Introduction

This website is dedicated to collecting, translating, and interpreting selected, published and unpublished writings by James Poy Wong (1925-2020) 黄培正, an established, senior civil engineer in San Francisco, California, who always had a profound passion in creative writings since teenage years. Wong's works were primarily published in two periods: from 1943 to 1950 and from 1973 to early 1980s. Having published in some two dozens of pseudonyms, Wong in reminiscence regarded the pen name Wandering (liu lang ) 流浪 to be the most meaningful to himself, which is also argubly representative of the general experience of Chinese Americans in the 1940s.

As one reads through Wong’s writings - the short stories, poetry, essays, as well as works that may be thematically categorized under literary thoughts - one may find “wandering” as a motif has naturally manifested in multiple ways beyond a literary trope. On various dimensions and yet never fully expounded in any specific way, wandering could be deciphered as a collective imagery symbolic of Wong’s personal sentiment expressed through a landscape of social alienation and experienced across the national and international journey of diaspora.

In an informal, short autobiographical summary of his life Wong noted he had published around 80 pieces of essays, 30 pieces of short fiction, a dozen of poems, 2 dramas, and 15 pieces of literary criticism from 1943 to 1950. These numbers have yet been finalized in counting, as Wong himself realized he did not include nearly two dozens of movie reviews that he wrote in the ‘40s.

Presenting these publications at a glance, the following chart records the estimated numbers of writings published in each genre during these periods. Wong’s writings in the 40s were primarily published in the following Chinese language newspapers established in San Francisco Chinatown: The Chinese Times (金山时报), The Nationalist Daily (国民日报), and The Pacific Weekly (太平洋周报). The writings written in the 70s were mostly published in The San Francisco Weekly, which was co-founded by Wong himself and Li Bohong 李柏宏. The formal record of all his publications is not complete, as some publication dates could not be verified due to missing archives from the currently accessible library. Read more information about this record on the About and the Reference pages of this website.

Notes on Romanization, Correction, Chinese Text, and Translation

For the interest of readability and consistency, Wong and I decided to convert most Chinese names in his writings to be romanized in pinyin, with exception of a few names that remained in either unofficial Cantonese or Taishanese romanization to preserve the cultural authenticity of the original writings. Similarly, for names of people and places that are historically recognized in English scholarship, these were kept in Wade-Giles.

There are three types of errors generally found in the original publications, which had been corrected by the writer from 2019 to early 2020. The first category of such errors is typos and/or misprints. The second type which occurs least frequently is misuse of Chinese characters. The last group of errors consists of those that were once broadly used by the May-Fourth generation, typically represented by writers of the 1920s to 1940s of Republic of China (1911- 1949). Some expressions had ceased being in use throughout the gradual reform of modern vernacular Chinese by the mid 20th century.

Since the original writings were published in traditional Chinese characters which are accessible through academic archives as well as the images that would eventually be uploaded to this site, I made the decision to republish Wong’s writings in simplified Chinese characters, with the intention of providing both writing scripts as a way of reaching broader readership.

Most of the writings selected to be included on this website were translated by me. Read more about this process on the About page on this website.