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Updated: June 19, 2025
The curiosity of the tourist is an available asset to Chinatown, and with queer houses and queerer articles on sale there is always plenty of uninitiated to keep the guides busy, but from a city of more than twenty-five thousand Orientals in the midst of an enlightened city an Asiatic city that had its own laws and executed its criminals with the most utter disregard for American laws, it has changed into one of the most law-abiding parts of the great city.
The glittering, spectacular restaurant was wide open to the public, and so was everything else. That fact made all the difference between Chinatown in the Fifties and Chinatown forty years later. My companion and I tarried long on Dupont Street, between Pacific and Sacramento Streets. The shops were like peep shows on a larger scale.
There, in the time of the sand lot troubles, Dennis Kearney, who nearly pulled the town down about his ears, used to make his orations which set the unruly to rioting. In later years Chinatown lay on one side of it and the Latin quarter and the "Barbary Coast" on the other. On this square the drifters lay all day long and told strange yams.
Their intricate carven woodwork had once adorned the palace of a Grand Wazir. Agapoulos had bought them in Cairo and had had them fitted to his house in Chinatown. A smaller brass lamp of very delicate workmanship was suspended in each of the recesses.
This may be taken as a sample of what to expect when visiting Chinatown's restaurants, and while we confess to having some excellent dishes served us in Chinatown, our preference lies in other paths of endeavor.
In order to retain their positions they have to assimilate themselves more or less to the manners and customs of the country, and they are only objectionable in certain respects. But the one-time dwellers in the Celestial Empire, who make their homes in Chinatown, have very few redeeming qualities, and most of them seem to have no tangible excuse whatever for living.
Gin Seng said he would go back to Chinatown and consult with his company. For reasons of his own he was badly frightened. Scarce had he departed before the watchful eye of Captain Scraggs observed Mr. Gibney and McGuffey in the offing, a block away.
"'Tis the way with boys.... Mine is getting so big I'm afraid he'll be going to war." Po Lun interrupted their further confidences. He rushed in breathless, unannounced. "Misstah Windham," he spoke to Benito. "One man wanchee see you quick in Chinatown.... He allee same plitty soon die. He say you sabe him. His name McTu'pin." McTURPIN TURNS INFORMER Benito stared, bewildered, at the Chinaman.
The police say that this step is only preliminary to a settlement of the whole affair ... that peace will be declared, the complaint against the alleged murderers withdrawn, and the case dismissed ... it is now expected that within a few days the extra police force, which has been maintained in Chinatown ever since the night of the shooting affray, will be withdrawn and peace reign once more."
Just in these two there is a meeting of the centuries, Handcraft Days and the Machine Age B. C. and A. D. the oldest civilization in the world and the newest. The most interesting thing in Chinatown are the Chinese. To some they all look alike, but to me they seem very human and individual and folksy.
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