Chinatown, San Francisco
Neighborhood in California, United States / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Chinatown, San Francisco?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, (Chinese: 唐人街; pinyin: tángrénjiē; Jyutping: tong4 jan4 gaai1) is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco.[4][5][6] Since its establishment in the early 1850s,[7] it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity.
Chinatown | |
---|---|
Coordinates: 37°47′39″N 122°24′25″W | |
Country | United States |
State | California |
City-county | San Francisco |
Government | |
• Supervisor | Aaron Peskin |
• Assemblymember | Matt Haney (D)[1] |
• State senator | Scott Wiener (D)[1] |
• U. S. rep. | Nancy Pelosi (D)[2] |
Population (2000) | |
• Total | 34,891 |
• Estimate (2013) | 34,557[3] |
Time zone | UTC−8 (Pacific) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC−7 (PDT) |
ZIP Codes | 94108, 94133, 94102, 94111, 94109 |
Area Codes | 415/628 |
There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture.[8] Due to a combination of factors, some more broad-based related to difficult circumstances for San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces a struggle for survival.[9]
Officially, Chinatown is located in downtown San Francisco, covers 24 square blocks,[10] and overlaps five postal ZIP codes (94108, 94133, 94111, 94102, and 94109). It is within an area of roughly 1⁄2 mi (0.80 km) long (north to south) by 1⁄4 mi (0.40 km) wide (east to west) with the current boundaries being, approximately, Kearny Street in the east, Broadway in the north, Powell in the west, and Bush Street in the south.[11] Owing to a combination of multifactorial issues, some more generally tied to socioeconomic difficulties afflicting downtown San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces a struggle for survival and is shrinking.[9]
Within Chinatown there are two major north–south thoroughfares. One is Grant Avenue (都板街), with the Dragon Gate ("Chinatown Gate" on some maps) at the intersection of Bush Street and Grant Avenue, designed by landscape architects Melvin Lee and Joseph Yee and architect Clayton Lee; Saint Mary's Square with a statue of Sun Yat-sen by Benjamin Bufano;[10] a war memorial to Chinese war veterans; and stores, restaurants and mini-malls that cater mainly to tourists. The other, Stockton Street (市德頓街), is frequented less often by tourists, and it presents an authentic Chinese look and feel reminiscent of Hong Kong, with its produce and fish markets, stores, and restaurants. It is dominated by mixed-use buildings that are three to four stories high, with shops on the ground floor and residential apartments upstairs.[12]
A major focal point in Chinatown is Portsmouth Square.[10] Since it is one of the few open spaces in Chinatown and sits above a large underground parking lot, Portsmouth Square is used by people such as tai chi practitioners and old men playing Chinese chess.[10] A replica of the Goddess of Democracy used in the Tiananmen Square protest was built in 1999 by Thomas Marsh and stands in the square. It is made of bronze and weighs approximately 600 lb (270 kg).
According to the San Francisco Planning Department, Chinatown is "the most densely populated urban area west of Manhattan", with 15,000 residents living in 20 square blocks.[13] In the 1970s, the population density in Chinatown was seven times the San Francisco average.[14]
During the time from 2009 to 2013, the median household income was $20,000 – compared to $76,000 citywide – with 29% of residents below the national poverty threshold. The median age was 50 years, the oldest of any neighborhood.[15] As of 2015, two thirds of the residents lived in one of Chinatown's 105 single room occupancy hotels (SRO), 96 of which had private owners and nine were owned by nonprofits.[16] There are two public housing projects in Chinatown, Ping Yuen and North Ping Yuen.[17]
Most residents are monolingual speakers of mutually unintelligible dialects of the Chinese language: historically Hoisanese, now Cantonese and some Mandarin.[15] In 2015, only 14% of households in the SROs were headed by a person that spoke English fluently.[16] The areas of Stockton and Washington Streets and Jackson and Kearny Streets in Chinatown are almost entirely Chinese or Asian, with blocks ranging from 93% to 100% Asian.[18] According to a study by the San Francisco Planning Department in 2018, 81% of the residents in the neighborhood were Asian.[19]
Many of the Chinese immigrants who managed to accumulate wealth while living in Chinatown move to the Richmond District, the Sunset District, or the suburbs.[15]
Demographic history
In the 1850s, Chinese pioneers, mainly from villages in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, began immigrating in large numbers to San Francisco, initially drawn by the California Gold Rush and the building of the first transcontinental railroad, and settling in Chinatown for refuge from the hostilities in the West. The main dialect spoken in Chinatown then was Hoisan-wa (aka Hoisanese; Toisanese in Cantonese and Taishanese in Mandarin), native to the emigrants from Hoisan (aka Toisan in Cantonese and Taishan in Mandarin), Sze Yup, in the Pearl River Delta. Surviving the ravages of the 1880s, Chinatown became a haven for later waves of emigrants from China in the 20th century.[20]: 2–4 [21]: 71
Working-class Hongkonger emigrants began arriving in large numbers in the late 1960s. Despite their status and professional qualifications in Hong Kong, many took low-paying employment in restaurants and garment factories in Chinatown because of limited English. An increase in Cantonese-speaking emigrants from Hong Kong and Mainland China has gradually led to the replacement in Chinatown of the Hoisanese dialect by the standard Cantonese dialect.
Due to such overcrowding and poverty, other Chinese areas have been established within the city of San Francisco proper, including one in its Richmond and three more in its Sunset districts, as well as a recently established one in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood. These outer neighborhoods have been settled largely by Chinese from Southeast Asia. There are also many suburban Chinese communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in Silicon Valley, such as Cupertino, Fremont, and Milpitas, where many Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese Americans settled. Despite these developments, many continue to commute in from these outer neighborhoods and cities to shop in Chinatown, causing gridlock on roads and delays in public transit, especially on weekends. To address this problem, the local public transit agency, Muni extended the city's subway network to the neighborhood via the new Central Subway.[22]
Unlike in most Chinatowns in the United States, ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam have not established businesses in San Francisco's Chinatown district, due to high property values and rents. Instead, many Chinese-Vietnamese – as opposed to ethnic Vietnamese who tended to congregate in larger numbers in San Jose – have established a separate Vietnamese enclave on Larkin Street in the heavily working-class Tenderloin district of San Francisco, where it is now known as the city's "Little Saigon".