 to welcome both of them back because we loved having them for their past book The Mission. And so we're really thrilled to explore another part of San Francisco and its incredible rich history. I'd just like to give a short introduction to both of our guest speakers who will take us on another journey into this neighborhood and into the work of their new publication. And this is great because as we can't celebrate China, Chinese New Year, you know, on the streets of San Francisco, it's a great way to continue a celebration as we continue to live our lives virtually. So Dick Evans is a San Francisco resident photographer with an interest in documenting the colorful and rapidly changing neighborhoods of the city. This book follows his 2014 Hape Ashbury and the 2017 award-winning book The Mission. He was born into a ranching family in Eugene, Oregon, and graduated with an engineering degree and also a business degree from Stanford. And he's spent a 50-year career in the global metal sector living in over five countries around the world. And during these travels, it's at that time that he developed an interest in the diversity and the richness in various cultures both abroad and also here at home. And started his work with documentary photography. So, I would like to also welcome Kathy Chin Leong. She is a lifetime career journalist and she covers travel, technology, business, art, and architecture and anything that piques her interest. She has written and published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic Books, Sunset Magazine, and other nationally recognized publications. Growing up in a bilingual and bicultural environment, Chinese at home, American at school, she is typical of ABCs who struggled with identity issues and eventually learned to embrace her Chinese heritage. She's traveled around the globe and is so pleased to have rediscovered her Chinatown roots by collaborating on this book with Dick Evans and calls it the journey of her lifetime. And we are so pleased to welcome them back. Please welcome Dick and Kathy. Okay, thank you very much, Laura. And thanks to you and also to your assistant, Pam Troy and to the Mechanics Institute for hosting us tonight. It's at least here in the city, it's a sort of a dark rainy night, so it's a great time to be watching something online. And I'd also like to mention that the Mechanics Institute for my recollection with the mission book experience and then attending several events always has a marvelous and well-informed audience. So, we're really looking forward to this one, looking forward to your questions and comments later. So please do enter those in the chat room as we go along. So, let's start right out with the first image here, which many of you, because I'm sure quite a number of you are from San Francisco, are certainly have visited, so you'll recognize this. It looks very typical of what we think of when we think of Chinatown, or at least what I think of. It's actually Grant Avenue, looking north. And Grant Avenue, as you probably know, again, certainly the San Francisco residents know, it is the main street through Chinatown, goes right through the heart of Chinatown. It also was formerly known as DuPont Avenue, and then the name was changed. And it is one of the oldest streets or the oldest street in San Francisco. But this image is very typical of what we think of when we think of Chinatown. And I had always assumed when I visited Chinatown in the 70s and 80s and 90s and with our young children, we lived in the East Bay at the time, that this was just the way Chinatown grew up when it was founded in the 1850s. And of course, that's not true. And I'll come to that in just a minute. But it is a very colorful street, a lot of interesting building facades. And it's no surprise that we took one of those building facades to be the cover of the book, which I think you see next here. And this is quite a well-known building, actually. It used to house the Four Seas Restrict, which was very well known. And in fact, the sign is still out in front of it for the Four Seas. But the Four Seas has not been there for quite some time. However, inside this building today, you have a very contemporary and awarded new restaurant. It's only been in existence three or four years, called Mr. Jews. And it is the one restaurant in Chinatown that has a Michelin star. So the building's maintained its heritage of housing very recognizable restaurant. Here's another shot of Grand Avenue. This one combines the street lamps, which I don't know exactly when they were first put in place, but very traditional. Everybody recognizes them. And then also the pagoda-style rooftops on the buildings. And as I said, I had always assumed this was just the way Chinatown had more or less grown up when it started in the 1850s and through the second half of the 19th century. However, in reality, that was not the case. The original Chinatown, which started in about 1850, during the Gold Rush and then subsequently the railroad building out the railroad, was really a low-rise, unsanitary, low-cost shantytown, virtually an ethnic ghetto, really, and looked nothing like this. So when did that change? Well, everybody on this call, I'm sure, knows there was a fairly significant event in 1906 that changed San Francisco forever. And that, of course, was the 1906 earthquake. And following that, you had many of the buildings were destroyed, crumbled, damaged, and then the fires that came subsequently consumed much of what was left. So what was Chinatown at that time was pretty much destroyed. And as a result of that, the city leaders thought they would take the opportunity to try to move the Chinese residents out to the outskirts of the city. They thought this would be a great way to claim this downtown property that was fairly valuable and strategically located. But the Chinese residents, of course, resisted. This is where they have been for several generations. And they banded together, and they had to resolve and negotiated with the city leaders and agreed that it would be rebuilt as a combination of a tourist attraction and a residential community. So