“Wherever, in any Channel of the Seven Seas, two world-wander'ers met and talked about the City of Many Adventures, Chinatown ran like a thread through their reminiscences”
—WILL IRWIN
AQUARTER of old Canton, transplanted and transformed, neither quite oriental nor wholly occidental, San Francisco's Chinatown yields to the ways of the West while continuing to venerate a native civilization as ancient as the Pyramids. Grant Avenue, its main thoroughfare, leads northward from Bush Street through a veritable city-within-a-city—alien in appearance to all the rest of San Francisco—hemmed within boundaries kept by tacit agreement with municipal authorities for almost a Century.
Chinatown enjoys a measure of civil autonomy unique among San Francisco's foreign sections. Though police protection, public education, and public health are directed by municipal authorities, local affairs are controlled largely by the powerful Chinese Six Companies. Labor relations, family regulation, traditional customs, and commercial activities are the province of this unusual body.
Along Grant Avenue bright display windows, neon signs, and glazed tile form a foreground wholly modern for merchandise which conforms to the age-old pattern of China's craftsmen. The street's smart cocktail lounges defy ancestral gods by adding American swing to the inducements of oriental atmosphere and native waitresses in brocaded gowns; its fashionable cafes, while they serve genuine native foods, advertise more familiar dishes. Beneath the pagoda-like cornices, electric chop suey signs perpetuate the popular notion that this dish, imported from the Atlantic seaboard, is something more exotic than its name—the Chinese word for hash—indicates. Side by side with curio shops offering inexpensive articles of oriental design are bazaars, wherein the discerning may buy objects genuine and costly. Within recent years, however, many sources of supply have been cut off by the Japanese occupation of China. Scattered along Grant Avenue also are Japanese-owned shops that sell goods manufactured in Japan.
Grant Avenue's commercial area is only the bland and somewhat cynical face the settlement turns to the world. More oriental are the avenue's northern reaches and the streets that run crosswise from Nob Hill to Chinatown's eastern boundary, Kearny Street. Along these congested sidewalks, among cheap shops and restaurants, are the market places whose distinctive sounds and odors give Chinatown its atmosphere of the unchanging East, A curious bazaar of foodstuffs are the poultry markets, the displays of dried and pickled fish, and the odoriferous tubs of snails along the curbstones. Roast ducks packed in rice; roast ducks from Canton, glazed with a salty wax—many of them flattened as if starched and ironed—hang in golden rows in grocery stores; and beside them are whole hogs—steaming hot from the barbecue pits—from which portions are cut and sent to Chinatown's dinner tables. Eels and octopi, shark, and other unusual sea foods are displayed in the many fish markets. Bakery windows are crowded with cakes of almost limitless variety, of which even the most common are decorative and of evasive flavor. The vegetables of Chinatown are a marvel to the stranger: string beans slender as blades of grass and 12 to 14 inches long; peas with sweet, tender edible pods; and many Chinese greens. Bitter melons to be added to soups, fuzzy melons resembling cactus fruit, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and lotus roots hang festooned in market windows. The artistry of the oriental cook is nowhere in the Western world better demonstrated than in San Francisco's Chinatown. In the numerous and inexpensive little Chinese restaurants that crowd the slopes of Jackson, Clay, and Washington streets above and below Grant Avenue, the occidental dines with relish on the meats and vegetables he has looked upon with disfavor in the markets around the corner.
About half Chinatown's population of 16,000 are immigrants from the mother country, many of whom still cling to the ancient customs and ancestral religion. Amid the modem throng appear in diminishing number those who still conform to the age-old styles of dress. Little old women pass by, their shiny black hair brushed tightly back and knotted, their black pantaloons showing beneath black gowns; and benign old men in loose jackets and black skullcaps. The upper-class women of the old generation reveal their bound feet—the “golden lilies” of Chinese literature—beneath the long narrow native costume covered by a coat of American make. Upon rare occasions, dignified Chinese gentlemen gracefully thread their way through the crowded streets in elegant custom-tailored attire, leisurely wielding fans.
Young Chinatown preserves its language and the more democratic of its national customs, while adopting the dress, the slang, and the commercial methods of its American compatriots. Grant Avenue is its creation. The shops of its elders, where the abacus is still used for calculation, are being forced to the side-streets. Even the little wall-shops, where for generations dreamy-eyed old men sitting in the sun have reluctantly bestirred themselves to sell occasional bags of candied melon, ginger, or lichee nuts, are being taken over by alert youngsters, who have stocked these narrow tables and outdoor shelves with souvenirs for the tourist.
