I love Chinatown but I don’t live there. If you know me, you know I probably spend more time at Red’s Place and Lion’s Den than I should. But I’m not hanging in Chinatown for the food, the drinks, or the knick-knacks. I love Chinatown for what it represents. Chinatown is a place built by us, for us — a testament to our history and our resilience. Now that the Asian community extends far beyond Chinatown, we need our voices and values to reflect that.
The 1906 earthquake reduced Chinatown to rubble. San Francisco’s city government, which then viewed Chinese people as little better than rats , sought to banish our community from valuable downtown land to the city’s southeast fringes. But we decided to carve our destiny. Brick by brick, the people of Chinatown rebuilt the buildings by hand. Then, we organized . Day and night, Chinese took shifts occupying these reborn buildings to resist eviction. By day, folks pooled what little money they had to lobby City Hall. Through sheer will and the hands of many, Chinatown rose again from the ashes, standing firmly where it does today.
But we remained second-class citizens. Men toiled in low-wage jobs, underpaid, and treated as less than human. Women, including daughters of those who rebuilt Chinatown, were prostituted on its streets —sometimes serving the very politicians promising to preserve our community. As that next generation labored in restaurants, bars, and brothels, they impressed upon their children: “You must become a doctor, engineer — anything but this.” And so the next generation joined the ranks of Civil Rights leaders , fighting alongside all people of color. They fought for the right to buy homes in white neighborhoods, the right to equal pay and opportunity in the workplace, and the right to higher education through affirmative action. And such triumphs bolstered a new wave of Asian immigrants — South Asians, Filipinos, and others — drawn to San Francisco and the promise of “ Old Gold Mountain .”…