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2.28.05
San Francisco Chinatown sucks! (and the city sucks, too!) The last weekend my friend Francisco, two of his UI friends and I made a short day trip to San Francisco. The city of San Francisco fell way short of my expectation. Maybe I didn't see the beautiful side of it, the side of the town that I saw was old and messy. We hit straight to the downtown when we got there. The impression was just old. The city of New York was established way earlier than the city of San Francisco, however, the San Francisco downtown looked at least 50 years older than that of New York. The street traffic set up was confusing and weird. I couldn't understand why this town can look this old and this unfriendly.
The picture above shows how messy and old the streets look. The left hand side is the street is a station for a Motorized Cable Car (yes, that's what they are officially called). It is right in the middle of the street. There are a whole bunch of confusing traffic signs. Our car stopped right in the middle. We didn't even know where to stop for traffic light. One little observation: Some of the buses are powered by the electric wires hanged above the streets, the same way the motorized cable cars are powered. I really don't understand why. The wires are suspended above most of the streets in and near downtown. Maybe people in San Francisco like their town "wired". Next stop: a must-see destination for each big city, Chinatown. This Chinatown is the (unofficially, this is what I heard) largest chinatown in the United States. Well, the chinatown is nothing spectacular. In fact, this is the oldest and the most disgusting chinatown out of all I have visited so far (New York City, Boston, Philly, Chicago, LA, Houston, Dallas). I didn't want to stay long. I even wanted to leave after a while. The area looked as old as the city itself. The signs on the street and the decor of some cafes are perfect for making movies of a background of 1980s Hong Kong. So weird!
Doesn't this street sign remind you of Hong Kong 20 years ago! This chinatown just gave an impression that the general Chinese population there is older. By that, I mean mostly retired elderly.
I thought this can only be seen in Macau or Hong Kong. Man! I can't believe my two eyes. A group of middle-aged or older men gather around a chess game! This is not the only group that I saw in the little park on the edge of the chinatown. There were at least 6 groups of this sort and many more chess battles with no spectators. To further prove my theory of the high age average of this chinatown, I saw many senior Chinese sitting inside the building in the rear of the photo above either watching tv or reading newspaper. Now it's clearer why there are all those old fashion cafes and buildings. We got out of the Chinatown after just walking around for a little while and had our lunch in a Hong Kong style fastfood cafe. A breath of fresh air once I stepped out of the Chinatown. Our next stop was a totally different feel, Japantown.
The Japantown clearly is newer and smaller. There is a fountain in the middle of a small shopping mall. Some stands like the one on the left of the picture showing the Japanese of some nouns (like fish, butterfly).
The other side of the area is a plaza with a signiture pagoda. On the side of the pagoda is a indoor shopping mall. The Japantown is much more relaxed and tourist friendly. So different from the packed streets of Chinatown. One observation: I heard Cantonese more than Japanese in the indoor Japanese shopping mall. This can only be explained by either: 1) Japanese are too quiet to talk aloud or not talking at all, 2) there are so many Cantonese speaking Chinese in San Francisco, they are in need of invading the Japantown, or most likely 3) new generation Hong Kong descendents just like Japanese stuff too much. Next stop: Golden Gate Bridge. Now I understand why it is called the Golden Gate despite its original red color. The Golden Gate refers to the geographical gate the Golden Gate bridge is built across. This gate separates the Pacific Ocean and the bay between San Francisco and Oakland (East Bay and West Bay). I guess this is the entrance from the Pacific Ocean to the Golden area during the gold rush more than a hundred years ago.
I think the best way to tour the Golden Gate bridge is to walk across it. As you can see on the right hand side of the above picture. Many people chose to experience it on foot, while we drove through it. I will definitely walk across it next time when I go there. From the view of the car, the bridge doesn't look anything so special to make it one of the most famous bridges in the world. The view from the bridge to the Bay side is quite nice though. I could see sailing ships and yachts on the sea. I could also see the hilly landscape of San Francisco when I looked back to the city from the bridge.
The bridge from the side of Sausalito (the bridge connects San Francisco and Sausalito). The red bridge together with the green hilly background is a nice match.
A Picutre taken from the hill on the side of the bridge.
The population of Hong Kong descendents in the Bay Area is unexpectedly high. The living style of these people is almost like that of Hong Kong in a lot of ways. The most significant difference is that they are not actually in Hong Kong. I can see that many of the souvenir stores are operated by Cantonese speaking Hong Kong people. The clam chowder store (yeah! Clam Chowder on the West Coast) in the S.F. Pier (the picture above) is also run by Chinese (don't know if they are from Hong Kong). The funniest thing I have encountered in the day is the conversation between a old Chinese man and a old Chinese woman (both around 60) in front of the tourist crowded pier. They are both "traditional Hong-Kong-style garbage busters". They collect paper, plastic, and aluminum cans from garbage and trash to earn money by selling them to recyclers. This type of older people "profession" is quite common in Macau and Hong Kong. I don't exactly know how much they can earn by doing this. I think they should be able to support themselves. I don't know why this type of people exist in the United States. Where is their family? Their conversation started when the woman, who to my understanding normally collects cans only, asked the man, who to my understanding normally collects newspaper only, a favor to allow her to collect day-old newspaper because she wanted to read something from the paper of a day ago. I think the man refused. Their conversation heated up. I didn't follow the development after that. Well, my point is Chinese are in just about any sector in this society. They are even in sectors that only exist in Hong Kong (like the garbage business). I was stunned when I saw garbage collectors in San Francisco. Hong Kong people didn't just spread around the world, they bring their professions and traditions, too.
This is just a sight I find interesting. Somebody used a really old little chair to reserve a parking spot near the pier. |