The children of Chinatown, most modem element of all, are benefiting most by the inroads of the West, Education is one of the colony's primary interests. Besides its regular public grade school, Chinatown has a dozen or more public and private schools. The children, expert negotiators of traffic, scamper in small bands from sidewalk to sidewalk on shopping tours for their parents. Children of the poorer families swarm the sidewalks nightly, armed with shoe-shine kits. Many of the older boys spend their evenings at the Chinese Y.M.C.A.; and many of the girls (whose families allow them to accept modem ways), at the Y.W.C.A. Chinese youth of both sexes frequent the various family clubs. Fong-Fong's on Grant Avenue (a soda fountain, lunchroom, and bakery) is a widely patronized “Joe-College” hangout.
Old Chinatown watches with silent disapproval the departure of its youth and its children from the ancient customs, brought here from Canton and preserved inviolate for three-quarters of a century. And Chinatown's elders still maintain customs of oriental feudalism, long since abandoned throughout China.
Though practically every religion has built churches and gained adherents here, the native Chinese temples, or joss houses, are still centers of Chinatown's spiritual life. (The word “joss” is a corruption of Dios, Portuguese word for God, which the Cantonese learned from early Portuguese traders at Macao.) Many of the furnishings have a history intimately associated with the Chinese immigration, during the Gold Rush, to this land they called Gum Sahn (Golden Hills).
Barometers of public sentiment in Chinatown are the sidewalk bulletins before the shops of its five newspapers. If the oblong strips of Chinese characters denote light news of local interest, a lively chattering ensues; but let the bulletins be of more serious import, concerned perhaps with events in their embattled homeland, and silence settles over the groups of 50 or more, as each man reads and goes his way without a word of comment.
The one ancient festival in which all Chinatown is united annually is the Chinese New Year, celebrated—according to the lunar calendar and the ancient philosophy of Tung-Fang-So—on the first day of the new moon after the sun enters the sign of Aquarius (between January 20 and February 20). This is the occasion to propitiate the gods and banish the evil spirits abroad each Yuen Tan (New Year's Day). It is also the season for the cancellation of debts, during which failure to meet obligations is considered a confession of inability to do so.
The first day of the new year, Yuen Jih (Day of Beginnings), often is called the “Three Beginnings”—the start of the year, of the month, and of the season. On the eve of Yuen Jih, joyous throngs crowd the streets of Chinatown. Gay lanterns sway in a blue haze of gunpowder smoke; a barrage of firecrackers continues far into the night. Houses must be cleaned thoroughly before midnight; then brooms are hidden until dark of the following day—for sweeping during the ensuing daylight hours brushes all luck out of the house for the entire year. No one sleeps on New Year's Eve; even the youngest children are awake until two or three o'clock in the morning. Incense burns throughout the colony to invite the good spirits.
The only food served on this birthday of Confucius is gai gum choy, a meatless stew eaten after one o'clock in the morning of the Day of Beginnings, and oranges, which have been arranged in perfect pyramids for days in anticipation. Throughout New Year week the children of the household will be unusually dutiful, for this is the season of the “red package.” These packages, wrapped in red paper and containing silver coins, all unmarried children—regardless of age—are entitled to receive from each visitor to the home.
On the second day of the new year, as on the first, no meat is served, for this day is dedicated to worship of Ta'ai Shen (God of Wealth). But from the third day onward, feasting and merrymaking are unrestrained, as pastries, sweet cakes, and candies are set out to satisfy the proverbial Kitchen God when he makes his annual report on family behavior.
The festivities end usually on the seventh day (Day of Human Beginnings) with the Dance of the Dragon. Unless events worthy of a highly spectacular celebration have occurred during the year, the Lion of Buddha substitutes for the traditional dragon. The lion requires but two men to operate; the dragon, trailing innumerable yards of tinsel and colored silk, must be borne along Grant Avenue on the stooping Shoulders of from 10 to 50 persons. Since its first appearance here in 1850, the dragon has been Chinatown's official protector. Homes and stores are decorated with green vegetables and red packages to attract his attention, for where he dances prosperity remains throughout the year. As the glittering monster weaves his way from sidewalk to side-walk, coins, wrapped in lettuce leaves or red papers and suspended from doors and windows by strings, are snatched by an alert hand that darts from beneath the dragon's gaping jaws.
