In the Grip of Colonialism
As the Covid-19 pandemic rages on, President Trump and his allies are calling plays from an old playbook
Wong Chut King couldn’t have known why he felt so warm. His billowing black shirt and pant stuck to him like tar, and he was grateful for the damp coolness that trickled into his room from the sidewalk above.
Dreams didn’t come easy that night. Burning incense mixed with the scent of his vomit and feces, creating a putrid miasma that made it even harder for his fluid-filled lungs to breathe. His body ached to the bone, every inch of skin prickling with heat. The wooden slab he used as a bed was slick with sweat and grime, and his desperate cries for help went unheard.
Wong moved to America sometime in the 1880s, sending the bulk of what paltry income he earned in San Francisco’s lumber yards to his wife and family in China. He lived in a building crammed with nearly three hundred other Chinese immigrants. Turn of the century California was a hostile place for Asian immigrants. The mayor of San Francisco pledged to “Keep California White,” and the state’s Sinophobic legislature nudged Congress toward passing the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Wong spent his last hours in a dizzying frenzy of fever, delirium, and pain. It’s impossible to know what he felt…
