Australian Dictionary of Biography

Jessie Wong, with the MacClurgs, 1946

Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York)

Jessie Wong (1892-1994), Pentecostal missionary, was born Wong Goot Hong on 2 September 1892 in Melbourne, youngest of three daughters of Chinese-born Wong Shi Geen (黄世彦), merchant and Chinese community leader, and his wife Chow Ho. Wong Shi Geen, who had arrived in Victoria as early as 1866, ran a store in Little Bourke Street, where he was also president of the See Yup Society. In the late 1880s—with prominent Chinese community leaders such as Cheok Hong Cheong and Lowe Kong Meng—he led opposition to anti-Chinese legislation being introduced in New South Wales and Victoria. He also opposed the proposed discriminatory changes to the Factories and Shops Act 1907.

Though raised in the traditional Chinese religion of her parents, Jessie was educated at the local Chinese mission school in Heffernan Lane, which was run by the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union. She converted to Christianity, despite strong opposition from her parents whom she later claimed had disinherited her in protest, though she was soon welcomed back. In 1910, following the death of her father’s brother and wife in Melbourne, the Wong family moved to China, where Shi Geen died after a short illness in late 1911.

By the early 1920s Wong was living in Shanghai, where she initially taught English. Around this time, she met Minnie Reimer Hanson, an American Pentecostal missionary, and converted to Pentecostalism after witnessing the faith healing of a relative ‘who had been given up to die’ (Chilliwack Progress 1951, 6). In 1923 she started the Cantonese Gospel Mission, which ministered to the poor in Shanghai. On at least one occasion she travelled north to give her testimony at missions in Shandong Province.

In the early years of the Sino-Japanese War (which began in 1937 and continued as a theatre of World War II until 1945), Wong’s church buildings were bombed by the Japanese. Despite the risk to her own life, she remained in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, starting a new mission in the international settlement, and distributing food to the poor while teaching the gospel. She later detailed experiences of starvation and deprivation. ‘I had finally given up hope,’ she admitted. ‘I never expected to see peace again’ (Henry 1946, 35). Following the Japanese surrender, and during the subsequent civil war between Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party and Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist government, she went on a lecture tour in the United States of America in 1946–47. Her visit was supported by the American Reverend Herbert MacClurg, whose wife and children she had helped to escape Shanghai in 1937.

Wong subsequently returned to East Asia and ministered in Hong Kong (1948–50). In 1950 she accepted a full-time position with the Assemblies of God in Vancouver, Canada, where she worked with Chinese refugees. Though she described her work in Canada as ‘very gratifying’ (Chilliwack Progress 1951, 6), she was openly critical of those in North America who were ‘forgetting the word of God.’ ‘I believe you will find more Chinese in Heaven than whites,’ she declared: ‘People are too intent on making money here to pay attention to religion’ (Times Colonist 1951, 5).

Between July and November 1954, Wong visited Australia for a preaching tour and a scouting mission to investigate whether she could return as a minister. After preaching in Sydney and regional New South Wales, she briefly visited Melbourne, where she spoke at the Pentecostal Church, Richmond Temple, in late October. She left Australia the following month, admitting that she felt the White Australia policy had left too few Chinese to support her ministry. In 1955 she resumed paid full-time ministry in Canada, where she continued with the Assemblies of God until 1969.

‘Small of stature, with raven black hair pulled severely back and secured in a heavy knot,’ Wong was once described as ‘a Pearl Buck character come to life’ (Henry 1946, 35). An earnest and energetic evangelist, she was fluent in Cantonese and English and usually wore Chinese dress, even in western contexts. Little is known of her life after her retirement. She died on 29 July 1994 at Calgary, Alberta, and was buried in the nearby Queen’s Park cemetery.