Chinatown today is the Chinatown that was rebuilt after 1906; the dim, narrow alleys so famed in melodrama are as safe now as brightly lighted Grant Avenue. But it occupies still little more than the cramped space in which the Chinese of Gold Rush days settled. The American brig Eagle in the spring of 1848, brought San Francisco's first three Chinese immigrants, two men and a woman. Clipper ships in the China trade during the following decade brought 25,000 coolies and peasants from Kwangtung Province. Eager to escape the famine succeeding the disastrous Tai Ping rebellion, and lured by prospects of sudden wealth, they arrived to do the menial work of the Gold Rush. Though many went to the mines, the majority settled in San Francisco. Despite the racial hostility they faced, they early became sellers of wares imported from China, peddlers of fresh vegetables, fishermen, servants, gamblers, and real estate owners.
As the Yankee first settlers, following the expanding water front in the 1850’s, moved down the slope toward Montgomery Street, the Chinese inherited their abandoned locations adjoining Portsmouth Square. Because of their value as laborers in the boom years when white labor was at a premium, they were allowed to entrench themselves in what was known to be an ideal residential district sheltered from wind and fog. The growing commercial district below Kearny Street formed the colony's eastern barrier; to the north Pacific Street's course between the Presidio and the water front was a natural boundary; south of California Street, almost in the shadow of Old St. Mary's Church, was a white demi-monde dominated by French prostitutes; along the higher slope of what is now Nob Hill, Stockton Street's respectable residential quarter forbade encroachment farther west. Destroyed by the successive conflagrations of the 1850’s and 1860’s, Chinatown rose repeatedly on old foundations that no sufficient majority of San Franciscans cared to reclaim.
Old Chinatown had neither the native architecture nor the glitter of lights characteristic of its streets today. Dim lanterns, hung on the iron balconies of tenements, furnished by night the only illumination, until gaslights brought their flickering radiance. Overcrowding compelled the Chinese to enlarge their quarters with cellars which were to add many a legend to the colony's ill repute. Even before its traffic in vice and its tong wars reached the alarming proportions of the 1870’s, 1880’s, and 1890’s, Chinatown was a stage set for criminal drama—a place of eerie shadows and flitting figures, of blind alleys and obscure passageways, of quiet stabbings and casual gunfire.
Subjected to increasing racial discrimination, the Chinese inherited the full measure of stigma that had been visited only incidentally upon the Hounds and Sydney Coves. When, during the building of the Central Pacific Railroad, additional thousands were imported by the Big Four to swell the already unwelcome horde of competitors with white labor, “Crocker's pets” became the objects of abuse throughout California. Dennis Kearney's sand-lot Workingmen's Party drove the hapless orientals from factories, burned their laundries, and threatened their white employers with violence.
The resulting Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made no provision, however, for deportation of Chinese lawfully within the country; and San Francisco's “Little China” remained to outlive half a Century of agitation against it. But the exclusion of orientals from their former respectable pursuits made them more than ever the prey of criminal elements. From the bonanza days until 1906, the district was synonymous with the Barbary Coast. The two decades between 1906 and 1927 (when the last tong war occurred) were required to eliminate its opium dens, its vice and gambling rackets, and its menace to public health.
The municipal czardoms of “Blind Chris” Buckley and Abe Ruef subjected Chinatown to domination by their oriental henchman, Fong Chong—better known as “Little Pete”—and his blackmailing society, Gi Sin Seer. Little Pete operated in a Chinatown where rival tongs fought over the profits of a vice traffic as old as the colony itself. In its most flourishing days, thousands of slave girls with bound feet were crowded into brothels along Grant Avenue—then the notorious Dupont Street—and adjacent alleys. The bloodiest of the tong feuds, lasting 7 years and costing 60 lives, was fought over “Lily-Foot” Wan Len, queen of the slave girls. It was Little Pete's Gi Sin Seer and a rival outfit of similar hired assassins, Bo Sin Seer, which finally settled the enmities of this oriental underworld and opened the way for China-town's modern phase.
