My workplace was taken over by the Japanese Army

Care about your workplace? Don't fret. If it can survive an occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army, you can probably be optimistic about its chances in most other situations.

The construction of Wang Fat Ching She was completed in 1938, and inaugurated as a Buddhist institute a year later - the same year World War II kicked off, according to Western writers. So it wasn't exactly the most stable time to start up a non-profit institution... 1937 anyone? Eurocentric historians still say the Second World War began in 1939, but 1937 was the year a colonial Asian power invaded a continental giant, with huge repercussions for both sides.

By 1940 the shadow of the Pacific War loomed high across the Buddhist world, with many clergy and laypeople alike fleeing their seminaries, temples, and monasteries. Wang Fat Ching She was one of the only Buddhist learning centres that was tenaciously occupied. During the Autumn, one of its lecturers, Ven. Bo Jing, fled to another temple, and then to Shanghai. By 1941, Imperial Japan’s military had crossed the border into Hong Kong, and Wang Fat Ching She was seized and converted into a logistics centre. All religious activities, of course, ceased for quite some time... until 1945, Wang Fat Ching She had remained unable to do what it was supposed to do as an institution.

After the departure of the Japanese army, laypeople with ties to Wang Fat Ching She turned to the philanthropic group Tung Lin Kok Yuen to form a committee to administrate and supervise the recovering temple. Eventually the temple itself would be donated to TLKY, in 1960 after the temple's owner, Mrs. Wong, immigrated to the States.

So that was a snapshot of modern Asian history, captured in a single temple on a small hill in quiet Tsuen Wan. It's difficult not to be more or less optimistic about its future. We didn't get blown to bits and we didn't suffer the tragedies that accompany wartime - massacres, rape, enslavement, mass bombing. The new century presents different challenges like red tape and funding, but compared to what Hong Kong and China were staring in the face over seventy years ago, it's probably not so bad.

We're also on top of a hill with a steep driveway, so we might survive global warming for a bit longer too.