It's Not About Us

At our orientation, I glanced around the room at all the others who were preparing to move overseas. I noticed that the majority were white Americans. A question immediately popped into my mind: How might my ethnic background and my bi-cultural identity affect my missions experience abroad?

One of the momentos I cherish from my year in the Middle East is a navy blue t-shirt that my teammate and I designed ourselves. It says, “I am not Japanese”…in the local language. When I wore it there, friends who spotted me would stop mid-conversation and burst out laughing. One person nearly choked on his tea that he was sipping. Strangers would stare and whisper to their companions. But in a country with very few East Asians, they tended to do that anyway when I’m around. When I told a friend who recently moved back from France about this t-shirt, she told me, “When I was in Paris, I wanted to make a t-shirt that said, ‘I am an American of Chinese descent.’”

Why did we feel the need to emblazon our identities across a t-shirt? The tension that we felt in being displaced and miscalculated is a daily tension that many people feel all over the world. As a bi-cultural person, the outside packaging doesn’t completely reflect the inner reality. I have a Chinese name, brown Chinese eyes and black Chinese hair. I can speak Mandarin Chinese somewhat fluently, and I love Chinese food. But I am also very American in ways that are not immediately visible. So what happens when you transplant a bi-cultural person into a third country as a missionary?

Some Challenges

In my experience, the challenges arise when you are perceived as either too different or not different enough.

Too different
I had an acute longing for the bliss of just sitting in a cafe by myself and reading a good book. In the Middle East, it is very rare to see someone spending time alone in a public place because cafes, restaurants, and other such venues are meant to be social places where you went with your friends. So one day, I took a chance and went to a little outdoor cafe in the park in the middle of the day. There were not many people around, and there were many empty tables. “Good,” I thought, “Nobody will talk to me if there’s no one here.”

The friendly waiter took my order, a little surprised that I could speak the language. Five minutes later he came back, “Excuse me, but are you a foreigner?” “Yes, I’m from the U.S.,” I replied briefly, hoping that this would be the end of the conversation. Five minutes later he came back, “Excuse me, but you don’t look like an American.” “Well, actually, my parents are from Taiwan.” That settles that, I thought, and resumed my reading. Another five minutes elapsed, “I thought you were Korean,” he ventured. At this point, I put down my book and gave up the hope of ever being anonymous in this country.

Though my white teammate sometimes got mistaken for a national, that fortuitous (in my perspective) mistake never happened to me. It was difficult for me, as an introverted person who does not like the spotlight, to be stared at constantly in public. On mission projects in Ghana, I experienced the same phenomenon— the knowledge that I was always being watched and evaluated. My Chinese-American teammate in the Middle East, Jerry, describes the experience as feeling like an object of curiousity.

Not different enough
When a bi-cultural person goes to a country where s/he appear physically similar to everyone else, there are different challenges and sometimes stickier issues. In countries like the Philippines and Vietnam, I was expected to understand the culture and the language. Many conversations started with a torrent of words I didn’t understand and ended with a confused frown. When I traveled in China, the expectations were much higher for me to understand the language and act within the cultural norms than they were for our non-Chinese traveling companions. In all of these situations, it felt like a tender, sensitive part of me— my identity and sense of self— was being poked and prodded by others.

The dilemma

The repeated questioning of my ethnic identity made me question it myself. Am I really American? What makes someone American? What makes someone Chinese? How should I represent myself? Would I be forced to choose or to deny one part of myself in order to be understood? What do I do with the other part of my identity? How do I deal with other people’s ignorance?

Many things happened to me in the Middle East that would make me angry in the States: adult strangers making slanty eyes at me, people asking me if I ate worms, children yelling, “Japan, Japan!” at me (the inspiration for that
t-shirt), and the comments of strangers when they did not think I could understand their language. I was regularly faced with the dilemma: Will I move on and let it go or will I stay upset?

Unwanted attention and the ignorance of strangers stretched me in extending grace towards others and pushed me to find my identity in God. It helped me to identify with Jesus, who was misunderstood and even rejected by most of the people with whom he came into contact. A prophecy regarding the Messiah in the Old Testament states, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.”(Is 53:3) Sometimes even his closest friends did not understand his true identity or the purpose of his life. The night before Jesus was crucified, in response to a request from one of his disciples, he asked, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?” (John 14:9).

