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13 Chop Suey (1884–86) The Chinese American never offered Wong a significant source of income, if indeed it provided him any salary at all. Its demise, however, once again raised the question of how he was to earn a living. Money, Wong claimed, was never a strong motivator for him— surprising, perhaps, in light of the decline in his father’s fortunes that had occurred within his memory, and that had caused the two to become charity cases in China. But even as a very young man, Wong had declined to go into business with his godfather, Matthew Holmes, which would have been a surer ticket to financial stability than going to school to become a missionary. Unlike those of many of his countrymen, his dreams do not seem to have focused on amassing a fortune, nor did he possess the business acumen to achieve that goal if they had. Still, one had to eat. By the end of 1883, Wong had not only ceased publishing his newspaper; he also does not appear to have been active on the lecture circuit. A letter he wrote in mid-1883 to Henry L. Slayton, a Chicago-based agent who represented Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton,1 among others, suggests that he had made arrangements with a different agent to deliver lectures in February and March of the following year, and felt that would be enough.2 What he did instead was to strike out in several unrelated directions. His new endeavors included mounting a theatrical production, opening a Chinese language school, studying law, and hiring himself out as an interpreter. Most importantly, he continued to pursue his career as a journalist, though he now wrote exclusively for other publications, and in English rather than Chinese. Even before the demise of the Chinese American, Wong allowed that he did not really have enough to do as its editor. “I can write a whole paper in a day,” he asserted, “and as my paper has not become 126 The First Chinese American a daily yet, I have not half enough work.” What did he propose to do with the rest of his time? “This winter I shall invade the ranks of theatrical managers, and produce a Chinese show, which will sweep the whole city of New York,” he declared.3 Wong had a fondness for Chinese theater that must have originated in his youth in Shandong. In early 1883, he wrote an article about the Chinese stage for Texas Siftings, an Austin-based magazine, in which he discussed the differences between the Chinese and Western theatrical traditions. Chinese troupes used a minimum of scenery and props, he explained, which meant that on any given night they were prepared to perform any play in their repertoire; a wealthy patron could select a favorite play, much as a diner in a restaurant might select an entrée, and watch it performed at once for $20. While an American theater produced a single play in a night, its Chinese counterpart would typically offer no fewer than six, none longer than half an hour, one after the other without intermission. Another important distinction was that American audiences placed a premium on realism, while a Chinese actor would “simply assume the characters designed therein, without even an imitation of the real.” To do otherwise, Wong assured his readers, would get him “hissed from the stage.”4 An appreciation for Chinese theater, Wong thought, could help Americans better understand the Chinese, an idea consistent with his philosophy that to know the Chinese was, if not to love them, then at least to realize that they were, in the main, cultured, principled, and law-abiding people who posed no threat to American life. That summer, he announced he was negotiating to bring a San Francisco Chinese theater troupe to New York, an endeavor he calculated would cost somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000. He proposed to form a corporation of 20 stockholders, each contributing $500 to rent and outfit a theater and to defray the expenses of the actors, who would travel east in September and remain in town for three weeks.5 This plan, to be sure, had little to do with adding to Wong’s income, as he made clear to the New York Tribune: I care not for money—I work for the future . . . I have an idea that will help each people to understand the other. I will establish the Chinese theatre in...

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