and discussed tactics. “Okay, the Chiu Chows made it seven to one. We will take 50 to attack them. That’s reasonable.” Then they took long knives and choppers from their secret arms cache and told Ah Ping,
“Look, we know where one of these Chiu Chows lives. We are going to take him and his family members out of their house one by one and stab them. Right?”

Ah Ping indicated, through his injured throat, “No, I’m a Christian now and I don’t want you to fight back.” Then he gathered one or two Club members who were believers, found my room and asked them to pray with him.

All night they prayed for the gang who had attacked him. Ah Ping once told me that Triads were so touchy that they would threaten and even kill over trifles; once he had seen a boy wearing the same shirt as he was, so he fought him. He had come a long way since those days; as well as praying for his enemies, he also asked the other boys to lay their hands on him and pray for healing.

The next morning he was completely healed, and he could talk clearly. In fact, he spoke in church just two days later. He spoke of the change in his heart, how he had given up stealing, and how he had been healed. He also mentioned that he would no longer take the devil lightly. Now he
knew
that the devil was around.