Chasing the Dragon by Jackie Pullinger Read Free Book Online Page A

invite girls along. Some of them had been warned about what might happen; others were innocent victims. At the party, the new girls would be seduced; if they resisted they weresometimes forcibly raped. Usually, each member of the gang would take his girl off with him and stay with her for a few days. When the girl was attached to him and thoroughly accustomed to sex, he signed her over to a brothel. One girl could bring in enough money to support several men.
    Other girls became prostitutes because their parents could not afford to feed and clothe them. One mother told me, “It wasn’t really selling my daughter, you know. My husband left me, and as there were no social security payments in Hong Kong I had nothing to live on. I couldn’t afford to raise my baby myself, so I gave her to this woman who wanted a child, and she gave me HK $100 lucky money. It was just lucky money.”
    Of course, this woman knew what she was doing—she was selling her daughter into prostitution for at least her teenage years. After that, most former child prostitutes escaped from their owners and made careers of their own, practicing the only trade they knew. Child prostitutes could start their careers as early as nine years old.
    Respectable people thought of the girls as the scum of the earth, but I knew that it was only by the grace of God that I had been born in a different place. I tried to work out how I could reach girls like these—guarded as they were. Eventually, I shelved the problem by hoping one day to find a concerned man who would pay the hourly rate but share the good news of Christ in that time. Maybe he and I could work out a plan of escape if any of the girls wanted to get out.

4
    THE YOUTH CLUB
    S ometimes I think that Chan Wo Sai was the real reason why I started the Youth Club. He was a most unattractive 15-year-old with about as many problems in life as anyone could have—personal problems, educational problems, home problems, background problems and no prospects at all.
    I first got to know him when I was teaching English and singing on one of my three afternoons a week at Oiwah Primary School. I was teaching the children “Ten Green Bottles”—a less sexy song I can hardly think of—yet there was Chan Wo Sai getting really “sent” by a traditional English nursery rhyme in a language he could not speak. Chan Wo Sai was rolling his eyes and clicking his fingers; then he got up and began to slide across the classroom toward me in a sexy, hip-thrusting motion like a bad Chinese movie actor. I hurriedly ordered him back to his place and changed to another song. As soon as class ended, I went to find out where he came from. The story was both simple and sad.
    Chan Wo Sai was born in the Walled City. His mother was a prostitute and his father a drunkard. They lived in a sort of cockloft; to find him I had to go down the narrow passage where the prostitutes were living, along the main street where the older woman pimps spent all day waiting, and then left at the blue film theatre and down a very muddy path to a collapsed building. Here, beyond a heap of stones, he lived with his whole family in half of a room that had been added on to another building. The walls were crumbling off.
    There were more prostitutes next door. He’d known about them for as long as he could remember. He was in no way shockedby them; they were just part of his life. Indeed, he thought their activities were very funny. His horizons were limited to the brothel next door, the gambling dens down the road and the opium dens beyond. There was nowhere in the Walled City where you could go and do anything neutral, let alone take part in constructive activity. So I tried to get to know him, to help him with his problems.
    This was difficult, because I could hardly speak a word of Cantonese. All I had managed to learn as of yet were a few sentences. I could say “good morning” and “have you eaten yet?” but that was about all. And to make life