Chinatown, San Francisco

2025-10-13T20:13:17Z

2600:1000:A021:4B4:21E1:125E:F432:153C: There are some English grammar tweaks, at least so that the English version of the Wikipedia page is grammatically correct.

{{Short description|Neighborhood in California, United States}}
{{Other uses}}

{{Use American English|date=January 2023}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2023}}
{{Infobox settlement

| name = Chinatown
| settlement_type = [[List of neighborhoods in San Francisco|Neighborhood]]
| official_name =
| native_name = 
| image_skyline = San Francisco China Town MC.jpg
| image_caption = Chinatown businesses line [[Jackson Street (San Francisco)|Jackson Street]], with the [[San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge|Bay Bridge]] in the background.
| nickname =
| pushpin_map = United States San Francisco Central
| pushpin_label_position = right
| pushpin_map_caption = Location within Central San Francisco
| coordinates = {{coord|37|47|39|N|122|24|25|W|US-CA_type:landmark|display=inline,title}}
| subdivision_type = Country
| subdivision_name = United States
| subdivision_type1 = [[U.S. state|State]]
| subdivision_name1 = [[California]]
| subdivision_type2 = [[Consolidated city-county|City-county]]
| subdivision_name2 = [[San Francisco]]
| leader_title = [[San Francisco Board of Supervisors|Supervisor]]
| leader_name = {{Representative|sfbos|3|fmt=linked}}
| leader_title1 = [[California's 17th State Assembly district|Assemblymember]]
| leader_name1 = {{Representative|caad|17|fmt=sleader}}<ref name=swd>{{cite web |url=http://statewidedatabase.org/gis/gis2011/index_2011.html |title=Statewide Database |publisher=UC Regents |access-date=November 21, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150201113744/http://statewidedatabase.org/gis/gis2011/index_2011.html |archive-date=February 1, 2015 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
| leader_title2 = [[California's 11th State Senate district|State senator]]
| leader_name2 = {{Representative|casd|11|fmt=sleader}}<ref name=swd/>
| leader_title3 = [[California's 11th congressional district|U. S. rep.]]
| leader_name3 = {{Representative|cacd|11|fmt=usleader}}<ref>{{Cite GovTrack|CA|11}}</ref>
| established_title =
| established_date = 
| unit_pref = US
| area_footnotes =
| area_total_sq_mi =
| area_land_sq_mi =
| area_water_sq_mi =
| area_water_percent = 
| elevation_footnotes = 
| elevation_m =
| elevation_ft =
| elevation_max_m =
| elevation_max_ft =
| elevation_min_m =
| elevation_min_ft = 
| population_footnotes =
| population_total = 34891
| population_as_of = [[United States Census 2000|2000]]
| population_est = 34557<ref>{{Cite web |last=Montojo |first=Nicole |date=June 2015 |title=Community Organizing amidst Change in SF's Chinatown |url=https://www.urbandisplacement.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/chinatown_final.pdf |website=Urban Displacement}}</ref>
| pop_est_as_of = 2013
| population_density_sq_mi = 
| timezone = [[Pacific Time Zone|Pacific]]
| utc_offset = −8
| timezone_DST = [[Pacific Daylight Time|PDT]]
| utc_offset_DST = −7
| postal_code_type = [[ZIP Code]]s
| postal_code = 94108, 94133, 94102, 94111, 94109
| area_code_type = [[North American Numbering Plan|Area Codes]]
| area_code = [[Area codes 415 and 628|415/628]]
}}{{Infobox Chinese
| t =
| s =
| p = Tángrénjiē
| h = Tongˇ nginˇ gieˊ
| j = Tong4 jan4 gaai1
| c = 唐人街
}}
The '''Chinatown''',{{efn|{{zh|c=唐人街|p=Tángrénjiē|j=Tong4 jan4 gaai1}}; [[Yale romanization of Cantonese|Yale romanization]]: ''Tòhng yàhn gāai''; [[Peng'im]]: ''Deng5 rêng5 goi1''; [[Pha̍k-fa-sṳ]]: ''Thòng-ngìn-kiê/kiâi''}} centered on [[Grant Avenue]] and [[Stockton Street (San Francisco)|Stockton Street]] in [[San Francisco]], California, is the oldest [[Chinatown]] in [[North America]] and one of the largest [[Han Chinese|Chinese]] [[ethnic enclave|enclaves]] outside [[Asia]]. It is also the oldest and largest of the [[Chinatown, San Francisco (disambiguation)|four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J49inXbkyJgC&pg=PA127 |title=Clement Street: The "Other" Chinatown|first=Shirley|last=Fong-Torres|isbn=9780595448678|year=2008|publisher=iUniverse }}</ref><ref>Hoiberg, Dale: The New Encyclopædia Britannica MicroPaedia vol. 10, Page 388., Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc, 2007.</ref><ref>Wanning, Esther: Culture Shock! USA, Color Plateno. 2, after Page 180., Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2008</ref> Since its establishment in the early 1850s,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sanfranciscochinatown.com/history/index.html |title=The Official San Francisco Chinatown Website |publisher=Sanfranciscochinatown.com |access-date=December 6, 2011}}</ref> it has been important and influential in the history and culture of [[Overseas Chinese|ethnic Chinese immigrants]] in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has [[Gentrification of San Francisco#Chinatown|retained its own]] customs, [[language]]s, [[Chinese temples|places of worship]], [[Kongsi|social club]]s, and identity.

The Chinatown district is primarily [[Cantonese]] and [[Taishanese]]-speaking, both dialects originating in southern China. Most Chinatown residents have origins in [[Guangdong Province]] and [[Hong Kong]], with some [[Mandarin language|Mandarin]]-speaking residents from [[Taiwan]] and central and Northern China, although lesser in comparison to Cantonese-speaking people, despite Cantonese being a minority language amongst people in China and ethnically Chinese people in Asia.

There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RWhp5kLHkbUC&q=sunset+district+chinatown+san+francisco&pg=PA80|title=San Francisco's International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American ...|first=Estella|last=Habal|isbn=9781592134472|date=June 28, 2007|publisher=Temple University Press }}</ref> Due to a combination of factors, some more broad-based related to difficult circumstances for San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces a struggle for survival.<ref name=SanFranChinatownShrinking>{{cite news|newspaper=South China Morning Post|title=US Chinatowns are shrinking, and while some want to fight, new ones are springing up|quote=In San Francisco’s Chinatown, the oldest hub of Chinese-owned businesses in the United States, vacancy signs pockmark the district’s dining establishments, gift shops and herb stalls. And at a Chinatown across San Francisco Bay in Oakland, rampant storefront graffiti and the fear of robbery chill the daily bustle of kerbside grocery shopping.|url=https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3228357/us-chinatowns-are-shrinking-and-while-some-want-fight-new-ones-are-springing|author=Ralph Jennings|date=July 21, 2023|access-date=October 12, 2023}}</ref>

==Geography and location==
{{OSM Location map
|coord={{Coord|37.79409|-122.4072}}
|float=right
|zoom=16
|width=310 |height=470
|scalemark=20
|shape1=n-square
|shape-color1=red
|shape-outline1=#ffffff
|mark-size1=20
|mark-coord1 ={{Coord|37.790783|-122.405616}}
|mark-title1 =[[Dragon Gate (San Francisco)|Dragon Gate]]
|mark-image1 =Dragon Gate (5401416859).jpg
|mark-description1 =Dragon Gate, designed by Chinese-American architect Clayton Lee, marks the southern entrance to Chinatown along [[Grant Avenue]] at Bush.

|mark-coord2 ={{Coord|37.792024|-122.405210}} |shape-color2=#0a0
|mark-title2 =[[Saint Mary's Square]]
|mark-image2 =2013, View NE, St. Mary's Square - panoramio.jpg
|mark-description2 =St. Mary's Square is in the block south of the eponymous [[Old Saint Mary's Cathedral]], stretching from California to Pine.

|mark-coord3 ={{Coord|37.792476|-122.406024}}
|mark-title3 =Sing Chong and Sing Fat buildings
|mark-image3 =Chinatown2 SF.jpg
|mark-description3 =The Sing Chong (background, north) and Sing Fat (foreground, south) buildings were among the first to be constructed following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire]], straddling the corner of Grant and California. They were designed by Ross & Burgren for Look Tin Eli in a chinoiserie style to attract tourists to the rebuilt district.

|mark-coord4 ={{Coord|37.793365|-122.405484}}
|mark-title4 =Nam Kue School
|mark-image4 =Free Lunch for Kids program, Chinatown (4845710208).jpg
|mark-description4 =The Nam Kue School is set back from Sacramento, on the northern part of the block between Grant and Kearny.

|mark-coord5 ={{Coord|37.794811|-122.405380}} |shape-color5=#0a0
|mark-title5 =[[Portsmouth Square]]
|mark-image5 =Card Players in Portsmouth Square, SF Chinatown (14966166730).jpg
|mark-description5 =Portsmouth Square is known as the 'living room' of Chinatown, often filled with residents playing games with friends.

|mark-coord6 ={{Coord|37.795069|-122.406240}}
|mark-title6 =Chinese Telephone Exchange
|mark-image6 =Bank of Canton office in a building that once housed a telephone exchange, San Francisco, California LCCN2011633083.tif
|mark-description6 =The Chinese Telephone Exchange now houses a branch of the East-West Bank (formerly the Bank of Canton).

|mark-coord7 ={{Coord|37.794570|-122.406979}}
|mark-title7 =[[Tin How Temple]]
|mark-image7 =Tien Hau Temple (2369813959).jpg
|mark-description7 =Tin How Temple is on the upper floor of the Sue Hing Benevolent Association building at 125–129 Waverly Place.

|mark-coord8 ={{Coord|37.795734|-122.407345}}
|mark-title8 =[[Ross Alley]] / [[Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company|Fortune Cookie factory]]
|mark-image8 =7214 Ross Crowd (49330431992).jpg
|mark-description8 =Ross Alley is lined with small shops, including the [[Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company]], where visitors may watch [[fortune cookie]]s being made.

|mark-coord9 ={{Coord|37.795551|-122.408901}} |shape-color9=#00f|shape9=n-circle
|mark-title9 =[[San Francisco Chinese Hospital|Chinese Hospital]]
|mark-image9 =20073d Chinese Hospital (39788332130).png
|mark-description9 =San Francisco Chinese Hospital serves the Chinatown community

|mark-coord10={{Coord|37.793840|-122.408815}}
|mark-title10=[[Chinese Historical Society of America]]
|mark-image10=Chinatown San Francisco (41588318331).jpg
|mark-description10=The Chinese Historical Society of America has a small museum housed in the former Chinatown YWCA, designed by [[Julia Morgan]].

|mark-coord11={{Coord|37.793762|-122.408000}}
|mark-title11=[[Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association|Six Companies]]
|mark-image11=Chinatown (29336915353).jpg
|mark-description11=The Chinese Six Companies or Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association building on [[Stockton Street (San Francisco)|Stockton]] is sometimes called the 'White House' of Chinatown.

|fullscreen-option=1
|caption=Selected locations in Chinatown, San Francisco <small>{{flatlist|
* {{color box|#f00|Points of interest|#fff|border=silver}}
* {{color box|#0a0|Parks and open spaces|#fff|border=silver}}
* {{color box|#00f|Hospital|border=silver}} }}</small>
|auto-caption=1
}}
[[File:Washington Street in Chinatown, San Francisco.JPG|thumb|left|Washington Street in Chinatown with [[Transamerica Pyramid]] in the background.]]

