At first sight, San Francisco's Chinatown gleams with the high gloss of a lacquered bamboo box. Below jade green pagoda roofs, banners announcing upcoming festivals hang from second-story balconies. Steel dragons circle the streetlights. At open-air groceries, bins of oranges, baby bok choy, and dried mushrooms edge onto the sidewalks, already crowded with shoppers lugging plastic bags of food. Around it all threads the scent of incense, drifting down to the street from the temples above.
A 24-square-block neighborhood tucked into the city's northeast corner, this is the Chinatown that draws more visitors--almost 12 million a year--than the Golden Gate Bridge. It is bustling and colorful, a sensory symphony--packed with dim sum houses and tea shops and temples and, yes, tourist traps. It rewards shoppers searching for foo dogs, diners looking for 1,000-year-old eggs, and travelers desiring souvenir tchotchkes.
But spend a little more time here, and you'll discover a richer Chinatown: more intimate, more interesting. Elsewhere in San Francisco, neighborhoods such as Fisherman's Wharf struggle to hold onto authentic traces of their past amid tour buses and T-shirt shops. But Chinatown exists for its residents as much as it does for its visitors. Even as descendants of early settlers move to other parts of the Bay Area, Chinatown, still drawing new immigrants, remains the cultural heart of the Chinese American community. Within San Francisco, that community's influence has never been stronger. As residents usher in the Year of the Snake, Chinatown's future looks bright.
"This is a thriving community"
You can contrast the two Chinatowns--the visitor's and the native's--by wandering from the busy southern end of Grant Avenue, where every store seems to sell the same back-scratchers, to Wentworth Street, where Yiu-Kwan Lau has produced delicate brush paintings for 43 years.
"I learned to paint in China a very long time ago," says Lau. "Now my son paints too." Lau's studio is filled with images of fish, eagles, and pandas; he even does custom portraits of pets. His son, Gary, is indeed taking over as artist-in-residence.
"This is a thriving community," says Shirley Fong-Torres, a food writer who promotes appreciation of old Chinatown on her walking tours. "Even as we change, it's important for us to carry on traditions--in language and food--and not forget where we came from," she says.
There are more people, businesses, meals, sounds, and smells crammed into Chinatown than anywhere else in the city. Its population of about 25,000 makes it one of the densest neighborhoods in the country.
Much of the way Chinatown looks today was shaped by early political and social constraints. Narrow alleyways and tiny storefronts--maximizing use of space--were prompted by discriminatory laws that prevented Chinese settlers from owning property. Early Chinese residents in San Francisco were not allowed to vote or testify in court. Faced with harassment and without legal standing, the community developed its own civic order. Fraternal organizations took care of business issues, arbitration, and police protection. Today, these groups, their offices above many shops, continue to wield considerable clout.
Fong-Torres says the neighborhood's past is part of its appeal. "Chinese immigrants played such a big role in shaping California and America," she says. "There's no better way to experience history than to walk through this neighborhood."
Which direction is home?
Chinese immigrants started coming to San Francisco in the late 1830s, and their numbers peaked in the 1870s. Primarily Cantonese speakers from the Pearl River delta in southern China, most sought gold or railroad jobs. But the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 limited immigration, and the city's Chinese population was more than halved by 1920. Laborers who hadn't struck it rich were in a tough spot, unable to return home but living in an increasingly unfriendly city. "I look around--north, south, east, west--and I don't know which direction is home," wrote one early-20th-century poet.
Since the 1943 repeal of the exclusion act, immigration from Asia has grown steadily. The Census Bureau estimates that the city's Asian and Pacific Islander population grew 25 percent in the '90s. Today's newcomer Chinese come from a broader region than early immigrants, including northern China and Hong Kong. "We've seen a blossoming," says David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee. "Fifty years ago, you would almost never hear Mandarin spoken in Chinatown."
Reports show that San Francisco's Asian American population is now the city's largest group, outnumbering whites. Chinese and Chinese Americans represent more than 60 percent of its Asian community. And an unprecedented number of Chinese Americans hold prominent positions in city politics. "Chinese have moved into the mainstream," says Bill Lee, whose book, Chinese Playground: A Memoir, tells of growing up in the neighborhood.
Voting activist David Lee agrees that Asian Americans have more clout in San Francisco than most other parts of the United States. "This in a city where 150 years ago the Chinese were marginalized," he adds.
A place of good fortune
Inside the Taoist Jade Emperor Palace Temple, tour leader Cynthia Yee guides a group of visitors past the shrines and handwritten prayers hanging from the ceiling. A dancer, magician, and tour guide who grew up in Chinatown, Yee says many of her friends no longer live in the neighborhood. But their ties will never be severed. "They come back for weddings or parties. And to have lunch."
As the group leaves, Yee instructs a tourist from Berkshire to select a lucky money envelope from a basket. The Englishwoman squints at the Chinese characters on the bright red paper.
"Long life and good fortune," translates Yee. She stops as she exits to gaze at the upturned pagoda roofline. The architectural style is not an authentic import but was invented after the 1906 earthquake leveled the area. Many city officials wanted to grab the land and relocate the Chinese, but a clever merchant promoted the chinoiserie redesign as a tourist attraction.
Lorraine Dong always tells Chinatown newcomers to look up at the architecture. "Look at the way the buildings were constructed," says Dong, president of the Chinese Historical Society and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. "It's a mixture--not quite Chinese, not quite Hollywood Chinese."
Though the buildings represent a kind of imagined Chinese architecture, they're still a tribute to a culture from across the ocean--improvised here, then added to, redone, and repainted over time. And they demonstrate a community's determination to stay. In this way, they're the perfect symbol of Chinatown itself.
