Chinatown

About Chinatown

San Francisco’s Chinatown is the oldest in North America and one of the largest outside Asia. About 15,000 people live in roughly 30 square blocks, mostly in SRO hotels and walk-up apartments above the storefronts. The neighborhood has been the commercial and residential center of Chinese American life on the West Coast since the 1850s.

The buildings you see today are the 1906 rebuild. The 1906 fire destroyed the original wooden Chinatown, and city officials proposed relocating the neighborhood to Hunters Point. Merchant leader Look Tin Eli commissioned the architectural firm Ross and Burgren to rebuild the blocks in a style the press at the time called “oriental”: pagoda rooflines, painted balconies, ornamental lampposts. The intent was to draw tourism and investment to keep the neighborhood in place. Almost every building on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street dates from 1907 through 1909.

How to Walk Chinatown

Grant Avenue is the touristy street. Enter at the Dragon Gate at Grant and Bush. Grant has souvenir shops, English-language restaurants, and the pagoda-roof architecture from the 1906 rebuild. Grant runs ten blocks north and ends at Columbus Avenue in North Beach next to Jack Kerouac Alley.

Stockton Street, one block west, is the community oriented street. Produce markets stack vegetables on the sidewalk; fishmongers keep tanks of live tilapia and Dungeness crab. The street is at full operation by about 7 AM. Good Mong Kok Bakery at 1039 Stockton sells grab-and-go char siu bao; cash only.

The alleys between Grant and Stockton. Ross Alley runs parallel to the two main streets and holds the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, where workers fold cookies by hand. Waverly Place, one block north, is the Street of Painted Balconies and the location of the Tin How Temple. Spofford Alley was a center of the tong-era conflicts of the 1880s and is now quiet and residential.

Portsmouth Square at Kearny and Clay is the neighborhood’s main public space. Older men play xiangqi on stone tables; tai chi groups gather on the upper plaza in the early morning. The square was the original town square of San Francisco.

Where to Eat

Hon’s Wun Tun House on Kearny serves hand-wrapped wontons in clear broth. Capital Restaurant on Stockton serves salt-and-pepper chicken wings, among other dishes. Sam Wo at 713 Clay Street serves congee and rice noodle rolls. The restaurant traces back to 1907 in Chinatown. Hang Ah Tea Room on Pagoda Place, in a narrow alley off Sacramento, was founded in 1920 and is widely cited as the oldest continuously operating dim sum restaurant in the United States. R&G Lounge on Kearny is a sit-down restaurant whose salt-and-pepper Dungeness crab is the signature dish.

What to Know Before You Go

Produce markets on Stockton are at full speed by 7 AM.  Shops on Grant open around 10ish and close by 5 or 6pm.

Public transit is the way in. The 30 Stockton bus runs through the neighborhood. The California Street cable car stops at the Grant Avenue edge. Powell and Montgomery BART stations are a five-minute walk. Parking garages exist under Portsmouth Square and St. Mary’s Square; on-street parking is difficult.

The alleys are public walkways. Ross, Waverly, Spofford, Beckett, and Ping Yuen are all walkable.