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Chinatown
 SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN
San Francisco's Chinatown is one of North America's largest Chinatowns. It is also the oldest Chinatown. Established in the 1850s, it has been featured in popular culture, such as in film, music, photography, and literature.
Chinatown has been experiencing some decline over the years due to the cropping up of other large Chinese communities in the Richmond and Sunset Districts of San Francisco, and possibly from the revitalization of Oakland's Chinatown only 10 mi (16 km) away - and from the development of Asian shopping centers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite this, it remains a major tourist attraction - drawing more visitors than the Golden Gate Bridge, and being one of the largest and most prominent centers of Chinese activity outside of China.
 LOCATION AND SUB-AREAS
Chinatown is located in downtown San Francisco. It is roughly bordered by Powell Street and the Nob Hill District on the west. On the east is Kearny Street and The City's Financial District. On the north is North Beach and Green Street and Columbus Street. On the south is Bush Street and the Union Square area. Despite its decline, it has been slowly expanding northward into the North Beach neighborhood north of Green and Columbus Street.
Within Chinatown there are two major thoroughfares. One is Grant Avenue, with the famous Dragon gate on the corner of Bush Street and Grant Avenue; St. Mary's Park that boasts a statue of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen; a war memorial to Chinese war veterans; and a plethora of stores, restaurants and mini-malls that cater mainly to tourists. The other, Stockton Street, 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. Chinatown boasts smaller side streets and alleyways that also provide an authentic character.
Another major focal point in Chinatown is Portsmouth Square. Due to its being one of the few open spaces in Chinatown, Portsmouth Square bustles with activity such as Tai Chi and old men playing Chinese chess. 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).
In recent years, other Chinatown areas have been established within the city of San Francisco proper, including the Richmond and Sunset districts. These areas 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 Taiwanese Americans are dominant. Despite these developments, many continue to commute in from these outer neighborhoods and cities to shop in Chinatown, causing gridlock on roads and public transit, especially on weekends. To address this problem, the local public transit agency, Muni, is proposing to extend the city's subway network to the neighborhood via the new Central Subway.
HISTORY OF CHINATOWN
San Francisco's Chinatown was the port of entry for early Taishanese and Zhongshanese Chinese immigrants from the southern Guangdong province of China from the 1850s to the 1900s. The area was the one geographical region deeded by the city government and private property owners which allowed Chinese persons to inherit and inhabit dwellings within the city. The majority of these Chinese shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and hired workers in San Francisco Chinatown were predominantly Taishanese and male. Many Chinese found jobs working for large companies seeking a source of cheap labor, most famously as part of Central Pacific on the Transcontinental Railroad. Other early immigrants worked as mine workers or independent prospectors hoping to strike it rich during the 1849 Gold Rush.
With massive national unemployment in the wake of the Panic of 1873, racial tensions in the city boiled over into full blown race riots. In response to the racial violence, the Consolidated Chinese Benevolent Association or the Chinese Six Companies, which evolved out of the labor recruiting organizations for different areas of Guangdong, was created as a means of providing the community with a unified voice. The heads of these companies were the leaders of the Chinese merchants, who represented the Chinese community in front of the business community as a whole and the city government.
The xenophobia, or fear of foreigners (in this case the Chinese), became law as the United States Government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 - the first immigration restriction law aimed at a single ethnic group. This law, along with other immigration restriction laws such as the Geary Act, greatly reduced the numbers of Chinese allowed into the country and the city, and in theory limited Chinese immigration to single males only. Exceptions were in fact granted to the families of wealthy merchants, but the law was still effective enough to reduce the population of the neighborhood to an all time low in the 1920s. The exclusion act was repealed during World War II under the Magnuson Act in recognition of the important role of China as an ally in the war, although tight quotas still applied.
The neighborhood was completely destroyed in the 1906 earthquake that leveled most of the city. During the city's rebuilding process, racist city planners and real-estate developers had hatched plans to move Chinatown to the Hunters Point neighborhood at the southern edge of the city, even further south in Daly City, or even back to China; and the neighborhood would then be absorbed into the financial district. Their plans failed as the Chinese, particularly with the efforts of Consolidated Chinese Six companies, the Chinese government, and American commercial interests reclaimed the neighborhood and convinced the city government to relent. Part of their efforts in doing so was to plan and rebuild the neighborhood as a western friendly tourist attraction. The rebuilt area that is seen today, resembles such plans.
As early as 1880s, the San Francisco Police Department had established its so-called Chinatown Squad. One of the more successful police sergeants, Jack Manion, was appointed in 1921 and served for two decades. The squad was finally disbanded in August 1955 by Police Chief George Healey, upon request of influential Chinese World newspaper, which had editorializeded that the squad was an "affront to Americans of Chinese descent".
Many early Chinese immigrants to San Francisco and beyond were processed at Angel Island, now a state park, in the San Francisco Bay. Unlike Ellis Island in the East where prospective European immigrants might be held for up to a week, Angel Island typically detained Chinese immigrants for months while they were interrogated closely to determine if they were really who their papers said they were.
The repeal of the Exclusion act and the other immigration restriction laws, in conjunction passage of the War Brides Act, allowed Chinese-American veterans to bring their families outside of national quotas, led to a major population boom in the area during the 1950s. In the 1960s, the shifting of underutilized national immigration quotas brought in another huge wave of immigrants mostly from Hong Kong, which changed San Francisco Chinatown from predominantly Taishan-speaking to Cantonese-speaking. The end of the Vietnam War brought a wave of Vietnamese refugees of Chinese descent, who put their own stamp on San Francisco Chinatown.
Despite the fact that the majority of California's private property owners refused to sell or deed their land to Chinese, there were areas where many Chinese in Northern California living outside of San Francisco Chinatown, could maintain small communities or even individual business, but except for Oakland, they did not set up any special town with shopping and restaurants. Nonetheless, the historic rights of property owners to deed or sell their property to whom was exercised in sufficient numbers to keep the Chinese community from spreading outside of it's early development. However, the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for property owners to deed their rights so that certain groups were excluded.
These rulings allowed the enlargement of Chinatown and an increase of the Chinese population of the city. At the same time, the declining white population of the city as a result of White Flight combined to change the demographics of the city. Neighborhoods that were once predominately white, such as Richmond District and Sunset District and in other suburbs across the San Francisco Bay Area became centers of new Chinese immigrant communities. This included new immigrant groups such as Mandarin-speaking immigrants from Taiwan who have tended to settled in suburban Millbrae, Cupertino, Milpitas, and Mountain View - avoiding San Francisco as well as Oakland entirely. This suburbanization continues today.
With these changes came paradoxically a weakening of the Tongs traditional grip on Chinese life. The newer Chinese groups often came from areas outside of the Tongs control. As a result, the influence of the Tongs and criminal groups associated with them, such as the Triads, grew weaker in Chinatown and the Chinese community in general. However, the presence of the Triads remained significant in the immigrant community, and in the summer of 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two Triads erupted in violence and bloodshed, culminating in a shooting spree at the Golden Dragon Restaurant on Washington Street. Five persons were killed and 11 were wounded, and the incident has become infamously known as the Golden Dragon massacre. The restaurant still stands today and remains a popular dim sum restaurant for tourists.
While the neighborhood continues to receive newer immigrants and maintains a lively and active character, suburban flight has left the neighborhood relatively poor, decrepit in many parts, and largely elderly. Grant Avenue has changed completely into a tourist street.
From Wikipedia
 SAN FRANCISCO TOURS, TRAVEL AND ACTIVITIES
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