1500 names on the tip of the tongue
The early history of San Francisco’s Chinatown is bleak, and the sordid details are often forgotten. It was the Chinese, who, in the mid-1800s, mined gold in the Sierra and built the Transcontinental Railroad. But by the late 1800s a national recession had stirred up public resentment toward cheap labor from abroad. In addition, the press’s menacing portrayal of gambling, violence, opium dens, and prostitutes within the Chinese immigrant community gave lawmakers the opportunity to indulge in unabashedly racist policy making.
In those years, Chinatown was six blocks long, a tumultuous neighborhood roiling in gang wars. In about 1887, the community’s first telephone service began and the Chinese Telephone Exchange opened in 1901 in a 3-tier pagoda on Washington Street, which was once home to the city’s first newspaper, the California Star. You can still visit the building, now situated like a book on a crowded shelf, sandwiched between a noodle house and a souvenir shop.
Info
Address 743 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA, 94108 | Getting there Bus: 1 (Clay St & Grand Ave stop); 30, 45 (Stockton St & Washington St stop) | Tip Stop at the Portsmouth Square Plaza to observe the Chinese chess or checkers games being played at the many tables there.
In the beginning, the telephone exchange’s manager brought in only male switchboard operators but gradually sought to hire women, who seemed to have a better disposition for such frenetic work. When the 1906 earthquake destroyed much of Chinatown, the exchange shut down for reconstruction. It was re-opened in 1909, after which only female operators were employed. They numbered about three-dozen, sitting in white tunics, earrings dangling, as they quickly plugged and unplugged lines on the board in front of them. Working hour after hour, they faced the daunting challenge of remembering the names of some 1500 subscribers. In addition, they had to be able to speak five local Chinese dialects, as well as English, and answer more than 13,000 calls a day. The exchange closed in 1949, with the coming of direct-dial rotary phones.
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