By Connie Young Yu, CHCP Advisory Board Member

In celebration of Constitution Week 2024, Citizen Wong, a one-man play about the first Chinese American activist, Wong Chin Foo, had two performances – one in San Jose and the other in Saratoga. I was invited by CHCP President Dave Yick to participate in a panel discussion following the performance.  My pioneer ancestors suffered greatly from relentless Chinese exclusion laws, and so this is personal. I gladly agreed to be on the panel for both programs.

Sunday afternoon, September 22
Saratoga Public Library

Citizen Wong comes to the Saratoga library. The community room has a capacity of 130 and every seat is filled.  We are made welcome by librarian Lisa Liu, and tea and cookies are on a side table for us. Enter Wong Chin Foo, as played by Richard Chang. He is as powerful and mesmerizing as the last time, connecting with the audience with references to this town of Saratoga, where several thousand Chinese workers cleared land and built the roadways. He speaks again of the large Chinatown in San Jose burning down and Yung Wah Gok of Heinlenville.  He takes us back in time – all the while his speech evoking today’s social turmoil over immigration and the never-ending battle against racial injustice. The audience is mesmerized by Citizen Wong, and when it’s over, everyone wants to talk about it.

Richard Chang as Citizen Wong returns to join the panel discussion, moderated by Yvonne Kwan, Professor of Asian American studies at SJSU. We start on the relevance and substance of Citizen Wong. There’s Professor of Anthropology Barbara Voss, who heads the Market Street Archaeology Project at Stanford, and Professor Loan Le of SF State University speaking on civic involvement today and that local politics matter, and I’m there with family documentation. I show the Certificates of Residence of my grandfather and others, and this time I hold up a placard copy of a receipt in Chinese for a dollar donation – a day’s wages - from a Mr. Ng of San Jose toward legal fees to fight the Geary Act in the Supreme Court. The audience then enthusiastically takes over with questions and commentary. "Why isn’t the Chinese Exclusion Law taught as part of American history? It’s the root of anti-Asian hate!" "How did it last for 61 years?" ...

After the discussion people stay involved, lingering to chat and have their pictures taken with Citizen Wong. We are in solidarity with his bold activism of the 1880s. We have been immersed in a drama of American history and emerge inspired and motivated.

Citizen Wong lives!

Be sure to read about the 09/20/24 San Jose performance of Citizen Wong: 
09/20/24 CHCP Speaker Series: "Citizen Wong: Portraying the First Asian American Civil Rights Leader"