Officially, Chinatown is located in downtown San Francisco, covers 24 square blocks,<ref name="Foster2001"/> and overlaps five postal [[ZIP Code|ZIP Codes]] (94108, 94133, 94111, 94102, and 94109). It is within an area of roughly {{convert|1/2|mi|abbr=on}} long (north to south) by {{convert|1/4|mi|abbr=on}} wide (east to west) with the current boundaries being, approximately, [[Kearny Street]] in the east, [[Broadway (San Francisco)|Broadway]] in the north, [[Powell Street (San Francisco)|Powell]] in the west, and Bush Street in the south.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Chatfield-Taylor |first=Joan |date=April 26, 1987 |title=SHOPPER'S WORLD; SAN FRANSICO'S VIBRANT CHINATOWN |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/26/travel/shopper-s-world-san-fransico-s-vibrant-chinatown.html |access-date=July 5, 2018 |work=The New York Times |language=en |quote=Chinatown, roughly defined as the rectangle formed by Kearny, Powell, Broadway and Bush streets ...}}</ref> Owing to a combination of multifactorial issues, some more generally tied to socioeconomic difficulties afflicting downtown San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces a struggle for survival and is shrinking.<ref name=SanFranChinatownShrinking/>

[[File:Stockton_Street_from_Broadway_70.JPG|thumb|left|Stockton Street]]

Within Chinatown there are two major north–south [[thoroughfare]]s. One is [[Grant Avenue]], with the [[Dragon Gate (San Francisco)|Dragon Gate]] ("Chinatown Gate" on some maps) at the intersection of Bush Street and Grant Avenue, designed by landscape architects Melvin Lee and Joseph Yee and architect Clayton Lee; [[Saint Mary's Square]] with a statue of [[Sun Yat-sen]] by [[Benjamin Bufano]];<ref name="Foster2001" /> a war memorial to Chinese war veterans; and stores, restaurants and mini-malls that cater mainly to tourists. The other, [[Stockton Street]], is frequented less often by tourists, and it presents an authentic Chinese look and feel reminiscent of [[Hong Kong]], with its produce and fish markets, stores, and restaurants. It is dominated by [[Mixed-use development|mixed-use]] buildings that are three to four stories high, with shops on the ground floor and residential apartments upstairs.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url = http://www.spur.org/blog/2012-04-09/creating-community-vision-stockton-street|title = Creating a Community Vision for Stockton Street|date = April 9, 2012|publisher = SPUR|first1=Noah |last1=Christman |first2=Deland |last2=Chan |first3=Vivian |last3=Chang |first4=Cindy |last4=Wu }}</ref>

A major focal point in Chinatown is [[Portsmouth Square]].<ref name="Foster2001">{{cite book|first=Lee|last=Foster|title=Northern California History Weekends|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8VA0GAmdjK4C|access-date=December 27, 2011|date=October 1, 2001|publisher=Globe Pequot|isbn=978-0-7627-1076-8|page=13}}{{Dead link|date=December 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> Since it is one of the few open spaces in Chinatown and sits above a large underground parking lot, Portsmouth Square is used by people such as [[tai chi]] practitioners and old men playing [[Xiangqi|Chinese chess]].<ref name="Foster2001" /> A [[Goddess of Democracy (San Francisco)|replica]] of the [[Goddess of Democracy]] used in the [[Tiananmen Square protests of 1989|Tiananmen Square protest]] was built in 1999 by Thomas Marsh and stands in the square. It is made of bronze and weighs approximately {{convert|600|lb|abbr=on}}.

== Demographics ==
According to the [[San Francisco Planning Department]], Chinatown is "the most densely populated urban area west of [[Manhattan]]", with 15,000 residents living in 20 square [[City block|blocks]].<ref name=sfplanbroadway>[http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=2646 Chinatown Broadway Street Design – Project Overview] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160211060541/http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=2646 |date=February 11, 2016 }}, San Francisco Planning Department.</ref> In the 1970s, the population density in Chinatown was seven times the San Francisco average.<ref>Estella Habal, ''San Francisco's International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement'' 2007. Temple University Press: p. 80.</ref>

During the time from 2009 to 2013, the median household income was $20,000 – compared to $76,000 citywide – with 29% of residents below the [[Poverty in the United States|national poverty threshold]]. The median age was 50 years, the oldest of any neighborhood.<ref name=":1">{{cite web|last=Green|first=Emily|date=November 1, 2015|title=For Chinatown voters, mayor's support goes only so far|url=http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/For-Chinatown-voters-mayor-s-support-goes-only-6604264.php|url-status=live|access-date=November 2, 2015|website=San Francisco Chronicle|quote=[Chinatown's] median age is 50, older than in any other neighborhood, according to the city’s Planning Department, which analyzed census data from 2009 to 2013. The median household income is $20,000, compared with almost $76,000 citywide, the Planning Department found. Twenty-nine percent of residents live below the federal poverty line. Chinese immigrants who make money tend to leave the neighborhood, moving to the Richmond District, the Sunset or the suburbs. ... most Chinatown residents are monolingual Mandarin or Cantonese speakers — even those who have lived in the United States for years ...|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151103175806/http://www.sfchronicle.com:80/bayarea/article/For-Chinatown-voters-mayor-s-support-goes-only-6604264.php |archive-date=November 3, 2015 }}</ref> As of 2015, two thirds of the residents lived in one of Chinatown's 105 [[single room occupancy]] hotels (SRO), 96 of which had private owners and nine were owned by nonprofits.<ref name=kam>{{cite news|last1=Kam|first1=Katherine|title=Families Live Jammed into Chinatown Rooms in San Francisco|url=http://newamericamedia.org/2015/12/families-live-jammed-into-chinatown-rooms-in-san-francisco.php|access-date=December 2, 2015|publisher=[[New America Media]]|date=December 1, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151202161129/http://newamericamedia.org/2015/12/families-live-jammed-into-chinatown-rooms-in-san-francisco.php|archive-date=December 2, 2015|url-status=usurped}}</ref> There are two [[public housing project]]s in Chinatown, [[Ping Yuen]] and North Ping Yuen.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.chinatowncdc.org/our-portfolio/ping-yuen|title=Ping Yuen|publisher=Chinatown Community Development Center}}</ref>

Most residents are monolingual speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties of the Chinese language: historically [[Hoisanese]], now [[Cantonese]] and some [[Mandarin language|Mandarin]].<ref name=":1" /> In 2015, only 14% of households in the SROs were headed by a person that spoke English fluently.<ref name=kam/> The areas of [[Stockton Street (San Francisco)|Stockton]] and Washington Streets and [[Jackson Street (San Francisco)|Jackson]] and [[Kearny Street]]s in Chinatown are almost entirely Chinese or Asian, with blocks ranging from 93% to 100% Asian.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://statisticalatlas.com/block-group/California/San-Francisco-County/061100-2/Race-and-Ethnicity|title=Race and Ethnicity in Block Group|publisher=Statistical Atlas/[[U.S. Census Bureau]]}}</ref> According to a study by the San Francisco Planning Department in 2018, 81% of the residents in the neighborhood were Asian.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hung|first=Melissa|date=August 30, 2020|title=To survive the pandemic SF Chinatown has to adapt — again|url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/culture/article/SF-Chinatown-has-always-adapted-To-survive-the-15520348.php|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200830183551/https://www.sfchronicle.com/culture/article/SF-Chinatown-has-always-adapted-To-survive-the-15520348.php |archive-date=August 30, 2020 |access-date=January 24, 2021|website=[[San Francisco Chronicle]]}}</ref>

Many of the Chinese immigrants who managed to accumulate wealth while living in Chinatown move to the [[Richmond District, San Francisco|Richmond District]], the [[Sunset District, San Francisco|Sunset District]], or the suburbs.<ref name=":1" />

=== Demographic history ===
[[File:Willard Worden, Midnight in Chinatown, San Francisco, 1903.jpg|thumb|[[Willard Worden]], ''Midnight in Chinatown'', gelatin silver print, 1903.]]
[[Image:Chinatown2.jpg|thumb|right|Grant Avenue during [[Chinese New Year]].]]
In the 1850s, Chinese pioneers, mainly from villages in the [[Pearl River Delta]] in [[Guangdong]], began immigrating in large numbers to San Francisco, initially drawn by the [[California Gold Rush]] and the building of the [[first transcontinental railroad]], and settling in Chinatown for refuge from the hostilities in the West. The main dialect spoken in Chinatown then was [[Taishanese|Hoisan-wa]] (aka Hoisanese; Toisanese in Cantonese and [[Taishanese]] in Mandarin), native to the emigrants from [[Taishan, Guangdong|Hoisan]] (aka Toisan in Cantonese and Taishan in Mandarin), [[Sze Yup]], in the Pearl River Delta. Surviving the ravages of the 1880s, Chinatown became a haven for later waves of emigrants from China in the 20th century.<ref name="chinn1969" />{{rp|2–4}} <ref name="Lee 2007">{{cite book |last1=Lee |first1=William Poy |title=The eighth promise: an American son's tribute to his Toisanese mother |date=2007 |publisher=Rodale Inc |location=New York, NY |isbn=9781594864568}}</ref>{{rp|71}}

Working-class [[Hong Kong people|Hongkonger]] emigrants began arriving in large numbers in the late 1960s. Despite their status and professional qualifications in Hong Kong, many took low-paying employment in restaurants and garment factories in Chinatown because of limited English. An increase in [[Cantonese]]-speaking emigrants from [[Hong Kong]] and [[Mainland China]] has gradually led to the replacement in Chinatown of the [[Taishanese|Hoisanese]] dialect by the standard Cantonese dialect.

Due to such overcrowding and poverty, other Chinese areas have been established within the city of San Francisco proper, including one in its [[Richmond District, San Francisco, California|Richmond]] and three more in its [[Sunset District, San Francisco, California|Sunset]] districts, as well as a recently established one in the [[Visitacion valley|Visitacion Valley]] neighborhood. These outer neighborhoods have been settled largely by Chinese from Southeast Asia. There are also many suburban Chinese communities in the [[San Francisco Bay Area]], especially in [[Silicon Valley]], such as [[Cupertino, California|Cupertino]], [[Fremont, California|Fremont]], and [[Milpitas, California|Milpitas]], where many Mandarin-speaking [[Taiwanese Americans]] settled. Despite these developments, many continue to commute in from these outer neighborhoods and cities to shop in Chinatown, causing gridlock on roads and delays in public transit, especially on weekends. To address this problem, the local public transit agency, [[San Francisco Municipal Railway|Muni]] extended the city's [[Muni Metro|subway network]] to the neighborhood via the new [[Central Subway (San Francisco)|Central Subway]].<ref name="sfmta.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mcsp/cspover.htm |title=Central Subway Overview |publisher=Sfmta.com |access-date=October 8, 2011}}</ref>

Unlike in most [[Chinatowns in the United States]], [[Hoa people|ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam]] have not established businesses in San Francisco's Chinatown district, due to high property values and rents. Instead, many Chinese-Vietnamese – as opposed to ethnic [[Vietnamese people|Vietnamese]] who tended to congregate in larger numbers in [[San Jose, California|San Jose]] – have established a separate Vietnamese enclave on Larkin Street in the heavily working-class [[Tenderloin, San Francisco|Tenderloin district]] of San Francisco, where it is now known as the city's "[[Little Saigon]]".

== History ==
=== Origins: 1850s ===
[[File:Willard B. Farwell, Official Map of Chinatown 1885, Cornell CUL PJM 1093 01.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.8|Official Map of Chinatown (July 1885). Map is oriented with north to the right side. Dupont (now [[Grant Avenue|Grant]]) is the prominent street running north–south along the middle of the map. Full extent of map is [[Stockton Street (San Francisco)|Stockton]] (top/west), [[Kearny Street|Kearny]] (bottom/east), [[California Street (San Francisco)|California]] (left/south), and [[Broadway (San Francisco)|Broadway]] (right/north). Special attention is paid to vices: prostitution is marked in green (Chinese) and blue (white); joss houses are marked in red; opium dens are marked in bright yellow; and gambling is marked in pink.]]

==== Guangdong pioneers ====
San Francisco's Chinatown was the port of entry for early Chinese immigrants from the west side of the [[Pearl River Delta]], speaking mainly [[Taishanese|Hoisanese]]<ref name="Dong,Hom 1980">{{cite journal |last1=Dong |first1=Lorraine |last2=Hom |first2=Marlon |title=Chinatown Chinese: The San Francisco Dialect |journal=Amerasia Journal |date=1980 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=1–29 |doi=10.17953/amer.7.1.q5326526546k8707 }}</ref> and [[Zhongshan]]ese,<ref name="chinn1969">{{cite book |last1=Chinn |first1=Thomas |title=A History of the Chinese in California |date=April 19, 1969 |publisher=Chinese Historical Society of America}}</ref> in the [[Guangdong]] province of southern [[China]] from the 1850s to the 1900s.<ref>[https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/191373 Documentary film about the early history of San Francisco's Chinatown], KPIX-TV, 1963.</ref> On August 28, 1850, at Portsmouth Square,<ref name="yung2006" />{{rp|9}} [[Mayor of San Francisco|San Francisco's first mayor]], [[John W. Geary|John Geary]], officially welcomed 300 "China Boys" to San Francisco.<ref name="dobie" />{{rp|34–38}} By 1854, the [[The Daily Alta California|Alta California]], a local newspaper which had previously taken a supportive stance on Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, began attacking them, writing after a recent influx that "if the city continues to fill up with these people, it will be ere long become necessary to make them subject of special legislation".<ref name="dobie">{{Cite book|title=San Francisco's Chinatown|last=Dobie|first=Charles Caldwell|publisher=D. Appleton-Century Company|year=1936}}</ref>{{rp|54–55}}

[[File:Sacramento St., SF sign.JPG|thumb|Sacramento St.; {{lang|zh|唐人街}}: literally "[[Tang dynasty|Tang people]] street"]]
These early immigrants settled near Portsmouth Square and around Dupont Street (now called Grant Ave).<ref name="dobie" />{{rp|54–55}} As the settlement grew in the early 1850s, Chinese shops opened on Sacramento St, which the [[Guangdong]] pioneers called "[[Tang dynasty|Tang people]] street" ({{lang|zh|唐人街}});<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hoy |first1=William J |title=Chinatown derives its own street names |journal=California Folklore Quarterly |volume=2 |date=1943 |issue=April |pages=71–75 |doi=10.2307/1495551 |jstor=1495551 }}</ref><ref name="yung2006" />{{rp|13}} and the settlement became known as "[[Tang dynasty|Tang people]] town" ({{lang|zh|唐人埠}}), which in Cantonese is ''Tong Yun Fow''.<ref name="yung2006">{{cite book |last1=Yung |first1=Judy and the Chinese Historical Society of America |title=San Francisco's Chinatown |date=2006 |publisher=Arcadia Publishing |isbn=978-07385-3130-4}}</ref>{{rp|9–40}} By the 1870s, the economic center of Chinatown moved from Sacramento St to Dupont St;<ref name="Pan1995" />{{rp|15–16}} e.g., in 1878, out of 423 Chinese firms in Chinatown, 121 were located on Dupont St, 60 on Sacramento St, 60 on Jackson St, and the remainder elsewhere.<ref name="yung2006" />{{rp|15}}

