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...
An exploration of San Francisco Chinatown typically NOT covered by tours