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 _ On a Sunday morning exploration, I happen upon a rare day when the former Government House is open to the public.

The British started building this mansion in 1851, nine years after they took control of Hong Kong. Surrounded by gardens and servants’ quarters, plus the grass tennis courts of a more languorous era, Government House once sat on a hillside overlooking a quiet harbor village and presiding over a British society that traded below and lived above.

Hong Kong’s first public transportation was a tram to help British burghers ascend the steep heights quickly.

Today this village has 6 million people, far larger buildings march up the hillside, society’s tram to Victoria’s Peak is a public amusement complete with wax museum, and the British are gone, leaving behind this house, which is identified on maps in parentheses, as formerly having had an English name.

The red flag of China flies over the former Government House now. Stern Chinese policemen direct traffic. The reception hall features photos, some from 1945, when Japan signed its formal surrender here, but mostly from 1998, when world leaders paid homage to Hong Kong’s new status as a Special Administrative Region of mainland China and potential gateway to its vast marketplace.

Who is “first of all” is a question of constant worry here. In a painstakingly negotiated Basic Law, China pledged to honor Hong Kong’s unique status as a democratic and capitalist enclave, with its own currency, highly Westernized lifestyle, and bustling energy in finance and trade.

Promises aside, people here watch every twitch in Beijing for signs of their actual status. China’s president made a casual comment last week that he supported a particular candidate for Hong Kong executive. But when Hong Kong reporters asked him if this was China’s “imperial order,” he went into a tirade against the impertinent press. Even though Hong Kong commentators said China’s ruler has a lot to learn about free press reporters, the effect here was chilling.

It’s a two-part worry. One part is freedom, and whether China will indeed honor political and religious freedom. While I was meandering through a British relic, Hong Kong’s Roman Catholic bishop was openly defying Chinese demands he cancel, or at least tone down, a celebration of 120 recently canonized Chinese martyrs.

The other worry concerns greatness. As China explodes with its own free- enterprise energy, as Shanghai bursts past Hong Kong and Singapore in commercial zeal, as China negotiates its own deals with the West, such as a $4 billion petrochemical plant for Royal Dutch Shell, as light manufacturing moves to the mainland, and as China considers trade-enhancing steps such as joining the World Trade Organization, Hong Kong could find itself a backwater.

Who, then, would buy $3 million apartments in unexceptional buildings? Who would store trophy cars in $500,000 parking places? Would the 30-year-old gunslingers stay on an 8-square-mile island or follow the action to Shanghai and Beijing? What would happen to a city that has obliterated its past in order to plant tall towers?

Long ago, in a time of comparable ferment, nervous power-holders asked Jesus questions about power. Legalists phrased their questions in the language of law, the religious establishment in the language of doctrine. Their concerns, however, weren’t law or doctrine, but power, the same worldly power that underlies nervous glances to Hong Kong’s impossibly large landlord next door.

Like Hong Kong capitalists doing business beneath a red flag with yellow stars, they had found ways to profit in another’s empire. But could it last? Did Jesus threaten their special arrangements? Would their preferred seating be lost?

Jesus responded that true power belongs to God, the proper approach to worldly treasure is to give it away, and that true greatness belongs to the servant, not to the master, and to the one who helps the downtrodden, not the one who treads harder.

Worldly power comes and goes. Governors build mansions, matrons demand a tram, religious establishments baptize their biases, politicians parade religious convictions, and everyone hopes their edge will last.

It’s all delusion. Who gets to occupy the big house on the hill isn’t the ultimate question.

DEA END EHRICH