At Grant Avenue and Bush Street in the City by the Golden Gate or San Francisco - stands a pai-loo bearing four Chinese characters written large by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the Founding Father of the Republic of China. They say: t'ien hsia wei kung - ''The world for all." That is the spirit of San Francisco's Chinatown, which is sometimes described as the largest and most populous outside Asia.
To Americans, Japanese and other tourists, Chinatown S.F. is an Oriental bazaar of arts and handicrafts. Prices can be reasonable, if you know where and how to shop. The Chinese cuisine of Canton can be eaten in sumptuous palace restaurants or in narrow workingman's family style canteens. There is, naturally, more than a small difference in the price of the meal, and the greater the authenticity, the lower the cost.
To the Chinese of San Francisco and northern California, Chinatown S.F. is a community of shops, banks, restaurants, tea houses (now serving coffee, more likely than not), mahjong clubs and brotherhood organizations. These may provide livelihood or entertainment. Either way, there is something for nearly all of the 67,000 Chinese of the Bay City.
This Chinatown is nearly as strange to the non-Cantonese speaking Chinese as to the foreigner. T'ong hua, or the language of the T'ong (Chinese) people, includes the Cantonese spoken today in Canton and Hongkong, and the t'ai shan and ssu yap dialects. The dialects (accents, really) are those of four counties in Kwangtung province from which the ancestors of most Chinese in the United States emigrated. Among the Chinese of San Francisco, anyone who cannot speak t'ong hua is an outsider and "non-Chinese," although he could be fluent in several other dialects.
The great North American influx of Chinese was in the 1840s, 50s and 60s during the period of transcontinental railroad building. The experience of the first arrivals was not always pleasant. Abuse and exploitation were common. The lack of English made it difficult even to complain. Naturally humble and fearful of the new, the first Chinese immigrants were drawn together. They organized their own social activities and then established separate communities, or "China towns," as a place of refuge and escape from the "foreign devils." Within San Francisco's China town, the Chinese lived as they had in the past and as they wished to; their town within the city became a closed society.
The Chinatown family remains intact even today. Old men in their 70s and 80s, walking the streets with shuffling gait, came to the United States as boys of 12 or 13. They spent their life in America yet really never became a part of it. They are citizens of Chinatown. Either they speak no English or have invented a personal pigeon that is incomprehensible to all except family members and close associates.
Chinese are a proud and hard-working people. Those who came first were manual laborers. Their hardiness kept them driving spikes on deserts and in heat that gave pause to the hardy Irish. Their life was one of toil, and it didn't get much better when the end of railroad work drove them into restaurants and laundries. Their sons and daughters had it a little better. The younger generation often served the food cooked by their elders or took in the dirty clothes and handed out the parcels of laundry. The younger Chinese also found work in other services. They became barbers, construction workers, traders and small businessmen.
The grandchildren have been assimilated and are climbing the ladder of success. They are professionals - doctors, lawyers and scholars. They own sizable businesses. They have done well in science and engineering. They are realtors and actors, stock brokers and pharmacists.
Older Chinese of San Francisco's Chinatown are proud of their part in the National Revolution of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the Founding Father of the Republic of China. Dr. Sun called the overseas Chinese "the mothers of the Revolution," and so they were. These oldsters are Confucians who could be presumed more at home in the Ch'ing dynasty than the Republic. They show few hints of Americanism in mannerisms, dress, speech, thinking or way of life. Yet they associate them selves with the Republic and with the three People's Principles of Dr. Sun: Nationalism, Democracy and Social Welfare.
Middle-aged Chinese Americans are proud of their success in business and the professions. They are of two worlds - with one foot still in each. They have done well. They have reared handsome families of "young Americans" - college students and teenagers who find the hamburger more familiar than a bowl of rice or noodles. To the young, China is a strange, exotic place, even when they are drawn to it. Their skins are Chinese but their minds are of the Occident.
Chinatown is a duality. The older generation sticks to Chinese attitudes and upholds Confucianism. Ancestors and the old culture are revered. The young do not agree. Some are frightened by their own race and heritage. The language is strange to them. Learning the written language is a long and arduous process which many decline to undertake. Even so, San Francisco still has ten Chinese-language newspapers and the China Times sells out its 12,000 copies daily.
