Vignettes of the World
In the mall at Abu Dhabi, I saw a lady completely covered in black, from head to toe. She was very tall. Her towering figure allowed no exposure of her features except for her height. That was the most conservative expression of Islam that I …
“I have never seen a place with such little soul.” This was a comment of a friend who visited Dubai last year. It was a provocative statement. When I heard it, I took a step back and probed my memory of Dubai. Was it a …
It came time to say goodbye finally. The tour group boarded the plane to fly back to Dubai. Yang, a fellow tour member, invited me to her home in Abu Dhabi. We arrived late night after an hour and a half of driving from Dubai. Her house was enormous. She had three daughters and the daughters’ room itself was larger than an average flat in Hong Kong.
Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the UAE. Being Chinese, we drew comparisons with the Chinese cities. Abu Dhabi is like Beijing, which is the political center of the country. Dubai is more like Shanghai, which is more commercially-oriented. The rivalry between these cities are similar as well.
The next day, we went to the Palace Hotel. As a six-star hotel, it stood lavishly with glistening gold under the sun. We sat down at the café and sipped coffee sprinkled with real gold flakes. That would be the most luxurious coffee I have ever had in my life. A group of black women sang a chorus outside the hotel. They looked like an American sorority to me.
The skyline of Abu Dhabi, like that of Dubai, stood proudly as architectural innovations. The most outstanding building was the Great Mosque of Seikh Zayed. It is the heart of religious worship within the UAE. It was really too bad that I went on a Friday and did not get to visit the Great Mosque because it was closed to tourists during the prayer day.
The afternoon was a markedly different experience from a view of the Great Mosque. We headed to the Ferrari Theme Park for the fastest roller coaster in the world. At 220 km/h, this ride was so thrilling that I was too overwhelmed to even scream before it all ended within two minutes. I then realized that perhaps I was a bit too old for this type of excitement.
At the evening we had a great dinner together at the mall. The mall at the Ferrari Theme Park easily emulates any significant mall in the United States. Stores like Victoria’s Secret and Starbucks stood proudly as the testament to UAE’s effort to welcome western and local consumers alike.
It was perhaps the competitive spirit of the Middle Easterners that drove what looked to me a contradiction, the way that western culture was rejected and yet embraced at the same time. The mall was so glamorous I thought it was grander than the Bloomingdale’s in Los Angeles.
Perhaps photographs would better convey the Dead Sea and its wonders. The tour finally made it out of Israel (there were some glitches at the border), and arrived at the Dead Sea’s Jordanian shore. Some of the tour members changed into swimsuits and bathed on …
Literally meaning “the dragon leaps over the mountain,” Lung Yeuk Tau spans a large area in Fanling in the Northern District. It was the second heritage trail in the New Territories that the Antiquities and Monuments Office proposed and promoted. The 2.6km walk takes visitors …
What is known in the West as the Wailing Wall is known to the Jewish people as the Western Wall. It is the famous remains of the Second Temple. Built during King Herod’s time, the remains was part of the wall intended to serve as the supporting structure for an extended temple compound for the Jewish people. Although the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 A.D. during the invasion of Jerusalem, the Western Wall stood, to this very day. Jesus Christ has prophesied the destruction of the Second Temple (Matthew 24:2).
Being connected to the Temple Mount, the Western Wall is a holy site where Jewish people come to pray.[1] The Westerners like to refer to the “Wailing Wall” because as the Jewish people pray here, many wail. The Jewish people may be weeping for the history of oppression and the many invasions of Jerusalem that they experienced.[2] They may be weeping specifically about the destruction of their holy temple and the timing of the Third Temple yet-to-materialize. For centuries, the Jewish people come to Jerusalem, and they shed countless tears at the Western Wall.
As soon as we arrived, we split into the men’s group and the ladies’ group. Indeed, I saw many praying in tears with the Talmud in their hands. I figured that I would not be able to share the same sentiment with which the Jewish people felt about the wall. Yet it was with the same yearning for God’s holy presence that I touched the wall (1 Kings 8:41-43). In my little prayer slip, I wrote, “may I be of God’s use in this world.”
What a wonderful experience it was to visit the Western Wall as the conclusion to our tour in Jerusalem. At lunch we savored many delicious roast meat with naan bread at an Arabic restaurant. Bethlehem was in view.
Bethlehem is in Palestine, and only when we checked our phones upon arrival did we realize that we were in Palestinian territory. There were other clues, such as the proud displays of Yasser Arafat at many spots. The last stop of our tour in Palestine was actually the birth place of Jesus Christ, who began his life on earth here in Bethlehem.
Despite the initial excitement, I was a bit disappointed in Bethlehem. The line was very long, perhaps not so surprisingly. Again, the church was overly ornate. People worshipped kneeling down and kissing what was supposed to be the staple where Jesus was born. I felt as if it was superstition that I was witnessing.
Back in the town of Bethlehem our tour guide hurried us to finish the souvenir shopping. He said that parking was prohibitively expensive at Bethlehem. The coach would have to pay $60 USD for an hour of parking there.
We exited Palestinian territory and I had in my mind the beauty of Jerusalem, lingering as I cherished the sights and sounds there. I wondered to myself: would New Jerusalem (Revelation 3:12; 21:2) really be that much better than what we see on earth here? Isn’t Jerusalem as it is now already heavens on earth?
