Wing Sun Fong was a Chinese passenger of the Titanic from Guangdong. He survived the sinking.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Wing Sun Fong was born on June 21st, 1894 in Taishan, which lay in the Guangdong Province in Imperial China.
In his career, while still a teenager, he was usually a sailor that worked for the Donaldson Line. In 1912, he wanted to go New York with 8 other seamen. Fong was a fireman on the Annetta.
Aboard the Titanic[]
On April 10th, Fong got aboard the Titanic at Southampton as a Third Class passenger under the false name 'Fang Lang' along with seven other Chinese who all were one ticket. The cost of their ticket was covered by the Donaldson Line. Because this piece of information was missing, some people who learned about his story thought he and his fellow countrymen were stowaways. Fong was just 18 years old when he joined the new liner.
On April 14th, late at night Titanic hit an iceberg. On April 15, the captain started to evacuate the ship just after midnight. Titanic was sinking. The lifeboats were being lowered one by one but Lang wasn't in it. He ended up in the ocean when Titanic lost the battle to the sea, breaking and disappearing at 2:20 A.M.
Lang was pulled out from the freezing water when Fifth Officer Lowe took lifeboat 14 back to pick up survivors. Fang Lang was one of the few people to survive the freezing water. He had maintained balance on a floating board which was a bit of debris that could just about hold him. Despite the horrifying ordeal he had just been through, both physically and mentally, he started to recover quite quickly and began to help row the boat after a short amount of time.
Six out of eight Chinese passengers were rescued. Lang was one among them.
Later life[]
Once the six survivors arrived in New York, they were detained and placed under guard by U.S. Immigration officers. Remarkably, they were immediately escorted to the Annetta, which sailed the next day for Cuba.
They worked together in Britain until 1920, when the country suffered from a post-war recession and anti-immigrant feelings were running high.
Fang Lang later married and had a son, Tom Fong and became a citizen of the US, the country that once rejected him after sailing between Britain and Hong Kong for years.
He never talked about the Titanic to his family.
He died on January 21th, 1986 at the age of 91.
In popular culture[]
Titanic (1997)[]
A possible cameo of Fang Lang in Titanic (1997), portrayed by Van Ling
Fang Lang appears as a possible appearance in Titanic (1997), portrayed by Van Ling. A Chinese man appears in some Third Class scenes. During the sinking, this Chinese man, Jack, Rose, Fabrizio, Tommy and some Third Class passengers broke one of the gates so they could go to the upper deck.
Fang Lang waiting for rescue to come and is caught in the search light.
He remains on the ship until the end, but survived because he climbed to a floating deck chair until Fifth Officer Lowe pulled him into lifeboat 14. This takes place in a deleted scene,
Gallery[]
