On May 15, 2022, a gunman entered a Taiwanese church in Orange County, California. He killed one person and wounded five others. Police later disclosed that the crime was committed out of a political hatred of Taiwan. The shocking crime brought attention to the tension between China and Taiwan even here in the United States.
Pastor KC Liu wrote about the incident for SOLA Network in “Response to the Laguna Woods Shooting on May 15, 2022.” In the article, he shared the dark history between the two nations but also looked for a way forward through the Gospel.
SOLA Editorial Board member Daniel K. Eng interviewed Pastor KC Liu a few months after the incident, and we are publishing it now in the new year. They talked about Pastor KC’s experiences growing up in a Taiwanese family, and how his own family was affected by the political tensions within the country. He also discusses the current animosity between Taiwan and China. But he also ends with a call for unity, and he has great hope for the future.
We hope this interview will be enlightening for American Christians, especially Asian American Christians, as we truly learn what it means to be united in Christ.
You can watch their conversation below, or on our YouTube Page. You can also listen to it via Podcasts. We have also provided a transcript below. Please note that it may contain spelling and grammatical errors.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, hello, everyone. This is Daniel here at the SOLA Network, and I’m here with Pastor KC Liu. And he is the English pastor and missions pastor at Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine. KC, can you just tell us a bit about yourself? And tell me about your church.
KC Liu: Yeah. Hey, how’s it going, everyone? Thank you for inviting me to be on the interview, Daniel. I’m Pastor KC, and I was born in Taiwan. And I immigrated here at the age of eight in 1988. And I came to Christ when I was about 16 years old. And ever since I’ve been kind of going to EFC, the Evangelical Formosan Church, a Taiwanese Chinese American church. I had been volunteering as a youth, and when I got called into full-time ministry, I started serving here. Yeah.
Daniel K. Eng: You recently wrote an article for us at SOLA Network in response to the tragic recent shooting at a Taiwanese church in Southern California. And so I’d love to hear about what led you to write that article. If you could just recap for people who haven’t read it, and then want to open up a discussion about what that leads us to today.
KC Liu: On May 15, was the day of the Laguna Woods shooting. My phone started going off, and people were like, “Did you hear about it?” And I was like, “Wow, wow, okay, another shooting. I’m so tired of shootings. I don’t want to know more. I don’t have the energy to.”
But I found out it was at Laguna Woods. We’re in Irvine so literally we’re neighbors. And I was like, “Wait, let me look at the name of the church, Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church.” And we are in Irvine—we’re EFC Irvine. And it suddenly clicked that we have people in our congregation whose moms and dads go to that church.
And so I was panicking, and I was texting left and right to check on it, and see if everyone was okay. And then I found out that the shooter was a Chinese man born in Taiwan but of his hatred for Taiwanese people. And that was just gut-wrenching to hear.
I kind of assume just the typical reasons—I kind of know why that kind of hatred exists. But the broader church community doesn’t. The Asian American Christian community does not understand what’s the difference between Chinese and Taiwanese. And so that’s why I felt compelled to write the article to kind of give some background to that conversation and for more understanding and how we can also prevent this type of thing from happening again in the future.
Daniel K. Eng: Thank you for writing for SOLA about that. I think it really struck a chord that we haven’t been able to hit before. And so we appreciate that. So how did you start experiencing the dynamics between Chinese and Taiwanese and maybe along the way, you can explain what the background is behind that?
KC Liu: Yeah. Going back to my earliest memory, when I was still in Taiwan, as a boy. I would hear conversations at the dinner table. Because our family is very, very Taiwanese. We spoke Taiwanese in our home, not really Mandarin. And both my grandparents on both sides had seven kids. So I have like 14 different uncles and aunts. We have a big family.
And I remember around the dinner table it’s like, “Oh, who married who and who married who? Which uncle married which auntie, etc.”
But what stood out to me is, “Oh, this auntie married, a quote-unquote wài shěng–married a Chinese person from another province–wài shěng.” In Chinese, it means the person from another province. He’s the other person. He’s not us. He’s the other. And they would say it.
