I could not Help but unravel the spiritual mapping of Hong Kong and specifically ‘The walled City’ that Pullinger refers to in her book, Chasing the Dragon as I read the book, Modern History of Hong Kong by Tsang, Steve. All the challenges that were faced by the families living in the squalid conditions of the walled city and the spiritual darkness are clearly rooted in history of Hong Kong. The selfish pursuit of trade interests of the British empire, the defiant and condescending response of the Chinese empire towards the British, the imperialistic pursuits of other powers and the impartial application of the law are some of the key historical human disasters that were the clear causes of the mess in the walled city.<\/p>\n
The British had vested interests in their trade with the Chinese empire that constituted a significant source of the national revenue while the Chinese empire felt self sufficient and their attempt at banning opium use, was a threat to a key source of revenue to the British. This eventually led to the first Anglo-China war that led to takeover of Hong Kong by the British empire and later to the second Anglo-China war. The British main interest was to protect their trade with China as opposed to imperialistic pursuit in taking over Hong Kong and later the Kowloon area, which led to a chaotic impartial application of the English law over Hong Kong. There was discrimination in the application of justice against the local Chinese population and permissiveness of corruption and lawlessness by the local Chinese population. This state of affairs are the chaos that prevailed in the walled city where: there was no respect for the rule of law; truth was not valued; the local population were and felt destitute and thus resorted to crime and other anti-social activities out of desperation; the local Chinese population resented the British and other westerners; the local population resented Christianity and saw it as a religion for ‘others’ and not for the ‘destitute’ that they considered themselves; and the selfish pursuit of opium trade by the British and the lax application of law and order must have encouraged the prevalence of drug abuse of opium and eventually other drugs like cocaine.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong was made a free port to promote trade and informed the rapid growth of the city as a commercial and financial hub where both expatriates and local Chinese established themselves in business. There was immigration of the Chinese from mainland china who maintained their Chinese cultural identity and practices and emigration of the Chinese to the US and other places where gold was discovered. This state of affairs promoted human and sex trafficking that was still prevailing even as Jackie Pullinger came to the ‘Walled city’ for ministry.<\/p>\n
There was interest to save the Chinese through the Gospel by the British and the Germans but this was not pursued due to the selfish pursuit of their trade interest and their hesitation at imperialism in China and spread of Christianity. This was also informed by the intentional policies of the Chinese empire to protect their population from being influenced or changed by other cultures and especially Christianity. This informed the resentment of Christianity by the local Chinese population and low prevalence of morality in the ‘walled city’ in particular.<\/p>\n
Spiritual mapping to identify the main challenges that influence the spiritual conditions of an area are informed by the historical events and cultural influences. It becomes important to pay attention to the history of the area if you are to understand the spiritual condition which, is very helpful to a minister of the Gospel in laying strategies for reaching the community. Steve Tsang’s work in putting together the history of Hong Kong is a valuable tool for those with successful ministry in Hong Kong, and is a good guide to on how to understand any area in future to establish the spiritual mapping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I could not Help but unravel the spiritual mapping of Hong Kong and specifically ‘The walled City’ that Pullinger refers to in her book, Chasing the Dragon as I read the book, Modern History of Hong Kong by Tsang, Steve. All the challenges that were faced by the families living in the squalid conditions of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[1336,1297,1290],"class_list":["post-18798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography-drama-history","tag-dminlpg9","tag-modern-history-of-hong-kong","tag-steve-tsang","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18798"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18929,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798\/revisions\/18929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}