For his bribing activities in the case of Lee Chuck, one of his hatchetmen whose ready six-shooter sent a rival sprawling in Spofford Alley, Little Pete served five years in San Quentin Penitentiary. Once back in his old haunts, he began extending his activities beyond the confines of Chinatown. His gang cleaned up $100,000 in a racetrack swindle, which made enemies who swore to get him the instant he should appear without his usual bodyguard of white men. Their chance came in January, 1897. Impatient to learn the latest racetrack results, Little Pete entered a Waverley Place barber shop without his bodyguard and paused to have his forehead shaved, his queue plaited, and his ears cleaned of wax. Then, “Two figures as swift and black as crows dart from nowhere into the doorway. There is a crackle of sound like the sputtering of a string of firecrackers ushering in the New Year: Little Pete falls forward in a crimson pool…”
In true gangster tradition, Little Pete's cohorts attempted to give him a magnificent funeral. After two hours of intricate last rites, performed by four priests from his favorite joss house, his casket was placed in a resplendent hearse drawn by six black-draped white horses. Hired mourners preceded the hearse, burning joss sticks and wildly beating the air with uplifted arms. From a carriage, four Chinese busily tossed out bits of paper punched with Square holes—to confuse the devils seeking to make off with the spirit of the departed. The fantastic cortege, led by a popular orchestra playing the funeral march from Saul, proceeded through streets lined with spectators to the Chinese Cemetery down the Peninsula. Here a mob of onlookers—not hoodlums, but respectable San Franciscans indignant over losing bets on race horses doped by Pete's henchmen—greeted priests and mourners with hoots and clods of earth. The Chinese were compelled to haul the coffin back to the city where, at the old Chinese cemetery Little Pete's remains were interred pending arrangements for shipment to China. The wagonloads of roast pig, duck, cakes, tea, and gin left beside the grave were guzzled by the crowd of white onlookers.
The Chinatown of Little Pete and his rival tongs was the Chinatown that shared with the Barbary Coast a worldwide notoriety. But always there was the sober, industrious Chinatown of respectable merchants and hard-working coolies; of ancient native customs and religion; and of traditional family life. Quietly this larger element was accumulating wealth, gradually co-operating with the Protestant and Catholic missions, and—after 1906—with the city's police. When it became necessary to erect the new Chinatown upon the charred foundations of the old, Chinese capital and enterprise accomplished the task promptly and with good taste. The colony's southern boundary was extended to Bush Street, claiming the block now occupied by St. Mary's Square.
The last three decades have seen various improvements on the district's sudden reconstruction after 1906. But not until recent years has its past—assiduously kept alive by pulp magazines and newspaper Supplements—been lived down. Naive visitors still expect to be shown opium dens and underground passages. The new Chinatown, alert and progressive, is without nostalgia for its long era of dirt and crime. The second largest Chinese settlement outside the mother country (Singapore has the largest), it prefers its modern role as meeting place of East and West.
103. The red-brick KONG CHOW TEMPLE (suggested visiting hours 6-10 p.m.), 520 Pine St., is entered through bright red doors opening onto the Passageway of Peace, a bare corridor ending in a blank wall—protection against evil spirits, who travel only in straight lines. From an inner courtyard, stairs lead to the third-floor sanctuary, just beneath the green double-tiered oriental roof—for worship of the ancestral gods permits nothing more created by human hands to be above the deities. Decorating the room are richly brocaded silken hangings and, extending its full breadth, hand-made wood carvings hearing stories of the Six Dynasties (589-317 B.C.); the upper part of one, a priceless, glass-enclosed work, depicts scenes from the Court of the Dragon King. From the articles of divination in the temple, religious Chinese determine those days auspicious for instituting business ventures and trips. Strips of red paper in the temple anteroom record the amounts of recent contributions—heavily swelled on such special occasions as the Day for Sweeping the Graves and the Feast Day to Quan Ti.
Pioneer Chinese from the district of Kong Chow first established their temple locally in 1857; after the buildings of the Kong Chow Association (one of the Chinese Six Companies) were dynamited to check the fire of 1906, they rebuilt their joss house here. Rescued from the doomed temple was the figure of Kuan Ti, patron deity and head of the 17 gods and goddesses of the temple, now enthroned in the reconstructed shrine.