And they wouldn’t say too much negative stuff at the dinner table, but I always felt like there was a tone to it. Like a he’s not one of us that type of feeling. I was a boy, I didn’t understand what was going on. I just knew that that particular uncle is not really one of us. So that was my first experience.
The second experience was when our family immigrated to the US. We had to fill forms a lot of times, whether it’s census forms or filling out visas and stuff, right? And they would say, “What nationality are you? What ethnicity are you?” And we would always be told by my parents, “Do not check the Chinese box. You are not Chinese. There’s a box for others. Check others and then write in Taiwanese.” So I was like, “Well, okay.” I just kind of understood I’m not from the mainland, but I’m from the island of Taiwan—that I understood. But why were they so adamant about it? That I didn’t really understand. That experience came when I was a young boy. Yeah.
Daniel K. Eng: So as you learn more, what did you learn about the history?
KC Liu: Well, it took a long time, actually, for me to really dig into the broad strokes of history. I kind of knew a little bit, but it wasn’t something that was very interested in. I wasn’t interested in politics. I immigrated here at the age of eight. The things I cared about, the things that were relevant to me, were not Chinese/Taiwanese history, you know?
And it wasn’t until my 30s, I’m 42 now, it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I really tried to find out more about my roots as a Taiwanese person and find out more about just what my parents went through and what my grandparents went through. And then I started asking questions.
I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with my grandfather. My grandpa, he’s a very dignified man. I remember when we would go back to Taiwan, we would go to Yilan, which is the countryside.
And everywhere we went, people call him. Teacher, Teacher Liu, Teacher Liu. And I was like, wow, everybody respects you a lot here. Whenever they see grandpa, he was a teacher. And so I thought he did that for a very long time. And then I remember one conversation, I said, “Grandpa, how long were you a teacher? How come they all call you Teacher? Did you spend decades as a teacher?”
He said, “I spent one year as a teacher?” Like one year? What? I thought you did it for decades. I asked him, “So what did you do after that?” He said, “I sold pork.” He raised pigs, and he sold pork. He was a butcher. He said, “I did that for 40 years.” And that just blew my mind. I was like why was there such a drastic transition to it? And he didn’t say very much; he didn’t care to explain why that was. I had to dig through broader history to know why that was.
So during that time, it was because when the KMT retreated from China to Taiwan, they took all the ruling positions, and all the teaching positions if you will or the business positions or the governmental positions. And they didn’t want any Taiwanese intellectuals to kind of rise up and say, “Hey, we want govern ourselves.”
Daniel K. Eng: He lost the opportunity to be a teacher.
KC Liu: Well, because of the 228 (February 28) Incident, and the aftermath of it, they were rounding up all the intellectuals, all the elites, and they were executing them. So a lot of I think my grandpa’s colleagues just disappeared and vanished forever. And so he couldn’t be a teacher. He would have been abducted and executed. Yeah. And so he had to become a commoner if you will. He became a normal butcher so he’s no threat to the ruling party. So that was why, you know.
And so that fascinated me, and, and I went to dig up a lot more things and find out more of the kind of like the trauma and the suffering that my family went through in that period of time. So that was one of the trauma events from that period of time. The 228 Incident or the 228 Massacre…
Daniel K. Eng: For those who don’t know, can you explain a little bit about what that means?
KC Liu: Okay, yeah, so after World War II, in 1945 the Japanese surrendered, right? They gave Taiwan back to China. And so China had to kind of send delegates to rule the island. And so, in 1945, there was a group of KMT soldiers and officials that went to Taiwan to become like the ruling party, and the Taiwanese people generally welcomed them. They were very excited at the time in 1945. They were excited that they were no longer in Japanese occupation. Now, our brothers from the mainland, people of the same blood are now coming to liberate us. So they held up welcoming signs like “Hey, welcome!” We are our own people. We are brothers and sisters, you know.
