Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco Chinatown Heritage Walking Tour July 2009
A brief intro by docent, and comments by walkers after taking the Chinatown Heritage Walking Tour offered by Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco.
Chinatown Heritage Walking Tour offered by Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco July 2009
A brief intro by the Chinatown tour docent, and comments by two walkers after taking the heritage walk.
Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco Chinatown Heritage Walking Tour 20090611
A group of primary school children and their teacher speak about how they feel for the Chinatown Heritage Walking Tour offered by Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco.
For more information, check our website:
SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN: beautiful, graphic and fascinating (USA)
SUBSCRIBE: - The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, (Chinese: 唐人街) is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese community outside Asia. It is the oldest of the four notable Chinatowns in the city. San Francisco is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th most populous city in the United States, and the fourth most populous in California, with 883,305 residents as of 2018.
San Francisco, in northern California, is a hilly city on the tip of a peninsula surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. It's known for its year-round fog, iconic Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars and colorful Victorian houses. The Financial District's Transamerica Pyramid is its most distinctive skyscraper. In the bay sits Alcatraz Island, site of the notorious former prison.
The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.
#VicStefanu
Vic Stefanu, vstefanu@yahoo.com
Liminal Space/Crossings Trailer
Liminal Space/Crossings is a public art located in Ross Alley of San Francisco Chinatown on view every day from sundown to midnight.
The installation is based on Lee's year-long community-based research on Chinatown's history, uncovering stories of local residents in dialogue with her relationship to her Chinese immigrant grandmother. Liminal Space highlights immigration as an unfurling of processes that begins with a physical transverse of the Pacific Ocean, but is an event that casts reverberations of change for generations to come.
Check back this spring for the full documentary highlighting Summer Lee's artistic and research process.
Liminal Space/Crossings
41 Ross Alley, San Francisco, CA
Daily sundown to midnight
The project is presented and organized by the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco (CCC) in partnership with the Chinatown Community Development Center.
Supported by California Arts Council, Community Challenge Grant Program, National Endowment for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts, and Grants for the Arts.
In Search of Roots, a program of Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco
Martial Spirit Preview
Join us for the opening of Martial Spirit, February 11th 11am-4pm at the CCC Auditorium and Visual Art Center Gallery. The exhibition is a part of Building Our Town, a series of powerful arts initiatives to elevate underserved communities and give voice to equality.
In the recent climate the country is challenged more than ever with divisiveness and bigotry politics. CCC invites you to be a voice for inclusiveness and equality through innovative art. Martial Spirit breaks the division through highlighting the values of endurance, self-reflection, and hope.
Martial Spirit
2/11: Performances 11am-4pm
Exhibition Opening 2-4pm
Exhibition Dates
2/11-4/29
10am-4pm, Tuesdays thru Saturdays
Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco
750 Kearny Street, 3/F
San Francisco, CA 94108
Artist: Justin Hoover
Chinatown of San Francisco Dragon's gate
It’s time to visit China town in San Francisco – great place to get in touch with Chinese culture, try unusual food, buy cheap souvenirs and practice language spoken by over 1.3 billion people.
We will start from the Dragon gate at the intersection of Bush Street and Grant Avenue, walk north on Grant Avenue, which is basically one giant souvenir store. After reaching Broadway Street, we will turn left. This is where the merchandise shifts from souvenirs towards food. There are more bistro and small restaurants with authentic food as well as grocery stores. We will then turn left on Stockton Avenue and walk down the hill. In a sense, we will circumvent this oasis of Chinese culture in the middle of a modern city.
One thing to remember before we begin is that you can find million a different things in China town but finding public restroom may be a challenge. Some installations are hard to figure out and may be out of order. Your best bet would be Portsmouth Square Plaza, a block East of Grant Avenue between Clay Street and Washington Street. It also has a play ground, a number of historical markers and a bridge to the entrance of Chinese culture center.
Let’s begin. The Dragon’s gate is guarded by two sculptures of Fou lions to deter evil spirits. Male lion on the left has its paw on the ball and female lion on the right is with the cub. It symbolizes protection of the structure or home by the male and protection of those who lives inside is provided by the female lion.