The area was the one geographical region deeded by the city government and [[landowner|private property owners]] which allowed Chinese persons to inherit and inhabit dwellings within the city. The majority of these Chinese shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and hired workers in San Francisco Chinatown were predominantly Hoisanese and male.<ref name="chinn1969" /> For example, in 1851, the reported Chinese population in California was about 12,000 men and fewer than ten women.<ref name="dobie" />{{rp|41}} Some of the early immigrants worked as mine workers or independent prospectors hoping to strike it rich during the 1849 [[Gold Rush]]. Many Chinese found jobs working for large companies seeking a source of labor, most famously as part of the [[Central Pacific Railroad|Central Pacific]]<ref name="Foster2001" /> on the [[First transcontinental railroad in North America|Transcontinental Railroad]], from 1865 to 1869.<ref name="dobie" />{{rp|71–72}}

==== Associations and institutions ====
The west side of the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong, where most of the Chinese emigrated from, was subdivided into many distinct districts and some with distinct dialects. Several district associations in San Francisco, open to anyone emigrating from those districts in Guangdong, were formed in the 1850s to act as a culture-shock absorber for newly arrived immigrants and to settle disputes among their members. Although there are some disagreements about which association formed first, by 1854, six such district associations were formed, of various size and influence, and disputes between members of different associations became more frequent. Thus, in 1862, the six district associations (commonly called the Chinese Six Companies, even though the number of member associations varied through the years) banded together to resolve inter-district disputes. This was made formal in 1882 and incorporated in 1901 as the [[Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association]] (on Stockton Street) to look after the general interest of the Chinese people living in a hostile western world.<ref name="Chinn 1989" />{{rp|1–9}}

Founded purportedly in roughly 1852 or 1853,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Queen II |first1=Edward L. |title=The Encyclopedia of American Religious History |last2=Prothero |first2=Stephen R. |last3=Shattuck Jr. |first3=Gardiner H. |publisher=Proseworks |year=1996 |isbn=0-8160-3545-8 |volume=1 |location=New York |pages=85 |author-link2=Stephen Prothero}}</ref> the [[Tin How Temple]] (Queen of Heaven and Goddess of the Seven Seas) on Waverly Place is the oldest Chinese temple in the United States. It is dedicated to the goddess [[Mazu|Tin How or Mazu]], the Divine Protector of seafarers, much honored by Chinese immigrants, especially arriving by ship, to San Francisco. The original building was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, and it opened on the top floor of a four-story building at 125 Waverly Place in 1910.

After closing in 1955, the temple reopened in 1975, due to a resurgence of interest from a new immigrant population following the [[Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965]].<ref name="SFC-Choy" />{{rp|207–209}} Another [[Mazu]] temple, known as [[Ma-Tsu Temple (San Francisco, California)|Ma-Tsu Temple]] was established in 1986 by [[Taiwanese Americans|Taiwanese American]] community and [[Fenxiang|affiliated]] to [[Chaotian Temple]] in Taiwan.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rPGtIVIERA4C&q=mazu+%22Beckett+Street%22&pg=PA171|title=Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana: Politics, Identity, and Faith in New Migrant Communities|last1=Lorentzen|first1=Lois Ann|last2=Gonzalez|first2=Joaquin Jay|last3=Chun|first3=Kevin M.|last4=Do|first4=Hien Duc|date=2010 |publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=978-0822391166|language=en}}</ref>

The Chinese Presbyterian Church on Stockton Street can trace its roots to October 1852, when Cantonese-speaking Rev. [[William Speer (minister)|William Speer]], a missionary in Canton, came to work with the Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. In November 1853 he organized the first Chinese mission in the United States, which provided much needed medical aid and conducted day and night schools that taught English to Chinese immigrants. He also published a Chinese/English newspaper, ''the Oriental'', which staunchly defended the Chinese as anti-Chinese sentiment began to grow in the 1850s.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stahler |first1=Michael L |title=William Speer: Champion of California's Chinese, 1852–57 |journal=Journal of Presbyterian History |date=Summer 1970 |volume=48 |issue=2 |pages=113–129 |jstor=23327321 }}</ref> The original building was destroyed by the earthquake, and the present church building on 925 Stockton Street was built in 1907.<ref name="SFC-Choy" />{{rp|173–174}}

Other Christian denominations followed, including the Methodist Church on Washington Street (founded 1870, rebuilt 1911) and the [[First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco|First Baptist Church]] (founded 1880, rebuilt 1908 on Waverly Place) as well as Catholic, Congregational, and Episcopal.<ref name="seager">{{cite journal |last1=Seager II |first1=Robert |title=Some Denominational Reactions to Chinese Immigration to California, 1856-1892 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3636239 |journal=Pacific Historical Review |publisher=University of California Press: Pacific Historical Review Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 49–66 |date=February 1959|volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=49–66 |doi=10.2307/3636239 |jstor=3636239 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> The pattern these early missions followed was to first conduct English language classes and Sunday schools. In these decades, the only English classes available to Chinese immigrants were those offered by these Christian missions. Some added rescue homes (e.g., from prostitution), and social services for the sick and protection from racial discrimination. With such tactics, the early Christian missions and churches in Chinatown gained widespread respect and new converts.<ref name="Chinn 1989">{{cite book |last1=Chinn |first1=Thomas W |title=Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco Chinatown and its People |date=1989 |publisher=Chinese Historical Society of America |location=San Francisco |isbn=978-0-9614198-3-7}}</ref>{{rp|28–34}}

==== Prostitution and ill repute ====
[[File:The street of the gamblers (by day), Chinatown, San Francisco LOC agc.7a55007 (curves).png|thumb|left|''The Street of the Gamblers ([[Ross Alley]])'', [[Arnold Genthe]], 1898. The population of Chinatown was predominantly male because U.S. policies at the time made it difficult for Chinese women to enter the country.]]

In the 1850s, San Francisco "was all but submerged in Caucasian forms of gambling and prostitution and lewdness".<ref name="dobie" />{{rp|57}} During the late period of the [[California Gold Rush]], a few Chinese female prostitutes began their sexual businesses in Chinatown. In addition, the major prostitution enterprises had been raised by criminal gang group "Tong", importing unmarried Chinese women to San Francisco.<ref name=":2">{{cite book |last=Tong |first=Benson |date=1994 |title=Unsubmissive women: Chinese prostitutes in nineteenth-century San Francisco |location=Norman |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=978-0806126531 |url=https://archive.org/details/unsubmissivewome0004tong }}</ref> During the 1870s to 1880s, the population of Chinese sex workers in Chinatown grew rapidly to more than 1,800, accounting for 70% of the total Chinese female population.<ref name=":2" />

In the mid-19th century, police harassment reshaped the urban geography and the social life of Chinese prostitutes. Consequently, hundreds of Chinese prostitutes were expelled to side streets and alleys hidden from public traffic.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bérubé |first=Allan |date=1990 |title=Coming out under fire: the history of gay men and women in World War Two |location=New York |publisher=Free Press |isbn=978-0029031001 |url=https://archive.org/details/comingoutunderfi00br }} [https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807871775/coming-out-under-fire/ Twentieth Anniversary Edition]</ref> From 1870 to 1874, the California legislature formally criminalized the immigrant Asian women who were transported into California. In 1875, the U.S. Congress followed California's action and passed the [[Page Act of 1875|Page Law]], which was the first major legal restriction to prohibit the immigration of Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian women into America.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ling |first=HuPing |date=1998 |title=Surviving on the gold mountain: a history of Chinese American women and their lives |location=Albany |publisher=State University of New York Press |isbn=978-0791438633}}</ref> In 1882, the [[Chinese Exclusion Act]] declared that no more skilled or unskilled immigrants would be allowed to enter the country, which meant that many Chinese and Chinese Americans could not have families in America, because their wives and children were prohibited to immigrate.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/becomingamerican/ce_witness5.html|title=Becoming American: The Chinese Experience. Charlie Chin Eyewitness|website=www.pbs.org|access-date=May 5, 2016}}</ref> Simultaneously, the public discourse began to accuse Chinese prostitutes of transmitting venereal diseases. Dr. [[Hugh Huger Toland]], a member of the San Francisco Board of Health, reported that white boys and men contracted diseases when they visited "Chinese houses of prostitution" in Chinatown, in order to warn white citizens to stay away; Toland asserted that nine-tenths of his patients had patronized Chinese prostitutes. "When these persons come to me I ask them where they got the disease, and they generally tell me that they have been with Chinawomen."<ref name=BoS-85 />{{rp|12–13}} <ref name=ChineseImmigration>{{cite report |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007104526 |title=Chinese immigration: its social, moral, and political effect. |publisher=California State Senate |author=Special Committee on Chinese Immigration |date=1878 |access-date=August 21, 2019}}</ref>{{rp|27}}
{{quote box |text={{pad|1.0em}}All great cities have their slums and localities where filth, disease, crime and misery abound; but in the very best aspect which "Chinatown" can be made to present, it must stand apart, conspicuous and beyond them all in the extreme degree of all these horrible attributes, the rankest outgrowth of human degradation that can be found upon this continent. Here it may truly be said that human beings exist under conditions (as regards their mode of life and the air they breathe) scarcely one degree above those under which the rats of our water-front and other vermin live, breathe and have their being. And this order of things seems inseparable from the very nature of the race, and probably must be accepted and borne with—must be endured, if it cannot be cured—restricted and looked after, so far as possible, with unceasing vigilance, so that, whatever of benefit, "of degree," even, that may be derived from such modification of the evil of their presence among us, may at least be attained, not daring to hope that there can be any radical remedy for the great, overshadowing evil which Chinese immigration has inflicted upon this people. |source=''The Report of the Special Committee of the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, on the Condition of the Chinese Quarter of that City'' (1885)<ref name=BoS-85>{{cite book |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100158894 |title=The Chinese at home and abroad: together with the Report of the Special Committee of the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco on the Condition of the Chinese quarter of that city |author=Farwell, Willard B. |date=1885 |publisher=A.L. Bancroft & Co. |location=San Francisco |access-date=June 16, 2018}}</ref>{{rp|5}} |align=right |width=30em}}

==== Emergence of tourism ====
By the end of the 19th century, Chinatown's assumed reputation as a place of vice caused it to become a tourist destination, attracting numerous working-class white people, who sought the oriental mystery of Chinese culture and sought to fulfill their expectations and fantasies about the filth and depravity. The white customers' patronization of Chinatown prostitutes was more extensive than gambling. After catering for three decades to white people as well as Chinese bachelors, Chinatown's prostitution sector developed into a powerful vested interest, favoring the vice industry.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Light |first1=Ivan |title=From Vice District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns, 1880-1940 |journal=Pacific Historical Review |date=August 1974 |volume=43 |issue=3 |pages=367–394 |doi=10.2307/3638262 |jstor=3638262 }}</ref> As the tourist industry grew up, the visitors came to include members of the white middle class, which pushed the vice businesses to transform into an entertainment industry as a more respectable form in which to serve white customers.<ref name=":4">{{cite journal|last1=Rast|first1=Raymond|date=2007|title=The Cultural Politics of Tourism in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1882-1917|url=https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2007.76.1.29|journal=Pacific Historical Review|volume=76|issue=1|pages=29–60|doi=10.1525/phr.2007.76.1.29|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

After the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, San Francisco saw the birth of its tourism industry. By the 1870s and further established in the 1880s and 1890s, Chinatown's exotic, infamous reputation began to attract tourists.<ref name=":4" /> Tour providers emphasized the vice-ridden elements of the area, strongly encouraging any curious visitors to take a professional guide or police escort with them to venture into Chinatown. These early tours often included staged reenactments of the "depravity of the locals" who were paid by tour operators to participate in the reenactments.<ref name=":4" /> Such reenactments exacerbated the perceptions of Chinatown as a problematic, vice-ridden location among San Francisco visitors and San Franciscans.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":6">{{Citation|last=Li|first=Chuo|title=The Politics and Heritage of Race and Space in San Francisco's Chinatown|date=November 12, 2011|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1108-6_3|work=On Location|pages=37–59|place=New York, NY|publisher=Springer New York|doi=10.1007/978-1-4614-1108-6_3|isbn=978-1-4614-1107-9|access-date=November 28, 2020|url-access=subscription}}</ref> The emphasis on the danger and depravity of the community ignored deeper issues of poverty, racial discrimination, and problems of overcrowding with overtaxed infrastructure.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":6" />

