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HomeMy WebLinkAboutItem # 2 - Chinatown - InterpretiveCity of San Luis Obispo, Community Development, 919 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93401-3218, 805.781.7170, slocity.org Meeting Date: April 23, 2018 Item Number: 2 TO: Cultural Heritage Committee FROM: Brian Leveille, Senior Planner SUBJECT: Chinatown Interpretive Sign Discussion: On January 22, 2018, the CHC reviewed a draft Historic Chinatown prepared by the Sonoma State Anthropological Studies Center (ASC). The CHC appointed a subcommittee consisting of Committee Member Kincaid and Chair Papp to refine language, layout, content, and final placement. The subcommittee has now completed draft text and citations for the committee to consider at the April 23 meeting. Images will also be provided at the meeting and the CHC should discuss final plaque placement locations. Next steps would be for the subcommittee to finalize the plaque installation based on any feedback from the CHC’s discussion and for City staff to coordinate fabrication and installation. Attached: Draft text and citations Packet Page 6 Below are draft text and citations for the Chinatown plaques for the committee to consider. Images will be available at the April 23 meeting. —James Papp Fow Wong—Chinatown Three buildings you can see from this plaque, long owned by the Wong, Chong, and Gin families, are all that remain of San Luis Obispo’s Chinatown. It occupied this block of Palm Street1 and was known in Cantonese as Fow Wong (Wong Town) because of the dominance of the merchant, manufacturer, farmer, banker, and labor contractor Wong On,2 known locally as Ah Louis—pronounced Ah Loo-ee.3 Chinatown thrived from the 1870s to World War II. Most of it was torn down in the 1950s to make way for downtown parking lots as the city expanded. Chinatown itself replaced a settlement of Northern Chumash, Salinan, and Yokut people connected to the mission who were wiped out by a cholera epidemic in 1852.4 The Spanish had, in turn, superimposed the mission on the Northern Chumash settlement of tilhini, whose descendants still call themselves the yak tityu tityu yak tilhini, the people of tilhini.5 Chinese Immigration In the mid nineteenth century, unrest in Canton (Guangdong) Province and a gold rush in California caused tens of thousands to sail for Gam Saan—Gold Mountain—the Cantonese name for California. In the 1870s and 1880s, thousands of these immigrants came to San Luis Obispo County to mine gold, chrome, and mercury; build the Pacific Coast Railway, Southern Pacific Railroad, and county highways; and work in agriculture.6 Most of them were brought here by Ah Louis.7 The 1890 US Census showed a tenth of this city’s population was Chinese. Because of immigration restrictions, these immigrants were overwhelmingly male.8 Boarding houses, restaurants, bordellos, and gambling and opium establishments that catered to Chinese 1. Sanborn maps 1874–1956 2. Dan Krieger, interviews with Young and Howard Louis. 3. Chester Newten Hess, “What California Means to Its Oldest Living Chinese,” interview with Ah Luis, Westways, Mar. 1934. 4. Samuel Pollard, “In 1852: How San Luis Obispo Had the Cholera and Buried the Victims” San Luis Obispo Tribune, 31 Aug. 1892. 5. yak tityu tityu yak tilhini tribal members; Richard B. Applegate, “Chumash Placenames,” Journal of California Anthropology, 1 Dec. 1974, p. 197. 6. Howard Louis, “Chinese and the Railroad,” San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune, 8 Nov. 1980. 7. Dorie Bentley, “Take a Stroll (or Two) into the Past,” interview with Howard Louis, Telegram-Tribune, 4 April 1992. 8. Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882. Packet Page 7 men were an important part of Fow Wong,9 but merchants like Ah Louis and restaurateurs like the Chongs and the Gins marketed Asian culture to the entire community.10 Discrimination Severe financial panics and recessions from the 1870s to the end of the century caused Chinese laborers, who were paid less than whites, to be targeted as competition. San Luis Obispo’s Tribune newspaper led racist rhetorical attacks, and private citizens followed with murder, assault, bombings, and threats.11 In 1880 the state passed a law against marriage between whites and “Mongolians”12; in 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, ending immigration by Chinese laborers. Riots and massacres of Chinese workers around California followed. “When I come to California hunt gold in 1860, many bad men here. Men not like China boy dressed in clothes of homeland. Every time see him, take off clothes and beat. Pretty soon China boys get smart and put on American clothes. … After while men in California fine men. Bad ones almost gone. I find in all business dealings here for sixty years, American men treat Ah Louis fine.”—Wong On (Ah Louis), interview in Westways, 1934 Laundry Wars Through the 1880s and 1890s the City of San Luis Obispo attacked its ubiquitous Chinese laundries with laws, fees, arrests, and baseless accusations of blocking the sewers.13 The City Council tried to drive them out in 1880. The Chinese laundries went on strike in 1883, and the city responded with arrests and sentences of labor that were overturned in court. In 1886 unhappy whites subscribed to set up a Caucasian Steam Laundry to break the “Chinese monopoly.” The bombing of Sam Lee’s laundry in 1894 marked the end of the laundry wars when the white perpetrators were arrested. Filipinos and Japanese in Chinatown After the Chinese Exclusion Act, other Asian immigrants filled the market for inexpensive workers. By the 1900s they were moving into San Luis Obispo’s Chinatown, with Filipino businesses occupying the northeast end of the block and Japanese the middle.14 The California Supreme Court finally struck down California’s law against interracial marriage in 1948, and between 1943 and 1965 the federal government slowly dismantled its exclusions against Asian immigration, citizenship, and property ownership. By then 9. 