Thoughts on Easter

Today, the Saturday in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, my wife and I attended worship service at our church.  We heard the choir sing that Jesus Christ died for me.  We sang that Jesus suffered for our sins.  Our pastor asked how much have we done to bring the good news of Christ’s salvation to other people.  

These thoughts brought me back to my encounter with Mohammad Yunus two days ago.  Our discussions entered around the enormous challenges of extreme poverty around the world, the assumption of selfishness of the prevailing economic system, the unwillingness of those in power to help, the glimmer of hope that some of us struggle to provide, the sense that we seem to be hoping against hope, …  

I am convinced that Christianity provides the most accurate depiction of the predicament that the world is in.   I have studied many of the major religions.  Buddhism from India seems to teach that enlightenment will release us from the ignorance and misunderstanding that cause the problems.  Daoism from China seems to say that understanding and following the way of nature (such as the nature of water) will lead us to the truth (and release from the world) that is Dao.  Islam from Arabia seems to say complete submission to Allah is the way to heaven.   

To me, Christianity seems to be the only religion that accords the evil of sin the seriousness that it deserves.   The selfishness, hatred, violence, depravity and other evils that is so prevalent and deep-seated that death seems to provide the only, well-deserved, ending.  And nothing that humans can do ourselves is weighty enough to save us from the certain death that we all face.  God seems to be the only one who can pay that price to save us all.  

Hence, to me, Christianity seems to be the only reasonable faith.  It is, of course, only my own feeling, and I mean no disrespect to people who believe otherwise.  But I shall do my best to share what I believe, because it is of utmost importance. 

These are the thoughts that come to me between Good Friday, when Jesus died for our sins, and Easter Sunday, when Christ is risen to being us hope.  

Mohammad Yunus

Very glad to be able to listen to Mohammad Yunus again, and than to have dinner with him.  Yunus is, of course, the father of microcredit from Bangladesh who received the Novel Prize in Peace for starting a bank to lend small amounts of money to poor people, particularly the women, to start their own business, turning millions of people into entrepreneurs. 

The first time I listen to him was 2012, at Tufts University.  He spoke about starting businesses to solve problems.  At that time, at PolyU, we were just starting to implement service-learning.  I thought what he said was a great idea but could not really see how I could apply it.    This time h became to PolyU.  By now, we have already gotten quite a bit of experience in service-learning and I picked up a number of ideas that are really quite relevant.  

He said we should not only be job seekers, trying to do what other people ask us to do.  But be job creators, imagining that we would like to see and work towards making the world the way we imagine it.  That is what we have been doing with service-learning.  We found many good practices in service-learning from some of the American universities.  We dared to dream about creating a culture of civic engagement at PolyU and started to work towards it, creating our own jobs in the process.  

Yunus told of how economists assume that people seek for their own benefit, ignoring that people do not only have selfish motivations.  That matches my own perception.  That is also what gives us hope and what we hope to build on. 

He talked about how they ask the poor people in Bangladesh to use the money used to buy kerosene to invest in solar energy, benefiting millions with solar power.  That is an idea that we have been struggling to implement.  We have installed solar electrical power for hundreds of homes in Cambodia, Myanmar and Rwanda.  We have trained scores of local youths to install solar panels.  But we not yet been able to help them turn the technology into businesses, injecting the profit motive into the equation.  That is something that we can put more effort in, to create bigger impact.  

Working towards creating social enterprises is an idea that applies not only to our solar energy projects, but to other service-learning projects as well.  In one case, we have helped a small NGO in Cambodia create a home-stay business, renting our village lodging for visitors to experience village life in rural Cambodia.  But these successes are still rare and in small scales.  We need to do more.  

He also mentioned that some graduates from business schools have actually turned more selfish by the time they graduate.  That is a serious warning for us educators.  Are we actually making the world worse by nurturing more selfish human beings?  If so, we really should be condemned.  

It is a warning that we should heed.  I do not wish to single out the business schools.  But i have indeed seen signs that this might actually be the case.  

Finally, I asked him the first question: how can we make more people like him?  The world is full of people who have the power to do good, but do not do it.  There re also many people who want to do good but do not know how.  How can we have more people like Yunus, who have the good intentions and are able to make it a success?  I suspect I have at least one answer, through giving the young people the opportunity to learn to be successful in doing good.  That is what we are trying to do with service-learning.  We hope that, by the time they graduate, they are less selfish.  

I hope it it more than just a dream.  With God’s grace, we can do it.  

Morning run on Tsim Sha Tsui Waterfront

Prompted by my daughter A, I have been trying to go out running in the morning before going to work.  