==== Ah Toy ====
{{main|Ah Toy}}
Ah Toy (18 May 1829 – 1 February 1928) was a [[Cantonese people|Cantonese]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Stephens |first=Autumn |title=Wild Women: Crusaders, Curmudgeons, and Completely Corsetless Ladies in the Otherwise Virtuous Victorian Era |publisher=[[Conari]] |year=1992 |page=[https://archive.org/details/wildwomencrusade00step/page/164 164] |isbn=978-0943233369 |url=https://archive.org/details/wildwomencrusade00step/page/164 }}</ref> [[prostitute]] and [[pimp|madam]] in [[San Francisco]] during the [[California Gold Rush]], and purportedly the first [[China|Chinese]] prostitute in San Francisco.<ref>{{cite book |last=Asbury |first=Herbert |author-link=Herbert Asbury |title=The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld |publisher=[[Thunder's Mouth Press]] |year=2002 |page=172 |isbn=978-1560254089}}</ref> Arriving from [[British Hong Kong|Hong Kong]] in 1848,<ref>{{cite book |last=Espiritu |first=Yen Le |title=Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws and Love |publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |year=1997 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/asianamericanwom00espi/page/32 32] |isbn=978-0-8039-7255-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/asianamericanwom00espi/page/32 }}</ref> she became the best-known [[Asia]]n woman in the [[American frontier]].<ref name="cg">{{cite book |last=Okihiro |first=Gary Y. |title=Common Ground: Reimagining American History |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2001 |pages=99 |isbn=978-0-691-07007-0}}</ref> When Ah Toy left China for the [[United States]], she originally traveled with her husband, who died during the voyage. Toy became the mistress of the ship's captain, who showered gold upon her, so much so that by the time she arrived in San Francisco in the 1840s,<ref name="Bacon, Daniel pages 52-53">Bacon, Daniel: Walking the Barbary Coast Trail 2nd ed., pages 52–53, Quicksilver Press, 1997</ref> Toy had a fair bit of money. Noticing the looks she drew from the men in her new town, she figured they would pay for a closer look. Her [[peep show]]s became quite successful, and she eventually became a high-priced prostitute. In 1850, Toy opened a chain of brothels at 34 and 36 Waverly Place<ref name="Bacon, Daniel pages 52-53"/> (then called Pike Street), importing girls from China in their teens, 20s and 30s, as well as some as young as eleven years old, to work in them. Her neighbors on Pike Street—conveniently linked to San Francisco's business district by Commercial Street—included the elegant new "parlour house" of madame Belle Cora, and the cottage of Fanny Perrier, mistress of Judge Edward (Ned) McGowan. In 1857, Ah Toy returned to China a wealthy woman to live the rest of her days in comfort,<ref>{{cite book |last=Pryor |first=Alton |title=The Bawdy House Girls: A Look at the Brothels of the Old West |publisher=Stagecoach Publishing |year=2006 |pages=36–38 |isbn=978-0974755175}}</ref> but came back to [[California]] in 1859. From 1868 until her death in 1928, she lived a largely quiet life in [[Santa Clara County]], returning to public attention only upon dying at age 98 in [[San Jose, California|San Jose]], three months short of her ninety ninth birthday.<ref>{{cite book |last=Yung |first=Judy |author-link=Judy Yung |title=Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |year=1995 |page=[https://archive.org/details/unboundfeetsocia00yung/page/34 34] |isbn=978-0520088672 |url=https://archive.org/details/unboundfeetsocia00yung/page/34 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=James R. |author-link=James R. Smith |title=San Francisco's Lost Landmarks |publisher=Quill Driver Books |year=2005 |page=76 |isbn=978-1884995446}}</ref>

=== 1870s–1906 earthquake ===
[[File:Officiers of the Six Companies b.jpg|thumb|right|Officers of the Chinese Six Companies]]
[[File:0140 Six Companies (41556221022).jpg|thumb|The headquarters of the Chinese Six Companies on Stockton]]

Relations between the United States and Qing China were normalized through the [[Burlingame Treaty]] of 1868. Among other terms, the treaty promised the right of free immigration and travel within the United States for Chinese. Business leaders saw China as a plentiful source of cheap labor, and celebrated the treaty's ratification.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/burlingame-seward-treaty |title=The Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 1868 |publisher=Office of the Historian, United States Department of State |access-date=March 6, 2018}}</ref> But this did not last for long.

The mostly male Chinese immigrants came to the United States with the intent of sending money home to support their families; coupled with the high cost of repaying their loans for travel, they often had to take any work that was available. Fears began to arise among non-Chinese workers that they could be replaced, and resentment towards Chinese immigrants rose.<ref name=CI-CEA /> With extensive nationwide unemployment in the wake of the [[Panic of 1873]], racial tensions in the city boiled over into full blown race riots. The two-day [[San Francisco riot of 1877]] raged through Chinatown in July; four were killed and {{US$|100000|1877|round=-4}} in property damage was done to Chinese-owned businesses. In response to the violence, the [[Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association]], also known as the [[Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association|Chinese Six Companies]], which evolved out of the labor recruiting organizations for different areas of Guangdong, was created to provide the community with a unified voice. The heads of these companies advocated for the Chinese community to the wider business community as a whole and to the city government.

The state legislature of California passed several measures to restrict the rights of Chinese immigrants, but these were largely superseded by the terms of the Burlingame Treaty of 1868.<ref name=CI-CEA>{{cite web |url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration |title=Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts |publisher=Office of the Historian, United States Department of State |access-date=March 6, 2018}}</ref>

==== Chinese Exclusion Act ====
In 1880, the Burlingame Treaty was renegotiated and the United States ratified the [[Angell Treaty of 1880|Angell Treaty]], which allowed federal restrictions on Chinese immigration and temporarily suspended the immigration of unskilled laborers. Anti-immigrant sentiment became federal law once the United States Government passed the [[Chinese Exclusion Act]] of 1882: the first immigration restriction law aimed at a single ethnic group. This law, along with other immigration restriction laws such as the [[Geary Act]], greatly reduced the numbers of Chinese allowed into the country and the city, and in theory limited Chinese immigration to single males only. Exceptions were in fact granted to the wives and minor children of wealthy merchants; immigrants would purchase or partner in businesses to declare themselves merchants in order to bring their families to America. Alternatively, prospective immigrants could become "[[paper sons]]" by purchasing the identity of Americans whose citizenship had been established by birthright.<ref name=SFC-Choy>{{cite book |url=http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100432180 |author=Choy, Philip P. |title=San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide to Its History & Architecture |date=2012 |publisher=City Lights |location=San Francisco |isbn=978-0-87286-540-2 |access-date=August 29, 2012}}</ref>{{rp|38–39}} However, the Exclusion Act was credited with reducing the population of the neighborhood to an all-time low in the 1920s.

[[File:Angel Island, San Francisco Bay. Approach from wharf to main building (rotated, cropped).jpg|thumb|left|Main immigration building on Angel Island]]
Many early Chinese immigrants to San Francisco and beyond were processed at [[Angel Island (California)|Angel Island]], in the [[San Francisco Bay]], which is now a state park. Unlike Ellis Island on the east coast where prospective European immigrants might be held for up to a week, Angel Island typically detained Chinese immigrants for months while they were interrogated closely to validate their papers. The detention facility was renovated in 2005 and 2006 under a federal grant.

==== Tong wars ====
As in much of San Francisco, a period of criminality existed during the late 19th century; many [[Tong (organization)|tongs]] arose, trafficking in smuggling, gambling, and prostitution. From the mid-1870s, turf battles sprang up over competing criminal enterprises. By the early 1880s, the term [[Tong Wars|tong war]] was being popularly used to describe these periods of violence in Chinatown. At their height in the 1880s and 1890s, twenty to thirty tongs ran highly profitable gambling houses, brothels, opium dens, and slave trade enterprises in Chinatown. Overcrowding, segregation, graft, and the lack of governmental control contributed to conditions that sustained the criminal tongs until the early 1920s.<ref name="ucpress/phr/3638429">{{cite journal |author1-link=Stanford Lyman |last1=Lyman |first1=Stanford M. |title=Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliation in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1850-1910 |journal=[[Pacific Historical Review]] |date=1 November 1974 |volume=43 |issue=4 |pages=473–499 |doi=10.2307/3638429 |url=https://online.ucpress.edu/phr/article-abstract/43/4/473/75575/Conflict-and-the-Web-of-Group-Affiliation-in-San |access-date=29 July 2025|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Chinatown's isolation and compact geography intensified the criminal behavior that terrorized the community for decades despite efforts by the Six Companies and police/city officials<ref>{{cite web|last=Onion|first=Rebecca|title=A Map of Vice in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1885|url=http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/08/02/san_francisco_chinatown_1885_map_shows_gambling_prostitution_overcrowding.html|work=Slate Magazine|date=August 2, 2013|access-date=August 2, 2013}}</ref> to stem the tide. The [[San Francisco Police Department]] established its so-called Chinatown Squad in the 1880s, consisting of six patrolmen led by a sergeant. However, the Squad was ineffective largely by design. An investigation published in 1901 by the California state legislature found that Mayor [[James D. Phelan]] and Police Chief William P. Sullivan Jr. had knowingly tolerated gambling and prostitution in Chinatown in the interest of bolstering municipal revenue, calling the police department "so apathetic in putting down the horrible system of slavery existing in Chinatown as to justify your committee in believing it criminally negligent."<ref>{{cite news |url=https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19010222.2.34 |title=Phelan Must Do His Duty |date=February 22, 1901 |newspaper=Los Angeles Herald |access-date=March 6, 2018}}</ref> Phelan and Sullivan testified it would take between 180 and 400 policemen to enforce the laws against gambling and prostitution, which was contradicted by the ex-Chief of Police [[William J. Biggy]], who said 30 "earnestly directed" policemen would suffice.<ref>{{cite report |url=http://clerk.assembly.ca.gov/sites/clerk.assembly.ca.gov/files/archive/DailyJournal/1901/Volumes/1901_jnl.PDF |title=Report of the Select Committee on Investigation |author1=Knowland, J.R. |author2=Webber, E.L. |author3=Schillig, Lawrence |author4=Wright, Eli |author5=Laird, J.W.P. |date=February 21, 1901 |publisher=California State Legislature |access-date=March 6, 2018}}</ref>{{rp|625–630}}

==== Bubonic plague ====
{{Main|San Francisco plague of 1900–1904}}
{{quote box|width=30.0em|align=right|quote=Chinatown, as it is at present, cannot be rendered sanitary except by total obliteration. It should be depopulated, its buildings leveled by fire and its tunnels and cellars laid bare. Its occupants should be colonized on some distant portion of the peninsula, where every building should be constructed under strict municipal regulation and where every violation of the sanitary laws could be at once detected. The day has passed when a progressive city like San Francisco should feel compelled to tolerate in its midst a foreign community, perpetuated in filth, for the curiosity of tourists, the cupidity of lawyers and the adoration of artists.|author=Dr. Williamson, ''Annual Report to the Board of Health'' (quoted in 1901)<ref name=SFC-Sbarboro />}}
In March 1900, a Chinese-born man who was a long-time resident of Chinatown was found dead of [[bubonic plague]]. The next morning, all of Chinatown was quarantined, with policemen preventing "Asiatics" (people of Asian heritage) from either entering or leaving. The San Francisco Board of Health began looking for more cases of plague and began burning personal property and sanitizing buildings, streets and sewers within Chinatown. Chinese Americans protested and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association threatened lawsuits.

The quarantine was lifted but the burning and fumigating continued. A federal court ruled that public health officials could not close off Chinatown without any proof that Chinese Americans were anymore susceptible to plague than Anglo Americans.<ref name=Kellogg1920>{{cite journal |last=Kellogg |first=W.H. |date=November 1920 |title=Present Status of Plague, with Historical Review |journal=American Journal of Public Health |publisher=American Public Health Association |location=Chicago |volume=10 |issue=11 |pages=835–844 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sFg7AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA835 |doi=10.2105/ajph.10.11.835 |pmid=18010389 |pmc=1362904 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Lipson |first=Loren George |date=August 1, 1972 |title=Plague in San Francisco in 1900: The United States Marine Hospital Service Commission To Study the Existence of Plague in San Francisco |journal=Annals of Internal Medicine |publisher=American College of Physicians |volume=77 |issue=2 |pages=303–310 |doi=10.7326/0003-4819-77-2-303 |pmid=4565792 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Risse |first=Guenter B. |author-link=Guenter B. Risse|title=Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco's Chinatown |chapter=Bubonic Plague Visits San Francisco's Chinatown |publisher=JHU Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-4214-0510-0 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9aoTfHAEQvoC}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Chase |first=Marilyn |title=The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco |publisher=Random House Digital |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-375-75708-2}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Echenberg |first=Myron |title=Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague: 1894–1901 |location=Sacramento |publisher=New York University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8147-2232-9}}</ref>

===1906 to the 1960s===
[[File:Arnold Genthe, San Francisco, April 18, 1906.jpg|thumb|Looking east down Clay St at the Great Fire on April 18, 1906: Arnold Genthe]]

The Chinatown neighborhood was completely destroyed in the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fire that leveled most of the city. "The fire had full sway, and Chinatown, for the removal of which many a scheme has been devised, is but a memory." Oakland Tribune, April 1906.<ref name="Pan1995">{{cite book |last1=Pan |first1=Erica Y.Z. |title=The Impact of the 1906 Earthquake on San Francisco's Chinatown |date=1995 |publisher=Peter Lang |isbn=978-0-8204-2607-5 |edition=American University Studies: Ser. 9, Vol. 173}}</ref>{{rp|33}}

==== Relocation attempt ====
Plans to relocate Chinatown predated the earthquake several years. At the 1901 Chinese Exclusion Convention held in San Francisco, A. Sbarboro called Chinatown "synonymous with disease, dirt and unlawful deeds" that "give[s] us nothing but evil habits and noxious stenches".<ref name=SFC-Sbarboro>{{cite news |url=https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19011122.2.2.6 |title=Removal of Chinatown Urged by A. Sbarboro |author=Sbarboro, A. |date=November 22, 1901 |newspaper=San Francisco Call |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref>

With Chinatown completely demolished by the Great Fire, which ended on April 21, 1906, the City seized the chance to remove the Chinese from the old downtown business district. Certain city officials and real-estate developers made more formal plans to move Chinatown to the [[Hunters Point, San Francisco, California|Hunters Point]] neighborhood at the southern edge of the city,<ref>{{cite news |url=https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19060424.2.2.7 |title=Chinatown Never Again to Occupy Former Location |agency=Associated Press |date=April 24, 1906 |newspaper=Los Angeles Herald |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref> or even further south to [[Daly City]]. [[Abe Ruef]], the political boss widely considered to be the power behind Mayor [[Eugene Schmitz]], invited himself to become part of the [[Committee of Fifty (1906)|Committee of Fifty]] and, within a week of the end of the Great Fire, on Saturday, April 27, 1906,<ref name="Pan1995" />{{rp|61–63}} formed an additional Subcommittee on Relocating the Chinese, because he felt the land was too valuable for Chinese.

Opposition arose, however, from politicians who feared that the removal of the Chinese would affect San Francisco's lucrative trade with Asian countries. Moreover, the government of China was also opposed, and soon after the earthquake, Tsi Chi Chow, the first secretary of the Chinese legation in Washington, DC, arrived in San Francisco, conveying to California governor [[George Pardee]] the opposition of China's [[Empress Dowager Cixi]] to the plan.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sfmuseum.net/chin/relocate.html|title=Relocation of Chinatown Following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake|website=www.sfmuseum.net|access-date=December 17, 2016}}</ref> The representatives, "acting unofficially", stated "the only way to remove the Chinese from the old Chinatown would be to give them a place elsewhere that would be acceptable for their purpose, when they might be willing to move."<ref>{{cite news |url=https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19060503.2.14.1 |title=Chinese seek permanency |agency=Associated Press |date=May 3, 1906 |newspaper=Los Angeles Herald |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref> The ''San Francisco Call'' reported it as "a vigorous protest" and noted that as the site of the Chinese consulate was the property of Imperial China, it could not be reassigned by the city.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19060503.2.25 |title=Chinese Protest Against Forcible Change of Site |date=May 3, 1906 |newspaper=San Francisco Call |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref>

On May 10, 1906, the subcommittee met with representatives from the Chinese community, the [[Chinese Six Companies]], who said that they would either rebuild in their old Chinatown quarters or move across the bay to Oakland, where most of the Chinatown refugees had fled.<ref name="Pan1995" />{{rp|65}} Other community leaders pointed out that displaced residents may not stop to resettle in Hunters Point, moving further to other West Coast cities like Seattle or Los Angeles, taking the pool of cheap labor with them.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-sep-25-me-15465-story.html |title=Chinatown Survives S.F. Quake and Racism |author=Gemperlein, Joyce |date=September 25, 1999 |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref> On July 8, 1906, after 25 committee meetings and considering various alternative sites in the city, the subcommittee submitted a final report stating their inability to drive the Chinese from their old Chinatown quarters.<ref name="Pan1995" />{{rp|66}} Ironically, plans to relocate Chinatown failed in the end because restrictive housing covenants in other areas of the city prohibited Chinese from settling elsewhere.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/unimpressiblerac00lowv |author=Low, Victor |title=The Unimpressible Race: A Century of Educational Struggle by the Chinese in San Francisco |publisher=East/West Publishing Company, Inc. |location=San Francisco |date=1982 |isbn=978-0-934788-03-8 |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref>{{rp|92}} In any event, the ability to rebuild in their old Chinatown quarters was the first significant victory<ref name="Le2018">{{cite journal |last1=Le |first1=Anh Sy Huy |title=The "Orientals" strike back: displacement, diasporic resistance, and spatial justice in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire |journal=Journal of Migration History |date=2018 |volume=4 |pages=134–160 |doi=10.1163/23519924-00401006 }}</ref> for the Chinese community in Chinatown.<ref name="Pan1995" />{{rp|83}}

==== Rebuilding ====
{{multiple image
|total_width=450
|image1 =Dupon Gai.jpg
|caption1 =c.1910
|image2 =Chinatown2 SF.jpg
|caption2 =2006
|footer =Looking north along Grant from the intersection of Grant and Pine. The distinctive pagoda-topped roofs of the Sing Fat and Sing Chong buildings are on the left side of each picture. The dragon street lamp (right) was installed in 1925 for the San Francisco Diamond Jubilee Festival.
}}
Even when the Subcommittee was bringing its relocation attempt to an end, the Chinese were already rebuilding, albeit with temporary wooden buildings which did not require permits. By June 10, 1906, twelve Chinese businesses were opened in Chinatown, including a couple of cafes. The actual reconstruction did not begin until October 1, 1906, when the City granted 43 building permits to Chinese businesses. By the time of the first post-quake Chinese New Year in 1907, several dozen buildings were completed, using old bricks unburnt by the fire, and Chinatown was filled with happy people. The reconstruction of Chinatown was completed more or less in 1908, a year ahead of the rest of the city.<ref name="Pan1995" />{{rp|92–94}}

While the city's proposals to relocate Chinatown failed, the directive of rebuilding Chinatown into an attractive district along orientalized and stereotyped conceptions still gained traction.<ref name=":6" /> A group of Chinese merchants, including [[Mendocino, California|Mendocino]]-born [[Look Tin Eli]], hired American architects to design in a Chinese-motif "[[Orientalism|Oriental]]" style in order to promote tourism in the rebuilt Chinatown.<ref name="ngai2006">{{cite news|access-date=February 23, 2019|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/opinion/17iht-edngai.html|title=How Chinatown rose from the ashes|work=The New York Times| first=Mae | last=Ngai | date=April 17, 2006}}</ref> The results of this design strategy<ref name="look tin eli">{{cite book |last1=Look Tin Eli |title=Our New Oriental City: Veritable fairy palaces filled with the choicest treasures of the Orient |date=1910 |publisher=San Francisco: The Metropolis of the West |pages=90–93|url=https://archive.org/details/sanfranciscometr00wrig/page/n89}}</ref> were the pagoda-topped buildings of the Sing Chong and Sing Fat bazaars on the west corners of Grant Ave (then Dupont St) and California St, which have become icons of San Francisco Chinatown.<ref name="SFC-Choy" />{{rp|113–115}}

This design strategy leveraged the ethnic identity and exoticness that city planners used to justify the relocation of Chinatown to become the same forces that made the area an attractive tourist location.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":6" /> In constructing "Oriental" style architecture, the area gratified Western fascination with and perception of a stereotyped Chinese identity.<ref name=":4" /> Opportunistic individuals from within the Chinese community and from outside the Chinese community made entrepreneurial gains from this "ethnic tourism" as it emerged in the early 1900s and boosted local business.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":6" />

[[File:Hang Ah Tea Room in Chinatown, San Francisco.jpg|thumb|left|The Hang Ah Tea Room opened in 1920 on Hang Ah Street. It has claims as the oldest [[dim sum]] restaurant in the United States.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/S-F-s-100-year-old-Hang-Ah-the-country-s-15941254.php | title=S.F.'s 100-year-old Hang Ah, the country's oldest dim sum restaurant, is determined to survive | date=February 11, 2021 | author-first1=Janelle|author-last1=Bitker|website=San Francisco Chronicle}}</ref>]]

In November 1907, an article extolling the virtues of the "new Chinatown of San Francisco" was written, praising the new "substantial, modern, fireproof buildings of brick and stone ... following the Oriental style of architecture" and declaring "[n]o more picturesque squalor, no more gambling dens, opium joints or public haunts of vice" would be tolerated, at the command of the Chinese Six Companies. By then, 5,000 residents had returned, of the estimated 30,000 that lived in Chinatown prior to the quake.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SU19071201.2.250 |title=Stray Things of Interest From San Francisco |author=Carroll, J.M. |date=December 1, 1907 |newspaper=Sacramento Union |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref>

When the earthquake destroyed Chinatown's wooden tenements, it also dealt a blow to the tongs. Criminal tongs continued on until the 1920s, when legitimate Chinese merchants and a more capable Chinatown Squad under Sgt. [[Jack Manion]] gained the upper hand. Manion was appointed leader of the Squad in 1921 and served for two decades. Stiffer legislation against prostitution and drugs ended the tongs.<ref>Bacon, Daniel: ''Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail''; 2nd. ed., pp. 59–62, Quicksilver Press, 1997</ref> The Chinatown Squad was finally disbanded in August 1955 by Police Chief [[George Healey (police chief)|George Healey]], upon the request of the influential ''Chinese World'' newspaper, which had editorialized the Squad was an "affront to Americans of Chinese descent".<ref name="nytimes">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1955/08/07/archives/coast-chinatown-loses-tie-to-past-san-francisco-police-detail.html|title=Coast Chinatown loses tie to past; San Francisco Police Detail, Started in Days of Tong, Passes Tomorrow|last=Davies|first=Lawerence E.|date=August 7, 1955|work=The New York Times|access-date=October 30, 2009}} {{closed access}}</ref>

The rhetoric of a "New Chinatown" obscured the reality of the community's perpetuating problems, particularly those of poverty, overcrowding, and racial discrimination.<ref name=":6" /> While the Chinese merchants succeeded in rebuilding in a tourist-attractive way, they could not influence the landlords, most of which were not Chinese, to provide adequate housing for the Chinese residents. In a 1930 Community Chest Survey of 153 Chinatown families, 32 families, with an average of five persons each, lived in one room each; only 19 families had complete bath tub, kitchen, and toilet facilities; on the average, there was one kitchen for 3.1 families and one toilet for 4.6 families (or 28.3 persons). Crowded inadequate living conditions contributed to a high death rate for the Chinese. The Chinese were no longer a problem for the city; they were forgotten.<ref name="cather1932">{{cite book |last1=Cather |first1=Helen Virginia |title=The History of San Francisco's Chinatown |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofsanfran0000cath |url-access=registration |date=1932 |publisher=R & E Research Associates |location=San Francisco |isbn=978-0-88247-274-4 |edition=1974 reprint|quote=(from p. iii) invisible but very real walls separate the life of Chinatown from that of the city around it}}</ref>{{rp|61–62}}

By 1947, Chinatown established itself as a central tourist destination and a rapidly developing community.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":6" /> Tension began to arise between businesses in Chinatown seeking to modernize and city planning committees seeking to maintain the "Oriental" look of the area.<ref name=":6" /> Similar to the post-earthquake discussion, Chinatown remained a contested space for conflicting visions of the area's development. In 1947, the Board of Supervisors proposed a building code prohibiting architectural changes to the area.<ref name=":6" /> Opposition to these preservationist initiatives came from Chinese business owners and some of the architects who designed the buildings, among others. These individuals saw such building codes or architectural regulations as hindering the progress of the community and treating it as a static ethnic icon.<ref name=":6" />

==== Nightlife ====
[[File:San Francisco (31) - Chinatown (14682007311).jpg|thumb|Dragon Street Lamp on Grant Ave]]
The famous [[Sam Wo]] restaurant opened in 1912.