Jesus chose to be born into a difficult life of being poorly known and understood in order to be with people who could not otherwise possibly experience God’s love. He not only took on a human form in the incarnation, he further displaced himself in cross-cultural ministry by hanging out with the riff raff of society— hookers, beggars, extortionists, the demon-possessed, and even a thief as he hung dying on the cross. In John:4, Jesus intentionally stops in a village of half-caste people to meet by divine appointment a woman shunned by the rest of her village for her promiscuous lifestyle. As he sits by the edge of the well under the hot midday sun, he does the unthinkable for a man of his culture and ethnicity— he initiates a conversation with her and asks her for a drink. The gesture precipitates a startling and revealing conversation with this woman, who becomes the first evangelist to her own people.

Why do we do put up with being misunderstood, uncomfortable, and sometimes rejected? Because we are following the example of Jesus who willingly enters another culture to make known the good news of God’s kingdom. As the Apostle Paul puts it in I Corinthians 9:20-23,

To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law…to those not having the law I became like one not having the law…to the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Jesus, Paul, and many others who have gone before us have displaced themselves in other cultures for the sake of the gospel and to share in the blessings.

Some Blessings

Our identity and our destination
Jesus is a special friend to those who are displaced. Because he experienced displacement himself, there is a closeness and intimacy we can develop with him when we turn to him in our own feelings of displacement. Displacement can happen everywhere and to everyone. It happens when we feel like, for whatever reason, we don’t belong. When I was a child, I was placed in six different schools in twelve years. The first day of school was always a dreaded date circled in red in the calendar. After being dropped off by my parents, I would adjust my carefully chosen outfit for the day and scan the playground for potential new friends, other lost-looking kids. God forbid that I would have to sit by myself at lunch in the cafeteria! Besides math and reading, there were new social rules to be learned in order to fit in.

Being in a foreign country was, for me, a more intense experience of displacement than I had previously experienced. It offered me a chance to grow in my relationship with God and to develop a spirituality of displacement, an understanding and practice of Biblical truth, that deepened my experience of God’s kindness towards me. My conversations with God took on new urgency and life as I wrestled with issues of being a foreigner. God used the questions and stares to challenge me to examine my sense of identity.

One of the many blessings for me of being a bicultural person in missions was that it rooted me much more deeply in my identity as an adopted child of our heavenly Father (Eph 1:5) When my identity as an Asian-American, as a missionary (a taboo word in a Muslim country), and my role as a woman was challenged, there was one firm and foundational truth that I could turn to— my primary identity is not my ethnicity, my job or role, or even my gender. My primary identity is a beloved child of the Father. I would remind myself of this as I walked in the marketplace or felt the stare of children. “I am a daughter of the King of Kings,” I would tell myself.

God taught me an essential lesson that transcends my year in the Middle East. All of the discomfort and “out-of-place-ness” I was feeling was reflective of a larger spiritual reality. This world was not meant to be our homeland. An early page from my journal that year reads, “I am coming to the conclusion that this sensation of constant foreignness is a gift. The very unexpected (and sometimes unwanted) gift is supposed to remind us that we are pilgrims journeying to our eternal home.” One of my favorite passages in the Bible is from Hebrews 11:13b-16, describing the situation of our heroes of faith.

They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed he has prepared a city for them

Never before had this passage felt more relevant. I feel like I could say along with Moses, “I have been an alien residing in a foreign land.” (Ex 2:22) My physical reality of being a stranger and a foreigner was a mirror of our spiritual reality. Regardless of where we are geographically, we are all on a journey towards our ultimate destination— the city of our God, the embrace of our Father, and our true homeland. Every day, walking in a city where I did not feel like I belonged, I was reminded of my pilgrim status and my true homeland.

