“You Are Chinese”
My grandfather was a first-generation immigrant who moved from Shandong, China, to Korea because of war. When I was a child, he often told me, “You are Chinese.” This was more than a statement about our family’s roots. It meant that even though I grew up in Korea, I was expected to live with a clear sense of myself as Chinese. For me as a child, being “Chinese” was not something to question. It was an inherited fact and, at least at the time, seemed to provide the clearest answer to the question, “Who am I?”
As time passed, however, I gradually discovered that what I understood by “Chinese” was not necessarily the same as what Chinese people in other places understood by it. My Chineseness may be different from yours. This does not mean that one person is somehow more “authentically Chinese” while another is less authentic. Nor do I use “Chineseness” here to refer to a fixed or unchanging cultural essence. Rather, I use it to describe the experience of identity that has gradually taken shape for me as a member of the overseas Chinese community in Korea, within particular histories, places, languages, forms of education, political memories, and social relationships. Nor does this mean that all Sinophone communities should be subsumed under a single “Chinese” identity.
In many parts of the world, Chinese diasporic communities have long acquired citizenship in the countries where they live, so nationality alone cannot define Chineseness. The overseas Chinese in Korea, however, have a distinctive historical context. Because many first-generation immigrants arrived in Korea before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, numerous families continued to hold ROC passports even after living in Korea for several generations. In recent years, more have chosen to naturalize as Korean citizens, but the ROC passport remains an important part of the historical experience and collective memory of the community.
Multiple Belongings
For the overseas Chinese in Korea, belonging has never been singular. Many families trace their ancestral origins to Shandong, China, a place that carries family history and ancestral memory. The Republic of China and Taiwan, meanwhile, became important sources of identity through history, education, and political memory. Overseas Chinese schools in Korea long used educational materials from Taiwan, and their curricula were deeply influenced by Taiwan.
At the same time, Korea was the place where we actually lived and grew up. We remembered our family histories rooted in Shandong, carried ROC passports, and lived in Korea. We spoke Mandarin (Guoyu) and the Shandong dialect while also speaking Korean naturally and fluently. What, then, made me Chinese? Was it my passport, my ancestral origins, my language, my education, or the place where I had actually lived and grown up?
The question became even more complicated in 1992, when Korea severed diplomatic relations with the Republic of China and established relations with the People’s Republic of China. As encounters with people from mainland China increased, the overseas Chinese in Korea gradually came to recognize that although we shared certain linguistic and cultural elements, our historical experiences were not the same.
“Are You Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese?”
My confusion about identity became much clearer when I went to Taiwan for university. I had been taught since childhood that I was Chinese, yet when I arrived in Taiwan, my classmates called me “Korean.”
“You came from Korea, so you are Korean.”
At the time, I found this difficult to accept. Sometimes I would show them my ROC passport and say, “I have the same passport as you. I am the same as you.”
Yet a passport did not resolve my questions. Was I Korean, Taiwanese, or Chinese? For a time, my answer to all three questions was “no.” Whether I called myself Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese, none of these identities seemed capable of describing me fully. Borrowing the title of Taiwanese writer Wu Zhuoliu’s novel Orphan of Asia, I sometimes described myself as an “orphan of Asia.” At that time, living at the boundaries felt not like richness but like a deficiency.
Looking back now, however, I have gradually come to understand that this very in-betweenness can become a place where theological insight begins to emerge. What I once regarded as an ambiguous position that had to be overcome instead enabled me to understand God, myself, and the different worlds that had shaped me in new ways. It is precisely where different histories, languages, and memories intersect that I have begun to see things that were previously invisible to me.
From Belonging Nowhere to Belonging
A significant change in my understanding of identity came after I came to know Jesus Christ. As a Christian, I began to understand the kingdom of God and the biblical idea of “citizenship in heaven” (Philippians 3:20) in a new way. I gradually realized that I did not first have to decide whether I was Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese. In the ultimate sense, I was first a person who belonged to the kingdom of God.
Yet heavenly citizenship was not a new passport designed to erase my earthly identities. Instead, the gospel enabled me to accept that the distinct historical and cultural traces of Korea, China, and Taiwan were all genuinely present in my life.
In the past, I felt that I had to choose one answer among Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. Later, I came to realize that, in different senses, I could even answer “yes” to all three. Korean society had shaped me. My family roots were in China. I held an ROC passport, studied at a university in Taiwan, and inherited political and historical memories connected to Taiwan.
In Christ, my understanding gradually shifted from “I belong nowhere” to “I can belong to more than one place at the same time.” Confidence that I belonged to the kingdom of God did not erase my other identities. Rather, it gave me the freedom not to make any national or ethnic identity my ultimate identity. It was precisely within this freedom that I was able to embrace my most particular identity again: overseas Chinese in Korea.
The incarnation also led me to reconsider the particularity of theology. In Jesus Christ, God entered a particular time, place, people, and history. Theology, therefore, is never spoken from “nowhere.” We always speak of God from somewhere, in a particular language, carrying particular histories and memories. Christians in mainland China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, North America, and among the overseas Chinese in Korea may share the same faith, but their theological testimonies need not be identical. This is not a deficiency. It reflects the particularity inherent in an incarnational faith.
Many Chinesenesses, One Body
It is at this point that I find Easten Law’s proposal of Sinophone Theologies (華語神學) especially significant. If “Chinese” is understood as a single and homogeneous cultural and linguistic category, we easily overlook the lived experiences of Sinophone communities shaped in different places and histories. As Law argues, a Sinophone perspective does not begin with a single, centralized “Chinese culture” but invites us to recognize both the commonalities and differences among multiple Chinese worlds.1
Pentecost offers an important theological image for thinking about Sinophone theology. In Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit came, people did not begin speaking one common sacred language. Rather, each person heard the mighty works of God in their own language. If Sinophone theology places Mandarin—whether Guoyu or Putonghua—at the center while pushing Cantonese, Taiwanese, Shandong dialect, and the linguistic experiences of different Chinese diasporic communities to the margins, it simply creates another center.
