I was born in southwestern China in Ganzi (Garzê) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province. Just some days after my start, I used to be despatched to Chengdu, the capital of the province. My sister and I had been raised by our grandmother, whereas my mother and father, each medical doctors, had been despatched by the Communist Social gathering to a rural space of Tibet in lots of excessive mountains removed from town, the place kids couldn’t get a good training.
I knew at a really younger age that I needed to have glorious grades with the intention to enter school and keep away from residing within the chilly and poor mountainous areas. I studied exhausting and excelled in class.
On the age of 16, I went to Shanghai to check chemistry at Fudan College, among the finest colleges in China. It was within the Eighties, after China opened its doorways to the world. Presently, Chinese language universities had been comparatively liberal and tolerant of free thought, and Fudan was generally known as one of the “westernized” universities.
In school, I started to insurgent towards the indoctrination into official communist ideology and needed to be taught extra about Western thought and tradition. However my worldview was influenced by years of atheistic training. I believed I didn't consider in something and I wasn't serious about any faith.
After commencement, I returned to Chengdu and began working in a analysis institute as a polymer scientist. I performed a variety of playing mahjong late at evening after work, however I used to be sad in my spirit. After the crackdown on the scholar motion in Tiananmen Sq. in 1989, I used to be damaged and misplaced. (I witnessed related types of violent suppression on the streets of Chengdu.) I plunged into deep darkness and hopelessness. I couldn’t discover the reply to the questions of my coronary heart, and life misplaced its that means and damage excruciatingly. I made a decision to go away China and go to America for graduate research and began getting ready for the related assessments.
In the meantime, I began studying a variety of books on philosophy and faith. Many of the books I discovered on Christianity had been damaging, however I additionally befriended a couple of Christians within the “English Nook” by the Jinjiang River in central Chengdu.
Arrival in America
In 1990, to earn some extra cash, I went with a British expedition group to the headwaters of the Yangtze River within the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, the place I served as an interpreter. Of the 30 folks on the group, 27 had been Christians, they usually used hovercraft to go up the Yangtze River to succeed in distant Tibetan villages the place they did charity work. I spent over a month with them on the Tibetan Plateau.
We traveled on harmful roads, confronted snow storms, mudslides and different types of inclement climate. The group's official Chinese language host firm, whose main concern was to generate income for themselves, created further difficulties along with the cultural, political and pure challenges. However I noticed how British Christians prayed after they confronted adversity and the way they joyfully worshiped God and sang hymns with a guitar of their tent. I used to be moved by their real and selfless love for the Tibetan folks and located myself eager for their lifestyle and perception.
In the summertime of 1992, I acquired my graduate faculty acceptance letter from the College of Alabama and waited 4 days and 4 nights exterior the US Consulate in Chengdu to use for a pupil visa. The I-20 paperwork confirming my acceptance had been misplaced when the varsity first mailed them. I needed to make a really costly worldwide cellphone name to request one other copy, which I lastly acquired on the third day in line exterior the consulate.
In August 1992, I arrived in America with $42 in my pocket (that was all my financial savings – certainly one of my relations purchased me the airplane ticket). I used to be prepared to start out pursuing the “American Dream” of freedom, democracy, happiness, and scientific achievement.
However what I discovered was salvation in Christ. I joined a Chinese language Bible examine group on campus and have become a Christian quickly after. Since I didn't have a automobile, I relied on Chinese language buddies to take me buying and stuff. The Christians within the fellowship supplied to assist me and took me to a Bible examine on Friday evenings, regardless that I used to be primarily there for the Chinese language meals.
Early on, I usually debated with Christians concerning the theories of creation and evolution. Nonetheless, I used to be more and more moved by the Christian love these buddies confirmed me, particularly due to the stark distinction between Christian love and the “we should always hate our enemy” teachings I had absorbed from my Communist training. I noticed that their capacity to point out sacrificial love got here from religion in God, the identical religion that impressed British Christians' love for the Tibetan folks.
I additionally turned conscious of the hatred and different darkness in my coronary heart and my want for salvation. On a Sunday in October 1992, I used to be sitting in a pew at Tuscaloosa First Baptist Church. The pastor preached an evangelical sermon concerning the cross of Christ and God's love. I used to be moved to tears. When the pastor requested if anybody would consider in Christ and stroll ahead to the pulpit, I stood up and walked ahead and the pastor held my palms as we prayed. I used to be baptized on this church simply two months after arriving within the US.
