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My experiences growing up in both a Chinese American household and the Catholic Church define much of who I am.

When I looked into the lives of the Chinese saints, I discovered that many of them had died during the Boxer Rebellion, a war that occurred on Chinese soil in the year 1900.

It is true that the Chinese are not so religious as the Hindus, or even as the Japanese; and they are certainly not so religious as the Christian missionaries desire them to be.

The Chinese people, too, went through all kinds of vicissitudes in their religious development.

My father was an Episcopal minister, and for 14 years my family lived in China, in a city called Wuchang. We four children spoke Chinese before we spoke English. We left when the communists came, in the early 1930s. I was about 5 years old.

I was born and raised in China, and my parents were missionaries.

One of the unique features of China is that, notwithstanding the fact that it has a population of 1.3 billion, around 92% regard themselves as Han Chinese. This is quite different from the world's other most populous countries, such as India, the U.S. and Indonesia, which are ethnically diverse.

I am an eighth Chinese, and I come from a large Chinese-American family in Los Angeles.

I'm very proud I'm Chinese and represent the Chinese community.

But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious.