S. F.’ s Chinatown, an insider’s view
New book chronicles famed neighborhood’s changing culture
“There are a lot of pretty books about Chinatown ... but nothing that shows photos of the people and their humanity, and the grit as well as the celebration.” Kathy Chin Leong, coauthor, ” San Francisco’s Chinatown”
When Dick Evans and Kathy Chin Leong began exploring Chinatown for their new book, “San Francisco’s Chinatown,” with a goal to provide an insider’s look at the famed neighborhood, Leong was struck instead by what she saw was fading.
Leong grew up in the Sunset District and was in Chinatown every weekend and through the summers, visiting her grandmother who worked in a sweatshop and lived in one of the area’s many singleroom occupancy units. She knew the traditions and rhythms of the community well. But when she and Evans wanted to capture one of the foundational gatherings of Chinatown, the Chinese wedding banquet, they struggled to find one.
“A lot of these wedding banquet places had shuttered,” Leong says. A large majority of those she remembers, like Gold Mountain, where she had her own wedding banquet years ago, were gone.
It was an early indication that the project — a glossy, comprehensive tour through the iconic neighborhood between 2017 and 2019 via Evans’ immersive photos and Leong’s rich text — would essentially be what Leong calls a “time capsule.” While the historic enclave in San Francisco is the oldest Chinatown in North America, the community has also persistently fought waves of existential battles and in recent years finds itself undergoing a reshaping, trying to maintain its character while new businesses shift toward more modern trends.
Now the book, the third in a series by Evans dedicated to the city’s changing neighborhoods ( following the HaightAshbury and the Mission), comes out as Chinatown faces an uncertain future amid a lingering pandemic.
Though COVID19 hit the city after the project had been completed, the book provides a knowing perspective on the hardships that have always informed Chinatown — such as institutional discrimination and threats of displacement — while offering an intimate view into the quotidian corners of life as much as the trademark visuals, from Portsmouth Square to Chinese New Year’s lion dancers.
“There are a lot of pretty books about Chinatown, of the architecture, but nothing that shows photos of the people and their humanity, and the grit as well as the celebration,” Leong says.
Capturing that vision took time. Aware of his outsider status, Evans, who is white, began the project by building inroads with Chinatown’s key figures and community groups, connecting with local figures like Betty Louie and with the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco. The largest asset, however, was partnering with Leong, who served as an ontheground liaison and accompanied Evans on nearly every shoot across the most famous fifth of a square mile in the city.
The experience of adventuring through the densely populated community was a far cry from what they’ve seen happen in the wake of the pandemic.
“I don’t know what it’s going to look like six months from now in terms of all the little shops there,” Leong says, specifically referencing the touristcentered stores on Grant Avenue.
Many began avoiding the neighborhood as the coronavirus that originated in China began arriving on our shores. But “very ironically, at this point, Chinatown’s been one of the least affected neighborhoods in the whole city,” Evans notes. “Given the density
of it and poverty levels, you’d think it would be the petri dish for it, but people started early wearing masks and socially distancing.”
The makeup of Chinatown in the aftermath of the pandemic and far beyond remains to be seen. A third of the households live in poverty, and more than half of the community is age 60 and older, Leong notes in the book. But the community has historically been resilient, and the generations that leave tend to come back.
“They’ve maintained it. They donate. They come back to work, they commute in,” Leong says. “The issue now is: Who’s going to take over these family associations for the next generation? Who’s going to take over these little antiquity stores since right now a lot of them are going out of business?”
The book, in this sense, indeed feels like a tribute to a Chinatown that may not look the same in both the short and long term, particularly as the community attempts to modernize. Evans saw a similar phenomenon happen in the three years it took to complete his book on the Mission.
“By the time I finished, there were three or four notable landmark buildings that had either burned down or were taken over for some other use, and a number of murals had been painted over or lost,” Evans says. “I was sensitized to what’s going on in terms of gentrification and change.”
San Francisco’s Chinatown, though, may be an entirely different story due to the strength of its community organizations. Notably, Leong says, the vast majority of the property in Chinatown is owned by Chinese Americans who tend to maintain ownership within the family.
She and Evans see the book as a philanthropic effort and plan to split the proceeds from its sale between two nonprofits, its indie Berkeley publisher Heyday Books and the Chinese Culture Center, which has been an instrumental force during the pandemic, organizing to support artists and restaurants while fighting the rise of antiAsian hate crimes.
The authors hope the book will also inspire visitors to support Chinatown and its businesses, and to truly look when they visit. But for the community itself, the book is a monument to the people in its pages, the culture and history that have spanned generations and will continue to.
“I don’t think it’s too much to feel hopeful,” Leong says. “It’s a community that’s going to stay. It’s stayed for over 150 years.”