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January 28, 2006

chinatown at night

Once upon a time, there was no such thing as an Asian chain supermarket. Fremont didn't have such a prominent Asian population. There weren't any places like 99 Ranch Market, Lion Market, or a convenient way to pick up one's favorite Chinese dish or groceries. Chinese restaurants were fairly few and far apart, enough so that when you went into a restaurant around here, the family running it was much more enthusiastic to greet someone who could speak the language. They'd ask where you were from in China and treat you almost like family in a sense.

This wasn't 30 years ago, this was within my lifetime (yes, I'm older than 30 -- ok this was still around even when I was growing up, ok?)

So where did Chinese people go to get their food on? Chinatown. Back then we had basically two choices, Oakland or San Francisco. Oakland was closer to Fremont, but it was a smaller Chinatown and the one or two really good restaurants had lines out the door (especially Saturday morning for dim sum). Either one was a big family production. Piling everyone into the car and circling blocks to find parking (Oakland Chinatown didn't have a big parking garage until maybe 15 years ago, while SF had the Portsmouth Garage on the east side of Chinatown). We'd hit up places like Jade Villa, Lantern, Empress of China for some dim sum, and then afterwards pick up some groceries from the mom and pop markets.

While my friends at that age always proclaimed their dislike of being dragged into Chinatown, I've always loved it. It was tiring, but exhilarating to be in the middle of so much life happening. People shouting out in dialects that I partially understood. Old men playing Chinese Chess in the park. Just so many people all over the place -- I was always curious to explore. My grandmother used to even pile me onto BART and her and I would go there when she needed to do a weekday run for groceries and I didn't complain a bit. But for the most part, Chinatown was seen during daytime, mainly Saturdays. The only times I was there at night was for wedding banquets and such, and even then I was rushed from the car into the restaurant (Mom said, "Its cold!") so I never really looked around then.

After all these years, I've recently seen a side of SF Chinatown I never saw before -- what it looks like at night. I first had this experience 2 years ago, when I met Jenn and my mother-in-law there for dinner after work. All of the lights and sounds at night made me feel like a kid again, because I had never seen Chinatown in this way. I then had the pleasure of participating in two Chinese New Year Treasure Hunts, part of which involved searching through Chinatown during the Chinese New Year celebration for clues and interesting little facts. Since that time, I've also taken advantage of the fact that I work about a 5 minute walk from there to do some post-work shopping and exploring.

Chinatown still seems so interesting to me. Even though my parents were not part of the original immigrations that lived and worked in Chinatown (they were part of the college wave of the 60s), this place is still part of my heritage. I can make my way around from a language perspective, but barely. But its still *my* language (although not always my dialects). These are people that are from where I'm originally "from". A shared sense of. . .something. I don't know if that makes sense, but there's a sense of belonging that seems stronger here than in other places. Its related to the same reason why I can't see myself living somewhere other than the San Francisco Bay Area (and a few other locations): The Chinese (and Asian) population here. Its hard to explain, but this has provided a sense of security for me from since I was young.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of exploring around here.

Posted by spoof747 at January 28, 2006 11:28 PM

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Posted by: marisa at February 1, 2006 07:45 PM

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