104. Where the soft crunch of gravel underfoot or the snores of a drowsing panhandler disturbs the quiet of green-terraced ST. MARY'S SQUARE, Pine, Anne, and California Sts., the raucous solicitations of the inmates of brothels once mingled with the bark of rifles in shooting galleries below, and American and British sailors met periodically for bouts and brawls. But the little park was not always so bawdy. In the 1890’s, the women of San Francisco petitioned the city, and the prostitutes were removed from Dupont Street (Grant Avenue) to the comparative isolation of the square (hidden from Dupont by a row of business establishments, as it is today). Here they remained for several years to distress the Paulist Fathers of Old St. Mary's, who faced them across California Street. In 1898, the Fathers organized the St. Mary's Association, whose purpose was to remove the bagnios and have the area set aside as a park. Between 1898 and 1904, money was appropriated on more than one occasion to buy the property for the city, but each time County Treasurer Sam Brooke used it for other purposes. A series of lawsuits resulted in the decision in 1904 that taxes should be levied to make the necessary purchases; but, before this was done, the fire of 1906 wiped out the offending red light area. A step in replanning the city was the creation of the present park.
From the high western slope of the square a STATUE OF SUN YAT-SEN faces the East toward China. The 12-foot figure, with head and hands of rose-red granite, wearing a long robe of bright stainless steel, was created by sculptor Beniamino Bufano under the sponsor-ship of the WPA's Northern California Art Project (formerly the Federal Art Project). Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), organizer of the Kuomintang—whose local branch supplied materials for the memorial—visited San Francisco on several occasions. China's present (1940) President, Lin Sen, in 1937 wrote the words that appear on the steel disc in the granite base of the monument: “Father of the Chinese Republic and First President… Champion of Democracy… Proponent of Peace and Friendship Among Nations…”
N. from Pine St. on Anne St. to California St.; W. on California.
105. The construction of OLD ST. MARY'S CHURCH, NE. corner Grant Ave. and California St., was inaugurated in 1853 by Archbishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany, and at midnight Mass on Christmas Day, 1854, the edifice was dedicated as the cathedral seat for the Roman Catholic diocese of the Pacific Coast. Until completion of St. Mary's Cathedral in 1894, Old St. Mary's remained the most powerful strong-hold of Catholicism in California and Nevada. Respected for its rich tradition and the simple dignity of its Services, this stately old structure for the last 45 years has been the parish church of the Paulist Fathers.
Old St. Mary's Stands on land donated by pioneer banker John Sullivan, whose wife (Catherine Farrell Sullivan) lies buried in the crypt of the church. Architects Crane and England are thought to have modeled the purely Gothic structure after a church in the Spanish birth-place of Archbishop Alemany. Its red brick and ironwork was shipped around the Horn; granite brought from China was hoisted into place with improvised wooden derricks by Chinese workmen. The two large clocks in the 90-foot-high Square Gothic tower were long the community timepieces of early San Franciscans. Beneath the frontal dial still appear the gold letters on black bronze, whose warning was intended to put the fear of God into the roisterers of Dupont Street: “Son Observe the Time and Fly from Evil.” As early as 1855, an angry correspondent to the Alta California made irreverent protest against the booming bell of Old St. Mary's: “Those who want their sins washed off by those daily ablutions may as well be aroused by their own consciences, without annoying the whole neighborhood.”
Completely gutted by the fire of 1906, the interior of the church was rebuilt on its original plan. In January, 1929, the basement was remodeled to form a modem auditorium, Paulist Hall; two months later a five-story structure adjoining St. Mary's on the north was razed and the church building extended to its present length of 153 feet. This latter wing, which maintains the architectural features of the original (Edward A. Eames, architect), houses the PAULIST CIRCULATING LIBRARY (open weekdays 11-6, Sun. 10:30-1 :30).
Each night for more than a decade, a long line of needy migrants has waited patiently at the side entrance to Old St. Mary's for the food and lodging tickets supplied them by the Paulist Fathers.
N. from California St. on Grant Ave. to Sacramento St.; E. on Sacramento.
106. The NOM KU SCHOOL (open 5-8 p.m.), 765 Sacramento St., for children between the ages of 6 and 15, Supplements the public school curriculum, offering a purely cultural program designed to foster Chinese traditions and customs in American-born Chinese. No commercial subject is taught; emphasis is placed on Chinese language, calligraphy, literature, history, and philosophy (particularly that of Confucius).
Built in 1912 by a group of wealthy Chinese, the school building follows the official courthouse design of China. A pair of sacred lions guard the set-back upper story. High, narrow windows in many small panels give myriad light reflections to the interior, whose simple teak-wood furnishings are relieved by the lavish use of decorative colors: vivid green, yellow, red, and turquoise.
107. More than its name implies is the CHINESE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (open Mon.-Fri. 10-5, Sat. 10-12), 730 Sacramento St., the only Organization of its kind when established in the 1880’s. In addition to fostering Chinese business and commerce, the Organization aids in solving the housing problem of Chinese in San Francisco; enlightens its countrymen on legal matters; and aids in the liquidation of bankruptcies of Chinese merchants by negotiation rather than by court procedure.
The Chamber of Commerce has assumed commercial arbitration over matters once handled by the Chinese Six Companies, settling disputes among merchants and members of their families, and—rarely—among trade organizations (such as the Jewelry Guild or Laundry Workers Association). Since establishment of a similar chamber in New York in 1910, this bureau no longer serves Chinese throughout the United States, Executive Secretary Chee Lowe, educated at San Francisco public schools and the University of California, worked for 20 years as a mining engineer in China, and returned to San Francisco in 1938.
Retrace on Sacramento St.
108. Outwardly occidental are the businesslike offices of the KUOMINTANG HEADQUARTERS IN AMERICA (open 10-12, 2-4), 827 Sacramento St., from which are supervised the activities of the 3 regional and 50 branch offices of the Chinese Nationalist Party in the United States. The San Francisco headquarters was the second established outside China (the first was in Honolulu). Party activities in this country (according to National Chairman Dr. K. D. Lum) consist of establishing good will between the people of the United States and the people of China and sponsoring the spread of the democratic idea by following the principles laid down by Sun Yat-sen. The Western Regional Office of the Kuomintang, with Jurisdiction over branches in California, Nevada, and Utah, also is located in San Francisco (846 Stockton St.).
The party publishes two Chinese-language newspapers in the city: The Chinese Nationalist Daily (809 Sacramento St.) and the Young China (881 Clay St.), founded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
109. The irregular series of rectangular terraces forming the CHINESE CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUND (open weekdays 10-10; play apparatus), Sacramento St. between Waverly Pl. and Stockton St., are walled by the dark brick of surrounding buildings. Brightly lighted at night, the playground is the occasional scene of evening entertainment and concerts (on gala occasions the children wear their native dress). The upturned cornices of the small pagoda-like stucco clubhouse are brightly painted.
N. from Sacramento St. on Stockton St.
110. The CHINESE CONSOLIDATED BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION (open to visitors 1-5), 843 Stockton St., also called the Chung Wan Wui Goon and the China Association, is best known as the Chinese Six Companies—despite the fact that it long has represented seven companies. These seven associations, each representing a province or district of old China, are the Kong Chow, Ning Yung, Sam Yup, Sue Hing, Yan Wo, Yeung Wo, and the Hop Wo—formed when so many persons had come from one district that it was advisable to make two companies of one. (The Chinese system of Organization follows three lines: family—of which there are about 100; geographical—hence the 7 associations listed above; and fraternal—the tongs, of which there are about 40, composed of people with common interests, such as trades.)
With Nation-wide Jurisdiction, the Six Companies functions as a board of arbitration, settling disputes among organizations and individuals. Chinatown's civic activities, such as the annual Community Chest drive and Rice Bowl parties, are under its management. It assists in maintaining the Chinese Hospital and Chinese schools. A particularly important function is its supervision of the removal of the bones of Chinese dead from American cemeteries to China for reburial or repository in shrines.
The Six Companies at one time engaged in commercial activities—such as the importation of bonded Chinese laborers—but is today a non-profit Organization supported by popular subscription, special taxes, and the income from its properties. From among its officers (representatives of the seven associations named above) a new President is elected every three months. The brief presidential term is designed to prevent the acquisition of undue power or influence by any one officer.
The Organization occupies a three-story stuccoed building roofed with red tile. White marble steps lead to a first-floor veranda guarded by giant Chinese lanterns. Contrasting with the facade of sky-blue tile are green- and gold-trimmed balconies opening onto the second and third floors. The interior is sumptuously furnished in the Chinese motif, from the large main-floor meeting hall to the rooms and offices of the upper floors.
111. A pioneer of Protestant faith in Chinatown is the CHINESE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 925 Stockton St., founded in 1853. The present building was erected after the 1906 fire upon the ruins of the original structure. The simple, uncarpeted interior resembles that of a country church, with its rough, beamed ceilings, its long pews, and the rows of chairs behind the pulpit; yet its atmosphere is that of the Orient. Three red velvet panels behind the rostrum carry inscriptions, in gold Chinese characters, of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Beatitudes.
