New Year's Reflection: Orthodox Tao in 2024, and some new videos

A year of searching and fellowship

Roughly a year ago, the number of Chinese Orthodox Christians that I knew were fewer than the fingers on my hand.

I still remember making great effort to attend a Lenten Retreat, in part because there was a legendary Chinese "Orthobro" in the area about whom people had spoken highly for his courage and sense of humor. That person was the very first Chinese Orthodox Christian I'd ever met, and we became great friends lasting even to this day.

One of the main reasons I made this account was so that I could turn my lonely journey into something unique and valuable for others. A hidden story about China, atheism, the diaspora, and Orthodox Christianity transformed into a platform, and it helped me tremendously with personal learning and meeting like-minded friends.

Through travel, divine services, and of course the power of the internet, my contact book is filled with the names of so many Chinese Christian people, as well as non-Chinese friends who care deeply about the topic of Orthodoxy in Asia.

It was mind-blowing to visit Japan and see a priest who was a 5th generation Orthodox Christian from the spiritual lineage of St. Nicholas of Japan, helping to lead services in Literary Japanese. As a convert myself who had grown up as an atheist, it was unbelievable. Later on, in Osaka, I not only met another Chinese Orthodox believer, but I also bumped into TWO people from faraway America and Russia who had been spiritual children of the two parishes I attended. What a small world.

It was deeply enlightening to venerate the relics of St. John of Shanghai, visit his old office, and meet with believers who had inherited his legacy in San Francisco. After that, I visited Shanghai itself and saw the modern parish community that continues their faith life there. It was a culture shock to speak in Chinese about deep matters of the Faith when I had been catechized into Orthodoxy in English! But somehow, everyone understood each other, and I could see that Orthodox locals in the Mainland cared about the exact same topics — faith, the lives of the saints, modern society — as everyone else.¹

I am very thankful to the parishes in Hong Kong for their hard work in maintaining and persevering in Orthodox missionary work, and for opening their doors wide for Christians — converts, inquirers, cradles, Cantonese-speakers, the Mainland Chinese, and expats — to come together in faith.

What a blessing! Thank God, and cheers to you, the reader. I hope your 2025 will be full of learning and fellowship. #OrthoAsia

See the discussion on Twitter and Reddit.

New videos of the church in Hong Kong are available on now. Check it out!

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1. It was also an interesting language adventure to speak in Japanese with Orthodox Christian believers. Maybe I’ll write about that one day.