this is, it's really the tourist attraction side that justified rebuilding it with this very traditional Chinese style architecture with the pagoda rooftops and the lanterns, as you see, and other parts of the architecture. Now, ironically, it was mostly designed by Caucasian architects and built by Caucasian builders, because they were the ones in that field at the time, although there apparently was some Chinese architectural input as well. So that's how we end up with, you know, this very attractive, iconic set of architecture. Now, in that first 50 years, it was a difficult 50 years for the Chinese immigrants. They were discriminated against from the very beginning. They were limited as to where they could live, what occupation they could take. They faced great challenges in the gold rush, not being able to create their own mind claims. And so it was a very difficult time. And that was the beginning, I think, of why Chinatown developed such a resilience, which has continued throughout a number of challenges beyond that. Now, after the earthquake, the immigration continued, and the immigrants mostly came through Angel Island, or perhaps virtually all came through Angel Island. And they faced a difficult time getting into the U.S. There was a specific law that had been passed all the way back to 1882 called the Chinese Exclusion Act. And it explicitly excluded ethnic Chinese, except for a very few exceptions from immigrating to the U.S. And that act and other more subtle, less overt forms of discrimination continued all the way through until the 1950s. So it did not go away after the earthquake and the rebuilding. Here is a quote that comes from a carving in the wall of the Detention Center for Chinese on Angel Island. And by the way, there is a book that chronicles all of the carvings that had the names and stories and poems and just notes like this. But this one, I think, is maybe very significant today when we think about the immigration problems and the issues that are being faced. But at this time, as you can see, this young man is saying, everybody has a number. He lists his number. And they referred to you by number, not by name. So if you had to go to an interrogation or health checkup, they would put your number on the board. And as it says, they didn't use names. On the day they let you go, your number is on the blackboard. And it just says San Francisco. And if you look down below, this was carved in the wood of the Detention Center by a young man who was 11 years old in 1939. So you can see that discrimination was still very prevalent going well, as I said, through the 30s and 40s and into the 50s. One thing, by the way, that did help change that was World War II. And in fact, the Chinese and United States were allies in World War II against the Japanese. And then the Chinese insisted on better treatment and less discrimination as a result of that alliance. And that really was part of getting over that. Now, the history of discrimination and social injustices, I think, is carried over into modern Chinatown. Today, there is an awareness, certainly of that past, and then a very, a very crude reminder of it with what's happened in the last 12 months with the COVID crisis. And the fact that even before San Francisco went into a lockdown, two months before that, Chinatown was virtually deserted because people were afraid to go to Chinatown, thinking that they would catch COVID-19. So Chinatown has suffered economically one of the worst of any of the communities in San Francisco because of that prejudice partly fueled by the United States president at the time. So here I have two other statues or monuments. The first one that you just saw there, you may recognize the form. Today, it's a 10 foot tall bronze statue in Portsmouth Square, which is the heart of Chinatown, or the living room of Chinatown, as it's sometimes called. But it is a replica of the 1989 Tiananmen Square statue called the Goddess of Democracy, which was built out of wood and paper. And you may recall that from the news at the time. It was right in the center of Tiananmen Square and had been built by the students. So this is a replica in tribute to the students and to democracy. And then a second monument and statue is a bit more recent, I think 10 to 12 years ago, but it's called the Comfort Women and it's in St. Mary's Square. That's the former Bank of America building behind that facade that you see. It's right there in St. Mary's Square. It is life-size and it is a tribute to the young women and girls who were taken by the Japanese government and army and enslaved as sex slaves to the Japanese army during World War II. So you see three young girls there. One represents Chinese, one represents Korean, one represents Filipino young women. And this one was a bit controversial and even triggered a dispute between Osaka and San Francisco, who you probably know are or were sister cities. So it's very much strained that relationship hopefully at some point that will be put behind us. But I think these two statues from recent decades show that there's still very much an awareness of the discrimination and the need for resilience and persistence in Chinatown and by the residents there. So during the course of the book, we came up with a tagline that the story of San Francisco's Chinatown has really been a story of resilience, survival, and also celebration. Now, during the course of the book project, as I was taking photos, Kathy was interviewing people and sometimes we would do both of those jointly. But she interviewed over 100 residents and friends of Chinatown. So let me turn it over to Kathy for some of her comments. Good evening, everyone. Gong Hei Fat Choi. That means Happy New Year in Chinese. I wanted to share with you a few stories tonight. This is called 100 Years of Chinese in America. And as you look on the left, this shows the beginning of Chinese who first came in the mid-1800s and it moves all the way to the right across seven panels where Chinese have assimilated into America. Now, this was created a commission piece by James Leong. And the artist represented each of these seven panels