Soon enough, we passed by the wall. This is the 708km-long wall that Israel built in 2000 within the occupied Palestinian territory along the Green Line in West Bank.[3] This act of Israel has caused incredible animosity from Palestine. While the Israeli government claimed that it built the wall to counter terrorist threats, the Palestinians viewed it as a wall of segregation. The controversy has risen to the attention of the international community. In 2004, in what was known as the “wall case,” the International Court of Justice determined that Israel has acted contrary to principles of international law when it constructed this wall.[4]
The wall was made of tall, gray metal planks. Graffiti lined the wall as far as we could see. There was an image of an Arabic woman, wearing a headscarf and carrying a gun. This powerful imagery of the tension brought to mind the reality of Israel today. It was not heavens on earth, despite all those creamy glimmer I saw in Jerusalem. The tension that I felt when I saw armed police marching in Old City came to mind vividly, reminding me that peace is not to be had here, nor there, anytime soon.
The people of Palestine, including the Jewish people, are living this complex reality day by day. Although signs of prosperity, the promise of milk and honey, are seen everywhere, the century-old strife between the Jewish people and their Arab neighbors also casts a shadow over their futures. As much as this was a pilgrimage for me, there was no missing of the discomforting political reality that was also religious and historical in nature. Did Jesus not also confront the same complex reality of Palestine? With this insight, I concluded that there was, indeed, a real hope invested in the idea of New Jerusalem, the holy city of peace that shall descend when the time comes.
[1] Wikipedia on the Western Wall.
[2] For the Jewish perspective on the Western Wall, see Six Reasons Why the Wall is Holy at aish.
[3] See Wikipedia entry on the Israeli West Bank Barrier.
The Old City charmed visitors with its crisscross streets. Bazaars selling all kinds of oddities along the roads form an air of festiveness. The goods and fruits shine incredible colors upon the Old City’s characteristic sandstone buildings. The street signs in Old City displayed English, …
“We think this is where World War III will begin.” Alla____hu Akbar! Alla_____hu Akbar! At the Dome of the Rock, groups of men shouted this repeatedly. Meaning “God Allah is Greatest,” this phrase often preceded terrorist attacks in the West. Located on the Temple Mount …
By Patrick H. Hase
“The leased area [the New Territories] was not seen as an economic advantage to the City (indeed, it was initially assumed that it would be a drain on the Colony’s finances), but it was seen as greatly strengthening the City’s security against attack.”[i]
For anyone who is quite serious about the New Territories, I highly recommend The Six-Day War of 1899 as a literary exploration. In this short and wonderfully written book, Mr. Patrick Hase tells a detailed account on the six-day war between the indigenous villages of the New Territories and the British colonial army in 1899. These six days were a pivotal time. Britain proclaimed the New Territories to be part of the Crown Colony.
Reading a colonial writing in post-colonial times elicits a sense of history that comes with feelings of conflicted loyalties. On the one hand, I sympathize with the villagers who dared waging a war against the British. They must have known the risks as even the Ch’ing army could not win. While the author explained various good reasons why the villagers waged an armed resistance, I think nationalist feelings motivated their participation (especially with the rank-and-file). With the benefit of hindsight, however, I am also glad that the villagers lost. I grew up in the New Territories under British administration. Hong Kong owes its success to the British.
The author takes pains to explain the underpinnings of imperialism. It remains a term that Chinese authorities often uses as political banter even now. British imperialism certainly had some unifying characteristics throughout the British colonies of the world. At the height of support for imperialist thinking, adherents believed that military expansion, and thereafter the governance of the colonies, ultimately benefited the colonial subjects. That if governance met the ideals of imperialism, Great Britain would bring forth civilization to peoples that could potentially be “raised” to meet the standards of the British middle class.
The chapter on colonial warfare is a vignette of classic, textbook tactics in conducting colonial battles. The author explains how the best military minds of Great Britain would conduct small-scale military campaigns in rough terrains. I think this chapter is worth a close reading. It is the key to understanding how British official Berger conducted the decisive battle in the Six-Day War that handed victory to the British. That is, despite the serious outnumbering of the British forces, and the very good military sense shown, by the villagers.
Surely, this book was itself written in post-colonial times. However, the sentiments were that of a former colonial official trained to administer Hong Kong affairs with a benevolent mindset. It required exceptional understanding of and sympathies with the people. The author’s commitment to Hong Kong, and particular to the indigenous population in the New Territories, comes through loud and clear. Yet at the same time he has not lost his roots as a British compatriot. He painstakingly communicates the various governing objectives and conflicting viewpoints amongst the then-governing officials that ended up effectively burying the truth of the Six-Day War.
Finally, as a historical account of a long-forgotten war, this book presents even-handedly the views and positions on both sides. Although there was no oral history available to explain the villagers’ stories, the author has extended significant effort in garnering evidence in genealogical records and artifacts with serious analyses and inferences.
This book brought me back to the beginnings of colonial Hong Kong, a time when people fought battles over raw ideals as well as practical survival. As I finished reading, I sighed, yearning for the era that has truly ended, more than twenty years since.
[i] Patrick H. Hase, The Six-Day War of 1899: Hong Kong in the Age of Imperialism, at 15.
“It is not important where Jesus died but why he died.” I rose in excitement on my first morning in Jerusalem. There would be a full day of sightseeing, and the Hortus Gethsemane (Lat. The Garden of Gethsemane) was to which I most looked forward. …