The gate is the only gate in North America build according to the tradition: it faces South, made of stone pillars and has a roof with green tiles. Two small passage ways are for commoners and the central one is for important persons.
The phrase on the wooden plug can be translated to English as following: “Everything under the sky is for the good of the people”
The stores of China town are stuffed with Asian art, traditional clothing, T-shirts of many designs, tons of curiosities and a huge variety of souvenirs. Most of them have interesting stories to tell.
Take for instance, these cute paw-waving cats called Maneki Neko in Japanese. They are talismans bringing luck and good fortune to the owners. Interestingly, there are versions with 2 paws up, which should bring protections in comparison to one-paw up cats bringing customers to the store or restaurant. The color is also important: white for happiness and purity, gold – wealth and prosperity, black to protect from evil, red – success in love and green – good health.
Dried sea cucumbers of various sizes and origins. These are called sea ginseng in China. reflecting believe that they have similar healing properties. Along with dried abalone and shark fins, sea cucumber is the food to impress the guests. It needs to be reconstituted in the water as a part of the preparation process.
If you have doubts about eating dried sea creatures, you can try blossom tea. These marble-size balls transform into a flower in hot water.
Buddha’s hand fruit (a citrus) and pitaya, a cactus fruit also known as dragon fruit. Pitaya is reach in antioxidants and vitamins and Buddha’s hand has no pulp or juice and is valued for its aroma. This is lotus root – must be good sliced, stir-fried with sesame and onions! Thanks for watching and good luck!
2007 Chinese Culture Center Spring Festival Opening
SF Wushu opening the Chinese Culture Center Spring Festival with lion dance on March 3, 2007.
Driving Downtown - Chinatown 4K - San Francisco USA
Driving Downtown Neighborhoods - Chinatown - San Francisco California USA - Episode 15.
Starting Point: Grant Avenue - . Neighborhood: Chinatown - .
The oldest and largest Chinatown outside of Asia. The Chinatown in San Francisco, California, (Chinese: 唐人街) is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese community outside Asia. It is the oldest of the four notable Chinatowns in the city. Since its establishment in 1848, it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that continues to retain its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. There are two hospitals, numerous parks and squares, a post office, and other infrastructure. While recent immigrants and the elderly choose to live in here because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture, the place is also a major tourist attraction, drawing more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge.
San Francisco
San Francisco (SF), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the most densely settled large city in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City.
A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, and its Chinatown district. San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Reddit, Square, Inc., Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, and Craigslist. It has several nicknames, including The City by the Bay, Fog City, San Fran, and Frisco, as well as older ones like The City that Knows How, Baghdad by the Bay, The Paris of the West, or simply The City. As of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings.
The last 20 years have seen two booms driven by the internet industry. First was the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once-poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified. Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid 2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a popular place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.
Economy
San Francisco has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including financial services, tourism, and (increasingly) high technology.
Sports
Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) were the longest-tenured major professional sports franchise in the city until moving in 2013.
Culture and Contemporary Life
Although the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well-known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk.
Beaches and Parks
Several of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13 million visitors a year.
Top Attractions:
Alcatraz Island
Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco Bay
AT&T Park
Golden Gate Park
Lands End
The Exploratorium
Palace of Fine Arts
Twin Peaks
Cable Cars
Discover the Real San Francisco Chinatown
Discover the Real San Francisco Chinatown
Exploring Chinatown
Adventures Waiting For You
San Francisco's Chinatown offers a unique look into the interesting world of the Chinese Americans in the US. In this district, you get the chance to visit working temples, sample traditional Dim Sum and bargain for goods on Grant Avenue.
San Francisco Chinatown Visitor Information Center (SFCVIC) is located at 625
Kearny Street, San Francisco CA 94108, which is the only tourist information center
in Chinatown that provides specific attractions and guides of transportations, hotels,
restaurants, and other types of shops in Chinatown. Our goal is to let tourists know
more about Chinatown and Chinese culture from going to our center and its official
website.
Chinese Culture in San Francisco
Singing in San Francisco's Chinatown. The video shaking towards the end is by no means me giggling.
Dancing on Waverly
An afternoon of music and dance on Waverly Place, Chinatown, SF.
A dance event in memory of Layton Doung.