The community of Pentecost is not one in which everyone speaks the same language, but one in which people can speak of God through different languages and also hear one another. In this sense, I believe the Pentecost community can be understood as a polycentric community. Such polycentricity no longer evaluates every community according to its distance from a single center. Sinophone communities in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, North America, and Korea can each encounter God and do theology from within their own histories and local contexts. The experience of any one place need not become the sole standard by which all others are measured.
For me, this is also deeply personal. My faith and theology were not formed through one language alone. I came to faith in Jesus in Taiwan and became part of a church there, but I later studied theology in Korea. Mandarin (Guoyu) and the Shandong linguistic world of my family have shaped my identity, while historical memories associated with the ROC and Taiwan also remain part of my background. If I were required to choose only one of these experiences and call it the “real” me, I would have to cut apart my own experience of faith.
In this sense, my lived experience is not merely an illustration of Sinophone theology. It is also an epistemological starting point from which I begin to do theology. Law likewise identifies “autobiographical experience” as one of the important theological sources from which Sinophone Theologies emerge.2 The tensions, forms of belonging, languages, and memories I have experienced as one of the overseas Chinese in Korea are therefore not merely personal background to be excluded before doing theology. They are the concrete conditions of life from which my theological reflection begins.
The Apostle Paul’s image of the “body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 12 reminds us that Christian unity is not uniformity. The body becomes a body precisely because its members are different, and it is because they are different that they need one another. No single Chinese Christian experience can represent the whole. Recognizing different voices does not deny unity. The body of Christ becomes one not by eliminating differences, but by needing one another in the midst of them.
Revelation 7 likewise presents a vision in which people from “every nation, tribe, people, and language” stand together before God. Yet we sometimes treat “Korean,” “Chinese,” or “American” as internally homogeneous categories and then discuss how these peoples can be united in Christ. In reality, every one of these categories already contains considerable internal complexity.
Unity in Christ, therefore, requires us to recognize not only differences between peoples, but also differences within these categories. “Chinese” itself encompasses different national experiences, regional histories, languages, migrations, political memories, and diasporic lives. Chineseness formed in mainland China cannot become the sole standard for Chinese people everywhere. Forms of Chineseness shaped in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, North America, and among the overseas Chinese in Korea have each emerged within their own distinctive histories and relationships.
For this reason, “My Chineseness may be different from yours” is not a declaration intended to separate us. It is an invitation to listen to one another. Sinophone theology should not begin by defining an abstract “Chinese culture” and placing everyone within it. Rather, it should listen to how different people encounter and speak of God from within their family histories, migrations, languages and education, politics and memories, and lived experiences of faith.
Yet Sinophone theology cannot stop at affirming the existence of multiple Chinese identities. It must also ask: Whose voice has been placed at the center, and whose experience has been pushed to the margins? This is not only a question of diversity; it is also a question of power. When one language, history, or political memory is treated as “universal,” other experiences can easily be regarded as particular, secondary, or merely marginal.
When we use the term “Chinese Christianity,” do we unconsciously treat the history of one region, one linguistic form, or one political experience as normative? The experiences of different regional and diasporic communities should compel us to ask again: What, exactly, have we long assumed “Chinese” to mean?
Perhaps the heart of Pentecost was not only that people spoke different languages, but that they were able to hear the languages of others. The task of Sinophone theology, therefore, is not only to produce more voices, but also to cultivate theological ears capable of hearing one another. I need the freedom to speak from my own Chineseness, while also accepting that another person’s Chineseness may be different from mine.
God did not ask me to resolve whether I was Korean, Chinese, or Taiwanese before receiving me. God met me precisely where these relationships and histories were intertwined. The heavenly citizenship I discovered in Christ did not erase my particular history. Instead, it gave me the freedom to embrace it.
I once thought that I belonged nowhere. Later, in Christ, I discovered that I could belong to more than one place at the same time. And within that freedom, I rediscovered the particular place from which I speak: I am one of the overseas Chinese in Korea.
I no longer regard the difference between my Chineseness and someone else’s as a deficiency. The boundary that once felt like a deficiency may instead become a theological location from which I can understand God anew and learn to listen to others. Difference need not be a problem to solve. It may become a gift we receive from one another.
My Chineseness May Be Different from Yours
Perhaps the task of Sinophone theology is not to overcome these differences, but to learn how to speak faithfully of God from within them, and to hear how others speak of God from within their own languages, histories, and lived contexts. If the kingdom envisioned in Revelation is a community in which different peoples and languages can worship God together without first being erased, then Sinophone theology should not seek to produce a single Chineseness.
Rather, it should enable people speaking from different centers to stop treating one another as the margins of someone else’s center, to bear witness to God from their own concrete locations, and to recognize and need one another within the body of Christ. Then “My Chineseness may be different from yours” will no longer be a declaration that separates us. It can become an invitation—an invitation to listen together to stories about God coming from different places.
- Easten Law, “When ‘Chinese’ Is Not One Thing: A Proposal for Doing Theology in a Diverse World,” ChinaSource, accessed August 24, 2026.
- Easten Law, “Doing Theology from Many Centers: A Proposal for Sinophone Theologies,” ChinaSource, August 24, 2026, accessed November 2, 2026, https://www.chinasource.org/articles/doing-theology-from-many-centers.