In 1925, for the celebration of the San Francisco Diamond Jubilee, the Downtown Merchants Association, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and the San Francisco Diamond Jubilee Festival jointly raised $18,000 for 43 dragon street lamps to be cast in China and installed along Grant Avenue from Bush Street to Broadway. Designed by W(alter) D’Arcy Ryan, who also designed the "Path of Gold" streetlights along [[Market Street (San Francisco)|Market Street]],<ref name="SFC-Choy" />{{rp|124–125}} the distinctive {{convert|2750|lb}} street lamp, painted in traditional Chinese colors of red, gold and green, was composed of a cast-iron hexagonal base supporting a lotus and bamboo shaft surmounted with two cast-aluminum dragons below a pagoda lantern with bells and topped by a stylized hexagonal red roof<ref name="dragonlamps">{{cite web |title=Dragon Street Lamps |url=http://philpasquini.com/dragon-lamps.html |website=philpasquini.com |access-date=March 8, 2019}}</ref>—all in keeping with the Oriental style pioneered by Look Tin Eli (1910).<ref name="look tin eli" /> The new lamps made Grant Avenue one of the brightest streets in the City at night,<ref name="cather1932" />{{rp|51}} at a cost of {{USD|418|1925|round=-2}} each. Since then, the original molds were used to add 24 more dragon street lamps were in 1996 (distinguishable by the foundry, whose name and location in [[Emporia, Kansas]] is cast on an access door at the base), and later, 23 more were added along Pacific by PG&E.<ref name="dragonlamps"/><ref>{{cite web |url=https://sfpucnewsroom.com/power/a-look-back-in-history-chinatown-decorative-streetlights/ |title=A Look Back in History: Chinatown Decorative Streetlights |author=Fisher, Leslie |date=November 14, 2019 |publisher=San Francisco Public Utilities Commission |access-date=February 7, 2020}}</ref>

[[File:San Francisco, CA Chinatown in 1945 (2729050830).jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.3|Chinatown (facing north from just south of the corner of [[Grant Avenue|Grant]] and Commercial) in 1945. Prominently lit buildings on the left (west) side of Grant include the [[Ying On Association|Ying On]] (closer to camera) and [[Soo Yuen Benevolent Association|Soo Yuen]] (in background); the Eastern Bakery sign is lit on the right (east) side of Grant.]]
During the Great Depression, many nightclubs and cocktail bars were started in Chinatown.<ref>Dong, Arthur E., Lorraine Dong, and Lisa See. 2014. ''Forbidden City U.S.A. : Chinese American nightclubs, 1936–1970''. n.p.: Los Angeles, CA : DeepFocus Productions, c2014</ref> The [[Forbidden City (nightclub)|Forbidden City]] nightclub, located at 369 Sutter Street just outside Chinatown and run by Charlie Low, became one of the most famous entertainment places in San Francisco.<ref name=":3">Graves, Donna J. & Shayne E. Watson (2015). [http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/Preservation/lgbt_HCS/LGBTQ_HCS_October2015.pdf "Citywide Historic Context Statement for LGBTQ History in San Francisco"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151106231130/http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/Preservation/lgbt_HCS/LGBTQ_HCS_October2015.pdf |date=November 6, 2015 }} (City and County of San Francisco).</ref> While it was doing business, from the late 1930s to the late 1950s, the Forbidden City gained an international reputation with its unique showcase of exotic oriental performance from Chinese American performers.<ref>Lee, Anthony W. ''Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.</ref> Another popular club for tourists and LGBT clients was Li Po, which, like Forbidden City, combined western entertainment with "Oriental" culture. It was advertised in a 1939 tourism guide book as a "jovial and informal Chinatown cocktail lounge" where one could find "love, passion, and nighttime".<sup>[[Queer history in Chinatown, San Francisco|[16]]]</sup> As of 2018, it was still in operation at 916 Grant Avenue.<ref name=":3" />

==== World War II era and immigration reform ====
For the Chinese in Chinatown, the war came upon them in September 1931, when Japan attacked the Manchurian city of Mukden, and became impossible to ignore in July 1937, when Japan launched a major offensive southward from their base in Manchuria towards the heart of China. In response, the Chinese Six Companies convened many community organizations together, from which was founded the Chinese War Relief Association, to raise funds from the Chinatown communities throughout the U.S. to aid civilians trapped by the war in China. In San Francisco's Chinatown, a popular means to raise money for war relief was through the Rice Bowl parades and parties, where the appeal to fill the rice bowls of starving children victimized by the war in China resonated with the Chinatown community. One hallmark of the Rice Bowl parade was the striking scene of a large number of Chinese-American women in fashionable Chinese dress (the cheongsam) carrying one huge Chinese flag spanning the width of the street, onto which money was thrown from balconies, windows, and sidewalks. In the Rice Bowl parade and party of 1938, San Francisco Chinatown raised $55,000; the second Rice Bowl in 1940 collected $87,000; and the third in 1941 brought in $93,000—all for war and hunger relief of civilians in war-torn China.<ref name="wong2005">{{cite book |last1=Wong |first1=K. Scott |title=Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War |date=2005 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |isbn=978-0-674-01671-2}}</ref>{{rp|33–44}} <ref>{{cite web |last1=Van Niekerken |first1=Bill |title=Chinatown charity: 79 years ago, SF's Rice Bowl helped save lives |url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/Chinatown-charity-79-years-ago-SF-s-Rice-Bowl-10883976.php |website=San Francisco Chronicle |date=January 31, 2017}}</ref>

{{quote box |width=15em |text=As Chinese Americans became more visible in the public eye during the period leading to the U.S. involvement in the war, the negative image of China and the Chinese began to erode. |author={{pad|1.0em}}— K. Scott Wong<ref name="wong2005" />{{rp|42}}}}
Once China became an ally to the U.S. in [[World War II]], a positive image of the Chinese began to emerge. In October 1942, [[Earl Warren]], running for Governor of California, wrote, "Like all native born Californians, I have cherished during my entire life a warm and cordial feeling for the Chinese people."
<ref name="wong2005" />{{rp|89}} In her goodwill tour of the U.S. starting in February 1943, [[Soong Mei-ling|Madame Chiang Kai Shek]] probably did more to change the American attitude towards the Chinese people than any other single person.<ref name="SFC-Choy" />{{rp|53–54}} She was hosted by the First Lady and President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]; she was the second woman and the first Chinese to address the U.S. Congress. The American public embraced her with respect and kindness, which is in stark contrast to the treatment of most Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans.<ref name="wong2005" />{{rp|89–109}} To the Chinese in Chinatown, she became an icon of the war years.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Hua |first1=Vanessa |title=Chinatown recalls an icon's era / Death of Madame Chiang Kai-shek stirs memories |url=https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Chinatown-recalls-an-icon-s-era-Death-of-Madame-2581057.php |access-date=March 8, 2019 |agency=San Francisco Chronicle |date=October 25, 2003}}</ref>

In December 1943, in recognition of the important role of China as an ally in the war, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed by the [[Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act|Magnuson Act]], which allowed for naturalization but restricted Chinese immigrants to a small annual quota of 105 new entry visas. The repeal of the Exclusion Act and other immigration restriction laws, in conjunction with passage of the [[War Brides Act]] in December 1945, allowed Chinese-American veterans to bring their families outside of national quotas and led to a major population boom in the area during the 1950s. However, tight quotas on new immigration from China still applied until the [[Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965]] was passed.

In the 1948 landmark case of [[Shelley v. Kraemer]], the U.S. Supreme Court ruled without dissent that enforcing racially restrictive covenants in property deeds violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and thus such covenants are unenforceable in court, which lifted the invisible walls around Chinatown,<ref name="cather1932" /> permitting some Chinese Americans to move out of the ''Gilded Ghetto''<ref>{{cite news |last1=Wong |first1=Ken |title=Gilded Ghetto |agency=San Francisco Examiner. Reprinted in the Appendix (p.129-141) of Kao, George (1988) ''Cathy by the Bay: Glimpses of San Francisco's Chinatown in the year 1950'', Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. ISBN 962-201-423-2.|date=September 1, 1972}}</ref> into other neighborhoods of the city and gain a foothold on the middle class. Twenty years later, such racially restrictive covenants were outlawed in the 1968 [[Fair Housing Act]].

====Frank Wong dioramas====
San Francisco artist Frank Wong created [[Dioramas|miniature dioramas]] that depict Chinatown during the 1930s and 1940s.<ref name = sfchron>{{cite web|last1=Guthrie|first1=Julian|title=Frank Wong recalls life in Chinatown through miniature dioramas|url=http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Frank-Wong-recalls-life-in-Chinatown-through-5706947.php|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle|date=August 23, 2014|access-date=August 26, 2014}}</ref> In 2004, Wong donated seven miniatures of scenes of Chinatown, titled "The Chinatown Miniatures Collection," to the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA).<ref name = histsociety/> The dioramas are on permanent display in CHSA's Main Gallery.<ref name = sfchron/><ref name = histsociety>{{cite web|title=Chinatown Miniatures Collection|date=March 8, 2007|url=http://chsa.org/2007/03/frank-wong-miniatures/|publisher=Chinese Historical Society of America|access-date=August 26, 2014|archive-date=January 29, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150129061046/http://chsa.org/2007/03/frank-wong-miniatures/|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title="Chinatown in Miniature" Presentation by Artist Frank Wong|date=February 18, 2011|url=http://chsa.org/event/march-second-saturday-at-chsachinatown-in-miniature-presentation-by-artist-frank-wong/|publisher=Chinese Historical Society of America|access-date=August 26, 2014}}</ref>

=== 1960s–present ===
[[File:San Francisco - Chinatown 1965.jpg|thumb|left|View north along [[Grant Avenue]], approximately taken from the sidewalk in front of 645 Grant (1965).]]

In the 1960s, the shifting of under-utilized national immigration quotas brought in another huge wave of immigrants, mostly from Hong Kong. This changed San Francisco Chinatown from predominantly Hlay Yip Wah ([[Siyi Yue|Sze Yup]] or [[Taishanese|Hoisan Wah]])-speaking to Sam Yup Wah (standard [[Cantonese]])-speaking. During the same decade, many stores moved from Grant Avenue to Stockton Street, drawn by lower rents and the better transportation enabled by the 30-Stockton [[Trolleybuses in San Francisco|Muni trolleybus]] line.<ref name="nolte">{{cite news|last1 = Nolte|first1 = Carl|title = Shopping for a new year|url = http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nativeson/article/Shopping-for-a-new-year-3273594.php|work = [[San Francisco Chronicle]]|date = February 7, 2010}}</ref>

[[File:Dragon Gate, San Francisco (9661169341).jpg|thumb|right|The [[Dragon Gate (San Francisco)|Dragon Gate]] at [[Grant Avenue|Grant]] and Bush, now a prominent landmark, was dedicated in 1970.]]
There were areas where many Chinese in Northern California living outside of San Francisco Chinatown could maintain small communities or individual businesses. Nonetheless, the historic rights of property owners to deed or sell their property to whomever they pleased was exercised enough to keep the Chinese community from spreading. However, in 1948, ''[[Shelley v. Kraemer]]'', the Supreme Court had ruled that racially restrictive covenants in deeds are unenforceable in courts due to the 14th amendment equal protection clause; and in 1968 the Fair Housing Act outlawed racially restrictive covenants. This ruling and law allowed the enlargement of Chinatown and an increase in the Chinese population of the city. At the same time, the declining white population of the city as a result of [[White flight|White Flight]] combined to change the demographics of the city. Neighborhoods that were once predominately white, such as [[Richmond District (San Francisco)|Richmond District]] and [[Sunset District (San Francisco)|Sunset District]] and in other suburbs across the [[San Francisco Bay Area]] became centers of new Chinese immigrant communities.

Until 1979, the United States recognized the [[Taiwan|Republic of China]] in [[Taiwan]] as the sole legitimate government of all of China, and emigration from Taiwan was counted under the same grouping as that for mainland China, from which little emigration to the United States existed from 1949 on. In 1979, the opening up of the [[People's Republic of China]] and the breaking of diplomatic relations with the Republic of China led to the passage of the [[Taiwan Relations Act]], which placed Taiwan under a separate immigration group from the People's Republic of China. As a result of the [[Immigration Act of 1990]], emigration from Hong Kong was also considered a separate jurisdiction for the purpose of recording such statistics. Thus, Mandarin-speaking emigrants from [[Taiwan]] began to arrive in the Bay Area, and they have tended to settle in suburban [[Millbrae, California|Millbrae]], [[Cupertino, California|Cupertino]], [[Milpitas, California|Milpitas]], [[Mountain View, California|Mountain View]], and even [[San Jose, California|San Jose]] – avoiding San Francisco as well as Oakland Chinatowns.{{Citation needed|date=April 2015}}

