Uli Chi: An Interview with a Wise Leader, Part 1

Uli Chi, author of “The Wise Leader.”

“I shouldn’t be here.” That’s one of Uli Chi’s opening lines when you first start to get to know him. And after learning his story and hearing about his unique German-Chinese roots, he might be right. By cultural and societal standards, Uli probably should not be here. His story could easily be chalked up to chance or luck. But Uli’s life is the product of neither. He knows that the grace and guidance of God have led him to be here and shaped him into who he is. And we are glad for both.

I had the honor of sitting down with Uli for a few hours this past month to learn more about the life and stories that have spiritually and professionally formed him and influenced his powerful book, The Wise Leader.

Read part 1 of my interview with Uli below.

Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like?

My father was Chinese, and my mother was German; that’s how my name came to be what it is. I was born in Taiwan in a little town just north of Taipei and we lived there for seven years. My mother was from Hamburg, and we moved there after we left Taiwan. I spent the first half of grade school in Germany and then moved to Seattle when I was ten. And I’ve lived there ever since.

One of the great gifts of my childhood was growing up in a multicultural home. Having lived in both Asian and European cultures and, of course, growing up in North America, I feel like I’ve experienced the best of those worlds.

My family dynamic was also interesting. Chinese men are not usually known for their warmth. But my father was quite a warm-hearted person, and my mother was not the typical, reserved German either. She was quite empathic and emotionally connected.

Did your parents have a religious background?

I would characterize my family as warm and close but not religious. My mother came from a German Lutheran background, and my father was Confucian, which—if you know much about Confucianism—is more of a philosophy than a religion. My father was never much interested in religion per se. But because he spent a good part of his early life studying in Germany and was exposed to the Christian faith there, he was always quite respectful.

Because of this, I didn’t grow up with religious faith as something important in my family or my own life. We never went to church, that I can recall. We did, however, celebrate Christmas. My mother would read the Christmas story from Luke in German, which I can still remember, and we sang German Christmas carols together before opening presents on Christmas Eve. That was an important part of our family tradition. My father enjoyed it, too, because he had spent a good part of his early life in Germany.

Why was your father in Germany?

My grandfather, who I mentioned in my book, was a Chinese scholar who wrote the first definitive work on Chinese opera. In the early 1900s, he and his brothers were advocates of engagement with the West, which was quite progressive for that day. He was involved in leading groups of students to Europe to study Western philosophy, culture, and learning. They took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing all the way across Asia to Paris to study.

And that’s how my father finally got to Germany. It was very unusual for someone like him to find his way there. He ended up studying in France as a young man and ultimately did his PhD in Germany during the 1930s. That’s where he met my mother. And that’s why the opening line to my story is, “I shouldn’t be here,” because they were married as an interracial couple in Nazi Germany during World War II. That wasn’t just frowned upon then; it was forbidden by law.

What were some of the values in your family life?

One of our family stories is how my parents lost everything twice. They escaped with their lives and their children from Germany to Switzerland near the end of World War II and literally left everything else behind. A year later, they took a troop carrier back to China and unknowingly walked into the Chinese Civil War. This time, they escaped to Taiwan, leaving most of their possessions behind once more.

As a result, I grew up in a family that believed—perhaps like many immigrant families—that as long as you have an education, work hard, and have good health and your family, you can rebuild. I think all of us kids internalized that.

Given the focus on hard work and achievement, perhaps a surprising but essential aspect of family life was my feeling deeply loved as a person by my parents. They weren’t perfect by any means, but I knew I was loved and valued for who I was and not for what I did. That was such a great gift and a deeply Christian notion. I don’t think I really appreciated that as much growing up as looking backward and interacting with others who didn’t have the benefit of that kind of upbringing.

I grew up in a family that believed—perhaps like many immigrant families—that as long as you have an education, work hard, and have good health and your family, you can rebuild. I think all of us kids internalized that.

What did you study in college?

Early on, I had a pretty clear sense that I wanted to study math and physics. I was one of those geeky kids in junior high and high school who read physics and calculus texts when others were doing more age-appropriate things! But my conversion to Christianity in my junior year of high school threw a monkey wrench into the machinery. I was converted through the ministry of Young Life and all of a sudden, instead of reading math and physics books, I was reading books on the Bible and Christian theology.

My mother wondered what had happened to her youngest child. She said to my Young Life leader, “What have you done to my son? He wanted to be a nuclear physicist, and now he wants to be a pastor!” I was fascinated by this incredible new possibility of a spiritual world that addressed the most basic questions about what it means to be human and what kind of world we live in. Christianity seemed to suggest the most plausible answers for the very questions that intrigued me about math and physics. Science never got to the why—it never really dealt with questions of purpose and meaning. Once I really understood the gospel, I was “all in.” As C.S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else” (Is Theology Poetry?).

Christianity seemed to suggest the most plausible answers for the very questions that intrigued me about math and physics.  Science never got to the why—it never really dealt with questions of purpose and meaning.

When I went to university, I was still interested in math, but my interest in physics waned. I remember reading a book about Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists of the twentieth century, and what physics was like in the 1930s and 1940s. Everywhere they turned, physicists discovered new things and new theories, a bit like Oppenheimer, the movie. But physics felt very different to me when I was studying it in the 1970s.

In those days, computer science was just coming of age as a discipline. It felt to me like physics must have felt in Feynman’s early days: everywhere you turned, you could discover something new and make a material contribution. So, I switched from physics to computer science.

At the same time, I had a bit of an epiphany. I remember taking a programming class and writing one of my first pieces of software. When I saw the result, I wondered if the delight I felt was similar to what God felt as Creator. In the creation account, God had an idea and spoke it into being. In my case, I had an idea in my mind and wrote software to create something out of nothing. I felt like I was doing co-creative work.

Another aspect of my epiphany was a deep sense of recognition that this was what I was meant to do. In the same way that others feel called to be pastors, this felt like a calling for my life. So, I decided to pursue a master’s and PhD in computer science. As it turned out, this epiphany proved embryonic in terms of figuring out what I would do next.

In the creation account, God had an idea and spoke it into being. In my case, I had an idea in my mind and wrote software to create something out of nothing. I felt like I was doing co-creative work.

In Part 2 of my interview with Uli, we’ll hear more about his career choices and the trajectory that led him to become the leader he is today. And don’t forget to pre-order The Wise Leader today.