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26 Citizenship for Americanized Chinese (1897) Wong was frenzied and unfocused at the end of 1896, and probably exhausted. He was, after all, publishing a newspaper, establishing a house of worship, running a civil rights organization, and planning the overthrow of the Manchus, all at the same time. But there was one additional, and very important, distraction. In December, Wong received a visit from a young man named Y. P. Yen. Nothing is known of Yen except that he had recently been in China and likely in Shandong, and that he came bearing an important letter. It was from Wong’s son in China, Wong Foo Sheng. Wong had not seen his son since the boy was an infant, and had not had any communication at all with him or his mother since 1873, when he fled China for Yokohama, fearing for his life. He claimed to have tried, over the years, to establish contact, and that he did not even know for certain that they were still alive until Yen arrived with the letter and a photo of the young man, now 26 years old. Wong’s wife was in poor health, which was apparently what prompted the young man to write: the letter included a request for money. It moved Wong deeply; he wept and thanked God for the news. But it also evoked a strong sense of guilt on the one hand, and a generous measure of self-justification on the other. Wong wrote back on December 30, 1896: It is needless to say that I was more than glad as well as surprised to receive your letter. Oh what can I say—how shall I begin this letter. I feel so guilty in a certain [sic] for these long years of silence to my dear ones at home. It is not my fault. I have tried every way to find the proper means by which a letter could reach your great and noble mother, but every one seemed desired to hide me from the only comfort of my life. I think partly they were right to hide my poor suffering little family from me, and it was for your sake they have punished me so long.1 262 The First Chinese American He may have been telling the truth—that he had made good faith efforts to find them—but it is hard to believe that in the space of a quarter of a century he had been unable to succeed. In 1889, when he was sparring with S. C. Chew over his defense of gamblers in Philadelphia, Wong revealed the circumstances of the death of his father, who had remained in the home of Sallie Holmes until the end of his life in 1887, so he was not without channels through which to obtain news from Dengzhou.2 In the letter, he was not specific about precisely who it was who had ostensibly hidden from him the circumstances in which his family was living, nor does it ring true that anyone he knew who had knowledge of them would have deliberately withheld the information. On the contrary: a Chinese in a position to reunite a suffering family with an overseas relative—who would, by definition, be considered wealthy and able to assist—would surely have done so. He continued: One of the principal reasons why I had not been home was the everlasting hope of accomplishing something for my fellow countrymen in this country. I expect to be able to accomplish it pretty soon and then it will be an honor to my little family without which I can never repay the injury I have done you and your noble mother. My only desire is now that you serve her and care for her ruined health and tell her that it won’t be very long before I will see her. Tell her also that I have been too busy for the past 20 years to think of even myself, devoting all my time to the cause of humanity, and that she ought to a certain degree bear up the burdens that I am bearing. God seemed to have ordained us both to suffer for others. My money, my life, and my happiness have been dedicated to the welfare of my poor oppressed countrymen everywhere.3 Interestingly, in discussing his rationale for staying away so long, Wong made no mention of the reason he left China in the first place—fear of execution by the...

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