Free Chasing the Dragon by Jackie Pullinger Page B

remarkable. Those I talked to about Christ believed. I could not understand it at first and wondered how my Chinese friends had so suddenly improved, or if I had stumbled on a splendid new evangelistic technique. But I was saying the same things as before.
    It was some time before I realized what had changed. This time, I was talking about Jesus to people who wanted to hear. I had let God have a hand in my prayers, and it produced a direct result. Instead of my deciding what I wanted to do for God and asking His blessing, I was asking Him to do His will through me as I prayed in the language He gave me.
    Now I found that person after person wanted to receive Jesus. I could not be proud—I could only wonder that God let me be a small part of His work. And so the emotion came. It never came while I prayed, but when I saw the results of these prayers, I was literally delighted.
    I began to get to know the Willanses better, and they became wonderful friends and counselors. The bonds of Christian conventions burst and I found, once more, the glorious freedom to live that we have in Christ Jesus. At my conversion, I had accepted that Jesus had died for me; now I began to see what miracles He was doing in the world today.

6
    THE TRIADS
    H
ai bin do ah?
Where do you come from?” The slight, sallow-faced youth stared terrified as four members of the famed 14K Triad advanced menacingly toward him. In gang parlance, they were asking him to which black society he belonged. He could not reply; he was trembling and his breath came in short gasps.
    “M’gong?
Not talking then?” Ah Ping, the spokesman, jeered at him and stepped closer until he was at kicking distance. There was no escape—the boy and his tormentors all knew what was coming. He was trapped down one of the Walled City alleys with the wall behind and the gangsters in front. They taunted him—teasing out his fear, advancing in ghastly slow motion. They were enjoying their captive’s terror, his cringing body.
    The first blow came with amazing speed and ground into the boy’s ribs. Chinese boxers are skilled, their movements supple. Their kung-fu training affects a litheness and economy of action that is precise and lethal. The victim fell to the ground as more blows rained on his stomach, his chest, his groin. He moaned, doubled up in agony, but still he did not speak. So they drove him along the street and kicked him while he crawled and then limped away. He would not be back. He had learned what happened when you walked down enemy territory unprotected.
    This made the Triads feel good. They were secure and superior in their own streets. They controlled what went on and who was allowed through their turf. Before long, I found that the room I had rented for the Youth Club was right in the middle of the 14K patch.
    I had just watched the sickening scene, but I did not yet know how inevitable this beating up was according to Triad tradition.
    “Why did you do that?” I demanded. “Why? What has that boy done to you?” I suddenly felt rather unwell.
    Ah Ping shrugged. “Probably nothing,” he conceded, but the corners of his mouth turned down disdainfully. “He could not identify himself or show his reason for being here, so we got to teach him a lesson. He perhaps from our enemies the
Ging Yu
, and we got to let them know who’s in power down here.”
    I was learning.
    H. W. E. Heath, one of the former police chiefs in Hong Kong, wrote in 1960, “Triad activities have been noted in the official law and police reports of Hong Kong for the past one hundred and sixteen years. For the past one hundred and thirteen years special ordinances and related legislation have been created in attempts to deal with the problem. The Triad Societies are still with us.”
    In its earliest phases, the Triad Society was a Chinese secret society whose members were bound by oath to overthrow the foreign conquerors of their country and restore the ancient ruling house of China, the