The Chinese Presbyterian Church, in 1854, published San Francisco's first Chinese and English newspaper (probably the first in the United States), The Oriental, which is said to have done much to counteract the local hostility between Chinese and the white race during its two-year existence. A copy of the paper is preserved in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at San Anselmo. The church conducts day and evening classes in English for Chinese of all ages.
W. from Stockton St. on Washington St. to Wetmore St.; S. from Washington on Wetmore.
112. Today's CHINESE (PRESBYTERIAN) MISSION HOME, 144 Wetmore St., occupying a small double fiat—home of a staff of Chinese girls—is far removed from the busy mission that moved to larger quarters four times after its establishment in 1874. In 1894, a building was erected at 920 Sacramento Street to house the crowded home. The following year its management was assumed by Donaldina Cameron, who became “Lo Mo” (The Mother) to the scores of Chinese girls she rescued from slave operators. Long before her retirement at the age of 70, Miss Cameron had achieved an international reputation. The mission moved to its present quarters in 1939.
Retrace on Wetmore St. to Washington St.; retrace on Washington to Trenton St.; N. on Trenton.
113. The CHINESE HOSPITAL, SE. corner Trenton and Jackson Sts., built in 1924 by public subscription by and for the residents of Chinatown, occupies a four-story, many-windowed gray concrete building, decorated by ornamental iron grill work and topped by a large sunroom. Chinatown continues to support its little 58-bed hospital, aided only by the Community Chest, while white patients in increasing numbers take advantage of its reasonable rates—low in comparison to those of other modern hospitals of the same standing. The institution consists, in addition to its general medical department and surgery, of emergency and maternity wards; an eye, ear, nose and throat department; and a clinic with in- and out-patient departments. It is staffed by both Chinese and white employees and officials.
Retrace on Trenton St. to Washington St.; E. on Washington.
114. What is now OLD CHINATOWN LANE, extending a half-block northward from its entrance near 868 Washington Street—a narrow paved thoroughfare of bazaars and shops characteristic of Chinatown—was once the “Street of the Gamblers,” a crowded little lane notorious for its gaming rooms and brothels. Later, it became Cameron Alley (honoring Donaldina Cameron) and kept this name until 1939, when, oddly enough, its dingy tenements were modernized to resemble the untouched Chinatown of a generation ago.
At the street's entrance Stands a 40-foot edifice embodying a watch tower, in authentic design, such as guards temple or palace gates and public grounds in China. The alleyway is decorated with bright Chinese lanterns, flowers, and shrubs. Among its shops is THE PAVILION OF THE SEVEN MAIDENS. Here, beyond a store offering oriental handcraft, is the first women's temple in the United States, dedicated to the Queen of Heaven (T'ien Hou) and watched over by the goddess of mercy. The legend of the temple is the story of a lovely goddess, who fell in love with a shepherd. She was allowed to marry him but, as punishment, was permitted to join him only on the seventh day of the seventh moon, at which time magpies formed a bridge with their wings that the goddess might descend. One of the tapestries in the temple depicts the goddess in the act of descending thus to meet her waiting lover.
In the CHINGWAH LEE ART STUDIO (12 m. to 12 p.m.), reached by a narrow stairway at the far end of the lane, are exhibited a rare collection of porcelain, bronzes, ancient snuff bottles, paintings, ancient weapons of warfare, and a large collection of Chinese gods (many from temples formerly situated in towns and camps throughout California, which eventually will be housed in a new temple).
Extending from the north end of Old Chinatown Lane westward to Stockton Street is the STREET OF THE LITTLE BAZAARS, an indoor passage whose model was a Street of old China. Midway in it is a wishing well surrounded by a small garden.
S. from Washington ST. on Waverly Pl.
115. The main floor of the four-story, yellow-brick building housing the TIN HOW TEMPLE (suggested visiting hours 6-10 p.m.), 125 Waverly PL, is occupied by the Sue Hing Benevolent Association, by whom the temple is maintained. Maroon-colored balconies run the length of the three upper floors. A wrought-iron gate on the top floor (summon attendant by bell) guards the temple of T'ien Hou, Queen of the Heavens and Goddess of the Seven Seas.