But when the ship arrived, it was a big disappointment because the people who came out of those ships were just like the ragtag soldiers— very young, very poor. They were wearing beat-up clothes. Straw sandals, some of them didn’t even wear them, like some of them had just one sandal. They all carry, like umbrellas and, and vegetables on their shoulders. You know, so they look very beat up. And, and, and from what, you know, that generation described it, they were very undisciplined.
And then they tried to give them the benefit the doubt. Oh, they’ve been fighting for eight years in World War II. And so, of course, after all this, they’re gonna look like that, you know, let’s cut them some slack and give them a break and so really try to be united as a Chinese people, Taiwanese people.
But in those two years, from 1945-1947. Because due to the lack of structure, the lack of discipline from a lot of the soldiers, they actually caused a lot of harm. They just took land in the name of patriotism: you need to give us your land so that we can live in it. We have a place to live, and they would just take food without payment. Like you’re supposed to give us food because we fought for the country. So, so you need to feed us, right. And they were also taking girls and women for themselves, sometimes very much unwillingly.
And so there was great animosity. There was this great expectation of liberation. This army has come to liberate us, instead, now they have come to rule over us. And there’s abuse, they treat us like they’re the conquerors. And during that time, when the mainland Chinese got to Taiwan, they saw the Taiwanese people as second-class citizens because they were too Japanese.
Taiwanese folks were too Japanese because they only spoke Taiwanese and they only spoke Japanese. They didn’t know how to speak Mandarin, so they couldn’t communicate that the soldiers, the KMT soldiers, and Taiwanese citizens could not communicate with one another. So there was a huge cultural difference. And, and the KMT soldiers saw the Taiwanese as Japanese slaves, if you will. And so they were second-class citizens. So they treated them as such, took their food, took their land, took their woman, etc. And then, on the big, big day, here’s the big incident on February 27.
There was a Taiwanese woman selling contraband cigarettes. At that time, only the government could sell cigarettes and tobacco. The commoners couldn’t do it because this was a big monopoly for the government. So there was a Taiwanese woman selling contraband cigarettes, and some KMT soldiers came and confiscated everything. They took the money, took the cigarettes. But that was all she had because during that time, everybody was very poor because the KMT soldiers, during 1946, took a lot of the supplies and shipped it to China for the civil war against the communists. So Taiwan was left with very little: everybody was poor, was hungry, so they resort to selling cigarettes to make a few bucks.
And so that woman just grabbed the legs of the KMT soldier and said, “Please, please don’t take my products. This is all I have left to sell. I have three kids I have to raise. Right, please don’t take it, have mercy.” And then the soldier took the rifle and just pistol whipped her on her head. And she fell, she went unconscious, and she was bleeding all over.
And there were bystanders right around her, Taiwanese local bystanders and, and they were furious. They were like, “How can you do this? How can you hit a woman over the head over this? You can just talk and communicate.” And so they started protesting, they started kind of throwing rocks at these two soldiers. Like “We need justice, what you guys are doing is wrong.” They got very upset, started throwing rocks at them, and start chasing them. And then one of the soldiers started firing into the crowd in in self-defense, and actually killed a 20 year old man, young man right in front of his house.
Daniel K. Eng: A Taiwanese man.
KC Liu: A Taiwanese man. And so that was, that happened on the night of the 27th, February 27. On the 28th, there was a big uprising. All the protesters came and wanted to talk to the authorities. “Hey, your soldiers did this, we want them to be held accountable for their crimes, for hitting the woman and for killing a young man.” Right? And then, but then the soldiers will kind of tell their side of the story like “we acted in self defense,” etc.
And so the authorities did not respond to the protesters—they ignored them. So what happened was then the protest got even bigger. And the protesters came and overran some of the governmental buildings and tried to take control and and to control the radio station, and then broadcasted all over the island all of the atrocities of the KMT soldiers upon the citizens. All right, so they start broadcasting.
And, and so more and more people started going to different buildings to protests, government buildings, and so the government and the soldiers, they start shooting. They start shooting and more people died. And then a riot just kind of developed all over the island. So that was just a period of days and days there was unrest across the island. While the governor of Taiwan at the time who was from the mainland, okay.
