Wong Chin Foo (; 1847–1898) was a Chinese American activist, journalist, lecturer, and one of the most prolific Chinese writers in the San Francisco press of the 19th century. Wong, born in Jimo, Shandong Province, China, was among the first Chinese immigrants to be naturalized in 1873. Wong was dedicated to fighting for the equal rights of Chinese-Americans at the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Nowadays, many Chinese-Americans consider Wong to be of similar character as Dr. Martin Luther King or Gandhi because of Wong's efforts to defend Chinese-Americans' rights in his era.
Biography
Wong was born in 1847 to a well off family which soon lost its money during the Taiping Rebellion. In 1861, he was taken in by a missionary couple, and was baptized into the Baptist faith and came to the United States in 1867. In the following years he studied at Columbian College in Washington, D.C. and University at Lewisburg (later renamed Bucknell University) in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1869–70, and left without finishing a degree.
Wong returned to China in 1870, after he studied and traveled in a number of American cities. "He personally thought he would never see America again. If he did, he was very much mistaken." In 1871, Wong married Liu Yu San who was a student at Eliza Jewett Hartwell's mission school in Dengzhou. Wong took a new name Wong Yen Ping (). Wong worked for a short time in the Imperial Maritime Customs Service in Shanghai. He was dismissed and went to Zhenjiang where he found a job as an interpreter in Customs House. While he was working in China, Wong was excommunicated from the Shanghai Baptist Church.
In his spare time, he advocated to set up a civic improvement organization for spiritual and moral uplift, also for social and economic changes as well as for political reform. He advocated to experience and absorb western culture. Meantime, Wong contributed a lot of effort for prohibition of opium. Wong was also involved in subversive, anti-government activity. One of activities was known as the Zhenjiang Incident. Using his position in the Customs House, Wong organized the importation of foreigners and weapons. Wong claimed that he had planned the "Overthrow of this corrupt Chinese government". His anti-government activities finally got the Qing government's attention which put a reward on his head. Wong fled China leaving his wife and child behind.
He then moved to Japan and (in 1873) back to the U.S. where he became a citizen in 1874. In the U.S., he lived mostly in the East and Midwest, traveling and lecturing. During this time anti-Chinese sentiment was rampant. Wong represented Chinese culture and promoted Chinese cuisine. He defended the Chinese community against charges of godlessness, depravity, and debauchery.
Wong organized the Chinese community for political and civil rights, he organized the first association of Chinese American voters and also established the Chinese Equal Right League which united the Chinese Americans to fight against the Chinese Exclusion Act and 1892 Geary Act. In 1896, he attempted to create a new political party which could represent Chinese Americans, then corresponded with Sun Yat-sen to propose a Chinese revolutionary junta.
Wong established the first Chinese-language newspaper East of the Rockies, the Chinese American. He crusaded against vice in Chinatown, survived several assassinations attempted by gangsters and won the conviction for libel of a gangster leader. Wong brought a Chinese theater in New York, established a language school and briefly opened a Confucian temple.
In 1898, he left the United States for a family reunion in China. In Hong Kong, he applied for a United States passport, which was issued but quickly revoked on orders from the State Department in Washington. When he proceeded to Shandong, he died of heart failure in Weihai.