In this three-part series, the ChinaSource team presents stories that trace the longing for home, identity, and grace across borders. Through encounters with people once considered Chinese—and others who longed to be—the author reflects on what it means to belong when history, memory, and faith tell different stories.
One Christmas season, when I was serving as the Mandarin pastor of a Chinese church in North America, I led a group of young people and children to a nearby nursing home to sing carols. Most of the residents were very elderly—some frail, others confined to wheelchairs. Yet when they saw the young people visiting and heard the familiar hymns, their faces lit up like children’s. They swayed gently in their seats, their lips moving with the songs. The whole scene was tender and full of warmth.
I noticed an elderly man in a long, quilted Chinese gown sitting quietly among the residents. When he looked up and greeted me—in clear, fluent Chinese—I stopped short in astonishment. No one had mentioned a Chinese resident in this home. But as I stepped closer, my surprise deepened: the face before me was unmistakably Western—a white man, not Chinese at all.
As I approached, he reached out eagerly and grasped my hand, his own trembling with excitement. “I never imagined that this Christmas, here of all places, I would meet someone from China!” he said.
He asked where I was from. When I told him, his eyes brightened even more. “I’m from China too!” he said, and tears filled his eyes as he began to tell his story.
His grandfather, a missionary and doctor from Norway, had gone to China during the late Qing dynasty, serving in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. There he met and married a Canadian nurse who was also a missionary. Their son—this old man’s father—was born in Shaanxi, and the old man himself was born in Shanxi. His mother, too, had been a Canadian missionary.
Shortly before he was born, the Boxer Rebellion erupted, targeting foreigners and Christians. His parents were among the few who survived. He told me that his first language had been the Shanxi dialect, the tongue his parents spoke at home. He had never thought of himself as a foreigner, and the local people hadn’t treated them as such. Yet, for as long as he could remember, China had never truly been at peace. When stability finally returned, the new government branded his family as imperialist spies and expelled them from the country.
He sighed. “When I came to Canada, I didn’t even know English. It was a hard beginning.”
After a pause, he continued softly, “Many countries recognize as citizens those born on their soil. I was born in China—so why won’t China recognize me as Chinese? More than ten years ago, I went back to visit my hometown in Shanxi, but I had to enter on a foreign passport and was received as an outsider. I even applied to spend my final years in China, but my request was denied.”
His voice trembled. “China is my home. My family lived there for three generations. Why won’t China accept me as Chinese? I’m old now. I just want to fall where I grew up—but will I ever be allowed to go home?”
The old man wept. His sorrow felt out of place amid the carols and laughter, yet it pierced my heart. I found myself fighting back tears and silently asked: Do you consider him Chinese?
A quiet answer rose within me:
If you refuse to acknowledge him as Chinese, then you have forfeited the right to call yourself one.
Later I heard that he had passed away in the nursing home. He never saw his earthly-wish fulfilled—to return as a Chinese and rest in his homeland. But he has gone home to his Father in heaven.
Editor’s note: This article was originally written in Chinese and published by New Territory and was translated and edited by the ChinaSource team with permission.
