There's the Chinatown of tacky green plastic dragons and bamboo back-scratchers, and then there's the real Chinatown: windows adorned with barbecue ducks, boxes filled with ripe oranges making the sidewalks a crowded labyrinth, or the oddly fragrant ambience of a traditional herb shop.
San Francisco's Chinatown is large enough to contain both these worlds, and the savvy traveler will veer off the brightly lit walkways of Grant Avenue to the authentic, no-less exotic side streets near Stockton Street.
Situated between Broadway, Bush, Kearny, and Powell streets, Chinatown is home to one of the largest Chinese communities outside Asia. The original immigrants, refugees from the Opium Wars who came to San Francisco in search of Gold Rush wealth, ended up working on the railways.
Much of the distinctive architecture of Chinatown is actually a reconstruction by American and European designers, who created it from the ground up following the 1906 earthquake. Local officials thought the dragon lampposts and pagoda roofs would be a good tourist draw. They were right, although many of the details are closer to Western chopsocky clichés than to genuine Chinese architecture.
But who's complaining? The kitsch is part of the appeal here, along with the temples and dim sum shops.
Visitors usually enter Chinatown through the green-tile Chinatown Gate at Bush Street and Grant Avenue, which leads up a thoroughfare lined with curio shops.
A block and a half up is Old St. Mary's Cathedral (660 California St., at Grant), and diagonally across from the cathedral is peaceful St. Mary's Park. Two blocks north lies the Chinese Culture Center (750 Kearny St., in the Holiday Inn), and nearby is the Old Chinese Telephone Exchange (743 Washington St.), built in 1909 and now a Bank of Canton. The telephone operators here had to memorize all the names of their customers and speak English and five Chinese dialects.
As you leave the third-floor doors of the Chinese Culture Center, cross the suspended walkway across Kearny St. to Portsmouth Square (Kearny and Washington Sts.), where the elderly Chinese men gather to gamble. From Portsmouth Square it's an easy walk to the restaurants and coffee bars of North Beach.
Not far away is the Imperial Tea Court (1411 Powell St., at Broadway), where you can relax and enjoy full tea service in an elegant Chinese tearoom.
One of the most colorful streets in Chinatown is Waverly Place, off California and Clay streets near Stockton St. Just off Waverly, in Ross Alley, is the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory (56 Ross Alley), where you can watch old ladies bake cookies in an oven that looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption, and pick up a couple of bags to go at ridiculously cheap prices: tell the counter man if you want your fortunes 'funny' or 'not funny.'
Also on Waverly is the Tien Hou Temple (125 Waverly Pl., top floor), a classic example of traditional Chinese architecture and sacred wood carving. Walk up three flights of stairs, past two mah-jongg parlors.
Other sites worth visiting in Chinatown include Buddha's Universal Church, a hand-built, five-story temple decorated with murals and tile mosaics (720 Washington St.); and the Kong Chow Temple, a Taoist temple with multi-colored altars (green for longevity, red for virility and gold for majesty), fragrant incense and representations of 17 gods (855 Stockton St.). It's customary to leave a dollar in the donation box at most temples.
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