It is believed by many Chinese that one of the present altars was brought to San Francisco in 1848, by one of the few Chinese who arrived that year, transferred from a sailing vessel to a house at First and Brannan Streets, and later moved to Waverly Place. When a larger temple erected in 1875 was ravaged by the flames of 1906, the altar and the goddess T'ien Hou were removed temporarily to Oakland. The following year, workmen excavating for the basement of the present building discovered the great temple bell, and it too was reinstalled.
The main altar of the temple presents an intricate carving representing the life story of Confucius. To the left of T'ien Hou sits Moi Dii, god of military affairs, and Ni-Lung, one of the goddesses of motherhood. In front of T'ien Hou are three massive bronze urns containing prayer sticks and a tiny altar light, which is never permitted to burn out. Along the walls are 16 ceremonial wands, resembling ancient Chinese battle-axes, used in early times as implements of war-fare against evil spirits. With the altar, set in the center of the sanctuary, are two urns inlaid with Cantonese enamel and precious stones; their designs depict scenes from the life and work of Confucius. whose teachings are especially revered, although Buddhism and Taoism are also represented.
Retrace on Waverly PI.; E. on Washington St.
116. A pagoda-like, green-fronted, little one-story structure houses the CHINESE TELEPHONE EXCHANGE, 743 Washington St., only exchange of its kind outside China. The interior is elaborate with gilt and wood carvings; dragons in bas relief decorate the ceiling. Intricately carved grillwork screens shield the 20 girls operators from Observation. Some of the present (1940) operators are descendants of the men who handled the original exchange in 1894; unusual memories are required of them, since the 2,100 subscribers include many who insist upon asking for one another by name rather than by number.
The exchange Stands on the SITE OF THE CALIFORNIA STAR. Here Sam Brannan, renegade Mormon and organizer of the first Vigilance Committee, published the California Star, first newspaper in San Francisco.
Retrace on Washington St. to Grant Ave.; N. on Grant.
117. Guiding the destiny of the ORIENTAL BRANCH OF THE BANK OF AMERICA (open Mon.-Fri. 9-3, Sat. 9-1), 939 Grant Ave., are its California-born manager, Dorothy Gee, and eight Chinese women department heads. (Only one other bank in the world, in Shanghai, is operated entirely by women.) The branch is proud of an unusual record: not a single loan defaulted during the entire period of the depression.
The establishment occupies the ground floor of a four-story yellow-brick building. The facade is enlivened by black and red marble, the windows bordered with carved black teak. Customers’ desks in the lobby—some of which are of teakwood—are supplied with the abacus, still used for mathematical calculations by many of the branch's 9,000 depositors.
E. from Grant Ave. on Jackson St.
118. Motion pictures made both in Hollywood and China (Chinese films predominate) have been shown at the GREAT CHINA THEATER (open 7-12 p.m., adm. 35¢), 636 Jackson St., since it abandoned legitimate productions in 1938. In the small ornate foyer—orange-fronted and covered by a blue ceiling dotted with gilt stars—stills of Chinese cinema stars are displayed beside scenes from such attractions as “Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan in Part 3 of Undersea Kingdom.” The names of current attractions, in Chinese characters on cheap wrapping paper, are elaborately framed with floral designs.
Retrace on Jackson St. to Grant Ave.; N. on Grant.
119. Everyone is a first-nighter at the MANDARIN THEATER (open 7:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m.; adm. 25¢-50¢)) for the play changes each evening. With few props and little scenery, the native dramas seem to flow on endlessly, while the orchestra (seated onstage out of range of the play) and the audience consume melon seeds, ice cream, and “pop.” For late arrivals, the programs carry detailed synopses of the play. The actors are unperturbed by the antics of children scampering up and down the aisles or by the intrusion of prop men, who casually walk off and on supplying needed properties—often by placing a table between two bamboo stools to form a bridge, over which the actor walks sedately to meet his foe in the dramatic sword fight that highlights every performance.
Only within late years were curtains introduced into Chinatown's legitimate theaters. These usually were supplied by some Chinese manufacturer, who devised this method of advertising local wares to a foreign public. The following notice recently appeared on the rather gaudy drapery of the Mandarin's proscenium:
“Heart Brand Disease Solution Dependable for curing all kinds of Skin Disease. ‘The Wai Shang Yuk Ching’ Tonic Juice. Safely and Highly recommended for nourishing the Blood and Brain.
Aukah Chuen Canton, China.”