historically accurately. However, the Chinese community was really angry. They felt it reinforced stereotypes. And he was so hurt by the criticism that he left America and he spent the rest of his artistic career in Europe where he found great success. Well, what happened to this mural was unknown for a while. Later on, it was recovered inside a Chinatown basement of a rec center. Portions of it were used as a ping-pong table. There were stains. There were soda stains and can rings on it. Later on, the museum, the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, recovered it. They invited James Leong to come back and retouch the mural. And at that time he lived in Seattle. So he was welcomed back with honor before he passed away. The biggest cultural event in Chinatown, of course, each year is Lunar New Year, which we are approaching tonight. So the next few days, of course, will be in the whole Lunar New Year celebration. And unfortunately, this year, as you may have heard or may not, there will not be a live Lunar New Year parade, unfortunately, for the first time in decades or even centuries, I think, because of COVID, of course. So we're going to show you a few pictures from the 2019-2018 parade. So they're in the book. But I also should mention at this point that there is actually going to be a virtual Chinese New Year parade, I believe, on February 20th. So they're going to have highlights of prior parades and then interviews. And I'm sure it'll be quite a lively event. So the New Year's parade normally is attended by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people throughout the 10-day period or so that it runs. And when the parade itself is going on, it's a bit over a mile-long parade. You can see it abounds with dragons. As you see here, you see a couple sets of, three sets of dragons here, but lion dancers, all kinds of costumes, bands, student groups from all over the Bay Area, and even the Central Valley come and participate. I think the next shot, you see a couple of the students. Yeah, these are two students who are actually stilt walkers. So they walk on stilts about six feet above the ground, the full mile plus parade route. In this case, they're dressed up in monkey king costumes. And they're elementary students from West Portal Elementary, which every year for quite a number of years has had the students come as stilt walkers. So it's quite an honor to be in that group and to get to do that each year. This year, of course, is the year of the ox. And this is one of the ox that's around San Francisco. Because they're not having the parade, they decided to have 11 of these life-size ox sculptures. And they're scattered around downtown San Francisco. This one happens to be in Portsmouth Square. And others are not too far from that. But that's the only one, I believe, that's in Chinatown itself. Others are in other parts of the city. And their thinking was rather than have the parade go by people this year, if you get the map, which the Chronicle has published, you can actually go around San Francisco and actually visit the sites where these various oxen are. Now, as you may know, each sign of the zodiac has certain characteristics associated with it. And in the case of the ox, which is the second out of the 12 years, the ox is especially known for being hardworking, persistent, and very straightforward and honest. So we just hope that the year 2021 has read its zodiac sign and behaves accordingly. There are other events throughout the year. We don't have time to go into a number of them. We include a few others in the book. But this one, in particular, this is from the Moon Festival, which is the major fall event. You see the moon goddess here happens to be Maggie Wong, who's been doing this for about 20 years. She's a well-known TV personality and broadcaster. And she's been doing this, I think, with the same man, not her husband, but she points out her partner for Lunar New Year each year. Today, if Bruce Lee were alive, he would be 80 years old. And before this action kung fu hero came on the scene in the 1970s, Chinese males had no role models in the media. So if you saw any Asians, they would be casting bit parts as house boys or evil emperors. And in our house, if we ever saw someone Chinese on the screen back in the 60s, the whole family would gather together and say, hey, there's someone Chinese on the screen, and we would all run. And by the time we get there, they'd be gone because it was just a bit part walking across the screen. This man on the left is Jeff Chen, and Bruce Lee completely changed his life when he was a junior hire. Back then, he was teased for being Chinese. And one night after a really difficult day at school, he looked at the poster of Bruce Lee on his wall, and he felt like Bruce Lee was calling out to him, telling him everything was going to be okay. And that night just changed his life. He decided he was going to emulate Bruce Lee, and he became a Bruce Lee collector. Today, he's one of the top collectors in the world with over 10,000 items. His collection has traveled around the world, has gone to the Smithsonian. And this fall, it should be on display at the Chinese Historical Association Society Museum in Chinatown. So look for it this fall. Now Tai Chi is a Chinese tradition, and from early morning, exercises classes to vibrant performances. And so during shooting for this book, we discovered that there's a worldwide international Tai Chi day. And so we gathered everyone together and fed them buns and tea in the morning and had this Tai Chi instructor move us through several wonderful moves. This is Sifu Xu Fenzao, and she is very well known. She has won many awards for her Tai Chi, and she was willing to demonstrate some of her moves in front of murals and different landmarks on the streets of Chinatown for us. Now we're here with the Tong family in Chinatown's Far East Cafe. And at this baby party, by one month old baby party, you have to have dyed red eggs to represent fertility and a plate of ginger, which represents energy and strength. And we came to film this in 2019. Now the 100 year old cafe was very