This is by Bela Roberts from Pun Amerivan Newsletter. Stan Kegel posted it on the groaners listserv.

A certain Mr. Chou, to save his life, fled from his native China during a revolution, leaving a son behind. Years later, he returned to search for his long lost son. He learned that a family named Gault (a common name there, like Smith) had spirited his son away for safety. Extensive searching and the questioning of several young men who might have been his son, but weren’t, brought Chou to conclude that, . . . “Many were Gault, but few were Chou’s son.”

Howell Gwin, Jr., poposed the following alternate version.

Or, as Jesus said in Minnesota, “Many are cold, but few are frozen.”