14

At the time, because of the difficulty of travel, China and Japan would have been considered much further away from Moose Jaw and Canada than it is today; nobody would have understood this as well as men like Charlie Chow, who had made the long voyage over in his youth. But this did not weaken their attachment to the country of their birth in spiritual, cultural or, as in the case of their support for the Nationalist cause, political terms.

15

Charlie, Mary, and the Chow family
1931

16

In fact, as Lynn Pan suggests, it only stands to reason that affiliation with the Nationalist struggle would have sustained and strengthened their identification with China: "Revolution as a means of national salvation was a theme to which the overseas Chinese responded with ardour, and the Kuomintang was to enjoy their allegiance until well into our own times. One day to be called the ‘Mother of Revolution,' the overseas Chinese had evolved their nationalism the quick way, by being aliens in a foreign country."