Sponsored by the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Chinese new year Parade highlights, year of the Monkey 2016 San Francisco CA.
The Chinese New Year Parade . Year of the Money features Marching bands, Lion Dancers ,Dragons, Martial artists & many colorful floats on a nice moon lit evening in San Francisco CA viewed from Columbus & Kerney streets
Celebrate China Songshan Shaolin Temple Day in San Francisco, CA
Shaolin Temple USA 少林寺文化中心
中國嵩山少林寺日
March 21, 2009 · Sat. 10 am - 5 pm · Union Square, San Francisco
Abbot Shi Yongxin conducts Buddhist prayer for America
Shaolin Kung Fu Demo & Lessons · Photo Exhibit · Shaolin Cultural Booths
Magnificent Shaolin
【少林古韻】
March 22, Sun. 3:30 pm
San Jose Center for the Performing Arts
Spectacular Kung Fu, Breathtaking Qigong Feats
Performed by Shaolin Temple Kung Fu Monks
Abbot Shi Yongxin conducts blessing ceremony.
For more information, please visit
Shaolin Temple USA Culture Centers:
San Francisco:
5509 Geary Blvd. @ 19th Ave. • Tel: 415-666-9966
Fremont:
4343 Peralta Blvd. @ Dusterberry • Tel: 510-818-9966
Email: shaolinusa@yahoo.com.cn
San Francisco's Chinatown - Part 2
San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese neighborhoods outside Asia. Since its establishment in the 1840s, it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants to the United States and North America. Chinatown is an active enclave that continues to retain its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. Popularly known as a city-within-a-city, it has developed its own government, traditions, over 300 restaurants, and as many shops.
Driving Downtown - Hills Of San Francisco 4K - USA
Driving Downtown Neighborhoods - Nob Hill - San Francisco California USA - Episode 14.
Starting Point: California Street - . Neighborhood: Nob Hill - .
Nob Hill is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Nob Hill is an affluent district, home to many of the city's upper-class families as well as a large young urban professional population, and a growing Chinese immigrant population from Chinatown to the east. Nob is disparaging British slang abbreviation of noble/nobility referring to the monied, often titled upper-classes.
San Francisco
San Francisco (SF), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the most densely settled large city in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City.
A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, and its Chinatown district. San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Reddit, Square, Inc., Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, and Craigslist. It has several nicknames, including The City by the Bay, Fog City, San Fran, and Frisco, as well as older ones like The City that Knows How, Baghdad by the Bay, The Paris of the West, or simply The City. As of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings.
The last 20 years have seen two booms driven by the internet industry. First was the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once-poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified. Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid 2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a popular place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.
Economy
San Francisco has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including financial services, tourism, and (increasingly) high technology.
Tourism and Conventions
Tourism is one of the city's largest private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city. The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide.
Sports
Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) were the longest-tenured major professional sports franchise in the city until moving in 2013.
Culture and Contemporary Life
Although the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well-known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk.
Beaches and Parks
Several of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13 million visitors a year.
Top Attractions
Alcatraz Island
Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco Bay
AT&T Park
Golden Gate Park
Lands End
The Exploratorium
Palace of Fine Arts
Twin Peaks
Cable Cars
Night of Ideas 2019 - San Francisco || “Facing our Time: the City of the Future.”
The French Consulate, San Francisco Public Library and SFMOMA team up to present Night of Ideas in San Francisco on February 2, 2019
FREE event features artist JR, Chef Dominique Crenn, Co-founder of The Center for Humane Technology Tristan Harris and host of KQED’s Forum Michael Krasny.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (January 8, 2019) – The French Consulate in San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) jointly announce the first San Francisco edition of the global marathon event Night of Ideas on February 2, 2019, from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., at the San Francisco Main Library. Presented in collaboration with the City of San Francisco and a vibrant ecosystem of local cultural, science, tech and academic partners, this free seven-hour marathon of philosophical debate, talks, performances, and music features top thinkers from San Francisco and beyond in a format designed to spur dialogue on the theme “Facing our Time: the City of the Future.”