close to shutting its doors, but it's hanging on by opening on weekends with outdoor dining. So fingers crossed, it will stay open. Now it's the kids that seem to love Chinese New Year the most. And you typically give two red envelopes filled with two fresh bills for double happiness. And actually Chinese will give red envelopes for anything for weddings, birthdays, and any celebration. Meanwhile, the wedding tea ceremony is a very treasured tradition, but fewer and fewer Chinese couples are honoring it, and we had a really difficult time trying to nail some down. But fortunately, Leanna and Michael were the exception. In this photo, they present tea to their elders, and in turn, the parents and the grandparents, one couple at a time, offer them back money and jewelry. Now brides aren't the only ones who get jewelry. Many times an older woman who will start handing down her heirlooms to her granddaughter, her daughter, daughter-in-law when she feels the time is right. Now in ancient times, people believed if you were a 24-carat gold necklace or a jade bracelet, you would be protected from evil spirits. Now this is one of my favorite murals. It's not up anymore, unfortunately, but I love it because it depicts everyday Chinatown life. You have a modern woman here passing a traditional tailor shop, and on her wrist, you can see that she's wearing a traditional jade bracelet, probably a gift from her mother, a grandmother, and then she carries a bag of good luck oranges and a box of bake retreats, probably visiting someone in Chinatown. Now this is my family at Eastern Cafe in New Asia, actually, and we're sharing deemed sum, and it's otherwise known as going to Yum Cha. And the plates of chicken feet and steamed tripe and gizzards are not exotic to us. It's everyday dishes. We would love for you to put in the chat what are your favorite deemed sum dishes? Chinatown has a very strong sense of community, as you might guess. It's only about 20 to 25,000 residents, but it has, I think, more non-profit organizations in Chinatown than any other neighborhood in the city, and it has a very strong identity. And one way to get a sense of that is just to stroll through Portsmouth Square. Typically, when it's not raining, you'll see groups of, when you don't have a pandemic, you'll see groups of women and men and mixed groups out playing cards, or Ma Zhong, or Chinese checkers, and chatting. And I wanted to get some shots of that. So one afternoon, I was taking some shots, then all of a sudden it clouded up and it just started to pour. And I assume naively that, well, everybody's going to fold up their hands and put their cards away and head back home. Well, not at all. They didn't even fold their hands. They kept their hands. They opened their umbrellas. They moved over under the protection of the gate that leads to the Kearney Street Bridge. And the game continued, and that gives you a sense of their commitment to that social time in Portsmouth Square. Another activity representing the strength of community are the family associations and the benevolent associations. We were invited to go inside several of those, which was quite an honor and a privilege, to see how they're used and what people do. In this case, this was a weekend morning. And you can see they're playing mahjong, checkers, cards, again, groups of men and women or mixed groups. Others reading Chinese newspapers. They had a large reading room stocked with Chinese newspapers in this particular benevolent association. But people come from, not just in Chinatown, but from outside, they'll come in for these weekend mornings to renew friendships and just chat with longtime friends. Another institution in Chinatown was Miss Chinatown, USA. And we had heard about it and knew that it existed. And we contacted Miss Chinatown through, I think through the Chinese Culture Center helped us make that contact. Ask if we could interview her, take some photographs and learn about the Miss Chinatown pageant. What was very interesting, this is Miss Chinatown 2019, Catherine Wu. As you can see, here she is with some students. And I think this is one of the oldest bilingual Chinese English schools. It's right off of, I think right off 19th Street, there in the sunset, while me. But she, in addition to these promoting education and bilingualism, we found she also had another very unique skill, which I think is portrayed in this next picture. It turns out that she is a world-class archer athlete and in fact was hoping to go to the Olympics. And of course, the Olympics got postponed. And I'm not sure that she's ever going to get that opportunity again. But it was fun to go around with her. And as you can see, her bow there is quite an elaborate bow. And we went around to some of the well-known spots in San Francisco, so we could picture her. This happens to be the pier down by Chrissy Field, near the Golden Gate Bridge. Now you might ask, why is there a separate Miss Chinatown when you have Miss California and Miss America and so on? Well, of course, the story going back decades is that the Chinese young women were either openly discriminated against, not allowed to participate or or subtly discriminated against and did not participate. So they created their own beauty and recognition pageant. So that's why it exists. It is actually Miss Chinatown USA. It's not just San Francisco. She happens to be from San Francisco, but others have been from other parts of actually North America, not just U.S. And so it is open to Chinatown to the young women in Chinatown or ethnically Chinese because she's not from Chinatown itself. She's from another part of San Francisco. And that discrimination has led to some other sort of self-styled and resilient organizations like this one, which is the Chinatown YMCA. Again, Chinese were discriminated against and not allowed to use the YMCA in other parts of the city. So they did the smart thing and worked with the Y to develop their own YMCA, which has been a very successful and very welcome organization in Chinatown for decades now. And similarly, the Chinese hospital is another case where Chinese were discriminated