My Roots

Of late, I’ve become more interested in my Chinese roots. All I have concerning my ancestry is a picture of my great-grandfather in China and some photos of my grandparents.

Evidently, he was a Magistrate in Xiamen, in the Fukien Province.

My grandfather was a rich merchant who eventually settled in Singapore and my dad was born there.

Grandma died at the age of 39 from cancer.

The strange thing about growing up in a Chinese family is that we weren’t raised with typical Chinese values and traditions.
Due to the fact that my parents worked for British expatriates, (dad worked in the Royal Air Force (RAF), and mom was a nanny for an RAF Captain) we adopted quite a fair bit of English customs.
All the boys wore knee high bobby socks and khaki shorts for church.
Even our diet consisted of a mix of Asian and Western meals. There would be days when we had English scones for tea, meat pies for supper along with the occasional sausage rolls and cucumber sandwich. This was highly irregular as most Chinese in post war Singapore were not familiar Western food or culture at that time. Our favourite reading material consisted of Beano and Dandy comics.
We watched The Ed Sullivan Show instead of Chinese soap operas.
Possibly the only time we were totally Chinese was during the lunar New Year when we learned a few words of greetings to earn our Red Packets. (Prosperity money)
Although, we were forced to learn Mandarin as second language, we were never ever good at it because of our bias against some of the superstitious and negative elements we saw in the Chinese culture. It didn’t help that we had only Western names in our birth certificates. I remembered my Mandarin teacher in school berating and picking on me because of my Western name. (Racial discrimination exists even within a homogenous culture.) Years later, while ministering as a missionary in Taipei city, I was constantly confronted with my ethnicity. Some of the locals insisted I was not really Chinese, while others reluctantly called us “Straits-born" or "overseas Chinese.” It was in that one year that I realized I was not really Chinese at heart. My views, philosophy of life, belief system and convictions were more Christian and had a Western bias. I’ve accepted who I am and know that it was in God’s plan for my future ministry in North America, that God had orchestrated my early development and training. Although I can speak Mandarin, Cantonese and Fukien quite fluently, I still think in English. I’m thankful for my rich heritage that consisted of the best influences from both eastern and western worlds. "For I know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11