I was born in southwest China, within the Ganzi (Garzê) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province. Only just a few days after birth, I used to be sent to Chengdu, the province’s capital city. My sister and I were raised by our grandmother while my parents, each medical doctors, were sent by the Communist Party to the agricultural Tibetan area many high mountains away from town, where children couldn’t get a good education.
I knew at a really young age that I needed to get outstanding grades to enter college and avoid living within the cold and poor mountainous area. I studied hard and excelled at school.
At age 16, I went to Shanghai to check chemistry at Fudan University, one among China’s top schools. This was within the Nineteen Eighties, after China had opened its door to the world. At this time, Chinese universities were quite liberal and tolerant of free considering, and Fudan was generally known as one of the vital “Westernized” universities.
In college, I started to rebel against indoctrination into official Communist ideology, and I desired to learn more about Western thought and culture. But my worldview had been influenced by years of atheist education. I assumed I didn’t imagine in anything and had no real interest in any religion.
After graduation, I went back to Chengdu and commenced to work in a research institute as a polymer scientist. After work, I played loads of mahjong with gambling late at night, but I used to be unhappy in my heart. After the crackdown on the scholar movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, I used to be heartbroken and lost. (I witnessed similar types of violent suppression on the streets of Chengdu.) I sank into deep darkness and hopelessness. I couldn’t find a solution to my heart’s questions, and life became meaningless and unbearably painful. I made a decision that I would go away China and go to America for graduate study, and I started preparing for the relevant tests.
Meanwhile, I began reading loads of books on philosophy and religion. Most of the books I discovered on Christianity treated it negatively, but I also became friends with just a few Christians on the “English corner” by the Jinjiang River in the middle of Chengdu.
Arriving in America
In 1990, to make some more money, I went with a British expedition team to the source of the Yangtze River within the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai Provinces, serving as their interpreter. Out of 30 people on the team, 27 were Christian, they usually used hovercrafts to go upstream on the Yangtze and access distant Tibetan villages, where they’d do charity work. I spent greater than a month with them on the Tibetan plateau.
We traveled on dangerous roads, braving snowstorms, mudslides, and other types of severe weather. The team’s official Chinese hosting company, whose primary interest was getting cash for themselves, created additional difficulties on top of cultural, political, and natural challenges. But I observed how the British Christians prayed when facing adversity, and the way they worshiped God joyfully, singing guitar-led hymns of their tent. I used to be moved by their real and selfless love for the Tibetan people, and I discovered myself wishing for his or her form of life and faith.
In the summer of 1992, I received a graduate school admission letter from the University of Alabama, and I waited outside the US consulate in Chengdu for 4 days and 4 nights to use for a student visa. The I-20 paperwork certifying my admission was lost when the college mailed it the primary time. I needed to make a really expensive international phone call to request one other copy, which I finally received on the third day in line outside the consulate.
In August 1992, I arrived in America with $42 in my pocket (that was all my savings—one among my relatives bought me the flight ticket). I used to be ready to start out pursuing the “American dream” of freedom, democracy, happiness, and scientific achievement.
But what I discovered was salvation in Christ. I joined a Chinese Bible study group on campus and have become a Christian soon thereafter. Because I had no automotive, I relied on Chinese friends to take me around for shopping and other things. Christians from the fellowship offered their help, and on Friday nights they’d take me to their Bible study, although I used to be there mostly for the Chinese food.
Early on, I often debated with the Christians about theories of creation and evolution. Yet I used to be increasingly moved by the Christian charity these friends showed to me, especially due to sharp contrast between Christian love and the “we should always hate our enemy” teachings I had absorbed from my Communist education. I noticed that their ability to act out sacrificial love got here from faith in God, the identical faith that inspired the British Christians’ love for the Tibetan people.
I also began to comprehend the hatred and other darkness in my very own heart, and my need 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 about Christ’s cross and God’s love. I used to be moved to tears. When the pastor asked if anyone would imagine in Christ and go forward to the pulpit, I stood and walked to the front, and the pastor held my hands as we prayed. I used to be baptized in that church only two months after arriving within the US.
