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This website is dedicated to collecting, translating, and interpreting selected, published and unpublished writings by James Poy Wong (1925-2020) 黄培正, an established, senior civil engineer in San Francisco, California, who always had profound passion in creative writing since teenage years. Wong's works were primarily published in two periods: between 1943 to 1950 and 1973 to early 1980s. Having published in some two dozens pseudonyms, Wong in reminiscence regarded the pen name Liu Lang 流浪 (Wandering) to be the most meaningful one 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 thematic motif has naturally manifested in multiple ways beyond a literary trope. On various dimensions that have yet to be fully expounded in any specific ways within the literary scholarship of Asian American studies, the notion and imagery of wandering as seen in Wong's writings could be deciphered as a collective memory expressed through Wong’s personal sentiments toward a people living within ethnic confinement, traversing through a landscape of social alienation, and struggling from a journey of diaspora replete with conflicts among the cultural, national, and international borders.

In a short, informal autobiographical essay, 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 later realized he did not include nearly two dozens of movie reviews that he published in the ‘40s as well as other misplaced writings.

In terms of publication sources, Wong’s writings in the 40s were predominantly 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 旧金山周报, which was co-founded by Wong himself and Li Bohong 李柏宏. In short, 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 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 romanize most Chinese names in his writings in pinyin, with exception of a few names that remained in either unofficial Cantonese or Taishanese romanization to preserve cultural authenticity of the original writings. Similarly, for names of people and places that have historically been recognized in English-language scholarships, these were kept in Wade-Giles.

Three types of errors have been 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 includes misuses 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 published between 1920s to 1940s in the 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.

Given that 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 decide to republish Wong’s writings in simplified Chinese characters for the purpose of reaching broader readership.

Most of the writings selected to be included on this website are my translations. Read more about this process on the About page on this website.