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"Your 'Gung Gung' was very emotional about his kidnapping. He could not preach on Mother's Day. He would always have to bite his lip to keep out the tears," explained my Auntie Betty (Elizabeth Wu Ko) as she told me the story of my grandfather, the Rev. Daniel Gee Ching Wu.
When I was four years old I remember sitting at his bedside chit-chatting on Sunday afternoons. He impressed me as smart, loving-and he spoke to me in English! My other grandparents mainly spoke Cantonese, but for some reason "Gung Gung" spoke perfect English!
"Gung," as all his grandchildren called him, was the founding priest of the two Chinese Episcopal missions in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was well known and respected among California Chinese. He was also well known and respected among the Fan Yun (Caucasians) who worked with the Bay Area Chinese community in the first half of the twentieth century.
I recently took an interest in uncovering his story. When my mother died I inherited some photo albums. Among them was a makeshift scrapbook. the photos had been neatly pasted into a lined notepad with a light blue cover. the notepad itself was manufactured by Diamond Head Stationers in Hawaii. the images are mostly of young Chinese men. Some are dressed in Western-style suits, others in traditional Chinese clothing. there is a photo of a distinguishedlooking White priest with a huge handlebar mustache. I later learned this was Henry Bond Restarick, the first bishop to Hawaii of the Episcopal Church of the United States. there is also a photo of my grandfather among a large group of young men in front of a building named St. Elizabeth's House. on the last page of the scrapbook is a photo of Deaconess Emma Britt Drant standing with a group of Chinese kids in front of true Sunshine Mission in oakland. the photo is dated 1907.
I knew the family folklore about my grandfather.1 He was kidnapped in China and traveled by ship to Hawaii, where he befriended an Episcopalian missionary named Deaconess Drant. He made a deal to teach her Chinese in exchange for English lessons. In the course of these lessons he converted to Christianity. Eventually he attended the Church Divinity School...