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"home village associations", which are formed by all members of particular villages in China who have migrated to Hong Kong. The clubs are the home village associations of two little fishing villages left behind not in distance, but in time, engulfed by technological change and urban sprawl. The villages still exist, surrounded by or transmuted into flats, but their former inhabitants are as much spiritual exiles as most other Hong Kong Chinese.
That these clubs are not primarily economic in aim does not mean, however, that they cannot be used for economic advantage, of course. The members do help each other. Members of the clubs, for example, had managed to secure most of the life-guard jobs at the new Chai Wan public swimming pool.
The fishermen's club on Lamma Island was founded by a business-man who had been active in trade with China since the 1930s, Jonathan Gray. It is similar to those of Chai Wan and Stanley, but has been prepared to be more militant and public in its pressure group activity to gain compensation for fishermen when their best fishing areas off Lamma were being 'reclaimed'.
These three clubs, confined to a small area in the south of the territory, are the only instances that even approach an ethnic mobilisation of the Shui-sheung-yan,
The True Jesus Church
The True Jesus Church was founded in Peking in 1917, and is evidently part of the world-wide Pentecostal revival of the early years of this century. It is distinctive in that, as well as being charismatic, it is "Seventh Day" — that is, it holds the Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday, not Sunday. It also holds that believers' baptism should be carried out by total immersion with the face facing downwards, and should be followed by the washing of feet. Otherwise, it is fairly orthodox in its evangelicalism. It describes itself as "a revived apostolic church”, preaching "a full gospel of salvation based on the truth in the Bible, accompanied by signs and miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit".
The membership of this church remained almost wholly Chinese as it spread to South-East Asia, apart from some missionary work in Nigeria. Its headquarters are now in Taiwan. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, a lady fish merchant belonging to the church came to Hong Kong from Malaya to buy seafood. She began to preach to her Shui-sheung-yan suppliers, and to pray for healing for their