COMMENTARY: Hong Kong and Jesus’ Jericho

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) HONG KONG _ Map in hand, undeterred by the concierge’s careful comment that our choice is “famous,” a business colleague and I set out for the Luk Yu Tea House. […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

HONG KONG _ Map in hand, undeterred by the concierge’s careful comment that our choice is “famous,” a business colleague and I set out for the Luk Yu Tea House.


It will be a scene from the 1930s, says the guidebook, a golden age in someone’s eyes. A Hong Kong native tells me his history classes skipped the 20th century altogether. Why dwell on 99 years of alternating British and Japanese occupation?

Golden or not, that era is gone. Today, glass towers and narrow, skyscraping apartment buildings dominate the eight-square-mile island. Tucked down alleys are remnants of the shabby gray stucco buildings whose manufactories once undergirded the local economy. Those plants assembling clothing, toys and electronics have gone to mainland China now _ the one change since “handover” that anyone mentions.

Now, fashion glitz like Giorgio Armani shares turf with tiny shops selling Chinese health remedies (mushrooms, roots, herbs, fish) and rubber stamps. We pass by the cuisine of Nepal, India, Louisiana, France, Germany, and the corporate faux kitchens of McDonald’s and TCBY.

Building piles on building, and person on person. Every sidewalk is jammed. Even though it’s clear and reasonably cool, at ground level the air feels dense, as if compressed by the throng.

The second floor of Luk Yu, where non-regulars are dispatched, feels wonderfully calm. We expect “famous” to mean tourists, but we find mostly Chinese, reading the Sunday paper at tables piled with baskets of dim sum, small servings of savories such as pork-filled dumplings. It’s a long way from our takeout favorites back home.

We head to the harbor. On the way we pass several hundred small groups of women having picnics on sidewalks and closed-for-the-day streets. At first, it looks like college students camping out for basketball tickets. But these are some of Hong Kong’s 150,000 Filipino maids who have Sunday off and want to get away from their employers’ homes.

We take the Star Ferry to Kowloon, a peninsula that juts out from the New Territories, beyond which lies mainland China. We wander from one shopper-jammed street to another, until we weary of American and Japanese chains selling familiar stuff. Whatever they do at the United Nations and ad hoc summits, these are probably the forces for peace: a small planet where millions, now billions want to own digital cameras, drive BMWs and eat burgers.


The disparities between rich and poor are said to be greater in Hong Kong than anywhere. Unemployment is high, now that handwork has gone to China, but tech and finance jobs are mushrooming. In a city where a parking place recently sold for $500,000 and a 700-square-foot apartment costs even more, it isn’t surprising that a newspaper poll found widespread unhappiness, mostly due to personal finances. And yet the energy here is unmistakable.

Is any of this like Jericho on the day Jesus passed through? Terrain and atmosphere are different; so are buildings, smells and accents. But I picture Jericho as not unlike this Hong Kong scene: crowded, hot, with rich and poor living side by side, past and present, golden ages of every description _ so much commotion that a single beggar’s cry would seem impossible to hear.

In fact, on our way to the “world’s longest escalator” for the climb to Mosque Street and a classy hotel named for a Roman Catholic bishop, we pass by an old man sitting on a sidewalk. He holds out a battered metal tray. He seems to be singing. It’s too noisy to tell. No one notices him.

Outside Jericho, Jesus and his band came across a beggar who demanded to be heard. The disciples wanted to silence him. But Jesus heard his cry and stopped.

Whatever believers do in their safe towers of doctrine and ceremony, this is the gospel on display. Jesus heard the desperate, stopped and healed.

Prosperity will carry humanity a long way. In the end, however, the desperate will make themselves heard, one way or another. In the end, decent people will have to choose between Armani and compassion. In the end, faith will have to mean more than competing languages and smells.


DEA END EHRICH

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