Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
164
San Francisco's Chinatown claims to be the largest one in America, an asser-
tion I would dispute; Manhattan's has been spreading for years. But there is no
questioning that it's one of the liveliest, most colorful sections in all of San
Francisco, easy to visit and get to know, and the neighborhood as a whole is more
established than many American cities, having begun around 1850. Each of the
district's two main avenues, a block apart, offers a different take on the same cul-
ture; Grant Avenue is all about antique stores, jewelers, and emporia, while
Stockton Street, 1 block west, is a rich food experience of exotic groceries and
dim-sum houses. You can pick your Chinatown to suit your mood, although this
walk will bring you through both. And at the end, we'll nibble at the southern
end of historic North Beach, where the Beat writers drank and the American
music culture was called in the 1960s.
1
Chinatown Gateway
Many Chinese villages have their own
gateways and, bowing to tradition, so do
many Chinatowns around the world.
This one, to me, is very much an
emblem of San Francisco's Chinatown.
That's because it's not even Chinese, but
Pan-Asian. It was a gift from modern-
day Taiwan. Astute observers of Asian
life will notice, as they walk these streets,
a blurring of national and cultural lines;
although many of Chinatown's residents
are, indeed, of Chinese extraction, the
wares and services are spread a little
more around the map of the East.
Stroll slowly up Grant Avenue, past
the souvenir shops and statuary houses,
and I'll fill you in on how this all came
to be.
Before rampant landfilling, this area
was closer to the wharves, and Chinese
residents could easily get back and forth
from here to work on the docks. In
1849, there were only 54 Chinese here,
but by 1876, there were 116,000 in the
state. They mined for treasure. They
broke their backs building the railroad.
For their pains, they were despised,
overtaxed, and excluded. Sometimes
segregation begins with good inten-
tions—when illiterate Asian young men
were being placed in schoolrooms with
Western girls half their age, it seemed
logical to the government to simply
solve the impropriety by establishing
separate schools. But too often, living
separate lives fostered a “yellow peril,”
or fear of Asian invaders, and the Asian
population was despised for reasons of
economic jealousy—that they were
poaching too many jobs.
And as is so often the case, those not
in power were seen as sexual quarry by
the overclass. In the late 1800s, this
area teemed with prostitution, along
with diseases. Many of the tales are too
harrowing to detail here, but much of it
was forced upon young girls who had
been tricked into slavery by crooked
businessmen, and, by their late teens,
many were tossed aside, their health
broken and their futures finished.
Chinatown was a hotbed of hot-sheet
operations.
As for the men, they were worked
hard. These so-called “coolies”—a bas-
tardized word derived from the Chinese
words for “rent” and “muscle”—had
slightly more protection in the form of
benevolent societies, where acclimated
Chinese helped them negotiate for
jobs. But to booming San Francisco
industry, these men were just as dispos-
able as the girls.
Moral crusaders fought an uphill
battle for their liberation, but the quake
of '06 did what they couldn't—the
whole district was wiped out. The
