Chung Sai Yat Po

Portrait of Ng Poon Chew

The Chung Sai Yat Po was the title of one of the earliest Chinese-American affiliated newspapers to be published in the history of the United States. The publisher of this magazine was a man that went by the name of Ng Poon Chew also known as the “father of Chinese journalism on the West Coast.”  He moved to California in the year of 1881 and became the first Chinese Presbyterian minister on the west coast.  After being a minister for a few years, and having a fire destroy his mission, he decided to focus on establishing a Chinese language newspaper that would be published and distributed to Chinese Americans that resided in California. Before publishing the Chung Sai Yat Po, he published his Los Angeles based newspaper, Ha Mei Sun Bo, for one year, eventually renaming it Chung Sai Yat Po, when he moved to San Francisco. The first issue of Chung Sai Yat Po was published in February 1900 and went on to be published till 1951. What was different about the Chung Sai Yat Po, was that it was a non-partisan newspaper, which meant that it didn’t declare itself to side with any of the current Chinese political parties during that time.  The newspaper was extremely popular within the Chinese community and the reason being was because the variety of its contents.  The newspaper usually contained the usual findings, such as the current happenings in the United States during that time and also communal news that was affiliated with San Francisco. 

Front page of Chung Sai Yat Po

The newspaper also reported current issues that individuals in China were experiencing.  One unique and significant factor of the newspaper was its assimilationist views.  This meant the newspaper often supported the idea of the Chinese immigrants that were successful in gaining entry to the United States, assimilating into the western culture and also advocated equal rights for these immigrants Since Ng Poon Chew wanted to promote the idea of assimilation he made the newspaper speak out against Chinese cultural customs such as foot binding.  He also allowed literary works, written by Chinese immigrants themselves, to be published within the newspaper. The literary value of this newspaper was eventually rediscovered in the early 1970s and were soon digitally scanned to be stored in the University of California library system. Issues that were published between the years of 1900 and 1904 can be found at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0g5016h6/.

Posted by Joshua Lasky