Daniel K. Eng: So, he wasn’t a local?
KC Liu: No, he wasn’t a local. The governor was sent in 1945, from China to Taiwan to govern Taiwan. Right. So now, it’s 1947. This is called the 228 Incident, February 28, 1947. Some call it incident, some call it a massacre. So what happened was the governor telegrams Chiang Kai-Shek, the general who’s fighting Mao, saying there’s an uprising here in Taiwan. We need reinforcement. Send one of your ships to come and put these people down. Alright, well, the local Taiwanese people now they are telegraming General Chiang Kai-Shek, saying, this is what is truly happening. There was atrocity done to us. And so now we’re protesting injustice. So please see it from both sides, see it from our side.
But that fell on deaf ears. And so the next week, Chiang Kai-Shek sent a naval ship to Taiwan. And the Keelung (Jilóng) port, soldiers came down. For the next three weeks, it was a massacre. They arrested everyone who protested and just dragged them out to the streets. Execution style just shot them behind the head.
It was estimated in those three weeks, about 20,000 to 30,000 people got killed from that massacre. And from then on, like there was just animosity, as you can imagine, on both sides against one another. You know, and that’s the famous 228 Incident. And, because the government didn’t want the word of the 228 Incident to get out, for the next few decades, they couldn’t even really talk about it. There was no freedom of speech. And everyone was under martial law for nearly four decades, where there was no freedom of speech. It was a one party group. And so that’s where the animosity comes from.
Daniel K. Eng: You know, I didn’t learn about this in school. I had to investigate on my own just like you did. And so a lot of this is unknown to a lot of people. So thank you for giving us a short history lesson. I’m sure there’s so much more that we could go into.
You’ve talked about the animosity between those who say they’re Taiwanese and those who say they’re Chinese. Can you tell us about tell us a bit more about what you’ve seen? Maybe in your ministry in your time?
KC Liu: Well, I feel like in the past decade, I’ve been playing connect the dots. Because I was so not interested in political stuff, but I know my own family history. Like, why is it that every time we talk about Chinese and Taiwanese people, my family gets all riled up? And I remember my mom once being very angry when we were talking about the Chinese Civil War, when the Nationalist Party was fighting the Communist Party. In our mind, “Oh, of course, the communists are bad,” in the Western mind. And so I thought, “Oh, one is the good guy, one is the bad guy.”
Daniel K. Eng: We demonize them.
KC Liu: And then my mom was like, “They’re both gangsters, and they’re thugs fighting thugs.” That’s what she said. Like, Chang was a was a gangster. Mao was a gangster. They’re both fighting each other. And they’re both thugs.
And I was so taken aback because I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand what she meant by that. And I didn’t ask for explanations. She was fuming when she said that, so I didn’t really want to talk about it. But it’s because my grandma went through that she told me that.
She [eventually] told me that when my grandmother had her, my mom in her belly, that was during the time when the KMT soldiers came. And one of the soldiers wanted to kind of violate one of my aunts. And then my grandmother stepped in to say, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t just take any woman you want.” And the KMT soldiers shot my grandmother right in the stomach when my grandma was pregnant, my mom was in her tummy.
And so she had to be born prematurely. She was taken to the hospital. When my mom was delivered, she was only two pounds. They didn’t think she was going to survive. And, so they were kind of just going to give up, not even feed her, and just let her go peacefully.
But my oldest aunt said, you know, “let’s just feed her and see what happens. She may not survive, but let’s just feed her and see what happens.” And in Taiwanese, they would say “mong chi,” which means “let’s just feed her.” Okay, mong chi, mong chi. And then that became her nickname.
So when I was young, and I heard my aunts and uncles call her mong chi. I was like, “What does that even mean? Why does she have such a weird nickname?” And it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I found out. That was her nickname, because she survived that trauma.
Daniel K. Eng: Thank God, she survived.
KC Liu: Yeah, if she didn’t survive, I wouldn’t be here. Right. And that made me think—now I understand the animosity. And the anger. Every time we talk about it because they were first-hand victims.
