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China Town

September 29, 2023
February 21, 2016

Pagodas and Dragon Gates - 99% Invisible

Chinese were restricted to live in the Chinatown of San Francisco. Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until the 1940s.

The 1906 earthquake and the resulting fire destroyed the old Victorian Chinatown. Americans are gullible to have believed Chinese lived in tunnels.

Rebuilt of Chinatown was taken into Chinese hand after Chinese merchants threatened to leave SF. The rebuilder decidedly foreignize Chinatown from the rest of US by adopting exotic designs that are obsolete even to China.
For tourists, they were wrong in all the right way. It was the westerners friendly version of China they longed: vaguely exotic yet familiar.