against and could not access some of their traditional medicine and treatments that they wanted to use. So they created their own hospital. Kathy has told me she was born in that hospital and we also discovered Bruce Lee was born in that hospital. And it is today, it's a wonderful hospital. This is a donor wall. You can probably see in the shape of a dragon, but as all the people have donated money to creating this very modern, just excellent hospital to serve Chinatown. Well, imagine your home is the size of a closet shared with four or more people. This is single renter occupancy or SRO apartments. And here you have no access to washers or dryers in the apartment complex. So you have to hand wash and hang your clothes outside to dry. You also share a restroom and kitchen with all your neighbors. Now one of Chinatown's heroes is the Reverend Norman Fong. And he was the former executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center that oversees many SRO buildings. On the day of this photo shoot, we met a family with a grandmother who was too sick to walk down the stairs to visit the the doctor. And remember, these buildings are so old, they do not have elevators. And the family wanted Reverend Fong to come and pray for her. So with compassion and tenderness, he took both of her hands in his and whispered a prayer in Chinese. We are very honored to be able to be standing outside the door and to to witness such a special moment. Now going from old to young, if you're a teenager on a dragon boat racing team with community youth center, all your gear, all your practice time, all your coaches are free of charge. Because of CYC, which is a nonprofit, the sport is transforming the lives of at-risk youth. And they might be tempted otherwise to draw the wrong kind of crowd. Now when I was young, it was not cool to be Chinese, but today things are different. You see here Yuhan Chen, who's six at the time, and she picks up a brush for the first time at this Chinese New Year event. And she finds out that she just excels at Chinese calligraphy. Meanwhile, Tyler Pham, my nephew, he happily samples dragon beard candy, making a beard of his own. Now this candy was originally the dessert of ancient Chinese emperors made from a solid block of syrup and hand-pulled, like taffy, to form thousands of strands. Now the tiny dragon beard candy shop recently closed on Grant Street. I'm hoping that one day it'll come back. Now these beautiful buildings are not just ornamental. They belong to family associations with more than 200 of them in Chinatown. Back in the 1800s, when you landed in Chinatown, you would look up your association based on your village or last name, and the association would help you secure a job and a place to stay. Often these association headquarters will feature shrines, and remember these are private clubhouses. They're not open to the public, so getting in to take pictures for a book like this was extremely rare. We knew someone who belonged to a family association, and they had to ask permission from their officers to get us in. The largest of all of these is the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. It consists of more than 50,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, and was started during the Gold Rush. Recently they worked with local officials to block marijuana shops from coming into Chinatown. This is Cecilia Chang, who recently passed away at 100 years old in October. She was a very famous restaurateur who was known as the Julia Child of Chinese cooking. Back in 1968, she opened up the very first elegant and successful Chinese restaurant called the Mandarin in Ghurideli Square, and years later her son Philip Chang caught the restaurant bug. He's the co-founder of PF Chang's with restaurants all over the world. This is Chinese school, and Chinese language schools go back as far as the 1800s. They were erected because parents feared their children would lose the language and culture of the homeland. At the time, youth learned Cantonese, which is the language of the Guangdong province where most Chinese were from, but today most schools are teaching Mandarin the national language of China. This is Corey Chan, we know as the lion head whisperer. For 40 years, he's been repairing injured lion heads and give them back their roar. He was simply self-taught. He replaces eyelid strings used for blinking. He glues on new fur and he paints over scratches until the lion looks like new. And in one quote, he said, after repairs, the new memories come back to the lion head. I might mention that last shot with the four lion heads is in his garage and the lion heads take precedent over his cars, which was parked in the street. To many visitors, and also I think to residents of San Francisco, visiting Chinatown is not complete unless you have a food experience of some sort, whether it's a restaurant or bakery or dim sum. This is, I guess you could say, a typical local restaurant. You see the smoked ducks hanging in the window, which is quite typical. And the smoked ducks probably will never go away even though some of the restaurants now are becoming very modern and upscale, as I think you see in this next shot. So you see the smoked ducks and that's also a pork, a little piglet on the right. But this is in China live. And here you see the kitchen of China live founded by George Chan, who is also the chef and his wife, Cindy. It's just a wonderful restaurant, large restaurant, very modern, excellent food. You can see immaculate kitchen. It was really interesting to be able to go back into the kitchens and of course, and talk to people and see the food being prepared. Here's some dumplings being steamed in a giant container, which is visible when you're in the restaurant, actually. It has in a part of it is open kitchen concept. This is back in the back part of the kitchen where we found this giant chocolate mousse mixer getting ready for the evening event. Now, I mentioned earlier, there's a restaurant right on Grant Avenue called Mr. Juice in that well-known building. And here is a picture of Mr. Juice looking into the kitchen from the dining