Old ways of shopping die hard. Stalls selling vegetables and meat line the sidewalks of Grant Avenue and of three blocks on Stockton Street. Middle-aged housewives disregard the San Francisco morning fog and chilling cold to buy "fresh from the country." This is not merely a matter of the food, which is probably no better and no fresher than that at the supermarket. To a Chinese woman, the market is a place of communication newspaper, magazine, radio, TV set and telephone all rolled into one. Greetings are followed by the endless chatter of gossip interspersed with bargaining. Of what use are the ingredients of a Chinese feast unless they have been bargained for? Between choice tidbits of gossip and bouts of haggling, orders are called out for so much of this and a little of that. Not far away, foreigners are raising their car windows to keep out the noise, the damp and the pollution of the freeways. They are on their way from suburb to downtown office, trying to beat the traffic, get to the parking lot before the "Full" sign goes up and reach the office before the boss begins to frown. For the ladies of Chinatown, there is no commuting to market; the stalls are a stone's throw from their homes. They are denizens of just 16 square blocks of the town within the city.
Chinatown streets are crowded by night, not by morning. As the office workers ascend to their steel and concrete hives a few blocks away, the people of Chinatown gather at coffee shops and small restaurants for the morning meal. Sidewalks may be nearly empty but the noise of animated conversation comes from doorways. Some drink tea and some coffee; everyone talks. Not until about 10 do the tourists and souvenir buyers begin to arrive. Shutters come down. If the visitors are overseas Chinese, bargaining begins. For the foreigner, prices are fixed.
Noon is an especially busy time. Chinatown must eat. So must everyone else, and many come to Chinatown's restaurants for Cantonese delicacies. The price is not low. But the diners can go home and tell of the exotic - of bird's nests and shark's fins and maybe just some eggs foo yong. The locals eat in the kitchen or at the smaller (and cheaper) restaurants or at home.
San Francisco pauses as afternoon turns to evening. People leave the concrete jungle for homes across the bay, in Marin county across the Golden Gate or down the Peninsula. Some live at the beach or on San Francisco's hills. China town is the exception; its people are already home. At 6, it is picking up steam for the big evening. Evening is the time of the big shopping, the big dinner, the big excitement of seeing a tiny bit of old Cathay. The bustle goes on until 11 or after, and it is welcome. This is the sustenance of Chinatown.
Dragons prance and crowds throng San Francisco's Chinatown to mark the Double Tenth National Day. (File photo)
The people need the subsidy. Behind the neons and the glittering bank fronts, back of the multicolored signs in Chinese and English (it could be Wanchai in Hongkong!) not everyone is prospering, not everyone is living high off the Peking duck. Chinatown has its seamy side of slum-'Style dwellings, rundown apartments and dirty alleys. Those who love Chinatown - Occidental and Oriental alike - see this as the shame of the community. But not everyone agrees about what to do. When money is asked to clean up China town, the authorities are likely to smile and say purification has been tried and failed. Chinatown is the way it is because the residents want it that way, they say. There could be a modicum of truth in that. The poor of Chinatown are thinking of their next meal rather than of prettification.
Chinatown occupies an area of just over a tenth of a square mile. It wouldn't make much of a parking lot for a football game - and it isn't much of a parking lot for the visitors who come by car. Grant Avenue runs through the heart of China town. It's a main thoroughfare, so there's no trouble getting to Chinatown by automobile. Finding room to stop is another matter. There are 4,000 business establishments in this tenth of a square mile. The Chinese of Chinatown sniff at cars. What would they need of them except to go away, and who would want to do that? The Chinatown resident can walk everywhere he wants to go in just a few minutes.