==== Gang violence ====
[[File:Chinatown (4970477246).jpg|thumb|left|Imperial Palace Restaurant in 2010. The Imperial Palace replaced the Golden Dragon in the same space at 816 Washington.]]
With these changes came a weakening of the Tongs' traditional grip on Chinese life. Newer Chinese groups often came from areas outside of the Tongs' control, so the influence of the Tongs and criminal groups associated with them, such as the [[Triad society|Triads]], grew weaker in Chinatown and the Chinese community.{{Citation needed|date=July 2018}} However, the presence of the Asian gangs remained significant in the immigrant community, and in the summer of 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two street gangs, the [[Wah Ching]] and the [[Joe Boys]], erupted in violence and bloodshed, culminating in a shooting spree at the Golden Dragon Restaurant on Washington Street. Five people were killed and eleven wounded, none of whom were gang members. The incident has become infamously known as the [[Golden Dragon massacre]]. Five perpetrators, who were members of the [[Joe Boys]] gang, were convicted of murder and assault charges and were sentenced to prison.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/03/09/NEWS12705.dtl |title=Inside Chinatown's Gangs |publisher=Sfgate.com |date=March 9, 1999 |access-date=December 6, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805012942/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fexaminer%2Farchive%2F1999%2F03%2F09%2FNEWS12705.dtl |archive-date=August 5, 2011 }}</ref> The Golden Dragon closed in January 2006 because of health violations, and later reopened as the Imperial Palace Restaurant.<ref>{{cite news |first=Vanessa |last=Hua |url=http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/07/BAGMMLKK661.DTL |title=Golden Dragon Closes and owes a million |publisher=Sfgate.com |date=October 7, 2006 |access-date=December 6, 2011 |archive-date=August 5, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805012352/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2006%2F10%2F07%2FBAGMMLKK661.DTL |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Other notorious acts of violence have taken place in Chinatown since 1977. At 2 a.m. on May 14, 1990, San Francisco residents who had just left [[The Purple Onion]], a nightclub located where Chinatown borders on [[North Beach, San Francisco|North Beach]], were shot as they entered their cars. 35-year-old Michael Bit Chen Wu was killed and six others were injured, among them a critically wounded pregnant woman.<ref>{{cite news|author=Jim Herron Zamora |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-15-mn-198-story.html |title=S.F. Chinatown Shootings May Be Tied to Gang |work=Los Angeles Times |date=May 15, 1990 |access-date=September 16, 2012}}</ref> In June 1998, shots were fired at [[Willie "Woo Woo" Wong#Legacy|Chinese Playground]], wounding six teenagers, three of them critically. A 16-year-old boy was arrested for the shooting, which was believed to be gang-related.<ref>{{cite news|first=Vanessa |last=Hua |url=http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Boy-16-Arrested-In-S-F-Chinatown-Shooting-3003614.php |title=Boy, 16, Arrested In S.F. Chinatown Shooting Rampage / Suspect was at scene but didn't fire gun, cops say |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle |date=June 20, 1998 |access-date=September 16, 2012}}</ref> On February 27, 2006, Allen Leung was shot to death in his business on Jackson Street;<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Slain-Chinatown-leader-remembered-fondly-2539253.php |title=Slain Chinatown leader remembered fondly |author=Hua, Vanessa |date=March 19, 2006 |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref> [[Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow]], who succeeded Leung as head of the [[Ghee Kung Tong]], was later convicted in 2016 of soliciting Leung's murder as fallout from the corruption investigation of [[Leland Yee]],<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/SF-crime-boss-Raymond-Shrimp-Boy-Chow-9123055.php |title=SF crime boss 'Shrimp Boy' Chow gets life, insists he's innocent |author=Egelko, Bob |date=August 5, 2016 |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref> and Raymond "Skinny Ray" Lei was indicted for committing the murder in 2017.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Las-Vegas-man-charged-in-2006-slaying-of-SF-10887611.php |title=Las Vegas man charged in notorious 2006 slaying in SF's Chinatown |author=Egelko, Bob |date=January 27, 2017 |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle |access-date=March 16, 2018}}</ref>

==== Developments of tourism ====
As Chinatown's ill reputation reemerged in the 1970s with the publicized gang crimes and continued neglect of substandard housing in the area, tourism began to decline. Visitors perceived the area as a "ghetto" taking their commercial business elsewhere.<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal|last=Li|first=Chuo|date=February 13, 2018|title=Postwar Urban Redevelopment and the Politics of Exclusion: The Case of San Francisco's Chinatown|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1538513218755043|journal=Journal of Planning History|volume=18|issue=1|pages=27–43|doi=10.1177/1538513218755043|s2cid=148982432|issn=1538-5132|url-access=subscription}}</ref> As Chinatown's tourist industry suffered, the entire area's once stable economy suffered.<ref name=":7" /> To counter this image, the Chinese Six Companies and other Chinese merchants began heavily emphasizing the safety and attractiveness of visiting the area.<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal|last1=Light|first1=Ivan|last2=Wong|first2=Charles Choy|date=1975|title=Protest or Work: Dilemmas of the Tourist Industry in American Chinatowns|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/225994|journal=American Journal of Sociology|volume=80|issue=6|pages=1342–1368|doi=10.1086/225994|s2cid=143641928|issn=0002-9602|url-access=subscription}}</ref> These marketing efforts alongside quieter initiatives to improve conditions for residents throughout the 1970s enabled the area's tourism-dependent economy to continue functioning.<ref name=":9" /> Similar dynamics of area leaders internally addressing social issues while externally maintaining commercial tourist appeal continued to the end of the 1900s.<ref name=":9" /> Now, However, San Francisco's Chinatown is now shrinking and faces an existential threat to it survival, due to macroeconomic ills afflicting downtown and San Francisco as a whole, in addition to its aging infrastructure and residential inhabitants.<ref name=SanFranChinatownAgingShrinking>{{cite news|newspaper=South China Morning Post|title=US Chinatowns are shrinking, and while some want to fight, new ones are springing up|quote=In San Francisco’s Chinatown, the oldest hub of Chinese-owned businesses in the United States, vacancy signs pockmark the district’s dining establishments, gift shops and herb stalls. And at a Chinatown across San Francisco Bay in Oakland, rampant storefront graffiti and the fear of robbery chill the daily bustle of kerbside grocery shopping.|url=https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3228357/us-chinatowns-are-shrinking-and-while-some-want-fight-new-ones-are-springing|author=Ralph Jennings|date=July 21, 2023|access-date=October 28, 2023}}</ref>

[[File:Chinatown, San Francisco USA - panoramio.jpg|thumb|View north along Stockton from atop the north portal of the [[Stockton Street Tunnel]] in 2011]]

== Culture ==

=== Institutions ===
San Francisco's Chinatown is home to the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (known as the [[Chinese Six Companies]]), which is the [[umbrella organization|umbrella]] organization for local Chinese family and regional associations in this Chinatown. It has spawned lodges in other Western U.S. Chinatowns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including [[Chinatown, Los Angeles]] and [[Old Town Chinatown, Portland, Oregon|Chinatown, Portland]].

The [[Chinese Culture Center]] is a community based non-profit organization located on the third floor of the [[Hilton San Francisco Financial District]], across [[Kearny Street]] from Portsmouth Square. The Center promotes exhibitions about Chinese life in the United States and organizes tours of the area. The [[Chinese Historical Society of America]] is housed in a building designed by [[Julia Morgan]] as a YWCA, at 965 Clay.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:left;font-size:90%;"
|+ style="font-size:125%;" | Selected locations in Chinatown, San Francisco
|-
! No !! Name !! Year !! Address !! class="unsortable" | Notability !! class="unsortable" | Image
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#f00;font-size:150%" | 1
| [[Dragon Gate (San Francisco)|Dragon Gate]]
| 1970
| [[Grant Avenue|Grant]] at [[Bush Street (San Francisco)|Bush]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Southern entrance to Chinatown on [[Grant Avenue|Grant]]. One of the most photographed locations.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:San Francisco Dragon Gate to Chinatown.jpg|100px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#0a0;font-size:150%" | 2
| [[Saint Mary's Square]]
| —
| 651 [[California Street (San Francisco)|California]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Features statue of Dr. [[Sun Yat-sen]], by [[Beniamino Bufano]] and a memorial for Chinese-American veterans of World Wars I and II.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:St Mary's Square 03.JPG|100px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#f00;font-size:150%" rowspan=2 | 3
| Sing Chong building
| 1907
| 601–615 [[Grant Avenue|Grant]]
| style="font-size:90%;" rowspan=2 | Designed by [[T. Paterson Ross|Ross]] & Burgren and among the earliest buildings erected after the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]]. Strong influence on Chinatown architecture.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:San Francisco - Chinatown & California Street Cable Car (1098847880).jpg|76px]]
|-
| Sing Fat building
| 1907
| 573 [[Grant Avenue|Grant]]
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:Sing Fat Co Oriental Bazaar 1920s.jpg|126x126px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#f00;font-size:150%" | 4
| Nam Kue Chinese School
| 1925
| 755 [[Sacramento Street (San Francisco)|Sacramento]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Private school offering classes in Chinese culture, history, and language.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:Nam Kue Chinese School - San Francisco, CA - DSC02361.JPG|100px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#0a0;font-size:150%" | 5
| [[Portsmouth Square]]
| 1800s
| 733 [[Kearny Street|Kearny]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Oldest public space in San Francisco.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:Portsmouth Square 2.JPG|100px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#f00;font-size:150%" | 6
| Chinese Telephone Exchange
| 1909
| 743 [[Washington Street (San Francisco)|Washington]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | All calls to Chinatown were routed by name and occupation until 1948.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:0233 Telephone Tag (41596679991).jpg|111x111px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#f00;font-size:150%" | 7
| [[Tin How Temple]]
| 1910
| 125 [[Waverly Place (San Francisco)|Waverly]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Oldest [[Taoist]] temple in Chinatown.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:Chinatown 23 Buddhist Temple (4253514495).jpg|100px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#f00;font-size:150%" rowspan=2 | 8
| [[Ross Alley]]
| 1849
| Between [[Jackson Street (San Francisco)|Jackson]], [[Washington Street (San Francisco)|Washington]], [[Grant Avenue|Grant]], and [[Stockton Street (San Francisco)|Stockton]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Often used as a backdrop for films.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:Chinatown @ San Francisco (4678554439).jpg|66px]]
|-
| [[Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company]]
| 1962
| 56 [[Ross Alley]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Working [[fortune cookie]] factory and shop.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:15 Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory.jpg|75px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#00f;font-size:150%" | 9
| [[San Francisco Chinese Hospital|Chinese Hospital]]
| 1925 (demolished), 1977, 2017
| 845 [[Jackson Street (San Francisco)|Jackson]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Only Chinese-language hospital in United States.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:Hospital, Chinatown (6031029834).jpg|74px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#f00;font-size:150%" | 10
| [[Chinese Historical Society of America]]
| 1932
| 965 [[Clay Street (San Francisco)|Clay]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Former YWCA building designed by [[Julia Morgan]]
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:Chinatown YWCA (8467462746).jpg|100px]]
|-
! style="color:#fff;background:#f00;font-size:150%" | 11
| [[Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association|Six Companies]]
| c.1907 (remodeled 1950s)
| 843 [[Stockton Street (San Francisco)|Stockton]]
| style="font-size:90%;" | Sometimes called the "White House" of Chinatown.
| style="text-align:center;" | [[File:Chinatown (29336915353).jpg|87x87px]]
|}

[[File:Chinatown San Francisco New Year's Dragon.jpg|thumb|Dragon on Geary, 2011]]

=== Events and festivals ===
In the 1950s,<ref name="kao1988">{{cite book |last1=Kao |first1=George |title=Cathy by the Bay: Glimpses of San Francisco's Chinatown in the year 1950 |date=1988 |publisher=The Chinese University Press |location=Hong Kong |isbn=978-962-201-423-7}}</ref>{{rp|71–73}} during the Korean war, a number of Chinese-American leaders, led by W. K. Wong,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nee |first1=Victor G |last2=Nee |first2=Brett de Bary |title=Longtime Californ': a documentary study of an American Chinatown |date=1986 |publisher=Stanford University Press |location=Stanford |isbn=978-0-8047-1335-1 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/longtimecaliforn00neev/page/244 244–249] |quote=W.K. Wong: 'Yes, it was my idea to initiate a public celebration of the Chinese New Year in San Francisco back in 1953.'... |url=https://archive.org/details/longtimecaliforn00neev/page/244 }}</ref> organized the [[San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade]],<ref name="Yeh 2008">{{cite book |last1=Yeh |first1=Chiou-ling |title=Making an American festival: Chinese New Year in San Francisco's Chinatown |date=2008 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley |isbn=978-0-520-25350-6}}</ref> including art shows, street dances, martial arts, music, and a fashion show. The 1953 parade was led by Korean war veteran, Joe Wong, and featured the Miss Chinatown festival queen and the dragon.<ref name="Yeh 2008" />{{rp|29}} By 1958, the festival queen had been formally expanded into the pageant of "Miss Chinatown U.S.A".<ref name="Yeh 2008" />{{rp|56}} In 1994, around 120 queer Asian Americans joined the annual parade, which was the first time that Asian American queer community had appeared in public and gained acceptance from Chinese-American society.<ref>{{cite news |id={{ProQuest|367563813}} |last1=Lavilla |first1=Stacy |title=A Growing Show of Pride: Record Asian American presence at parade reflects a growing acceptance |work=Asianweek |date=July 9, 1998 |page=15 }}</ref>

San Francisco Chinatown's annual Autumn Moon Festival celebrates seasonal change and the opportunity to give thanks to a bountiful summer harvest. The Moon Festival is popularly celebrated throughout China and surrounding countries each year, with local bazaars, entertainment, and [[mooncake]]s, a pastry filled with sweet bean paste and egg. The festival is held each year during mid-September, and is free to the public.

