Chinatown's Starter Kit

Entering San Francisco's Chinatown is like walking into another city. San Francisco stops at the Chinatown Gateway.

The architecture is so different from the one in the rest of the city that if people spend enough time in Chinatown they can forget they are in the Golden City. The houses –for the most part–resemble the ones in China. The lamp poles are also part of the landmarks.

This “city” within the city by the Golden Gate functions at a different speed and rhythm. It’s almost like Chinatown never sleeps.

Early in the morning, middle-aged people go to work, walking rather fast in the middle of a surprisingly big crowd of elderly people, who shop for groceries and talk on the sidewalks of Stockton Avenue.

By 9 a.m., lines are forming at the bakeries –especially at the Far Eastern Bakery and the Golden Gate Bakery, where older people talk about local gossip while waiting for their favorite pastries, such as the husband and wife cakes.

At midday, Chinatown doesn’t get any less busy. Tourists start arriving on Grant Avenue to see something different –something exotic that they’ll never see in other parts of the city.

Oftentimes, tourists walk around but are not as good buyers as they used to be, said Kee Fung Ng, an art business owner on Grant Avenue. “In the past, they would leave with a lot of big bags,” said Ng. “Now they say they don’t have money.”

Many of Ng’s competitors complain Chinatown’s businesses are decreasing.

Wandering in the area when tourists are present allows one to hear comments such as: “I can’t stand the smell anymore” or “These people really eat weird things,“ as the speaker points at some dried fish in a window.

Indeed, smells in Chinatown are different and persistent, and the whole culture might scare more than one foreigner away.

At night, the whole quarter is still filled with tourists except for a couple of remote areas that are only frequented by local residents.

A tour guide was telling one of her groups that tourists tend to be scared away by Chinatown at night.

Locals gamble in family association houses where the police never seem to get to. Also, on Saturday and Sunday evenings, men come to Portsmouth Square to play Mah Jong (Chinese domino) and drink beers. The police never seem to interrupt the drinking either.

Chinese people have a great sense of community and family and call people who have the same last name “cousin,” “aunt,” or “uncle,” said Cynthia Yee, the Chinatown Tour business owner.

Yee said they also believe in spirits and use different methods to scare them away. They use different colors (red), objects (mirrors, tigers, etc.), and rituals such as the dragon dance or the firecrackers, said Yee.