1886 Sanborn map; Louisiana Clayton Dart, “Chinatown, San Luis Obispo, 1912,” interview with Richard Chong; Sally Connell, “A Relic of Chinatown Tells Its Story, and His,” interview with Howard Louis, Tribune, 24 Nov. 2007. 10. Ah Louis advertisments, San Luis Obispo Tribune, 1881–83. 11. Patricia Mary Ochs, “A History of Chinese Labor in San Luis Obispo County,” La Vista, June 1970, pp. 37–47. 12. Section 69, Civil Code. 13. Ochs, op. cit., pp. 20–23. 14. 1900–1930 US Census; Stacy Salinas, “Uncovering Chinatown: The Manila Hub of San Luis Obispo,” La Vista, 2014. Packet Page 8 assimilation into the surrounding community, as well as emigration to Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and other big cities had depopulated San Luis Obispo’s Chinatown.15 Chinatown’s Clans The Gin, Chong and Wong/Louis families all featured a patriarch who arrived before the Chinese Exclusion Act and—after the struggle to become established in business—married a much younger wife and had a large number of children.16 This helped counter US policy that kept Chinese women from immigrating here to prevent the community from perpetuating itself. In the cramped quarters of Chinatown, parents, grown children, and grandchildren often lived under one roof and worked in each other’s businesses. The Wong/Louis Family Wong On, known to the non-Chinese community as Ah Louis, was born in Guangdong in 1840 and came to California in 1860.17 In 1870 he arrived in San Luis Obispo, where he first worked as a hotel cook but quickly rose as a merchant, farmer, manufacturer, and labor and construction contractor. He drained the area around Laguna Lake, built the stagecoach road over the Cuesta Grade, bred work and race horses, and farmed thousands of acres, pioneering the local seed business. His descendants have had a prominent place in the community, including photographer and projectionist Wong Young Louis and grandson Billy Watson, the county schools superintendent.18 In 1885 he built the current Ah Louis Building out of bricks, replacing his wood-frame building of 1874. The Ah Louis Building is owned by Ah Louis’s great-grandson, William Watson, MD. “When I first came to San Luis, I worked in the French Hotel as a cook. … After that, I was the foreman and employment agent of all the Chinese who were working on the Pacific Coast Railway. … After that, I had charge of the Chinese miners who were working in the quicksilver mines near Cambria. After that, an American man and I became partners: we owned the first brickyard in San Luis.”—Wong On (Ah Louis), The Ah Louis Store “I fought City Hall. The whole town woke up. They unleashed a sleeping dragon.”—Ah Louis’s son Howard Louis on the city’s 1950 attempt to demolish the Ah Louis Building.19 The Gin Family Before Ah Louis built his brick house and store, his wooden building was moved across the street. This became Yee Chung’s store by the 1890s. The Gins acquired the property by the 1920s, operating it as a restaurant. It was partially demolished and rebuilt in 1957, but much of the original 1874 structure survives, making it one of the three oldest wood frame buildings in the city. Gow and Peggy Gin and their children and grandchildren operated the 15. Salinas, op. cit. 16. US Census records. 17. Hess, op. cit. 18. Ochs, op. cit., pp. 25–28; Louisiana Clayton Dart, “The History of Ah Louis Store in San Luis Obispo,” California Historian, November 1965. 19. Bentley, op. cit. Packet Page 9 Mee Heng Low restaurant from 1945 to 1988, and the family still owns the building. In 2009 Mee Heng Low was revived by British-born restaurateur Paul Kwong. “My grandfather, Gow Gin, was born in China in October, 1902. Nearly thirteen years later, in 1917, he would embark on a journey that would take him first to the Port of San Francisco and detention on Angel Island. Sometime around the late 1930s and early 1940s, he would work in Santa Barbara as a cook for a local family. A few years later, he would find his way to the picturesque city of San Luis Obispo, where the story of Mee Heng Low restaurant began for our family. … My grandfather purchased the business and building from his cousin, Gin Jack Keen, on 13 October 1945.”—Nancy Gin, Mee Heng Low Gin Family Cookbook Sweet and Sour Pork Ribs, from the Mee Heng Low Gin Family Cookbook A huge favorite at Mee Heng Low! Obviously the key here is the sauce. At Poly Royal one year the Chinese Students Association ran out of sweet and sour sauce for their egg roll fundraiser. They quickly improvised and made a mixture of Hawaiian Punch and vinegar. The sauce below is not that recipe … .—Michael Gin 1 cup water ½ cup vinegar 1 pound spare ribs ¼ cup sugar ¼ cup ketchup ½ teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons cornstarch ½ cup water ¼ onion, thinly sliced ¼ bell pepper, chopped 1 green onion, chopped 1. In a saucepan, add water, vinegar, and pork. Simmer for fifteen minutes. 2. Add sugar, ketchup, and salt. Bring to a boil. 3. Mix cornstarch and water; add to saucepan for desired thickness. 4. Add onions and bell peppers. Cook until vegetables lightly soften. 5. Top with green onions. The Chong Family Chong Quong and Chong Yup Shee operated a grocery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in one of Chinatown’s wooden buildings, where their twelve children were born.20 In the mid 1920s their son Addison Q. Chong built the brick building at the corner of Chorro and Palm, which housed Chong’s Chinese Restaurant; his parents, several siblings, wife, and daughter Beulah lived next door. Addison’s brother Richard took the brick building over in the early 1950s and operated it as Chong’s Homemade Candies till his death in 1978. Beulah Chong still owns the building. 20. US Census records; Bob Anderson, “He Adds a Touch of Sweetness,” interview with Richard Chong, Telegram-Tribune, 28 Nov. 1974. Packet Page 10 “You’d walk in the street, and it’d be elbow-to-elbow.” During celebrations, “The whole street was red with the paper from the firecrackers.”—Richard Chong21 21. Anderson, op. cit. Packet Page 11