area. So again, a very contemporary style. And in the next shot, you'll see, I believe, in a table and a serving very exquisite, very precise and just excellent food. Kathy and I had the pleasure of being treated to a lunch there as part of our activities, as well as China Live, I might mention. And a number of other restaurants, including this one, this is Kathy Fang, one of the young new restaurateurs. She has her own restaurant called Fangs. And she comes to the restaurant business from a lot of experience. Her parents still own an operate house of Nan King in Chinatown, a very well-known restaurant, very traditional, and one that she worked at as a child. And this happy employee works at Mo Li, Shinki, the business of dried meats and poultry over 100 years old, and it spans seven generations. And I wonder if any of you out there have ever tried ham yi or salted fish? I love it because as a child, when I stayed at my grandmother's apartment, po po steam this over rice for breakfast. So let me know if you've ever had ham yi. And this is coffee crunch cake. Okay, you can tell I'm a foodie. Eastern Bakery is one of two bakeries making this famous confection in San Francisco. And the other one is in Japan Town. Now Eastern is weathering the COVID storm. The owner told me that all these years they saved every penny from the bakery, never remodeling or upgrading. So Mr. Orlando Kwan runs the bakery and they've been able to stay in business every day to weather the storm. So I encourage all of you to go there when you can to buy a cake or two. This is a produce market on Stockton Street known as the Locals Chinatown. And every day at four o'clock, the little grandmas emerge from their SRO apartments for produce. There's always a sale. Some people, the vendors are shouting yap man yap out, which means one dollar, one bag, you will get an entire bag of apples or donuts or peaches for a dollar. And everyone loves a good bargain, right? So entrepreneurship is quite prevalent in Chinatown. And this woman who is 83 years old, her name is Tane Chen, and she has run the walk shop for decades. And I talked to her in the middle of the COVID crisis. She was still working six or seven days a week to four hours a day, handling online shipments, because even though the store was closed, they were able to do business online. And she's one of the fortunate ones because she got herself set up to do online business before the crisis. Other family businesses that didn't have the ability to do that have been hit really hard and some, of course, may never recover. But small businesses like that are really the heart blood of San Francisco's Chinatown from an economic standpoint. Here is another business. This gentleman is an herbalist. You can see some of his large collection of herbs and medications behind him. And I might just mention he happens to be the husband of the woman in the pink Tai Chi outfit, the master Tai Chi performer that Kathy mentioned earlier. And we were lucky, we didn't realize we were there to shoot the herbalist and his store. And then we learned about her and her Tai Chi and then her willingness to come back and do some modeling, explain Tai Chi more to us. There are many other businesses. Of course, you have several florist shops like this one, which happens to be in Wasale. You have a studio photographer who on his walls has photos of presidents, governors, movie stars, people who have come through San Francisco over the decades, and photos that he's taken. We visited an acupuncturist and his wife who works with him and went behind the scenes to where they were cooking up some of their herbal remedies that go with the acupuncture treatment. There are some other businesses that cater especially to tourism, particularly on Grand Avenue. There are several tea tasting shops, which is a marvelous way to spend a couple hours if you get a chance to do that and haven't done it. The collection of teas that they have is just phenomenal, all the different varieties and blends. And they're very patient to walk you through tasting and finding what you like. And of course, I mean, they have tea selections that you just can't find anywhere else. Another very traditional business focused on tourism are the jade carvings and the antiquities shops. And they've been hit especially hard as well because the tourism is just really proctormatically. Now, as in the restaurant business, there are also some new boutiques starting to spring up or were before the pandemic, and I'm sure will afterwards. This happens to be the gift shop at China Live, which I mentioned is quite a large restaurant, which also has this large gift shop. And this is Cindy Chan, co-owner of China Live with her husband George. And she curated the selection for the gift shop. She traveled all over the world, especially Asia, but including Europe and bringing back items that she thought were best in design, very unique, very high quality. So it's a terrific place to get some very unique, mostly food related gifts, like you see here, teapots, but also art pieces as well. And another similar new contemporary boutique is this one, which specializes in hand painted silk clothing, and also jewelry, as you see here. That's a mural on the wall. And last year during the Moon Festival, so I'd say last year, fall of 2019 because 2020, we did not have in person Moon Festival. But in 2019, this is in that boutique. It's called Kim Plus Ono, so it's a take off on Kimono. They were holding a crazy rich Asians lookalike contest, and you may remember that movie if you saw it. So this gal is dressed up like that. And finally, here's an image that I'd like to close with, and then we'll take your questions, so be thinking about your questions. This is an image that we found on a wall in a back hallway at a new restaurant called Dim Sum Corner, which by the way is a very fine restaurant for Dim Sum is doing take out and doing outdoor dining again now. But it's only a couple years old. It opened up actually just before the pandemic hit. And this mural is painted in one of the back halls, and we just love this mural because it combines the