While there were many criticisms of Maya Lin's design, Sampley chose to focus on its shape, suggesting that the architect, born in Ohio to Chinese immigrants, was evoking the hanzi人, (rén), which usually means "person", with its two angular lines. Sampley took this to come from a Confucian, humanistic tradition, which he traced to Lin's parents.[10] But according to Lin's biographer Donald Langmead, both her parents' families had converted to Christianity several generations before they emigrated to the U.S.; they were in fact practicing Methodists, both of whom were educated entirely within that faith, without any exposure to Chinese traditions.[11]
