San Francisco Chinatown

Introduction:

San Francisco's Chinese community is the oldest, one of the largest, and most visually recognizable urban Chinese American enclave in the world.

San Francisco's Chinatown begins at the dragon-crested gate at Grant Avenue and Bush Street. San Francisco’s oldest street—Grant Avenue—runs eight blocks through the center of America’s ethnic capital to over 1.5 million people of Chinese descent.

Chinatown during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a vibrant and resilient community.
Everything that a Chinese person needed or wanted was available within its dozen or so square blocks: work, food, benevolent associations, entertainment, newspapers, education, and religious houses were some of the many accessible amenities.

As more and more Chinese immigrants migrated into northern California in search of fortune and work, San Francisco Chinatown served as their home away from home, a comfortingly familiar place in an alien and oftentimes hostile land.