For the past two weeks, the weather has been perfect, with the temperature hovering around 20 degrees.  More importantly, the air has been clear, affording an excellent view of the harbour and Hong Kong Island, almost from one end to the other, when I run between Huang Po and Tsim Sha Tsui.  

West Kowloon has been a mess for 20 years now.  Will it get better?  I dare not hold out too much hope.  But I am hoping against hope that one day, maybe, I can run from East Kowloon to West Kowloon along the waterfront without interruption - truly seeing Hong Kong Island from one end to the other.  I trust it can be an attraction for other people as well. 

In the mean time, going running early allow me to see the people who clean up the streets before the people flood the streets.  They are also an important part of our city.  Although they are not always seen or appreciated. 

There is also the, by now, ubiquitous “free” newspapers and the people who distribute them.  What do people really get from them?  And the very few, uglily preserved “calligraphy” of the “Emperor of Kowloon”.  He was quite a quirky character whom many people remember fondly now that he is gone.  Not so the government, it would appear, however.

Personally, my daughter’s prompting has helped me run 23 kilometres on Sunday, 10 kilometres on Wednesday, and then another 10 kilometres on Friday - a full marathon in one week, albeit not all in one go.  I used to run faster than she did.  Now it is the other way around.  That is the way it should be, I suppose.  But i am not giving up yet.  

Maclehose Trail 麥理浩徑 Stage 5

I was originally planning to run up to Fai Ngo Shan today.  But when I arrived at Sha Tin Pass 沙田坳 after running for 10 km from Hung Hom, I realised I was at the entry point of Maclehose Trail Stage 5, between Shatin Pass and Tai Po Road.  I remembered that my daughter A had mentioned it, which runs through Lion Rock 獅子山, which I have not tried.  So I decided on the spot to do it.  

Along the way, I was treated to panoramic views of Kowloon.  It gave me the feeling of a sea of concrete threatening to swallow whatever nature is left in the city.  It reminded me that Hong Kong has a landed area of one thousand square kilometres (which we discussed only yesterday in our class preparing the team of students to do their service-learning project in Rwanda in June.  But we decided to squeeze ourselves onto only 7% of the total land area.  That leaves us with some nature as breathing space for the weekends, which I was enjoying at that exact moment.  But that also means we are suffocating ourselves in a sea of concrete and glass - and bad air.  

Thanks for the country parks, we do have some rocky trails to escape to.  And forests that can swallow us should we slip off the trails.  I shuddered to think what could happen should that happen to me.  But this is also Hong Kong - beautiful, enticing and slightly dangerous and mysterious nature.  

The trail skirted some well-built and well-maintained graves.  Someone must have been taking care of them.  It does take some effort to come up here regularly.  

Some flowers look like 洋紫荊（Bauhinia × blakeana).  But I remembered my daughter A telling me that they are probably 宮粉羊蹄甲 (Bauhinia variegata).

Then I also found some small, white and very fragrant flowers.  They resemble but are probably not 米仔蘭.  I have yet to find out what they really are.  

Later on, on Tai Po Road, someone was drying some Tree Cotton flower (木棉花).  I heard that they have medicinal use - it is one of the ingredients of 五花茶.  Perhaps that is why.  

When I reached Tai Po Road after hiking for about 8 kilometers, I found someone fishing in Kowloon Reservoir.  Perhaps they have a license?  In any case, it looked rather enjoyable and scenic.  

There were, of course, those ubiquitous monkeys.  Many people come to see them, and to feed them.  But I don't really like them. 

I decided to continue to run along Tai Po Road to get to Shatin.  Along the way, I passed a spot overlooking a highway leading to a tunnel, complete with toll-booths.  I remember when I encountered this several years back, I thought it was the Shing Mun Tunnel 城門隧道 - between Shatin and Tsuen Wan.  But it couldn’t be - since the Shing Mun Tunnel should be to the north and west of Tai Po Road.  But this one is south and east of Tai Po Road.  Later I realised that this is actually Tsing - Sha Highway 青沙公路 and Tunnel.  I do notice that each time I passed it, the traffic is very thin.  Is it really worth the money spent on building it?  

In the distance I would still see Lion Rock.  

Then I passed again a badly-deteriorated tire that I have seen earlier.  A reminder how hazardous the highway can be - if you have bad tires.  

I ended up in Tai Wai, very tired, but also very satisfied.  Because of the exertion running and hiking the 23 kilometers, but also because of the encounters on the way.  My legs were weak and feet sore.  But I am sure I will come this way again. 

Who are the Egyptian people?

Who are the modern day Egyptians?  Are they the true descendants of the ancient Egyptians, of the age of the pharaohs?  Of Rameses, Nefertari, Tutankhamun, Akhanaten, Nefertiti, … and Cleopatra?  Are they actually descendants of the Arabs and other conquerers?  Or, more likely, a mixture of both?  After all, they do speak Egyptian Arabic today.  