A developing sense of my ethnic identity
Surprisingly, I feel more confident of my ethnic identity after having lived in a foreign country than I did before I went. I suppose it’s the constant questioning and grappling with that particular issue that makes me more secure. Because the students I worked with were fascinated with Chinese culture and the threat of Chinese dominance in the global economy, I had opportunities to delve deeper into my cultural heritage. At one point, I taught a beginning Chinese class… how the despairing Chinese school teachers in my past would laugh now! I learned to roll out dough and make my own dumplings because Chinese food was just not available in my city. I invited multiple local friends and students over for their very first Chinese meal. And even when they did not enjoy the food (most found it strange), I could shrug it off and enjoy the company and the doors God opened to me for ministry because of my ethnicity.

At the same time, my very presence stretched others in their definition of “American”. The United States is an immigrant nation that is becoming increasingly diverse, and my Asian face literally presents a different face of America than what is represented in most of our exported media. In moving to another country, I learned how very American I am. Initially, I was surprised by how defensive I felt when nationals would make disparaging comments about our foreign policy since I certainly don’t consider myself a particularly patriotic person or a supporter of the current administration. I was irritated by simplistic and negative generalizations about my country during a time when I was missing home. It helps me understand how others might feel when I express snap judgments of their countries of origin. Ironically, living in another country made me more aware of my “American-ness” as well. I came to value my deeply ingrained American values of independence, informality, creativity, and action, all the while trying to fit into a culture that often embodies another set of values.

The Gifts We Bring

Champion Twister Player
“Huaj” is an interesting word in the local language. It means foreigner or stranger, and it can even be used to describe cars, as in, [Parking for tenants only] “Don’t park strange cars here.” But it is also a loaded word for some of the expatriots living here. Bill is a tall, red-headed American from my language class who has lived in the country off and on for about 20 years. He has married a local woman and has two bi-cultural boys. One day, he literally explodes in class, “I hate the word, ‘Huaj”! You can live here for 20 years and people will still call you a Huaj! You will always be seen as a foreigner” He seemed to be near tears. Our teacher moved on rapidly to the next topic.

“Welcome to my life in America,” I thought. No matter how perfectly I speak English or how many generations my family has lived in the States, I will always be seen as foreign by some in America. I will always get those questions, “No, where are you really from?” or someone insisting, “With a name like Ling-Hsia, you can’t be from the U.S.” So here in the Middle East, I am somewhat more used to my blatant foreignness. Other missionaries from the States have told me how difficult it is to live in two worlds— one language outside, one language in the home. One set of cultural expectations outside of the door and the “normal” mode inside the door. As a bicultural person, I feel like I may have an advantage over missionaries who were previously monocultural. I know what it’s like to live in two widely divergent worlds. And I have an internal cultural switch that shifts my mode of being from one culture to the next.

It also helps, sometimes, not to look like what others think of as “American.” One day I went into a hardware store. After the usual questions and explanations that I’m Chinese, the shopkeeper gets really excited. He starts pulling out magazine and newspaper articles about China from a stack by the cash register and exclaims, “I love China! We don’t want Americans here, but we like Chinese”. Talk about confusion for me as a Chinese-American! Which country/ethnic group/background do I claim while I am here? Which will others claim for me?

But I’ve realized in deeper ways how my cultural background is a gift. My chameleon abilities— one minute Chinese, one minute “American”— are an asset in places all around the world. I am playing a giant Twister game: left foot on green, right foot on blue, and left hand on red. I don’t get to land solidly anywhere, but there are advantages to spanning cultures as well. I leave the store with new friends and some nails and hooks that the shopkeeper refused to let me pay for.

An Outsider Doubles as an Insider
The speaker is talking rapidly, giving tips about how to navigate a Middle Eastern culture, and the group of missionaries scribble pages of notes as I listen, pen still. “Respect for elders is very important,” he says. “Always stand up when someone enters the room. Make sure you greet everyone. Always offer something to eat or drink when people come over, help other people to seconds,…” the instruction continues.

I stopped taking notes because so much of the information he was giving was similar to the social norms of Chinese culture. As I child, I was always dragged to the front door to greet every guest by name and again when they left. You did not wait for someone to say, “Please pass the chicken” you just automatically plopped a piece on their plate and filled up their teacup to boot. You always offered whatever you were eating or drinking. Now I don’t always play by these rules, but at least I was familiar with them.

This is a vast generalization, but I found that in many non-Western cultures, there are similar values for collectivism, hospitality, respect for heirarchy, relationship over task or time, and so on. As a bicultural person, I was able to pick up on cultural cues more quickly, and it felt more natural to me. And I think that this inspired confidence in the students I was reaching out to.

