Drawn From Life: The Creative Legacy of FLO OY WONG

As the sixth daughter of Chinese immigrants living in Oakland’s Chinatown in the 1940s-1960s, FLO OY WONG was determined to break free of a life of pre-destined invisibility. She began her art career at the age of forty. Her poetry career started at seventy-five.

At eighty-five, Flo’s life comes full circle when The Community Rejuvenation Project proposes to paint a mural at 723 Webster, the former site of her family’s restaurant, the Great China. Flo’s beginnings in Oakland’s Chinatown come to life once more — this time through the eyes of another artist. Outside, muralist Desi Mundo renders Flo’s drawings of her immigrant family on the building which is now home to Imperial Soup. Inside, Flo and siblings Nellie and Bill swap stories about their formative years in Oakland Chinatown, dreaming of life beyond Ai Joong Wah, Great China.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

FLO OY WONG makes art and writes poetry to tell stories about her immigrant family and other Asian communities. Growing up in Oakland Chinatown, she spoke her family’s ancestral dialect, Hoisan-wa. Flo is a recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts awards, and co-founder of the San Francisco-based Asian American Women Artists Association. In the year 2000, Kearny Street Workshop presented Flo Oy Wong’s “made in usa: Angel Island Shhh” exhibit, which explored the identity secrets of Chinese immigrants detained and interrogated in the United States. In 2018, Flo published her art and poetry book, Dreaming of Glistening Pomelos, inspired by her childhood. A member of The Last Hoisan Poets, she reads with sister poets Genny Lim and Nellie Wong. Contemporary Asian Theater Scene presented Flo with their 2022 Image Hero Award.

GREAT CHINA RESTAURANT

Great China Restaurant (or Ai Joong Wah) at 723 Webster Street in Oakland Chinatown was started and run from 1943 to 1961 by Gee Seow Hong and Gee Suey Ting, the parents of siblings Flo Oy Wong, Nellie Wong and William Wong.  

“Born in Oakland, California, in 1938, Wong grew up in Oakland’s Chinatown. She was in her late thirties when, during the height of the feminist movement that she claims as an inspiration, she started taking art classes. Her first major body of work, her autobiographical Oakland Chinatown Series, emerged from her initial uncertain attempts to find her voice as a woman artist of Chinese descent. The thirty-five drawings in this series (1983-1991), some made directly from individual family photographs and others composites of several images, pay tribute to her extended family’s tightly interconnected lives and work as restaurateurs at the Great China Restaurant in Oakland from the 1940s into the 1960s.” – MELANIE HERZOG, “On Voice and Memory: Flo Oy Wong”

FLO OY WONG’S OAKLAND CHINATOWN SERIES

Flo Oy Wong’s Oakland Chinatown Series, her first major body of work comprising of 35 autobiographical drawing created from 1983 to 1991, marked the beginning of a lifelong artistic exploration of visual art and poetry — an active career which now spans over 40 years.

While working on the film, Ed Wong found a set of archival slides which document Flo’s Oakland Chinatown graphite drawings on paper, created in the period between 1983 – 1991.

“My poetry collaborates with the body of artwork I created for 40 years.” — FLO OY WONG

ABOUT THE 723 MURAL PROJECT

The 723 Mural, a project of the Community Rejuvenation Project and the Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project. The mural by artists DESI MUNDO and FLO OY WONG, was painted on the building at 723 Webster Street—once home to the Wong family’s restaurant, the Great China— featuring images from Flo Oy Wong’s Oakland Chinatown Series.