The Hidden Chinatown of San Francisco

If you came to Chinatown, you probably walked or drove past Portsmouth Square many times. But this "square" predates the statehood itself, and has a history far beyond "where you park for Chinatown".  Google Maps of Portsmouth Square 2022 courtesy Google, USGS, Maxar, Airbus, et al The town square that will become Portsmouth square was set aside in 1833 by the Mexican community who had won their independence from Spain. At the time, the area was called "Yerba Buena" (lit: Good Herb). In 1835, it was officially designated "Grand Plaza", but it was an empty gesture, as there were no residents until William A Richardson and his family (Richardson married Maria Antonia Martinez, the daughter of the commander at the Presidio, Ygnacio Martinez, who controls the local Mexican army fort) moved to the area just west of the plaza, in late 1835, in an attempt to map and settle the area. He was soon joined by Jacob Leese (known to the Mexicans as Don Jacobo

At one end of Spofford Alley stood a community mural, and one of the phrases on top is "Tape vs. Hurley". What you probably do not know was this was the EARLIEST court victory against school racism dating back to 1885, 70 years before Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, and 11 years BEFORE "Plessy vs. Ferguson" (1896).  Mural at Washington side of Spofford Alley, Mary Tape, Tape v Hurley 1885 courtesy author Joseph Tape was born in Guandong, in Southern China. He came to San Francisco, as a teenager in 1864, and worked as a servant to a dairy farmer, and steadily moved up to delivery wagon driver. He met and married Mary McGladery in 1875. Mary originally came from Shanghai as a teenager a few years after Joseph did, and MAY have been trafficked, but was rescued and placed with the Ladies' Protection and Relief Society's shelter, and chose to take her caretaker's name as a symbol of her rebirth. When they married, they both took the German su

This First Chinese Baptist Church stood unique among all Chinatown buildings in that it incorporates clinker bricks in its facade. Originally built in 1888, it was rebuilt after the 1906 Earthquake and fire. The congregation, with assistance from other Baptist churches across the US, was able to rebuild, and they chose a very western choice: walls studded with that's known as "clinker bricks". These bricks are darker, and gnarled, and are named for the sound they make when you clink them together.  First Chinese Baptist Church, 15 Waverly Pl, SF CA 94108 courtesy author Close-up of the gnarled clinker bricks among regular bricks Clinker bricks are made by exposing unfired bricks to hotter fire for longer so the surfaces sintered and thus are SEALED, unlike regular bricks which are porous. Therefore, the clinker bricks barely absorb any water, and are denser and heavier than regular bricks, thus more stable.  NOTE:  Some claim the clinker bricks were reclaimed from the rub

One of the oddities during the Gold Rush years of San Francisco was the extreme imbalance between males and females. It is believed the ratio was like 20 to 1. And remember, back in the 1800s, men do NOT do laundry... It was supposed to be women's work or domestic servant's work. Most men don't even know how to do laundry. Not to mention two buckets of fresh water would cost a quarter. This resulted in some very odd pricing, such as the cost of laundering a dozen shirts being $8-12 dollars, due to very few women available to do the laundry. A few men will try, but give up after a while after they either destroyed the shirts or lost all the buttons. The situation was bad enough, laundry was sent across the ocean to be laundered. A ship can carry back several hundred dozen pieces of laundry .  Hawaii, seeing an opportunity, started to offer $6 per dozen washes and a much faster turnaround.    Some folks in Chinatown recognized the profit potential, being close to the port and

Waverly Pl was far more than just an alley in San Francisco. During the earliest days of San Francisco, it was apparently known as "Pike Street", at least until the 1906 Earthquake. I cannot find any historical references on when the name was changed. Many references imply state "Waverly Pl, (formerly Pike St.) while other references imply stated Pike St. Even from the earliest days in Chinatown, it was known as a place of brothels, and allegedly both Bella Cora and Ah Toy, the two most famous madams of Chinatown, have brothels at or very close to Pike St. (later Waverly Pl). For a while, the brothels co-existed with barbers on the same street, where sailors and miners can get a haircut and a shave for 5 cents, and later, 10 cents. So the area was also known as Five Cent Street or Ten Cent Street for a while. But the street remained mired with vices.  A "crime map" prepared for SF City Supervisors in 1885, note the blue and red vices mapped.  courtesy Cornell U

How many movies have at least one scene in Chinatown?  According to IMDB, no less than 69 . Unfortunately, some are short films, some are ancient, some are actually Chinese, and very few are well known.  In fact, a few of the more popular movies most people believed had a scene in Chinatown... Did not.  Not In Chinatown Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) did not film in Chinatown, but adjacent to it. When Scotty, McCoy, and Sulu walked by a couple arguing in Cantonese, most people assumed this was in Chinatown. But if you look more closely, they walked past 1232 Grant " The Saloon ", just before encountering the couple. The Saloon, the oldest Blues Bar in San Francisco, is in North Beach.  So which ones really did film in Chinatown?  Did Film in Chinatown Big Trouble in Little China (1986) poked fun at all the myths and legends of Chinatown underground tunnels which are fictional. The location of Grant and Commercial is still there, now home to a Bruce Lee mural.  Curren

One of the "must-stops" in SF Chinatown is the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in Ross Alley. Founded in 1962, the place is about to hit its 60th anniversary later in 2022.  Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory courtesy author Feel free to watch them make some in front of you, and get a taste of the unfolded ones, which are miles better than any of those wrapped (censored) you get from (censored). They are often still warm off the circulating multi-griddle. And yes, the fortunes are placed manually. You can also get fancier versions, like dipped, flavored, and so on, or even giant ones.  But did you ever wonder where it came from? Turns out, it's not Chinese. It's actually Japanese.  The origins of fortune cookie can be traced back to a Japanese "fortune" (tsujiura) that a temple would offer in a rice cracker (senbei) for a small donation. It is a bit larger than the modern version, darker, and made of sesame and miso. Let's just say, they are fist-size

