A Visit To San Francisco's Chinatown
"San Francisco's Chinatown" (revised ed. 2016) offers in a short pictorial history the opportunity to get to know a storied community from its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Judy Yung, professor emerita of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a Chinatown native, and the author of several books on Chinese Americans wrote this book for the Images of America series of local American histories with the support of the Chinese Historical Society of America.
San Francisco's Chinatown is usually considered the largest and most famous Chinese community outside of Asia. With her textual discussion and her well-chosen and well-reproduced images, Yung succeeds in giving an inside portrait of the community throughout the extensive changes it has undergone in time. The book shows the residents of Chinatown in their relationships to one another, to the city of San Francisco, to the United States and to the world. It offers understanding and insight in a short pictorial account.
The book follows the changes in Chinatown's fortunes over the years and the making of a cohesive community that for many years was rejected before ultimately becoming a treasured part of the United States. Yung's book shows the first Chinatown community called Tong Yun Fow which lasted in San Francisco on the same site as the current community from 1848 until it was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1906. The book offers many rare photographs of this old community and of old San Francisco, with cluttered overcrowded streets, Chinese pushcart peddlers and fishermen, the beginnings of community organizations, and images of opium dens,prostitution, gambling, and gangs. It is a revealing portrait of an early community enhanced by Yung's commentary.
After the earthquake, Chinatown rebuilt and reinvented itself. Yung shows the effort required to rebuild Chinatown with an eye towards tourism, even at that early time. The book guides the reader through the narrow, crowded Chinatown streets to show the enterprise of the community's people, their businesses, public lives and celebrations, and community organizations at a time when the Chinese still faced extensive discrimination. While focusing on events within the community, Yung describes as well the relationship of the community with China and with the changes in the Chinese government. The book discusses the WW II years, the patriotism of the Chinese community, and the lifting of many discriminatory barriers as a result of America's alliance with China in the war.
In a chapter titled "Guilded Ghettos", Yung describes how the community was threatened after the war when many of its more prosperous residents were able to move elsewhere. The community was able to hold on through difficult times and expanded with the influx of immigration following the 1965 revision of the immigration laws. The community managed to retain its own character while responding to the turbulent events in the United States of the 1960s.
The final chapter of the book shows contemporary Chinatown, which has been described as one of the Top Ten Great Neighborhoods in the America for its exceptional character, quality, and lasting value. The photos show the continuity of Chinatown with its earliest days through public events such as parades and through community cohesiveness as Chinatown has made a home for itself in the 21st Century.
The book concludes with a street map of Chinatown which allows the reader to put in context the many landmarks and sites discussed in the text. It also includes a bibliography for readers wishing to learn more.
Interested readers with no ties to Chinatown will be moved, as I was, by getting to know the community and its people through this history. Readers familiar with Chinatown will learn more about their community and gain a valuable sense of it through time. The book gave me an appreciation of Chinatown and its role in our diverse and beloved country.
