David Liu
Honoring Parents by Planting Seeds: Connected Across Generations
Looking back to his childhood in Raleigh, NC, David Liu’s memories are rich with the aromas of his parents Joyce and Rou-Hang cooking—kneading dough for steamed breads, assembling spring rolls, savoring his father's beloved scallion pancakes.
As immigrants from China to the United States, David’s parents embraced food as a special currency of love throughout their lives. Born into military families in the 1930s, both Joyce and Rou-Hang’s families resettled from their hometowns to Chongqing. From there, they relocated to Taiwan in the tumultuous years following the end of World War II, but not before developing a love of Sichuan cuisine that they shared with others throughout their lives.
Today, that heartwarming (and mouth-watering) legacy lives on every time one of David’s three children recreates one of Joyce’s recipes, recipes learned through cooking lessons with Nainai and weekly family meals together in Palo Alto, where Joyce and Rou-Hang moved later in life to be closer to David and his wife, Deborah.
“We’re very lucky that both of our girls are interested in cooking and pretty talented—certainly much more talented than I was at their age, and certainly more talented than their older brother is!” David said. “It’s great that when [my daughter] Bethany makes some of these dishes, she still remembers cooking with Nainai.”
Both Joyce and Rou-Hang emigrated to the United States in the 1960s to further their graduate studies. Both found their way to NC State University, where Joyce worked as a biochemistry researcher and Rou-Hang pursued an advanced degree in civil engineering. As newcomers to Raleigh, Joyce and Rou-Hang found rich community through groups like NC State's Chinese Students Association and a Bible study fellowship hosted by Forest Hills Baptist Church. There, the two eventually met and fell in love, marrying in 1972 and welcoming David the following year.
Community at the Center
Across the decades that followed, Joyce and Rou-Hang continued to live out a deep love for their church family and for the NC State community. A long-serving deacon at Raleigh Chinese Christian Church, Rou-Hang was a “pillar of the community,” David said. Among other things, Rou-Hang often stood in for the father of the bride at weddings for young couples whose families were thousands of miles away.
“Some of my early memories of my dad are of him playing this critical community role that modeled for me what life in a Christian community looks like,” David said. His mother, too, set a lasting example—David remembers Joyce showing him what it means to live out faith on “a day-to-day basis” through her devoted prayer life, hope-filled attitude, and relationships with others. From potlucks to summer volunteering and countless weeknights at church, David learned in a foundational way how Christian community becomes an “extended family.”
In time, that foundation spurred David to seek out Christian fellowship as a student at UNC-Chapel Hill. He got deeply involved with his church’s college ministry, as well as attending many InterVarsity large-group meetings and taking part in Urbana 93.
“[Urbana] was another level, in terms of seeing the true breadth and scope of the Christian community,” David said. “I still remember singing ‘O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing’ there with thousands of other tongues.”
David went on to study at Harvard Law School. Struggling with the isolation of adapting to a new city, David found himself craving the kind of intimate, Jesus-centered community he had enjoyed in college. Thankfully, David found that connection in his school’s InterVarsity chapter, the Law School Christian Fellowship.
“These are friendships that have lasted decades,” David said. “Being able to meet fellow believers, worship together, and study the Bible together made law school a much more warm and fulfilling experience.”
Commemorating a Legacy of Love
When Joyce and Rou-Hang passed soon after one another in 2023, David and Deborah longed to memorialize the ways David’s parents lived out their love of others throughout their lives, both within the church and within the NC State community.
Recalling their own experience of life-changing community through InterVarsity, David and Deborah decided to honor Joyce and Rou-Hang through a major memorial gift to InterVarsity’s NC State Legacy Fund.
“I wanted to do something that would give back to this university that was such a large part of their lives, and at the same time respect the fact that, at the end of the day, what they lived for was this hope that we all live for something greater,” David said. “The opportunity to contribute to the NC State Legacy Fund was a unique way of bringing those two things together.”
Through the Lius’ gift, InterVarsity’s ministry at NC State will be empowered in its work to offer future generations of students the same transformative belonging that impacted multiple generations of their own family.
“What we're hoping is that this gift will enable the InterVarsity chapters at NC State to have the resources to give students the tools, the training, and the space they need to develop the skills to go on and be the next generation of church deacons, pastors, and volunteers,” David said.
Reflecting on the diverse ways his parents served and sowed faithfully across their lives, David said he hopes his gift will do just that: continue sowing gospel seeds in the lives of students for years to come.
“I can think of nothing more appropriate to give in their honor than to further this goal of creating these new ‘crops’ and preparing the new harvest that will come down the road.”