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My Asia Diary, Continued: I get invited to a Cantonese Church in Kowloon City While
I was waiting, three ladies came in, and one of them struck up a
conversation with me, asking if I (American) liked Chinese food.
Of course I did, and they invited me to join them. Two
of them spoke enough English for us to communicate with each other, so
we practiced our language skills on each other.
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Kwan, Yanica and Bobo: new friends in Hong Kong |
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We
had soup, some meatball-like dishes and mushrooms and noodles. The most "interesting" dish was what I eventually
found out was curry marinated pork intestines.
Let's just say they were sort of OK
;^0
The rest of the food was pretty good. I learned that they lived across the bay in Kowloon City, and were members of a church there, which was scheduled to have a Cantonese service at 8PM. I told them I would like to go with them. Food
market in Kowloon City, across the bay from Hong Kong We
got on a bus, went through a tunnel under the bay, and arrived in
Kowloon City, which is a blue collar version of Hong Kong island.
When I arrived, I discovered it was called "Grace
Church" which was part of the Evangelical Free Church denomination. I spent considerable time before the service talking with them about life in Kowloon City. They told me that a 1000 square foot apartment with 2 bedrooms, a sitting room, kitchen and bath costs $5000HK ($700US) per month and typically has 5-6 people living in it. Usually 3 or 4 of those people will be adults who earn $7000HK ($1000US) each per month. They tell me that in the last couple of years, immigration of Chinese people into Hong Kong, as well as manufacturing jobs being relocated to mainland China, has driven unemployment up and wages down. The trend now is to take the two bedroom 1000 square foot apartment and divide it up into four smaller apartments and rent them out to Chinese immigrant families of 3 or 4.
Hong
Kong is extremely crowded, and few people have cars.
So everywhere on the city streets are local shops selling basic
groceries etc. -- no
Wal Marts, because the property would be vastly too expensive and no one
could get to them. At
the service, I met their minister, who turns out studied at Trinity
seminary in Deerfield Illinois almost 30 years ago, and had been back
there for sabbatical about 3 years ago.
He'd actually been at my own church Willow Creek before, and
spoke excellent English.
Grace Church in Kowloon City, Hong Kong: Cantonese speaking service on Sunday evening with about 30 people At
the service, 30 people sang American hymns in Cantonese (!) and served
communion. The message was
in Cantonese, and I understood very little of it.
Once in awhile Elaine, sitting next to me, would tell me
something about what was being said. Afterwards,
a 2nd year finance student (Hong Kong Polytechnic U.) named Angus took
me to the bus stop and I went back to Hong Kong island.
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