Pioneering in - Far Eastern Bible College

Fifteenth Night are equally boisterous. The natives have a way ofmaking extra money. Cashing in on the superstitions of theChinese, they form their own processions of dancing lions anddragons, blowing and drumming along to beg from door to door.Like the gods of wealth in China coming around to bless,suddenly their drums and gongs boom up to heaven.In recent years the overseas Chinese have made someprogress. Taking advantage of New Year’s Day the associationssend out dancing lions and dragons to collect money for schoolsand charity, whereby tens of thousands are obtained for a goodpurpose. Such a transforming of a superstitious occasion to benefitcharity is something laudable. What I regard as senseless is howthe Fifteenth Night (when the moon is full) is spent. O the crowdsof people surging like a mountain and a sea, men in scarlet andwomen in green, old and young jostling and mingling with oneanother! What good is there in all these except that it affords anopportunity for fleshly lusts? Some overseas Chinese being of aconservative, traditional type would lock up their daughters in therooms nor allow them to appear with unveiled faces. The onlyexception to this rule is New Year’s Night when they could leavethe house to worship the gods in the temples. As a custom, this isthe night when the women have their fling. Though the streets arefull of profligate young men, you can see bevies of youngcoquettish girls parading themselves.When we set foot on this foreign land we got this firstimpression of a strange culture. This deep impression made usrealise how urgently the overseas Chinese needed the true light ofthe gospel.We sailed to Makasar straight from Hong Kong in the“Tjisalak” while Dr. Jaffray and Paul Lenn came by way of Java.When Dr. Jaffray arrived in Makasar we had already left byanother boat for Samarinda in East Borneo, Rev. Chu in ourcompany.83