San Francisco Chinatown
San Francisco's Chinatown is the largest outside of Asia. The southern entrance to Chinatown is marked by a dragon-topped gate at the corner of Grant and Bush. Start your tour of Chinatown with a picture of you near one of the stone lions at the base of the gate.
Delight your senses with the sounds, sights and tastes of Chinatown on this San Francisco Chinatown Culinary Walking Tour.
The first Chinese arrived in San Francisco in 1848. In the 1850s, Chinese merchants began converging in the area that is now Chinatown. Tourism was a booming business in Chinatown as early as the 1860s. In the 1870s, more Chinese immigrants arrived to work on the transcontinental railroad and racism against Chinese immigrants was encoded into laws that restricted the type of jobs they could perform. The Chinese became further entrenched in a twelve block area bounded by California, Stockton, Broadway and Kearny streets. This area remains the core of Chinatown today.
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Grant Street and Shopping
Grant Street is lined with Chinese style lamps and is the main street in Chinatown. Along Grant you'll find plenty of shops where you can buy everything from San Francisco souvenirs to Chinese attire to electronics to meat and produce and Chinese herbs. A lot of the stores on Grant Street are oriented towards tourists, but good bargains can still be found. On Stockton street, you'll find more of the types of shops where the residents of Chinatown pick up their staples.
Chinatown Alleyways
The Chinese immigrants broke with San Francisco's grid street pattern and added many alleyways for easier pedestrian access. Make sure you wander the alleys between Grant and Stockton where you'll see entrances to many family organizations, which play a large roll among San Francisco political and social elites. Ross Alley is my personal favorite as well as the oldest alley in San Francisco. Ross Alley runs parallel to Grant street and is between Grant and Stockton and Washington and Jackson. If you enter the alley from Washington Street, you'll view some small murals depicting Chinese people participating in daily activities in the streets of Chinatown.
Delight your senses with the sounds, sights and tastes of Chinatown on this San Francisco Chinatown Culinary Walking Tour.
Further along Ross Alley on the right side (if you entered from Washington), you'll find a gated entrance where you can have your name written in Chinese. This place isn't always open, so if you happen to be there on a day when the door is open and the sign is out make sure you go in. You'll find an elderly Chinese gentleman who will write your name on a hand decorated bookmark for anywhere between one to four dollars. The gentleman doesn't speak much English, so you'll have to look up your name in one of the books he has resting on his table. Don't worry though, if you can't find your name, the gentleman will have you write in on a piece of paper (in English) and then have you pronounce your name clearly for him. From this, he can deduce the appropriate Chinese characters for your name. These bookmarks are one of the cheapest and best souvenirs to be found in San Francisco and best of all, they don't take up much space in your luggage.
Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory
Fortune Cookies were actually invented in San Francisco in 1909 by a Japanese family named Hagiwara. The Hagiwara's used to serve fortune cookies at the restaurant at the Japanese Tea Garden. But the most visited Fortune Cookie Factory in San Francisco sits in Chinatown at 56 Ross Alley. In the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory (established in 1962) where you'll see two workers folding fortune cookies as they come hot out of their baking molds. Pick up a free sample of a flat (unfolded) round from one of their discard barrels. Somedays, you'll get the opportunity to sample chocolate flavored or chocolate-vanilla swirled rounds. If you want, you can buy some bags of cookies factory-direct for a few dollars.
I always play the lottery numbers on the back of my fortunes. Though this technique hasn't really paid off for me, 110 people recently won big in a multi-state lottery because they all picked their numbers from the back of the same fortune.
For More Information about Chinatown
For a more detailed introduction to Chinatown's mysteries and attractions, visit the SanFranciscoChinatown.com website.
