Volunteers, Dr. Robert Coenraads from Sydney, Australia and Ron Louie, who is second generation Chinese, from Vancouver, Canada, managed Urantia Foundation's booth at the Hong Kong Bookfair this month. While a comprehensive report is still forthcoming, preliminary reports are very encouraging. Ron and Robert, on behalf of the Foundation, secured a distributor for the English Urantia Book that will distribute to Hong Kong, Shenzen, and Macao. This distributor has placed their first order for three hundred books.
Robert and Ron also made some comprehensive investigations into Chinese companies that deal with the translating, printing, and distributing of foreign works in China.
Ron developed an audio visual on a laptop computer which gave an overview of The Urantia Book in Chinese, with relevant visuals and Chinese music playing. This program ran continuously throughout the book fair and attracted the attention of passers by. Ron also produced an introductory brochure in Chinese which was handed out extensively. Many showed a genuine interest in the book but the language barrier was an obvious hindrance to potential readers as they could not understand very much of what they read in the book.
With three Asian countries visited by the Foundation this year: Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and with the positive response from all countries, we feel that we have truly embarked on the challenging journey of introducing The Urantia Book to our Asian brothers and sisters.