Daniel K. Eng: Your family?
KC Liu: Yeah. This wasn’t like something that happened to other people. This was something that happened to my family.
Daniel K. Eng: It’s personal.
KC Liu: It’s very personal. And not just that. I found out on my Dad’s side is the same thing. You know, my grandpa had to become a butcher instead of a teacher so he wouldn’t get killed. My father, when he drinks a little bit, he spills out all the beans and all the juicy stories. He would tell me when I was a kid, that when the KMT came, they had to learn Mandarin. They were forced to learn Mandarin. And so, in school, if they spoke Taiwanese, they would have to wear a sign.
In Chinese, we call it a dog tag, saying: I have to speak Mandarin. I can’t speak Taiwanese. It was a sign of public shaming if you spoke Taiwanese at school. So in my dad’s era, he always had to wear dog tags, so he felt like he was a dog. Later on, you know decades later, they would get rid of the dog tag and they would actually fine you money. You have to pay money if you spoke Taiwanese. That was personal trauma for him as well. So that’s why he was so adamant.
Daniel K. Eng: About keeping on speaking Taiwanese.
KC Liu: Yeah. I mean, eventually, he learned to speak Mandarin. Because well if you want a job anywhere, now you have to speak Mandarin.
Daniel K. Eng: But the association of having to learn Mandarin when he was younger was very negative.
KC Liu: Oh, pure humiliation. Felt like a dog.
Daniel K. Eng: For me, being ethnically Chinese and not supportive of the Chinese Communist Party, I have to always make a distinction between politics and ethnicity. But I know it’s not easy for people. That has probably led to a lot of animosity. Can you tell me more about how you’ve maybe experienced that more recently? Or witnessed this division?
KC Liu: You mean, like in the church?
Daniel K. Eng: It could be in the church, could be outside the church.
KC Liu: I mean, outside the church, there’s always bickering on the news. It depends on what news channel you watch. It’s like for Westerners you either watch CNN or you watch Fox News, and you’re gonna get two different stories, right? Yeah. Well, same thing over there. Like, if you watch certain channels in Taiwan, it’s it’s very, very green.
Daniel K. Eng: Can you tell us, what does “very green” mean?
KC Liu: Very green, meaning that the Green Party is the Taiwanese Independence Party. They want Taiwan…
Daniel K. Eng: It’s a political party.
KC Liu: Yeah. And it’s the Progressive Party—Democratic Progressive Party, DPP. And the Blue Party is the KMT, Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party. That’s the party of Chiang Kai-Shek, and so that’s blue, which in its very original form, sees China as one, right? The true Chinese government is the KMT.
Daniel K. Eng: The UN sees it too.
KC Liu: Yeah, yeah. So Chiang Kai-Shek always thought that Communist Party in China was illegitimate, and that we are the true legitimate political party, which happens in Taiwan at that time.
Daniel K. Eng: So us it’s red and blue. And in Taiwan, it’s blue and green, right?
KC Liu: Blue and green? Yeah, it’s blue and green. Sorry, where was I going with this?
Daniel K. Eng: You were saying that you saw a lot of green, especially on Taiwanese TV.
KC Liu: Oh, yeah. So just depending on, you know, what channel you watch, they’re gonna advocate for a particular side. And so I was so turned off by that. I was like, “I don’t want to watch that stuff. That’s, that’s not my battle. I’m here in America. Like, I fight other battles. We have other issues to worry about.” Oh, yeah. And so I’m like, “okay, Mom and Dad, always watch Taiwanese news here in America, you know?”
And I’m like, “Oh, you guys care so much about Taiwan. But you guys are in America.” So when I was younger, I was like, “Your body’s here, but your mind is over there, your soul is over there.” Right. And so I see that bickering on the news all the time. But here, living here, like that, that distinction is not something in my mind. Okay. Besides prior to 2000, the only Chinese people I met were Taiwanese people. Right?
Daniel K. Eng: That was your circle.
