A Shanghai Road Epiphany
Waking along Shanghai Road in Hong Kong yesterday, I passed by the Kowloon City Immigration office. It is a rather unglamorous building on an equally unglamorous thoroughfare, The street might, at a pinch, be described as atmospheric, but even that faint praise could not be applied to the Office. Such places are largely unknown to me, in Europe, I can travel freely and outside the EU, my passport fast tracks me past these rather dinghy buildings. But for economic migrants the world over, these offices are the norm, and the anonymous civil servants who staff them can literally assume a life and death significance. I noticed the Immigration Office only because in Hong Kong Airport only a day before, I joined a swarm of well heeled migrants who were coming to terms with the new requirements for entry into the Middle Kingdom. Visa processing in Hong Kong for China have always been strict but relatively benignly enforced, at least for citizens of the European Union. No longer. The painless process of presentation of passport and one picture has been replaced by a bureaucratic procedure requiring application forms, confirmed flights and pre-booked hotel accommodation. Even then, the result is only a document which allows a short term stay instead of the six months to a year allowed previously. The changes do seem Olympic related as all promises to return to ‘normal’ after the Olympics are over. But in the interim, for those of us used to what is know as the “Hong Kong” run, life has suddenly become more difficult, complicated and uncertain. My chance encounter with Hong Kong’s migrants, while absorbed in my own worries, allowed me to see how shallow my own concerns were by comparison. Unlike them, the very worst that could have happened would have been the inconvenience of having to sit out the Olympics doing parish work in another country; it does not quite put me in the “blood of Martyrs” category, does it?
Safely ensconced back in Beijing, I have surprised by the degree to which the situation has affected my equilibrium. One would imagine that a priest might find living day by day no big deal. The Scriptures do suggest that we “Consider the Lilies of the field…” and I have preached more than once on the subject of leaving all in the hands of God. Even the spirituality of my Order, which places a high degree of attachment to Providence, did little to relieve my distress. The nice neat process which has allowed me to pass easily in and out of this country has changed, and the relative certainty of the last few years have been replaced with a rather hand to mouth existence. Faced with my new circumstances, I found myself going off at the deep end rather. I am discovering that, scriptures, sermons and training not withstanding, I am no Lily.
Chinese Visa officials may no longer be my flexible friends, but their new rigour allows me to see myself in a new light. It is easy to weave my immigration problems into an heroic “Missionary in China” narrative and I am more than capable of dining out on the saga. But on a back street in Hong Kong my pallid inconveniences were briefly juxtaposed with the blood and guts dilemmas of real migrants and more than a performance of the “harassed missionary” seems to be required. Instead of making a drama out of the crisis, I find myself rather reluctantly trying to pray quietly “not my, but Your will be done”. Would that following through on this prayer was as easy as it sounds.