With keynotes, panels and presentations by diverse voices including artist JR, (whose video mural The Chronicles of San Francisco opens at SFMOMA in May 2019), Dominique Crenn, chef/owner of the three Michelin-starred restaurant Atelier Crenn, John Law, Co-founder of Burning Man, architect Nicola Delon, designer of the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Dominique Alba, director of the Paris Urbanism Agency, Michael Krasny, host of Forum on KQED, and Allison Arieff, editorial director of SPUR, the San Francisco edition of Night of Ideas expects thousands to participate in the evening’s exchange of ideas and creative dialogue.
Multiple stages throughout the Main Library host concurrent programming, music and dance performances, yoga, breakout sessions and opportunities for engagement and debate amongst the attendees. More than 30 topics relating to the City of the Future will be explored over the course of the evening on multiple floors of the Main Library including civic imagination, arts, accessibility, equity, literature, film, games, food, transportation, media, city planning, play and much more.
PRESENTERS AND SPONSORS
Night of Ideas is co-presented by the San Francisco Public Library, the French Consulate in San Francisco, and SFMOMA in collaboration with media partner KQED and the City and County of San Francisco.
The event is made possible by the support of Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, 836M, the Cultural and Scientific Services of the French Embassy in the United States and the French American Cultural Society. La Nuit des Idées is a project of the Institut Français and Fondation de France.
Co-presenters: French Consulate in San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library, SFMOMA
Media Partner: KQED Public Media for Northern CA,
Curating Partners: Numerous renowned local institutions worked together to create the content for Night of Ideas. Among them, Atelier Crenn, Burning Man, City Lights Bookstore, Civic Center Commons, Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Hormel LGTBQIA Center, Institute for the Future, Litquake Festival, Lycée français de San Francisco, Mutek.SF, National Park Service, Open Austria, SFFILM, SPUR, Stanford University, Ubisoft, UC Berkeley and Youth Speaks.
Performances: Night of Ideas will offer performances by: Awesome Orchestra Collective, Bay Area Flash Mob, Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon, Burning Man, Exploratorium, Outdoor Yoga SF, RAWdance, San Francisco Sound Wave, Solenn Seguillon and Aleron Trio, among others.
Main Partners: The event is made possible with the support of Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, 836M, the Cultural and Scientific Services of the French Embassy in the United States and the French American Cultural Society.
In-kind Partners: We thank French Bee and Intercontinental San Francisco for their contributions.
Observation Vlog: Mostly Golden Gate Park again; Chinese sword dancing; San Francisco, CA
0:00-0:18 Duck and swan decoys radio controlled on water at golden Gate Park.
0:18-0:49 very hot, not far from coast.
0:49-1:13 many people in these tight neighborhoods will negotiate parking.
1:13-1:37 Found a nice park spot that is not used too much in the Golden Gate Park.
1:37-3:01 pond observations in Golden Gate Park.
3:01-3:06 Chinese sword dancers.
-3:31 My park spot is a great shade spot.
-3:57 Trail observations in the northwest quadrant of GG Park
-4:20 Raccoons
4:47-5:03 healthy Seagulls
5:04-5:11 weird flower
-5:26 Walk across rock stone bridge
5:32-5:47 Dangerous to walk through the frisbee golf area.
-5:55 Chinese Sword dancing, group of 20
6:08-6:20 Bad health feeling, this could be cause.
6:47-7:18 spilled my chain grease
-7:28 Safeway delivery trucks.
7:40-8:19 Fire trucks on the Pacific Beach
8:20-9:11 trash was picked up after I passed
People who hang around the pond sing this:
American Authors - Best Day Of My Life
It's cute to watch the Chinese practice their dances on a trailway while a strange wail cries from a tiny radio that is turned to max volume. But when they start dancing with swords on trails, I am a little concerned because I either need to take a different path or give them plenty of space.
What goes through the Chinese person minds on deciding where the best path is to practice their Tai Chi dances? I have seen them all over the place, from groups of 2 or 3 to over 30 of them. They always listen to a listen Chinese radio that wails out commands for the dancers to slowly keep in step with.
The Chinese dancers never have mats. They never lay or kneel. They are always on their feet. They will focus on wave their arms all about them like they are slowly swatting at flies.
Chinatown - San Francisco
Arrive by cable-car, and hours can be spent exploring. Bring a camera or video, we bring both. This is China Town, San Francisco, CA