KC Liu: That was my circle. And during that time, around that time, there weren’t very many mainland immigrants here. There weren’t unless you’re talking about the first wave of Cantonese immigrants, but that was 100 years ago. That’s not what I’m talking about. About the third wave of family history is the campaign. So it wasn’t until the year 2000 when there were more mainland Chinese immigrating here to the US, and I start seeing them in schools. And in churches, you know, and I thought the only thing I thought was, wow, they talk with a funny accent.
Daniel K. Eng: You can tell they’re mainland.
KC Liu: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because they roll their “R”s very much, you know. So I thought they have a funny accent. And they thought I had a funny accent. Right? Yeah. That was kind of about it, and I thought, you know, not very different. All the young people, they go out to buy boba. We buy boba at the same places, we eat the same stuff, we drink the same stuff, receive the same education, and say yeah, “okay, we’re not that different. Yeah, okay.” And we learn to coexist. No problem. Yeah.
Daniel K. Eng: In America.
KC Liu: In America, yeah. So, so I didn’t think anything of it. Besides we’re Christians, we’re followers of Christ. Any animosities that we have, we have to learn to forgive one another. You know? But when I first thought that, I didn’t know about my family history and the suffering, the trauma they went through. So I kind of said it as an outsider. “Oh, of course you should forgive.”
Daniel K. Eng: It’s not personal to you at the time. Right?
KC Liu: It wasn’t personal. Yeah. In my 30s, when I started finding out more, then it became very personal. And when I say, “Yes, I still believe we ought to forgive and reconcile.” But this time, I’m saying it in a way that’s very personal and very heartfelt. It’s not as easy to say. But I still have to say it because I believe it. And if we cannot forgive, then this cycle of violence is just going to continue. And it’s shown and proven throughout history, not just Chinese Taiwanese history. But it’s world history.
These geopolitical tensions and power grabs and ambitions to rule, that is human history. And it’s true for 5,000 years in every part of the world, and just made me realize how much the human race needs the Lord.
Daniel K. Eng: I mean, the hatred between people groups, there’s a long history, and there’s, there’s been a lot of brokenness and sin, and so on. How have you seen that in maybe in your church, and then have you started, have you seen some healing happen?
KC Liu: Well, I go to EFC Church, Evangelical Formosan Church. Formosan means Formosa Island of Formosa.
Daniel K. Eng: That’s the name of the island of Taiwan.
KC Liu: Yep, it was, it was the name Formosa was given by the Portuguese because the island of Taiwan has been colonized by many different groups, not just the Japanese, but the Portuguese, the Dutch, etc. So Formosa means beautiful. It is the beautiful island of Taiwan, and indeed is very beautiful.
In our EFCs, we have different congregations. We have the Taiwanese congregation, the Mandarin-speaking congregation, and also the English-speaking congregation. In our particular church, we have also the 1.5 congregation, which is kind of like the Chinglish bicultural congregation.
Daniel K. Eng: Do you consider yourself 1.5?
KC Liu: I do. I am a 1.5 by definition because I came when I was eight. I’m not an ABC, I’m not an American-born Chinese so I came as a child. 1.5 is bicultural, which means you struggle with English and Chinese. And so you can speak both but not very well.
Daniel K. Eng: That’s a definite subculture.
KC Liu: Yeah, we joke about it, but it’s kind of true. In our church, my prayer is that, yes, we do have our different languages, but our ultimate allegiance and our ultimate identity has to be in Christ.
Like in Philippians 3:20-21, Paul says to the Philippians our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body, then they will be conformed to His glorious body. The point being, we are citizens of heaven, after we become Christians, followers of Christ. That our nationality, our race or ethnicity is now second place. If it still is first place and my primary identity is that I’m a Taiwanese son, then where is Christ in that? Right.
And so my hope is that, that we can accept one another, but I know it’s very hard, especially for the generation that experienced trauma firsthand. And so you’re gonna find that in our Taiwanese congregation, which has a lot of people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, we have people that have experienced those trauma firsthand, who are in their 90s. They’re still alive.
