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Uh... that's not San Francisco Chinatown...

 There are plenty of merch out there about Chinatown, and artists can simply upload a picture, and setup a "print-on-demand" (POD) place for t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and whatever you can print a picture on, setup a listing, and sell those items without spending money up front. 

But are you buying the RIGHT item? Let's just say some artists (and I use the term loosely) clearly didn't verify the pictures fit the description. Which implies they didn't create the pictures they uploaded. 

Just for fun, I did a search for "San Francisco Chinatown Merchandise" on Google, and while most of the items are correctly depicting San Francisco Chinatown, there are a few that clearly are NOT San Francisco Chinatown, even though they are labelled as San Francisco Chinatown. 

Here is one such example on Amazon. Do you see the problem? 

A sweatshirt for sale on Amazon labeled as San Francisco China Town

That's right, they are driving on the "wrong side". This picture is clearly NOT an American Chinatown, much less the one in San Francisco! 

A Google search revealed that this is actually the Chinatown East Gate in Yokohama, Japan. 

Chinatown East Gate, Yokohama Japan, courtesy Wikipedia

Here's one that's also wrong... An "art print" labeled as San Francisco Chinatown.  


Yet this is also NOT San Francisco. It's way too tall. Turns out, this is the West Gate of Los Angeles Chinatown. 

Los Angeles Chinatown West Gate, courtesy of Wikipedia

If you get Chinatown merch, please make sure you get the right one. 

P.S.: I talked to RedBubble, but they're hiding behind "artists control everything" slogan and refused ANY responsibility for accuracy of the listing. "You must contact the artist" is what they said. Sheesh. 

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About the author

Kasey is a professional tour guide and amateur historian who specialized in Chinatown History and Tours. You will often find him guiding groups sampling delicious food and learning interesting historical tidbits about Chinatown most weekends.

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