traditional with the traditional red dress with what is obviously a very sort of contemporary confident young woman with a camera. And it's all done in this graphic arts vibe in terms of the art style. So we thought that's a great combination of representing Chinatown, looking back at tradition, but looking forward at the same time to the future. So with that, I understand Pam Troy has been monitoring the chat room for some questions, and we would be more than happy to take those questions now. And I noticed also a number of you made comments. Thank you for your comments as well. So over to you, Pam. Hi. And so far we only have one question. So if people have other questions they'd like to ask, please type them in. But we do have a question. I think it was related to something you were talking about earlier, Dick. What do you think of HBO Warrior based on Bruce Lee's writing? So either one of you could. Yeah, I don't know that much about it. I mean, I've heard about it, obviously. One sort of anecdotal thing that I found interesting when we met Jeff Chin that Kathy mentioned who's this collector. One thing we discovered is after Bruce Lee died, there was a huge dispute over his estate and the property rights to his estate. And this was fought back and forth. And I believe you'll have to tell me, Kathy, if you remember, but one was I think his sister was claiming rights. And then I don't know if he's a niece or his daughter, his daughter. His daughter and sister then were the two that were. So there was, so Jeff said there were a lot of disputes and suits and he was very afraid to, he don't show certain things and was being threatened. So I understand they sorted that out. So they must have if there's an arrangement to use some of that for that series. But do you know anything, Kathy, about the Warrior series? No, but I'll throw this Bruce kid bit out there. My uncle used to spar with Bruce Lee and they grew up together in Hong Kong. And my uncle is a kung fu master. And so is my cousin. So they have great memories of sparring with Bruce Lee and knowing him as a person. And they said he really was a great guy. And Kathy's cousin is in the book with some of his other fellow kung fu students, I guess. Yeah. Jeff is one of them. Yeah. Right. So the next question is from Kimberly Haaschild. What happened to the wall mural that we saw a photo of that no longer exists? Yeah, I have to assume it got painted over. That I took that photo. That's one of, I think maybe three photos that I'd actually taken maybe seven or eight years before I did the extensive photo shoot. But it was such a nice mural, as Kathy described, conveyed all of these combination of feelings and meanings. So we decided to use it in the book. But I had taken that, as I say, seven or eight years earlier. And when I went back to find it and take a shot of it, it was not there. So I, and I couldn't remember the exact location, although I knew the alley that it was in, but the walls were painted over there. So one thing I've learned from both this and even more from the mission book, the ownership of mural art is not a simple thing. The muralist owns the intellectual property rights to the mural, to the art. But the property owner owns the building and the wall. And the property owner has the right to paint over or cover that mural, you know, because that's their property. But someone else could not come, you know, take a photo of their mural and then use it in a commercial advertisement or something like that. So I don't know what happened, but obviously it was painted over, which is too bad. The mural that Kathy showed of Bruce Lee, incidentally, is only about two or three months old. And it was painted over another mural that was there before. And in this case, it was the same artist that did it and the same landowner. So I guess they had no dispute. So next question is from Gretchen. I've always been concerned about the use of endangered animals and plants in traditional Chinese medicine. Is that changing at least here in San Francisco? It's a great question. Go ahead, Kathy. Oh, I think it depends on the herbalist. If the herbalist has an environmental conscience to not buy certain things from certain vendors, it is a great concern. I don't know how far it's gone into the consciousness of the herbalist in Chinatown. I think maybe they are more aware, but a lot of these things are, I think it's kind of under the radar. So that's a really good question. And I don't know that it's necessarily the established vendors in Chinatown that are running the black market on that. I think when you see every once in a while, you see the city of San Francisco arresting somebody or getting in a dispute over endangered species or something like that. And it is somebody sort of off the grid. Often that has their own network for distributing it. In shark fin soup, I don't think you can get that at a restaurant in Chinatown these days. So a question from Kimberly Haaschild, do you know the details of the struggle between the San Francisco Health Department and restaurants in San Francisco and the safety of the hanging ducks seen everywhere? Well, they've been doing hanging ducks for decades. It's quite safe. I grew up eating them. Their preserve was salt so much that I believe they are quite safe. That's how they do it in China. That's how they do it in Hong Kong. So and they're still hanging in the windows now. That the safety inspectors are looking at more deeper things like the bathroom situation or back of the kitchen and that type of thing. Chinatown restaurants have really cleaned up their act over over years. So also the fact that there are not enough health and safety inspectors out there either because you have the SROs that are also below code as well. So it's an interesting dilemma. But I think for the duck thing and the chicken, you don't have to worry. I just bought one today for Chinatown. Yeah, in the course of taking photos and going around with a fellow who is a guide but also well known in Chinatown and knows the restaurants well and so on. He cautioned me not about the hanging ducks. But if you go in the back of some