China
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Giving Up on Glorifying, Part 1
Glory Belongs to the King Watching the video of the Maverick City Music version of “Revelation 19:1,” the song takes me back to the unbridled days of my youth when Vacation Bible School singing would devolve into a noisy competition… Continue reading
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Grit
…fine yellow sand from the Gobi Desert…drifted down into the streets, sand whirled in eddies and filtered through doors and windows. It silted into corners and lay upon tables and chairs and in the crevices of garments, it dried upon… Continue reading
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Hanging with my Humans
After growing up in church and then finishing Bible college, I went on to complete a second degree at a public university. That’s when I started hanging out with “tax collectors and sinners.” A few weeks after completing my second… Continue reading
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Building Bridges
In the novel Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng imagines an American society that labels China “our greatest long-term threat,” pulverizes Asian language books into toilet paper, and ostracizes people with Asian connections. After being locked in China during the COVID-19 pandemic, I… Continue reading
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Freedom to Be
I love my home country, but having been influenced by Chinese culture while viewing my own through the eyes of others, certain aspects of American culture make me uncomfortable. Even small and simple ones. On my latest visit to my… Continue reading
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Losing Face
Before he retired, a dean at my university in China used to warn incoming freshmen, “To learn a foreign language is to lose face.” His intent was to inspire new students to persevere in spite of the inevitable humiliation they… Continue reading
Water for the Weary 