San Francisco has always been a political city - a sort of Boston of the Pacific Coast. The Chinese are political, too, with their brotherhood associations and the Kuomintang, the party of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Elders belong to the KMT and see that it keeps active. Chinese culture and youth activities are encouraged. Unfortunately, there is a new political influence in Chinatown - that of the Chinese Communists. This message - as subversive to the faiths of America as to those of Sun Yat-sen and the Republic of China - is conveyed by recent arrivals from the Chinese mainland by way of Hongkong. The Communists are spending money on propaganda - films, lectures, reading sessions and Mandarin lessons on the radio.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen described the Chinese as "grains of sand," meaning that they had not found their national unity. This is less true than formerly, but the Chinese are still inclined to be clannish, especially when they resettle overseas. The businesses of Chinatown tend to be family owned and operated. Corporations are all around Chinatown but not a part of it. One exception to the rule of "family first and only" is the cooperative Chinese Hospital, or Tung Hua Yi Yuan. Fifteen Chinese organizations throughout the Bay Area joined in its establishment as a private venture of and by Chinese. Over the years, the hospital has 'become involved in all manner of Chinatown affairs. Recently there was a controversy over proposals for hospital expansion.
Chinese of a commercial bent have always believed in the philosophy of owning their own businesses. This is one of the mountainous obstacles the Chinese Communists have not been able to find their way around. In Chinatown, restaurants are the biggest of the small businesses. The investment is sizable, however, and the owner of a big establishment must hire help outside the family. Souvenir and handicraft shops can be tightly held and family-manned. The investment is smaller than that in a restaurant; the work is less onerous, too. Other individual and family enterprises in Chinatown include employment, travel and real estate agencies.
There is an old joke that everything in a China town shop comes from Japan. That isn't true, but Japan is one of the suppliers and was probably a bigger one just before and after World War II. The Japanese have lost some of their mastery of gimcrackery. Prices may be high or low in Chinatown. You can get a bargain but most buyers won't because they don't know what they are buying. Whether the goods come from Taiwan, mainland China or Japan, the initial mark-up will be substantial.
Chinatown has its own financing. This comes from banks as well as families. There are American banks, of course, and also the Chinese-owned Bank of the Orient and the Bank of Canton. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation of Hongkong has a China town branch. This big bank can transmit to Hongkong the small sums that Chinatown residents send to family members on the mainland, hoping it will get there and make life a little easier.
To many, Chinatown S.F. is the most Chinese city in the world - not excluding Taipei, Hongkong and the cities of the mainland. That is not quite the exaggeration it may sound. Because Chinatown is so insular and in a strange way so isolated, it has kept much of its original Chinese flavor. Those who founded Chinatown are dead, but many of today's leaders were born in China. The first American-born generation remained Chinese; it was born, bred and educated in Chinatown. Subsequent generations do not have a big foot hold in Chinatown. They live and work elsewhere. To them Chinatown is a place for a Sunday dinner and a cultural experience they do not perceive too clearly. Younger members of the fourth generation work in Chinatown as waitresses and busboys. They speak Cantonese but they know little of China and cannot read Chinese. They are Americanized. Chinatown is Chinese and always will be although the Chineseness may have a large content of tourist tinsel when the older Chinese are gone.
Chinatown has been changed a little by the arrivals of the last decade. Some are trouble makers. The Chinese have difficulty "taking care of their own bad apples" these days. Outside help was not needed through most of Chinatown's existence. The S.F. Police Department attested to that. Not all newcomers have "Red Guard" inclinations. But nearly all of those from the mainland are lacking in language proficiency and education. Young American-born Chinese and some of the immigrants are involving themselves in Chinatown affairs and trying to improve the community. They are seeking shorter hours and higher pay for those who have been exploited. They want to keep Chinatown alive and make it a better place.
Good or bad, genuine or phony, Chinatown is a fascinating community that gets under the skin of Oriental and Occidental alike. To the Chinese it is home; to the non-Chinese it is an exotic slice of the fabled Middle Kingdom where Fu Manchu or a hero of Kung Fu might be encountered on any street corner. With Saigon's Chinese sister city of Cholon now behind the Bamboo Curtain, San Francisco's Chinatown is unique not only in the New World but also in the old outside Taiwan or the Chinese mainland. Some love it and some hate it and move away. But no one is indifferent or uninterested.