Dragon-Slayer Extraordinaire
Written: Oct 24 '07 (Updated Oct 24 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: compelling true story; well-written; wryly humorous at times; extraordinarily moving and inspiring
Cons: none
The Bottom Line: A true story beautifully told by a delightful narrator who lives as she preaches. Provides insights into a society considered the underbelly of the world of the Chinese Triads.
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| jc_hall's Full Review: Jackie Pullinger and Andrew Quicke - Chasing the D... |
[N.B. My copy of Chasing The Dragon was published in 2001 and is the revised and updated edition that boasts a different cover from the one above. In the introduction, the author notes that while 'the first edition covered about 10 years, the new material in this edition overviews more than 20 years in two chapters.']
To some people, Jackie Pullinger is a living saint, a tireless evangelist who lives as she preaches, and has done so for years in atrocious and dangerous conditions that would faze a streetwise cop in the most violent inner-city ghetto. Whatever your faith or code of beliefs, you cannot help but admire this lady who, as a somewhat naive young woman, embarked on a journey from her native England to distant Hong Kong where she stayed to preach the Gospel to the dispossessed.
In the infamous Kowloon Walled City where even locals feared to enter, she lived among drug addicts, prostitutes and triad members, and befriended what was considered the dregs of society. Not only that—she also managed to gain the respect of triad leaders and even converted some of them.
In Chasing the Dragon, subtitled One Woman’s Struggle Against The Darkness of Hong Kong’s Drug Dens, Jackie Pullinger chronicles her journey from English suburbia as a young girl searching for her calling in life. Bent on a missionary career, certain that God meant for her to preach his Word, she was nevertheless uncertain as to where she was meant to go. With nothing more than faith to guide her, she boarded a ship and ended up halfway around the globe, in a place where she knew no-one, could not speak the language, or even count on fellow missionaries who had their own problems in that part of the world. Yet with faith, dogged determination, and her very own brand of naivete, she gathered around her a group of heroin junkies and former triad members who were able to come off the drugs that plagued them with nothing more than prayers—and that in tongues, no less.
Things did not always work in her favour—far from it. In the beginning, the sight of a foreign woman in Kowloon Walled City attracted little more than passing curiosity, ridicule and a handful of 'rice Christians'. But she soon learned that preaching was not enough, that she had to act out what she preached, and she began to reach out to the needy around her. She took pains to understand their life-style, visited them in prisons, stood in line and helped them with legal matters, set up a youth club for them. In time, these addicts and hoodlums came to trust her and believe in what she preached, especially when they started coming off drugs without the usual excruciating side-effects, simply by praying to the Holy Spirit.
While Ms Pullinger’s work is fundamentally evangelical—in her own words: "We care not to extend our work but rather His kingdom."—and she often quotes from Scriptures to help explain (to herself as much as to the reader) why she thinks something is happening, and there is much made of the addicts’ praying in tongues and turning from drugs with help from the Holy Spirit, all this is explored in very matter-of-fact terms. There is no preaching. There are no sermons. The tone of the book is decidedly not one of religious fervour.
In fact, to say that Chasing The Dragon is evangelical is to mislead the potential reader. In our time and society, the word has developed negative connotations due in no small part to a particular brand of TV evangelism, and become almost synonymous with militant, crusading zeal of a dubious provenance. In contrast, Ms Pullinger’s evangelism is as pure as its original definition, which is this: emphasizing salvation through faith in Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as opposed to ritual.
Certainly, this book will appeal greatly to practising Christians, especially those who feel a calling towards missionary work. But it will also appeal to laymen and non-Christians alike, partly because of the exotic and exciting world that Jackie Pullinger found herself in, but mostly because of Ms Pullinger’s spirit and strength of character, and the remarkable faith that sustained her in some very hairy situations and allowed her to change the lives of some very interesting but downtrodden characters in a place the polar opposite of her comfortable middle-class existence in English suburbia.
Chasing The Dragon is an eye-opening and wonderfully exhilarating read. It’s well-written and Ms Pullinger’s delightfully wry humour shines through her writing. Here are some instances, from her time as a music student at the Royal College of Music in London "where I discovered very quickly that musicians regard love as the food of music, and had a hard time eluding a persistent horn player…", to her disdain of the Christian Union denizens who "sat in a holy huddle by themselves and looked unattractive, like those awful people who came up to me and asked if I was ‘saved’…", to her reaction at a particularly impressive Bible study where the other girls ate risotto happily after praying: "I was appalled. For if we believed that we were going to heaven because of Jesus, surely the converse was true also—that some people would not be going…I dashed out, thinking, How can you just sit there believing what you do? What about the people who haven’t heard? Risotto?"
Chasing The Dragon is a riveting story full of action and suspense. It is the story of one ordinary woman achieving extraordinary things and saying, I did this by the grace of God. Join me if you can. And even if we can’t or won’t, we’d have read a remarkable story from the perspective of a very likeable woman who wears her achievements very lightly indeed, and who just so happens to be a delightful narrator to boot. Like those who follow her, we simply can’t lose.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jc_hall
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Member: JC Hall
Location: Toronto, Canada
Reviews written: 199
Trusted by: 54 members
About Me:
Going back to Vancouver for Christmas! Happy Holidays, everyone!!
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