So sad to say, I must admit that, that we sense that hostility in a few of the older folks. I wish there wasn’t, but there still is. And I would say that’s a minority. That’s a small group of people who show open hostility. But maybe, I’m just guessing here, maybe half of them in their heart, still feel hostility and animosity and hurt and pain and suffering. But they wouldn’t say it out in the open because they feel like, “Well, I’m a Christian. I shouldn’t say those things openly even If I feel negativity towards those people. I try to be a good Christian. I try to follow Christ.” Yeah, those who would say it openly are, are real.
But praise God, now we have some mainland brothers and sisters that go to our church now. I would say maybe, maybe 10%. Okay. And we try to make them feel welcome that, yes, you are my brothers and sisters in Christ. The blood of Jesus runs through all of our veins. And because of that I love you as a brother as a sister in Christ. At least that’s what most of us try to, you know, have that attitude. But sometimes, you know, that hostility from certain people still kind of leaks out a little bit. And people can feel that. And so they may not stay. Right. And that’s a shame. That’s a shame. Yeah.
Daniel K. Eng: What are some ways that you’ve seen healing happen?
KC Liu: I think it has to start in the leadership, in the pulpit, with the pastor’s the elders, the deacons giving leadership roles to mainland Chinese in our Taiwanese churches. Right, inviting them to be a part of the deacon board, to be a part of the elder board. I think that’s very important. You know, and some churches even have mainland, invited mainland people to be pastors, part of the pastoral team, to kind of show and role model that we can work together. Right? Or else we repeat history again, like in ‘45, 1945 to 1947, when, when the Japanese went back to Japan, and the Taiwanese were like, now we can rule ourselves. We can be self-governed. Yeah. And then the Mainlanders, the KMT came and said, No, you guys are, are too dumb to rule yourself. You guys are just Japanese slaves. Now we have to put all the Mainlanders in leadership position. Right. And they felt like second-class citizens.
And we definitely do not want history to repeat itself in that. Right. And so so I’m thinking, you know, even in EFCs, I see hope, because I see mainland Chinese in our leadership. Right, it may not be a majority, but there’s some, and that’s a step in the right direction. Yeah. Right. And on the pulpit. Maybe sometimes we have to talk about it. I know, we don’t want to get political on the pulpit. Actually, we’re not allowed to that that’s kind of like a, like an unwritten rule. We’re not supposed to talk about politics and the pulpit, because we know there’s people on both sides.
Daniel K. Eng: Right. But this is not about political policy.
KC Liu: Right, right. So we want to talk about it in a way that’s about forgiveness and reconciliation on unity on Christ, and not to paint a certain party in a very negative light. And I know the story that I just told it may paint, like a party and a negative light, but I’m just talking about the things that they experienced. I’m just talking about the factual.
But I know of course, there’s violence on both sides of the aisle. Okay, that things have happened. And just depending on who you are, where, where you were born, what kind of background you have you probably suffered, negatively, in some point of your life, right? And so, so yeah, again, we’re not throwing anyone under the bus. The point of this is that, even though there’s trauma in previous generations, we have to we must, as followers of Christ, we have to come to learn to work together, and to be there for one another, so that we can be light of the world in this dark, dark society that we live in.
Daniel K. Eng: You know, Pastor KC, as you were kind of giving us the history lesson of Taiwan. I couldn’t help but think about the Jewish people and the oppressors that they had. And they went through different oppressors who were controlling them, right. And so when we get to the time of Jesus, it was the Romans who were their oppressors. And there were people on both sides of the political divide.
Jesus in his discipleship group has someone like Matthew, who was a tax collector who worked for the oppressors, worked for the enemy. And then he also had Simon the Zealot, who sounds a lot like the Green Party, and just just really want liberation and really want to be separated from the oppressors, and so on. And I can only imagine, maybe even the arguments that Matthew and Simon the Zealot would have had traveling and walking around with Jesus, but in the end, you’re going to find that they end up building the church together.
