With change bubbling, San Francisco’s Chinatown strives to stay authentic
In San Francisco’s Chinatown, where tradition is sharing space with modernity — think duck fat-infused cocktails alongside oolong tea — the community finds itself at a crossroads: trying to fend off gentrification while welcoming change.
As leases run out and merchants retire, entrepreneurs are opening upscale restaurants and shops, while aging enterprises strive to remain relevant. The restaurant Eight Tables, which opened last October, offers a $225 tasting menu featuring a caviar dumpling, and the popular Golden Gate Fortune Cookies tempts changing taste buds with matcha and chocolate-dipped treats.
This struggle to adapt is felt in other Chinatowns across the nation as heritage enterprises and new ventures work to maintain their cultural authenticity.
In Manhattan’s Chinatown, the population of Chinese inhabitants has dropped well below 40 percent, according to research by Tarry Hum, a professor and acting chairwoman of the urban studies department at Queens College.
With luxury housing developments in the works, including a $1.4 billion, 815-unit tower, the district is “neck deep” in gentrification and facing “hyperdevelopment,” said Tomie Arai, an activist and a co-founder of the Chinatown Art Brigade. She added that the area now had more than 100 art galleries, which have displaced mom-and-pop businesses.
“You can picture how devastating this development is on the lives of the people who live there,” Arai said. “An increasingly white population is threatening to replace the cultural identity of the neighborhood.”
In San Francisco, more than 14,000 residents, mostly Chinese, live in densely packed quarters in Chinatown’s 20-block core, according to the Chinatown Community Development Center. Many of them are low-income and elderly people renting single rooms in buildings with health and safety violations that are twice the city’s average, according to the center’s 2017 report.
Despite these challenges, civic improvements are helping enhance the neighborhood, including mural art, cleaner alleys and better affordable housing. A much-anticipated Chinatown Station subway hub is expected to open in 2019. Recently enacted laws curb short-term vacation rentals, keeping out companies like Airbnb and VRBO, and a legacy business program offers financial incentives to landlords who sign long-term commercial leases with qualifying Chinatown enterprises.
“If it weren’t for the determination of the community and a seat at City Hall, Chinatown would have been long gone by now,” said Aaron Peskin, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors representing Chinatown. When changes are done right, neighborhoods can be upgraded without displacing longtime residents, he added.
In addition, proponents believe the enclave of 900 family-owned businesses is shifting in the right direction. But change happens slowly.
By next year, at least two Chinese-owned cocktail bars and two Chinese restaurants will open. A performance venue, the Clarion Music Performing Arts Center, recently presented “Sparring With Beatnik Ghosts,” a poetry night that included Chinese rap.
People complain that old shops are closing, but evolution is good, said Betty Louie, a prominent Chinatown landlord whose family has owned property there since the 1940s. “Some think we should remain a ghetto, but people are coming in and trying to do something different, and that is cool,” she said.
Notable chefs in Chinatown are garnering rave reviews, turning the zone into a culinary hot spot.
George Chen, a restaurateur and executive chef, yearns to see the heyday return. His Eight Tables restaurant was recently named by Time magazine as one of 100 of the World’s Greatest Places. It is the crown jewel of China Live, Chen’s new $20 million-plus, four-level contemporary Chinese food and beverage emporium that houses restaurants, cocktail lounges and a retail shop.
Brandon Jew said he chose Chinatown for his Mister Jiu’s restaurant amid much skepticism. He said he started the restaurant because he felt the need to carry on the tradition of Chinese cooking after his grandmother died.
“It was a challenge and a responsibility,” he said. “I draw my strength from the amazing Chinese restaurants before me like Four Seas and Kan’s. I want to be a part of that Chinatown legacy.”
At the same time, retail is becoming more sophisticated. It took three years for Chen’s wife, Cynthia Wong-chen, to curate her shop at China Live. Merchandise includes house sauces, portable tea sets in zippered cases and handmade paring knives presented atop reclaimed elm tables.
Another entrepreneur, Tiffany Tam, gleaned business savvy from working at her parents’ Chinatown souvenir stores. In April, she and her sister, Renee, opened Kim + Ono, a boutique on Grant Avenue that focuses on hand-painted Chinese kimonos designed in San Francisco. There’s couch seating, a few clothing racks with space to browse and jewelry from local artisans. Of note is a floor-toceiling floral mural.
“In this generation, you really have to strive to have something different than everyone else and create an experience for your customers,” Tam said.
But Chinatown’s advocates are concerned. The area is filled with too many voices that seem unable to agree, said Sue Lee, Chinatown historian and former head of the Chinese Historical Society of America.
“There is no uniform strategy for improvement to move forward together,” Lee said, calling the new restaurants and retail shops “one-offs.”
“There is very little culture left in terms of Chinese movies and opera, but it has to survive,” she said.
Founded in the mid-1800s, Chinatown was notorious for opium dens, gambling houses and brothels. After the 1906 earthquake, the city threatened to move Chinatown to undesirable outskirts, so leaders in the Chinese community hatched a plan to transform Chinatown into a tourist attraction so it could survive.
Another reason the cultural hub stays intact is the wealth of nonprofit organizations and social service agencies looking out for Chinatown’s interests. The influential Chinatown Community Development Center has been advocating affordable housing and grooming youth for civic leadership for more than 40 years.
Within Chinatown are 200 distinct family and district associations, which are much more than social clubs — they are strong voting blocs. In the 1800s, new immigrants made a beeline to their family associations to secure housing and employment. The largest is the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, with some 2,000 members.
For decades, Chinese residents were prohibited from buying property, so associations incorporated and bought real estate in Chinatown. Today, the majority of the buildings are owned by Chinese associations, partnerships and individuals, Louie said. Association leaders discuss rental issues, scholarships to award and charities to fund.
“The associations do incredible things,” Peskin said. “Their saving grace is that they are all profoundly interested in the continuity of the community.”
Associations uphold traditions, but they cannot prevent retirement and real estate vacancies.
Eddie Au, owner of Man Hing Ivory & Imports for 50 years, is praying someone will buy his antiquities store. What was once a 1,500-square-foot storefront with ivory, bone and jade carvings now occupies 600 square feet.
“It takes five years to carve a bone or a stone. These are handcrafts that people have had to learn,” he said. “But this generation does not care for things like this.” He does not expect his grown children to take over and has begun selling his inventory on ebay.
A few members of the younger generation, however, are keeping the flame alive. Some do it out of duty, others for a fun challenge.
Kevin Chan, for one, has worked at Golden Gate Fortune Cookies, owned by his mother, Nancy Tom Chan, since he was 9. His mother created the secret recipe and has been mixing the batter daily since 1962.
“I’m not rich,” Kevin Chan said. “I am giving back to Chinatown and the city of San Francisco. I’ll be here until I die.”