According to the Egyptians I met, they are the true descendants of the ancient Egyptians, that the Egyptians and their conquerors do not mix.  Is that true?  Let us look at the facts.  The Egyptians guide that we had in Cairo told us one of her grandfathers was from Albania, hence she is one-quarter Albanian.  In fact, Muhammad Ali Pasha, the founder of the last dynasty of Egypt, was an Albanian Ottoman commander.  He was born in Macedonia of a family originally from Albania.  He was sent, as part of a force to re-occupy Egypt in 1801 when Napoleon Bonaparte withdrew from Egypt.  I found him immortalised on the walls of the citadel in Cairo, just under the mosque that he built, in the Ottoman style.  It looks like a smaller version of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.  

Prior to Napoleon, Egypt had been conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517.  The Ottoman Turks founded the Ottoman Empire in present day Turkey in the 1200s.  But they were originally Oghuz Turks from present day Kazakhstan.  

Prior to the Ottomans, Egypt was ruled by Mamluks from 1250.  The Mamluks were actually slaves who were trained as soldiers.  They came to power in Egypt with Saladin, or Salah ad-Din, who defeated the Crusaders and took Jerusalem.  Saladin was actually a Kurd, the people who still live in a region at the junction of Turkey, Syria and Iraq, who are still fighting for a homeland …  I was pleasantly surprised to find his name on a pier along the Nile in Aswan.  

Prior to Saladin, Egypt was conquered by the Arabs in the 600s.  That’s why they are Muslims and speaks a version of Arabic.  

Prior to that, they were ruled by the Byzantines.  Before that, the Romans since 30 BC.

Before that, Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Ptolemy Dynasty.  She ruled as the last Pharaoh.  But the Ptolemies were not Egyptians.  Ptolemy was a general under Alexander from Macedonia who conquered Egypt in 332 BC, and founded Alexandria.  

On the waterfront in Alexandria, the waves look angry in the rain.  I found myself in front of the University of Alexandria, with a picture of the famed lighthouse, which had disappeared a long time ago, of course. 

So, for 2,000 years, Egypt had been ruled by at least the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs,  Kurd Mamluks, Ottoman Turks, and Albanians, with each of them leaving their own heritage.    Who, then, are the present day Egyptians?

Morning in Hurghada

Hurghada is a famous beach resort on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. Looking east across the Red Sea is the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.  People come here to see the corals, sunbathe, swim, and dive.  We also did a bit of day.  One morning, I came out to run along the seaside and through the town.   I was rewarded with a more nuanced side of life in Hurghada. 

The rising sun over the sea, through the trees, is beautiful.  It makes you forget the ugliness of the world for a moment.  

When I was running north, I was aware that I had the vast body of water on my right, and the equally wast expanse of the desert on my left.  Later, when we drove further north from Hurghada towards Suez, for hours and hours there was nothing but undrinkable sea water on our right, and inhospitable desert on our left.  This is also Egypt.  

On the waterfront, a man was scavenging from a trash bin.  

While the sun was rising, people were waiting for the ubiquitous white minibuses, to go to work, I suppose.  

Many street sweepers were working.  They are the reason why the streets of Hurghada (at least the main roads) are clean.  Presumably because of the presence of the tourists.  

Are the street sweepers glad that they have a job.  I heard the economy has not been doing well and the unemployment rate is high. 

A cat strolled confidently across the side walk, seemingly without a care of the world.  It has the air of a pharaoh inspecting his domain.  Perhaps it was going home after a night out cahooting?

In a shop window, numerous gods jostled for space against cigarettes.  Also because of the tourists, I suppose.  

A marlin sculpted on an entrance reminds us that we are on the Red Sea.  But i was told no fishing is permitted there because the area is restricted, under military control. That is the reason why we could not see any fishing boats.  

The bounteous and colourful fruits by the roadside remind me that agriculture is big business in Egypt.  Egyptian oranges and cotton are world famous.  I was further reminded by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s "Why Nations Fail" that Egypt is poor not because of culture, geography, or ignorance, but because of its political and economic institutions, that power and wealth is concentrated in a small number of elites.  

The presence of the military is very strong, probably stronger than any other country that I have visited.  I could not decide whether I should feel reassured, or scared.  But I didn’t feel threatened by the possibility of terrorism or other forms of violence.  

I heard singing and realised that I was outside a school.  Several ladies congregated around a small opening in the gate.  Piqued by curiosity, I found a bunch of mothers watching their children walking in line towards their classrooms.  The language and the dresses are different, but the behaviour is no different from the mothers in Hong Kong.  We are all humans after all.  

That thought is reassuring.