Web evangelism
After finishing my grasp's diploma in 1995, I began working within the US chemical business, first as a scientist, then as a R&D supervisor. Work took me to Arizona, then New Jersey, after which Maryland. On the similar time, I grew spiritually and served in native Chinese language church buildings.
It was additionally in 1995 that I began writing about Christianity on the primitive Chinese language Web. Fairly quickly I began interacting on-line with unbelieving Chinese language intellectuals in China and abroad. This made me one of many first Chinese language Christian apologists on the Web.
Though there have been only some Christians on the Web again then, Christianity was one of many hottest matters of debate within the first boards that appeared on the Chinese language Web throughout its start. Debates on science and Christianity appeared on the listing of “High 10 Chinese language Web Information” in 1996 and 1997, and I used to be one of many few Christians listed.
In 1996, I turned one of many first volunteers for the Chinese language Christian Web Mission Ministry. We have now uploaded apologetic and evangelistic supplies for the folks in China (the federal government has not but constructed its “Nice Firewall” of censorship) on our web site. In 1998 I additionally began my private gospel website “Jidian's Hyperlinks”. (Jidian is my pseudonym and in Chinese language it’s the identify of the biblical character Gideon.)
Within the late Nineties, many Chinese language on-line boards turned fashionable. Christians, myself included, have been energetic on these platforms and engaged in dialogue with intellectuals in China concerning the Christian religion. Many influential Chinese language intellectuals had been concerned in such talks.
When extra helpful Web platforms equivalent to blogs, Douban, Weibo, Zhihu, and WeChat turned fashionable within the 2000s and 2010s, Chinese language Christians shortly adopted them for evangelistic functions. I began running a blog and step by step broadened my focus past apologetics to tradition and present affairs. In 2012, a group of essays was revealed on my weblog, Search and return, was revealed in China. Within the Chinese language Communist Youth League's official article revealed that yr, the writer referred to as me one of the influential “web missionaries” that Chinese language youth ought to concentrate on.
Safety and Windfall
However my evangelism in China was not restricted to on-line writing. Earlier than the Chinese language authorities tightened its management over religions in 2018, there was a golden window of 10 or 15 years when it was potential to evangelize throughout the nation itself. Throughout this era, I returned to China two or thrice a yr, holding evangelistic “free and public seminars” in Christian bookstores and cafes run by native church buildings, and assembly Christians and seekers in lots of Chinese language cities.
In 2011, I turned a full-time Christian employee. I joined China's Abroad Campus Ministries (OCM) primarily based in California to function the director of its evangelistic division and editor-in-chief of its magazines and media platforms. We reached over 70,000 subscribers by way of our WeChat account earlier than it was blocked and deleted by authorities censors. And we organized a Christian blogger “circle” in China to encourage and help different Christian authors. Earlier than my account was censored in January 2020, I answered almost 300 faith-related questions on Zhihu.
Throughout my time at OCM, I additionally served the diasporas in Chinese language congregations in North America, Asia, and Europe as a speaker and preacher. In 2019, I joined a global mission group as a “Diaspora and Return Missionary”. In January 2022 I used to be “dropped”. Christianity At the moment to function Asian editor. Within the two years I labored at CT, we revealed not solely a whole bunch of Chinese language translations from English, but in addition dozens of articles initially written in Chinese language. I’ll proceed to serve the worldwide Chinese language church buildings by way of my missionary work in addition to my media ministry.
Once I got here to the US 32 years in the past, my mother and father anticipated me to turn into a superb scientist. I used to be doing nicely as a scientist within the chemical business, however my mother and father by no means envisioned me giving up that profession to turn into an Web missionary author and editor. Most of the Chinese language boards I used to go to now not exist, however I nonetheless often get direct messages from Chinese language Christians who say they knew me due to my on-line presence after they had been nonetheless atheists. Some turned full-time ministers or missionaries. They’re stunned that I’m nonetheless actively evangelizing on the Web and thru Christian media.
Once I look again on my journey by way of life, I’m extra satisfied than ever that I’ve nothing to boast about besides God's grace. He labored in my coronary heart after I was struggling in China. He led me to the web and to apologetics and missions in his personal timing. My journey was stuffed with his safety and windfall. As one hymn says, I can heartily affirm in phrases: “he leads me along with his personal hand.”
Sean Cheng is a Christian author, media editor, and Chinese language diaspora missionary primarily based in Maryland. In 2022, he revealed a e book in Chinese language, Above allas regards to science and Christianity.