[[File:Funeral in down town Chinatown San Francisco (27022642753).jpg|thumb|right|Funeral procession in Chinatown along Grant with marching band, taken facing south near the corner of Grant and Jackson, 2016]]
Chinatown is frequently the venue of traditional Chinese funeral processions, where a marching band (playing Western songs such as ''[[Nearer, My God, to Thee]]'') takes the street with a motorcycle escort.<ref name=":5">{{cite web|url=http://www.sfchronicle.com/performance/article/Around-SF-s-arts-scene-the-state-of-the-unions-9203030.php|title=Around SF's arts scene, the state of the unions is strong|last=Whiting|first=Sam|date=September 5, 2016|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle|access-date=September 5, 2016|quote=A Chinatown funeral is done the old way, with a marching band, slow and solemn, marching in three lines for six blocks up Stockton Street and back on Grant, always in the traffic lane with a motorcycle escort. The point of departure is Green Street Mortuary [...] Each funeral procession takes about an hour, often starting with "The Day of Resurrection" and ending with "Nearer, My God, to Thee."}}</ref> The band is followed by a car displaying an image of the deceased (akin to the Chinese custom of parading a scroll with his or her name through the village), and the hearse and the mourners, who then usually travel to [[Colma, California|Colma]] south of San Francisco for the actual funeral.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/chinatown-decoded-what-happens-during-chinatown-funeral/|title=Chinatown Decoded: What Happens During a Chinatown Funeral?|last=Lucas|first=Scott|date=April 23, 2015|website=[[San Francisco (magazine)|San Francisco magazine]]|language=en-US|access-date=September 8, 2016}}</ref> By union regulation, the procession route starts at the Green Street Mortuary proceeding on Stockton Street for six blocks and back on Grant Avenue, taking about one hour.<ref name=":5" />

=== Chinatown Community Development Center ===
Chinatown Community Development Center is an organization formed in 1977 after the merger of the Chinatown Resource center and the Chinese Community Housing Corporation.<ref name="About">[http://www.chinatowncdc.org/about/history/index.html About] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080905182650/http://www.chinatowncdc.org/about/history/index.html |date=September 5, 2008 }}</ref> The organization was started by Gordon Chin, who served as executive director since 1977 until he was succeeded by the organization's Deputy Director [[Norman Fong|Rev. Norman Fong]] on October 1, 2011. The organization advocates and provides services to San Francisco's Chinatown. They have also started many groups, [[Adopt-An-Alleyway Youth Empowerment Project]] being the most notable,<ref name="AAA">{{cite web|url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/11/BAG3TPP8FV1.DTL |title=HONORING CHINATOWN / A group of young people, most with roots in the historic district, began by scrubbing and sweeping its historic alleys. Now they're giving tours, too. |website=SFGate.com |date=May 11, 2007 |access-date=July 22, 2016}}</ref> and have been involved with many tenant programs.<ref name="About2">{{cite web|author=10K Group LLC |url=http://www.chinatowncommunitydevelopmentcenter.org/pages/main.php?pageid=1 |title=Chinatown Community Development Center |publisher=Chinatown Community Development Center |access-date=July 22, 2016}}</ref>

== Media and politics ==
In the citywide Board of Supervisors elections, Chinatown forms part of [[San Francisco Board of Supervisors|District Three]] and in 2014 accounted for 44% of both registered voters and ballots cast.<ref name=":1" /> The two main newspapers read among residents are [[Sing Tao Daily]] and [[World Journal]].<ref name=":1" />
[[File:ASIANVOTERS.jpg|thumb|right|SF Mayor Willie Brown attends a Chinese New Year Celebration in Chinatown (1999).]]

== Fame ==
San Francisco Chinatown restaurants are considered to be the birthplace of [[American Chinese cuisine|Americanized Chinese cuisine]] such as food items like [[Chop suey|Chop Suey]] while introducing and popularizing [[Dim sum|Dim Sum]] to American tastes, as its Dim Sum tea houses are a major tourist attraction. [[Johnny Kan]] was the proprietor of one of the first modern style Chinese restaurants, which opened in 1953. Many of the district's restaurants have been featured in food television programs on [[Chinese cuisine]] such as [[Martin Yan]]'s ''Martin Yan - Quick & Easy''.

The Chinatown has served as a backdrop for several movies, television shows, plays and documentaries including ''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'', ''[[Flower Drum Song]]'', ''[[What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)|What's Up, Doc?]]'', ''[[Chan Is Missing]]'', ''[[Chinatown Kid]]'', ''[[Big Trouble in Little China]]'', ''[[The Presidio (film)|The Presidio]]'', ''[[The Dead Pool]], [[Jackie Chan Adventures]],'' ''[[The Pursuit of Happyness]]'', ''[[Godzilla (2014 film)|Godzilla]],'' [[Warrior (TV series)|''Warrior'']], and ''[[Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings]].''

Noted Chinese American writers grew up there such as [[Russell Leong]]. Contrary to popular belief, while the Chinese-American writer [[Amy Tan]] was inspired by Chinatown and its culture for the basis of her book [[The Joy Luck Club (novel)|The Joy Luck Club]] and the subsequent [[The Joy Luck Club (film)|movie]], she did not grow up in this area; she was born and grew up in Oakland.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.biography.com/people/amy-tan-9542574|title=Amy Tan|website=Biography.com|language=en-us|access-date=December 4, 2017}}</ref> Notable 1940s basketball player [[Willie "Woo Woo" Wong]], who excelled in local schools, college and professional teams, was born in, and grew up playing basketball in, Chinatown; a local playground bears his name.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.parkscan.org/parks?parkId=33 |title=San Francisco Parks Alliance |publisher=Parkscan |access-date=July 22, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Rivas |first=Stephen |url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/steverivasone/2806622875/ |title=Willie Wong Playground | Stephen Rivas | Flickr |website=Secure.flickr.com |date=August 15, 2008 |access-date=July 22, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.discoverchinatownsf.com/parks |title=China Visa Office (China Visa Requirements) |website=Discoverchinatownsf.com |access-date=July 22, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131103235447/http://www.discoverchinatownsf.com/parks |archive-date=November 3, 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Actor-martial artist [[Bruce Lee]], who was born at [[San Francisco Chinese Hospital]] before moving back to Hong Kong three months later, returned to the United States at the age of eighteen, residing in San Francisco's Chinatown for the first few months before moving to [[Seattle]].{{Citation needed|date=August 2015}}

== Transportation ==
[[File:San Francisco - Transamerica Building & California Street Cable Car from Chinatown (970229072).jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.2|[[San Francisco cable car system|Cable Car]] 56 ascends [[Nob Hill, San Francisco|Nob Hill]] from Chinatown along [[California Street (San Francisco)|California Street]]; prominent buildings shown include the [[Transamerica Pyramid]], Sing Chong Bazaar, [[650 California Street|Hartford Building]], and [[Old Saint Mary's Cathedral]].]]
{{see also|List of streets and alleys in Chinatown, San Francisco}}
[[San Francisco cable car system|San Francisco cable cars]] have long served areas of Chinatown; the modern system serves the southern (along California Street) and western (along Powell Street) sections of the neighborhood.

The [[Stockton Street Tunnel]] was completed in 1914 and brought [[San Francisco Municipal Railway]] Streetcar service to Stockton Street. After the tracks were removed, the overhead wires were maintained and [[Trolleybuses in San Francisco|buses replaced streetcars]] along the route. The ''[[30 Stockton]]'' and ''45 Union-Stockton'' are among the most heavily ridden lines in the system.{{Citation needed|date=July 2018}} Modern rail service has returned in the form of [[Chinatown station (Muni Metro)|Chinatown station]] upon the completion of the [[Muni Metro]]'s [[Central Subway (San Francisco)|Central Subway]].

The [[Broadway Tunnel (San Francisco)|Broadway Tunnel]] was completed in 1952 and was intended to serve as a connection between the [[Embarcadero Freeway]] and the [[Central Freeway]]. These plans did not materialize due to the [[highway revolts]] at the time.{{Citation needed|date=July 2018}} The tunnel currently serves to connect Chinatown with [[Russian Hill, San Francisco|Russian Hill]] and [[Van Ness Avenue]] to the west.

In the 1980s, Chinatown merchants were opposed to the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway, but these objections were overturned after it was damaged in the [[1989 Loma Prieta earthquake]].<ref name="Wildermuth">{{cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Chinatown-s-champion-3173928.php|title=Chinatown's Champion|last=Wildermuth|first=John|date=September 19, 2010|work=[[SFGate.com]]|access-date=May 28, 2017|publisher=[[Hearst Newspapers]]}}</ref><ref name="King2004">{{cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/15-SECONDS-THAT-CHANGED-SAN-FRANCISCO-The-3302464.php|title=15 SECONDS THAT CHANGED SAN FRANCISCO / The sweeping makeover that transformed the city began 15 years ago today with the Loma Prieta earthquake.|last=King|first=John|date=October 17, 2004|access-date=June 8, 2014|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle}}</ref> According to the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', activist [[Rose Pak]] then "almost single-handedly persuaded the city to build" the $1.5 billion [[Central Subway (San Francisco)|Central Subway]] project to compensate Chinatown for the demolition of the freeway.<ref name=":8">{{cite web|url=http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Rose-Pak-flashes-red-light-on-Stockton-Street-9126204.php|title=Rose Pak flashes red light on Stockton Street pedestrian mall|date=August 7, 2016|publisher=San Francisco Chronicle|access-date=September 19, 2016}}</ref>

The [[49-Mile Scenic Drive]] is routed through Chinatown, with particular attention paid to the corner of Grant and Clay.

On October 20, 2022, [[Chinatown station (Muni Metro)|Chinatown station]] was first shown to the public after years of development, with promises of completion of the station sometime in January. It opened with a soft launch as part of a shuttle service on November 12, 2022, introducing two new metro stations downtown before officially being connected to the [[T Third Street]] line on January 7, 2023.<ref>{{Cite web |last=SFGATE |first=Silas Valentino |date=October 21, 2022 |title=This is what $2B bought SF Muni for its newest metro station |url=https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/sf-chinatown-central-station-opens-to-public-17525207.php |access-date=November 8, 2022 |website=SFGATE |language=en-US}}</ref>
{{clear}}

== See also ==
{{Portal|California|China|Hong Kong|San Francisco Bay Area|United States}}
* [[Kong Chow Temple]], Corner of Stockton and Clay
* [[Chinatowns in the United States]]
* [[History of the Chinese Americans in San Francisco]]
* [[Showgirl Magic Museum]]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

== Further reading ==
{{refbegin}}
* Chen, Yong, ''Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A trans-Pacific community.'' Stanford University Press, 2000.
* Chinn, Thomas W., editor, ''A History of the Chinese in California'', Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969. LC CARD # 71008031
* Chinn, Thomas W. ''Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco Chinatown and its People''. Chinese Historical Society of America, 1989. {{ISBN|0-9614-1983-0}}
* Choy, Philip P. ''San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide to Its History & Architecture'', City Lights, San Francisco, 2012. {{ISBN|978-0-87286-540-2}}
* Nee, Victor G. and Brett de Bary ''Longtime Californ': A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown'', Stanford University Press, 1986. {{ISBN|0-8047-1335-9}}
* Pan, Erica Y.Z. ''The Impact of the 1906 Earthquake on San Francisco's Chinatown'', American University Studies: Ser.IX History, Vol. 173, Peter Lang, Publisher, 1995. {{ISBN|0-8204-2607-5}}
* Risse, Guenter B. ''Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco's Chinatown.'' Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. {{ISBN|978-14214-0510-0}}
* Tsui, Bonnie. ''American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods'', 2009 {{ISBN|978-1-4165-5723-4}} [http://americanchinatown.com/ Official website]
* Yung, Judy and the Chinese Historical Society ''San Francisco's Chinatown'' Images of America, Chinese Historical Society, 2006. {{ISBN|978-07385-3130-4}}
* [[Ki Longfellow]], ''China Blues'', [[Eio Books]] 2012, {{ISBN|0-9759255-7-1}}
* Barbassa, Juliana. "[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR2006111700143.html SF Chinatown Still Home to Young and Old]." ''[[Associated Press]]'' at ''[[The Washington Post]]''. Friday November 17, 2006.
{{refend}}

== External links ==
{{wikivoyage|San Francisco/Chinatown-North Beach}}
{{Commons category|Chinatown, San Francisco}}
* [http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/chineseinca/sfchinatown.html Chinatown history] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030827211442/http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/chineseinca/sfchinatown.html |date=August 27, 2003 }}, from the [[University of California]]
* [http://www.sanfranciscochinatown.com/ San Francisco Chinatown]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20230124185029/http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/art/sfchinatown/sfchinatown.html Early San Francisco Chinatown], archived from [http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/art/sfchinatown/sfchinatown.html pandanet.co.jp]

{{Geographic Location
| Center = Chinatown, San Francisco
| North = [[North Beach, San Francisco]]
| Northeast =
| East = [[Financial District, San Francisco]]
| Southeast = [[Belden Place|French Quarter, San Francisco]]
| Southwest = [[Tenderloin, San Francisco]]
| South = [[Union Square, San Francisco]]
| West = [[Nob Hill, San Francisco]]
| Northwest =
}}

{{navboxes|list =
{{Chinatown, San Francisco}}
{{US Chinatowns}}
{{Chinese American}}
{{SFBayshopping}}
{{San Francisco Attractions}}
{{Neighborhoods of San Francisco}}
}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Chinatown, San Francisco| ]]
[[Category:Neighborhoods in San Francisco]]
[[Category:Chinatowns in the United States|San Francisco]]
[[Category:Chinese-American culture in San Francisco]]
[[Category:1848 establishments in California]]
[[Category:Tourist attractions in San Francisco]]
[[Category:Shopping districts and streets in the San Francisco Bay Area]]

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Chinatown, San Francisco