The “Egg Woman” — An American Pastor in South China

Hong Kong – It was nine o’clock on a Thursday night in a church in Hong Kong. A choir of 20 was rehearsing a Mandarin pop song on the stage, a song written for Sunday’s worship. But they hadn’t quite mastered it. It is not always easy for Cantonese-speaking Hong Kongers from the south of China to enunciate in Mandarin, its accents rooted in the north.

Off stage, a blonde-haired American stood with her arms folded and listened carefully. Her body moved with the beat. She grinned and frowned from time to time.

Suddenly she waved her hands to signal a pause.

“No, no, no, you did it again. This is not how you speak Mandarin,” she said in perfect Cantonese. She walked to the stage, grabbed the microphone and demonstrated the correct pronunciation.

“You’ve got to remember it. Let’s do it again,” she said, clapping her hands and as the music resumed.

This American woman who was instructing a Chinese choir on singing in Chinese is Sharon Grace Lau, a senior pastor of the Revival Christian Church in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. Born and raised in British colonial Hong Kong, Sharon said she has never felt American.

“I’m like an egg,” she said. “White on the outside and yellow on the inside.”

Sharon Lau is a missionary who sees serving Christianity in Hong Kong and mainland China as her life’s mission.  “I’ve received God’s calling,” she said. “The Lord wants me to serve the Chinese people for all of my life.”

Her father, Dennis Balcombe, came to Hong Kong in 1949 as a missionary. He taught himself Cantonese and started the Revival Christian Church in 1969 with Lau’s mother, Kathy, also a missionary.

Lau — Lau is her married name– was born in 1973 and groomed by her parents to one day serve God in China.

Cantonese is her first language, and it is the language she spoke at home with her parents — her father refused to address her in English. She learned English as a second language.

Sharon and her mother, both pastors in the church, often eat lunch together and often attract attention.  “Two gwei-lo [foreign ghost] women talking in Cantonese. Even I would think that picture looked weird,” she said.

Her language abilities are unusual enough that the local media are intrigued — see some of their reports here.

Yes, she said, it could often be annoying to explain, day after day, as to how she came to speak such fluent Cantonese, but now, she sees her linguistic abilities as a special gift.  “Just by talking about my language skills, I can easily start a natural conversation with a stranger,” she said.

This serves her well in her work, she said. She often provides pro bono [free] advice to those seeking help and the absence of a language barrier enables her to get quickly to the bottom of a problem.

“It is surprising to find that people are more willing to open up their hearts to someone like me, who looks foreign, but can speak their language,” said Lau. “Sometimes they will tell me the most intimate things.”

Growing up, Lau attended local Hong Kong schools where her blond hair and blue eyes made her stand out. An identity crisis hit in when she was in high school.  No matter how well she spoke Cantonese, her classmates considered her an American. Yet when she spoke English in the United States, people laughed at her accent.

“I got lost,” she said. “I didn’t know where I belonged.”

Lau and her parents lived in a tiny apartment when she was a child. She recalled her envy of relatives in the United States. On one visit to an uncle’s house, there was a swimming pool where she and a cousin, a girl of her own age, played.  “I almost ran to my father and begged him ‘Daddy! Can we stay here? Can we not go back to Hong Kong”,” she said.

She rebelled and resented her parents’ decision to live in Hong Kong. When her father told her he saw in a vision that she would become a pastor in Hong Kong, she yelled: “No!”

She said she couldn’t understand her father’s calling until she was 15, when he took her to a village in China’s Henan province, and they visited an underground church there. The villagers’ hospitality touched her.

There were chickens crowing and running around her feet. But by the day she left, there were no more chickens to be found.

“They had killed all the chickens to treat us,” Sharon said. “They didn’t have much, but they offered us everything they had.”

What most moved the teenager most was the villagers’ devotion to God.

Home churches are illegal in China. Christians there have been prosecuted and even beaten for practising their faith outside the “official” state-controlled churches.

“While Hong Kong Christians complain about the air conditioning or food in church during worship,” said Lau, “Christians in mainland China put their lives on the line to embrace God.”

That trip in 1988 shook her world. She said that was when she started to understand her father’s dedication to China. It was also when she received her own calling from God.  “I heard this inner voice, strong and gentle, telling me that he wants me to serve the Chinese people, and he would be with me all the time,” she said.

As she built her career, she also found her identity.  “I’m a Hongkonger,” said Sharon. “That’s what I have been and what I will continue to be.”

Lau still values American culture. She kisses her mother on the cheek everyday she sees her, hugs her children when she gets back home, and ends her phone calls with her husband with an “I love you,” just like any other suburban soccer mom.

Sharon met her future husband, Samuel Lau, when she was 14 and he was 18. They both attended the same youth worship team at church.

“She was pretty and lovely. Lots of boys from the church had feelings for her,” said Samuel, “but no one dared to ask her out.”

At the time, he was a boy from a poor Hong Kong family. And she was the daughter of the pastor. To Samuel, Sharon was holy. He didn’t reveal his feeling until six years later, when Sharon returned from theology studies in Taiwan. A year later, they married. Sharon was 21.

It was a simple wedding. They had no money. Everything was borrowed, including her wedding gown and jewellery. But Sharon Lau remembers it as the happiest day of her life.

Life hasn’t always been smooth for Lau. She suffered from depression after she gave birth to her second child.  She  became overly concerned with how people thought of her and lost self-confidence, she said. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work, and cried every day.  “I felt I wasn’t good enough for anyone, anything,” she said. “I even thought of committing suicide.”

But Samuel Lau and her friends were on hand to encourage her. Eventually, Sharon walked out of her own shadow.  “For the first time, I felt the freedom of being myself,” she said.

Lau says her experience proved to be an asset. She became more patient during her one-on-one counselling sessions.  She became able to pray continuously with someone for hours, she said, hoping her effort and God’s power could heal the wound sooner.

“When you’ve been through the difficulties yourself, you are able to better understand people’s pain.”

Thompson Wong, 29, is an interior designer. His best friend died last year. He sunk into depression and loneliness.  “Pastor Sharon sat down and talked to me for a whole day,” he said. “Her encouragement helped me get over it.”

Forty-four-year-old Alan Wong, another pastor at the Revival Christian Church, thinks Lau holds mercy above other principles.

For members of her denomination, it is seen as a sin to have sex before marriage. Yet two young congregates violated the rule. As a punishment, they were not allowed to get married in the church.

“But Sharon proposed a remedy and guaranteed that these two young people would never violate the rule again,” Wong said. “She even invited the girl to live with her in her own apartment for three months (before the wedding) in order to ensure she wouldn’t make the mistake again.”

The couple married last year in the church.

Lau has two children, a 12-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. They both help out at the church during weekends. But unlike her parents, she doesn’t want to push them to become pastors.

“They should be whatever they are gifted to be,” she said. “They will love God and serve God, but they don’t have to become pastors to do that.”

Lau has another plan in mind. She wants to help Christians on the mainland.  It has been her father’s — and her own — goal for years.

“My husband and I are thinking of moving to mainland China one day,” she said. “Maybe Chengdu.  We all like the spicy food there.”