Internet evangelism
After I graduated with my master’s degree in 1995, I began working within the US chemical industry, first as a scientist, then as a research and development manager. The work brought me to Arizona, then New Jersey, after which Maryland. At the identical time, I grew spiritually and served in local Chinese churches.
It was also in 1995 that I began writing about Christianity on the primitive Chinese web. Pretty soon I started engaging online with non-believing Chinese intellectuals in China and overseas. This made me one among the earliest Chinese Christian apologists on the web.
Even though there have been only just a few online Christians then, Christianity was one among the most well liked debate topics on the early forums that sprang up on the Chinese web during its infancy. Debates about science and Christianity appeared on a listing of “Top 10 Chinese Internet News” in 1996 and 1997, and I used to be one among the few Christians named on the list.
In 1996, I became one among the earliest volunteer coworkers for the ministry Chinese Christian Internet Mission. We uploaded apologetic and evangelistic materials on our website for people in China (the federal government hadn’t yet erected its “Great Firewall” of censorship). I also began my very own personal gospel website, “Jidian’s Links,” in 1998. (Jidian is my penname, and in Chinese it’s the name of the biblical figure of Gideon.)
At the tip of the1990s, many Chinese online forums became popular. Christians, including myself, were lively on those platforms, dialoguing with intellectuals in China about Christian faith. Many influential Chinese intellectuals were involved in such conversations.
When more useful web platforms corresponding to blogs, Douban, Weibo, Zhihu, and WeChat became popular within the 2000s and 2010s, Chinese Christians quickly took them up for evangelistic purposes. I began writing blogs, step by step expanding my focus beyond apologetics to cover culture and current affairs. In 2012, a group of my blog essays, The Search and the Return, was published in China. In an official Chinese Communist Youth League journal article published that yr, the writer called me one of the vital influential “web missionaries” that Chinese youth should pay attention to.
Protection and windfall
But my evangelism in China was not limited to online writing. Before the Chinese government tightened its control on religions in 2018, there was a golden window of 10 or 15 years when evangelism was possible contained in the nation itself. During this era, I went back to China two or 3 times annually, giving evangelistic “free and public seminars” at Christian bookstores and low houses run by house churches while meeting Christians and seekers in lots of Chinese cities.
In 2011, I became a full-time Christian employee. I joined the Chinese media ministry Overseas Campus Ministries (OCM), based in California, to function director of its evangelism division and chief editor of its magazine and media platforms. Through our WeChat account, we reached greater than 70,000 subscribers before government censors blocked and deleted it. And we organized a Christian blogger “circle” in China to encourage and foster more Christian authors. I answered nearly 300 faith-related questions on Zhihu before my account was censored in January 2020.
While with OCM, I also served diaspora Chinese churches in North America, Asia, and Europe as a speaker and preacher. In 2019, I joined a world mission organization as a “diaspora and returnee missionary.” In January 2022, I used to be “seconded” to Christianity Today to function Asia editor. In my two years at CT, we now have published not only a whole bunch of Chinese translations from English, but in addition dozens of articles originally written in Chinese. I’ll proceed to serve the worldwide Chinese churches through my mission work in addition to my media ministry.
When I got here to the US 32 years ago, my parents expected that I’d turn out to be an impressive scientist. I did well as a scientist within the chemical industry, but my parents never anticipated that I’d hand over that profession and turn out to be an online missionary author and editor. Many of the Chinese forums I frequented now not exist today, but occasionally I still get direct messages from Chinese Christians who say they knew me through my online presence once they were still atheists. Some have gone on to turn out to be full-time ministers or missionaries. They are amazed that I’m still actively evangelizing on the web and thru Christian media.
Thinking back on my journey of life, I’m more convinced than ever before that I actually have nothing to boast in except God’s grace. He worked in my heart once I was struggling in China. He led me onto the web, and into apologetics and missions, in his own timing. My journey has been stuffed with his protection and windfall. As one hymn puts it, in words I can heartily affirm, “by his own hand he leadeth me.”
Sean Cheng is a Christian author, media editor, and diaspora Chinese missionary based in Maryland. In 2022, he published a book in Chinese, Above All Things, on the subject of science and Christianity.
