The Hidden Chinatown of San Francisco

Rather than spoiling anything, you may just want to listen to her tales of when she grew up... LOTS of interesting stories. However, the video is potentially NSFW, with some very leggy outfits and some drag performers. 

 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". ...

You can't come to SF Chinatown and leave out Dragon Gate, aka the Chinatown Gate, at the corner of Bush and Grant. But do you know its history?  Chinatown Gate, aka Dragon Gate, San Francisco Dragon Gate (aka Chinatown Gate, aka Dragon's Gate) was designed by Clayton Lee and others in 1967 in response to a mayoral competition, and his was the winning entry. Originally two gates were proposed, but the other gate leading to Barbary Coast was dropped due to lack of funds, and cost overrun.  The gate itself was designed after a Chinese "pailou 牌樓" or "paifang 牌坊", which were the "gates" that marked separate fang 坊, or "ward" within a city. However, later it evolved into a purely decorative element. As with tradition, the gate faces South, and is composed of a large gate with two smaller side gates.  The gate has a lot of its materials donated by Taiwan (Republic of China) including artisanal tiles, roofing, and the two guardian lions. Despite...

Delicious Dim Sum, at 752 Jackson, is just up hill from Wong Lee Bakery and across the street from House of Dimsum. Competition is fierce on this block indeed. I don't know about their other items, but they have excellent beef siumai.  Their beef siumai are positively huge, quite a bit bigger than the normal suimai size, and two orders of these (six pieces in total) makes up a whole meal. Yes, there's a little bit of wrapping around the siumai, and while the meat looks very "pink" it is cooked. And there are no fillers like water chestnut or peas or such. It's just a meatball. Two orders are just over 6 bucks.  SIDEBAR: There are several version of beef siumai 牛肉燒賣 or beef balls 牛肉丸. Generally speaking, the former is like a traditional siumai, with a thin layer of wrapping around it, almost like a wonton wrapper, while the latter generally has some tofu skin at the bottom to stop it from sticking to the steaming vessel (generally a small saucer), and generally a b...

Wong Lee Bakery, on 738 Jackson, is just opposite the must busier and more famous House of Dimsum, and while they do serve some dimsum, WL should really be better known for its big baos and eggtarts.  The place is rather dark and there's often a line going in, and you have some time to look over the steam table / shelf of egg tarts (decently priced) and other items on the menu behind them.  They are probably more famous for frozen wontons and dumplings for sale by the dozens.  If you want to eat cheap, I recommend ordering a pound of chow fun (rice noodles) or chow mein (egg noodles). There's no meat in these, just scallions and soy sauce. As of March 2023, it's $3.70 a pound. And you should be more than half way full once you eat a pound of that.  The other item I recommend is the "dai-bao" (lit: big bao) which is mostly chicken, but also has chinese sausage (which is pork) plus portions of an boiled egg, for a mere $2.20. So One pound of starch, 2 die-bao, and i...

Yummy Dimsum , which is right next to the Bank of American ATM on Stockton (930 Stockton), is not a fancy place. But from the kitchen they serve a lot of different dimsum, and has steam table of about a dozen different entress for your lunchbox needs. They even have porridge and wonton noodles, but you have to know how to order, as it's very rarely visited by tourists.  While the quality of the items isn't the greatest, nor the freshest, locals keep coming back, just not in large numbers.  Their lunch boxes (3 entrees and rice) is $7, and most dimsum are $3 for one order (usually 3 pieces) with occasional exceptions (like beef balls are $4). They also have rice porridge in the rice cooker behind them, and their kitchen can also make you beef stew noodles, wonton noodles, and such by ordering off the menu on the wall. They do have a few small tables but they are VERY tight.  Personally, the portions of those entrees are on the smaller side, but that is probably just my fee...

As a tour guide for Chinatown, I sometimes have to answer some unconventional questions about Chinatown, and everything adjacent to it. And for those into nostalgic movies, one of the topics that kept coming up was the Kurt Russell movie " Big Trouble in Little China (1986) ".  In case you don't remember the movie, Jack Burton, a big rig driver, goes with his Chinese buddy Wang Chi to pick up Wang's green-eyed fiancee Miao Yin arriving from China, only to have bad guys kidnap her! Jack and Wang chase the kidnappers, and learned that evil sorcerer Lo Pan needs to marry a green-eyed girl to return to land of the living, and he has a bunch of evil minions. So Jack, Wang, lawyer Gracie Law, plus bus driver and sorcerer apprentice Egg Shen unite to smite evil as they are transported into the literal underworld of Chinatown... So, do the tunnels exist?  Unfortunately, no. There are no such giant tunnels and elaborate labyrinths. Those are all filmed in the Hollywood soundst...