KC Liu: Yeah, exactly. And it’s funny that you bring that up because I watched the show The Chosen. You know, and, and I love the show. And it really shows that like that, when Jesus brought his disciples together, they were so different from one another. Right? Like he said, like Matthew, the tax collector, who worked for the Romans and Simon the Zealot, and Peter, you know, Peter, in the show, he didn’t like Matthew very much, either, you know, and they just didn’t get along. But Jesus is trying to teach them about this new way, the way of the Lord.
And like you said, we draw this comparison, and in our Taiwanese mind quite a bit too, because Taiwan is a tiny little country. Israel is a tiny little country. They have both been colonized and ruled by different groups. There’s a lot of similarities. And we kind of joke like, you know, when we compare Chinese culture and Jewish culture, it’s, there’s a lot of similarities. It’s like, you know, sometimes I joke on my pulpit, hey, the Jews are very Chinese, or the Chinese are very Jewish.
Daniel K. Eng: What message would you have for Chinese American and Taiwanese American churchgoers, or just you know, Chinese and Taiwanese churchgoers? Like what? What message would you have?
KC Liu: I would say, let’s be intentional with each other. In light of the Laguna Woods shooting, in light of all these old wounds being kind of brought up again, you know, this was something of my grandparent’s generation, right, the firsthand victims, were my grandparents’ generation. And, and, of course, my parent’s generation that a lot of them lost their fathers and mothers because of all the, because of the massacre. So so they’re, in a way very much victims as well. But now in our generation, we only have animosity, if we’re taught to have animosity.
Daniel K. Eng: Here at home, yeah.
KC Liu: Because we didn’t experience it. Yeah. Right. But it’s something that we’ll hear from our parents and grandparents. And hatred has to be taught.
Daniel K. Eng: Hatred has to be taught.
KC Liu: And I would say, we have to stop that in our generation. Yes, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that you went through that. I’m so sorry that grandpa and grandma went through that. Yeah, it’s tragic. I can’t allow that hatred to control me and for me to have hatred towards my fellow mainlander brothers and sisters, because I love them. They love Christ, I love Christ, and we’re doing Kingdom things together. And we can’t let that history hinder us from building that relationship.
We have to start a new cycle, and stop that cycle of hatred and violence in your generation. We can’t allow that to continue in our generation. So we must be even more intentional, to hang out with each other, to have both churches if you will like a mainly Taiwanese church, mainly Chinese church, to have potlucks together, to go on a picnic together, right to share pulpits together, to have youth group outings together. Let’s all go to a movie together. You know, let’s have an icebreaker game together. Let’s go to the beach together. And just being more intentional than ever, in light of the tragedy that just happened. And I believe that’s going to help and that’s going to show the love of Christ to the world.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, Pastor KC, I really appreciate this time and the fact that you know we’re able to do this together. I’m really grateful. And I know this is a sensitive topic for a lot of people. And so I appreciate that you spoke biblically and pastorally, about what it means to be a body of Christ. And on a large scale.
But you know, as we see this happen, and you know, there’s a lot of people kind of unfamiliar with this, with all the history that might just think, “Oh, we all have the same.” But there, there’s a lot of history there that has compromised unity. And so yeah, I’m grateful for this conversation. I think–I’m praying that this, that, you know, as you and I have this conversation, and other people have a similar conversation, that there can be healing. And there can be unity to a watching world who need to hear and see what it looks like to follow Jesus and to have unity.
KC Liu: Right. Amen. Amen to that. And, you know, maybe my final point, and there is a real possibility that on the political front, there may be more attention coming in on a greater scale between Taiwan and China. And when that happens, if that happens, and when that happens, how are we going to respond as the church. Now, are we going to look at each other with hostility now? Because of what’s going on there? So we have to prepare our hearts. So that intentionality is even more to prepare for what is to come. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But thank you so much, Daniel, for this time. I really enjoy talking to you.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, thank you. Thank you for the history lesson. Thank you for the pastoral words, like I said, this has been edifying for me, and we will pray that this will be edifying for the church at large. So thanks again. God bless your ministry at EFC. Pastor KC Liu, everyone, from Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine.
KC Liu: Thanks, everybody. Take care.