J.P. Wong

J. P. Wong (Huang Huapei, 1901-1988) was born in China and emigrated with his family to San Francisco in 1913. Given that the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was in effect, limiting emigration to the family of US residents, it is possible that Wong was one the wave of immigrants who sought entry to the US after the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed San Francisco’s municipal records, allowing many to claim citizenship or family relationships for immigration on the basis of documents allegedly lost in the fires. In 1922, Wong joined the Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Republican Party that ruled much of China from the end of the Warlord era until the success of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949. Wong’s primary work was with the KMT. In the ’20s, he raised money for the party in SF, and was one of the local KMT officers. In 1929, he returned to China, where he stayed until the CCP takeover of mainland China in 1949, when he returned to San Francisco. Outside of his work for the KMT, Wong had a varied career. He might have spent some time working for a newspaper, and he was also arrested for his involvement in a roaring twenties bootlegging ring. Later in his life, after his return to the US, he became part owner of the Hang Ah Tea Room in San Francisco, which is still operating to this day. In his time, it was a center for KMT organizing in the US. Wong passed away in San Francisco in 1988.

Wong was not, by career, a cartographer, this being the only known map made by him.

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