I also bonded with a group of Kurdish students over being bicultural. As an ethnic minority group in the country, they, too, experience the pull of the two worlds. They are proud of their Kurdish heritage, but their national identity card identifies them as nationals. Some of their parents do not speak the national language, and they have to play the role of translator and broker to the outside world. One day on campus, I ran into someone I knew and started asking them questions about being bicultural. I also trotted out the three Kurdish phrases I knew. Quickly, a group of over ten Kurdish students crowded around us, each one interrupting others to be heard. Their stories of experiencing racism were heartbreaking. I think that I was probably the first person who actually asked for their stories. They shared because maybe they felt like I could understand.

A Walking, Talking Contradiction
One evening, my roommate and I had some women over for dinner. After dinner, we settled down in the living room for some tea and talk. They started flipping through an art book I have by a Christian Chinese artist. He’s rendered Biblical stories in a very creative Chinese style. These three Muslim women were fascinated by these prints. We looked through the entire book, with me explaining each story. It was wonderful— I got to explain the virgin birth of Jesus (No, God didn’t have sex with Mary; and no, Christians don’t consider Mary a part of the Trinity), God’s concern for the lower class and His shepherd’s heart in the chorus of angels bursting in on the shepherds’ watch, the radical nature of the disciples’ choice of leaving their livelihood to follow Jesus, Jesus’ concern for women learning from Him in Mary and Martha’s house, and so on. I doubt that I could have taken them through an entire book of Biblical images in the Western style. My cultural background actually made it easier to share the gospel.

There were three different prints of the baby Jesus. In each one, He is a Chinese baby with a small tuft of hair in the middle of His otherwise bald head. “Why is he holding an apple?” one of them asked. This may have been a reference to the Garden of Eden, but I have a different interpretation. In Chinese culture, apples are the sign of peace because the words for “apple” and “peace” are so similar in Chinese. “The artist is using a Chinese symbol to express that Jesus is the ‘Prince of Peace’,” I told them. I could tell that this kind of contextualization was a new idea for them.

One of the reasons the spread of the gospel here is so difficult is because it is inconceivable for a local to think that he or she can switch religions. The saying, “to be a citizen is to be Muslim” is so firmly ingrained in the national psyche that some cannot even believe that there are national Christians in their country. “They aren’t nationals. They are foreigners,” one student protested upon learning that Jerry was staying with a local Christian family. Most people here believe that you are born into a religion that is essentially a part of your culture. That’s why they think all Westerners are Christians just as they think all nationals are Muslims, no matter what their daily practice.

But I am a visible walking, talking contradiction to that belief. Though part of my family is Christian, the other half didn’t come from a Christian background. And though the gospel is spreading throughout China like wildfire, 95% of China’s population still does not follow Jesus Christ. So I’ve had several chances to explain that my faith in Jesus doesn’t change my cultural identity but gives new meaning to my culture. I explain that it is possible to follow Jesus but not lose essential parts of who you are. I embody the truth that it is possible to follow Jesus whatever your background. And I think that this is another precious gift that Asian Americans and other bicultural people can bring to the Muslim world that so desperately needs the good news that there is a Father of grace.

As you prepare to venture into new cultures, be confident that God wants to use all of who you are— including your ethnic identity and your cultural background- to be a blessing to the people you will meet. Our world sorely needs followers of Jesus who are willing to embrace discomfort and misunderstanding, displacing themselves for the sake of the gospel. As a person living with more than one culture, you will have unique challenges but also unique gifts to bring to the table. But most of all, my prayer is that you will experience the blessing of a more intimate journey with God and a deeper sense of identity as His beloved child as you give yourself to belonging in a new culture.

Reflection and Discussion Questions:

#What is your ethnic background? How might that impact those in the country to which you are going?

#How do you feel when you are misunderstood or false assumptions are made about you?

#What do you think are some challenges and blessings you might encounter?

#What do you think are some unique gifts that you bring to your team and to the culture you are going to?

#How might God use a displacement experience in your life to deepen your identity as a pilgrim on a journey towards God or as a child of the King of Kings?