of these restaurants and markets, of course, you'll find live chickens. And of course, you'll find fish tanks and live fish and crustaceans. And I know there's been some issues around the sale of live poultry, for example. And as I understand, you cannot have the chicken butchered on the premise. You have to take your live chicken home and butcher it yourself technically. So I know there have been disputes around that. Which one do you use to bring the live chickens home and tie a little string around the neck and I'd play with it. And the next thing you know, we're having it for dinner. That's a country life. There's a question from Jolene Huey. Is your book intended to focus solely on Chinatown today? Does it include the history and the changes including people in places in Chinatown over the years? The photographs are all contemporary, meaning most of them all done in the last three years. Although as I mentioned, there are a few that are seven or eight years old. We don't have any historical photos of which, of course, is quite a bit. We did post some historical photos on the website. So if you go to the website, which is ChinatownBookSF.com, you will find that it has more photos in the book. It has a more extensive history of Chinatown, which Kathy composed. And it also has more stories, I think like 25 stories, short stories coming out of her interviews. So on very specific topics of SROs or the Green Street marching band or Miss Chinatown or other specific topics. So the idea was that it was a contemporary look. But of course, you know, the architecture, the murals, much of that reflects the history. So you get some of that. And there is in the print copy of the book, there is a section, a brief section on the history of Chinatown. And then there are these separate short stories from the interviews, some of which go into historical subjects like Cameron House, which some of you may have heard of, which was run by a nun in the late 1800s and early 1900s who rescued young girls from the brothels in Chinatown and then educated them and protected them. There's a book out, some of you may have read or heard about, called The White Devil's Daughters. That just came out, I think, two years ago. And, you know, it's quite popular that is a non-fictional account of Donald Dina Cameron and that whole story. There's a lot of history in Chinatown. I tried to cover it in a breezy way in the first few chapters of the book. And particularly the Cameron House is a very poignant story of this missionary, Donna Dina Cameron, who rescued thousands of women and girls from trafficking. I want to also mention that Julia Flynn-Silver, who wrote that book, White Devil's Daughters and the Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco, Chinatown, is a Mechanics Institute member and we had a wonderful program with her. So, yes, I do recommend that book. We have time for just one quick question. Pam, do you want to read out the last question? It's Michael Lippman. Is there any concern about gentrification among residents? Yes, I think that's the short answer in every neighborhood in San Francisco. But yes, and really interesting, when I photograph Chinatown, I like to use the example of going to the top of the Hilton Hotel, which is right across Gerni Street. And it must be 30 stories or more. And I got permission to go on the roof because I wanted to get an aerial shot of Chinatown. So, when I go up there and I look down on Chinatown, and in fact a couple of these photos are in the book and on the website, what you suddenly realize is Chinatown is an island and you can see the perimeter of the island quite clearly because on the east side you have the financial high rises, on the south side you have the Union Square downtown shopping area, and then on the west you have Knob Hill and on the on the north you have North Beach. So, here is this island of mostly three and four stories, maybe five-story buildings surrounded by high rises. And the fact that it survived 170 years with that footprint tells you something about how effective it's been in retaining its character. It's only 24 or 25 square blocks that the part that's really known as historical Chinatown. And there's only one building I think, or a couple buildings that are 10 stories high there. So, while there's been a worry of gentrification, most of the property is owned by either residents or other Chinese who have connections, maybe they moved out of Chinatown but owned the property there, or benevolent associations. So, it's mostly in local hands and it is, I think it's known that a developer going in to try to build a high rent condo right in the center of Chinatown would face all kinds of community difficulty and pressure. And I think that has caused the developers to basically look elsewhere where there's much less resistance. So, I think it's still a concern, you know, obviously given the location that property is extremely valuable. But there's also a very strong spirit of community and a very strong cultural desire, I think, to protect and preserve what is there. I encourage all of you to go to Chinatown and support it. There's tours available, the restaurants are open, souvenir shops are open. Please go down there to support it for its rebuilding efforts. Well, I'd like to thank Dick Evans and Kathy Chin Leong for this wonderful, rich, colorful, multi-generational view of San Francisco's Chinatown. Please purchase a book from alexanderbook.com and also mask up and take that walk through Chinatown, your own self-guided tour this weekend for the festivities. Be safe, be healthy, a happy Chinese New Year to all of you. And we look forward to seeing you again on our next programs. Thank you, Laura. And thank you, everybody. You can unmute and just say bye. Say hi. I also want to thank Laura Pinzon for the help she did with the slideshow and basically everything, all those wonderful graphics you saw. Thank you. Thank you. Really, really beautiful presentations. Okay, everyone, thank you again and good night. So long, everyone's great, great event, great seeing everyone. I'm going to close the doors now. So long. So long.