Old St. Mary's Cathedral, with the address of 660 California St (corner of California and Grant), is also the Chinese Mission, and the first Cathedral in California. The cornerstone was set on July 17, 1853, and the cathedral completed and dedicated for Christmas1854, by Bishop Joseph S Alemany. This was both the first dedicated cathedral (and thus, the head Catholic building in the state, and was also the tallest building in San Francisco when it opened, at 27 meters (89 ft) tall, due to the extra tall clocktower.  One of the most prominent features of the clocktower was the quote from Ecclesiasticus 4:23 right below the clock itself: "Son, Observe the Time and Fly from Evil." It was meant to warn the sailors from visiting the various brothels and other dens of vices in the area.  This cathedral was demoted to a regular parish church in 1891 when the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption (aka "New Saint Mary's") was built at Van Ness and O'Farrell. 

The Wok Shop , located at 718 Grant Ave (between Sacramento and Clay, next to Eastern Bakery off Commercial) has been a Chinatown institution for over five decades.  In this tiny shop you will find all sorts of Chinese kitchenware from rice cookers to crockery, from woks to ladles, recipe books, kitchen gadgets, and everything else related to Asian cooking (yes, even sushi making stuff), on the walls, hanging from the ceiling, and more. Think the inventory of William-Sonoma, or Sur La Table, but crapped into 1/5th the space. That's the Wok Shop.  The owner, Tane Chan, over 80, has been operating the shop since 1972 and not even a break-in in 2021 in the midst of COVID season can slow her down.  The shop has been such an institution, its products were featured several times in Cooks Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen by Grace Young, aka the Stir-fry Guru . Indeed, one of the Wok Shop's exclusive Carbon Steel Wok was the 2nd choice on ATK , only because it was a hair hea

NOTE: This is not related to Chinatown, but it was a part of Chinese-American history, so I decided to include it as a bonus post.  If you eat fruit, you may have heard of Bing cherries. They have darker skin than your typical cherries, almost purple-ish. This is the most popular cherry variety cultivated in the US. But did you ever wonder where that name came from? photo of Bing cherry, courtesy Wikicommons The Bing cherry was named after a Chinese farm foreman who was only recorded in history as "Ah Bing". But to explain things, we have to go all the way back to the 1850s, and a Quaker family.  The Lewellings were a Quaker farming family who believed in human rights. Before the Civil War, one of the brothers built an Underground Railroad stop in their house that was riddled with secret passages and doors (and it still stands today). In the mid-1800s, they decided to head out West, and the two brothers, Henderson and Seth settled in Milwaukie, Oregon, and started the first n

In late May or Early June, you may see Chinatown vendors offer sticky rice dumplings, that are actually quite large, roughly the size of a fist. This is called zhong-zi 粽子 and it has some history behind it.  The most accepted origin story traced it to roughly 300 BC, when China was in its "Warring States" period, lots of smaller kingdoms vying for survival. A poet-politician by the name of Qu-Yuan 屈原 (pronounced chu-yuan) in the State of Chu, was exiled for opposing an alliance with the state of Qin as he feared the "ally" would later turn on them. He was proven right 28 years later when the ally turned on them and captured the Chu capital. Saddened by the event, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the nearby Miluo River. He was beloved by locals, and many rushed to the scene, if not to save him, then to at least recover his body, but his body was never found. This was said to be the origin of the dragon boat races. Some also dropped sticky rice into th

Everybody knows who is Bruce Lee, but what most people do NOT know, is Bruce Lee was thoroughly American... by birth. Bruce Lee, Chinese name Lee Jun-fan 李振藩, was born in The Chinese Hospital in Chinatown, San Francisco, on Nov 27, 1940... which happens to be the year of the dragon, AND the hour of the dragon.  This made him a dual Hong Kong and US Citizen by birth.  Bruce Lee Sculpture in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong by tee2tee via Pixabay When he took to the stage later, he chose the stage name 李小龍 (Li Xiao-Long in Mandarin, Lee Siu-lung in Cantonese), which means "little dragon".  (Remember we mentioned Xiao Long Bao aka XLB, aka Shanghai Dumplings?)  What was interesting at the time was how his parents got to the US... His father, Lee Hoi-Chuen was the lead Cantonese Opera singer of a traveling troupe from Hong Kong, and his mother, Grace Ho, was the wardrobe manager for the troupe. Indeed, Grace Ho was Eurasian, as Bruce's maternal grandmother is English. The Cantonese

If you have walked by Chinatown, or indeed, cities with a large Asian population, you probably came across "boba tea" vendors, and there are like a dozen of them in Chinatown. The items are also known as "pearl tea" or "bubble tea". But have you ever wondered about its history?  A cup of boba milk tea courtesy wikipedia The lineage of Boba tea can be definitely traced to Taiwan... all the way back to the 1940s.  A gentleman by the name of FanShu Chang (Chang is the surname) worked as a mixologist in an izakaya (Japanese, lit: stay-drink-place) in the 1940's Taiwan, which was then under Japanese rule. After WW2 ended, Chang decided to specialize in hand-shaken ice tea by opening a unique tea shop in 1949. The hand-shaken tea was done by a cocktail mixer and the result is a smooth and silky ice tea with a layer of bubble foam on top, dubbed "foam tea" at the time, and it was a hit, as Taiwan, being a tropical island, is always searching for co