DAAN Chinese Herbs and Acupuncture

Chinatown continues to attract young and old:

“The Chinese were an integral part of San Francisco’s wild Gold Rush days, but for decades segregationist practices forced them to pack their lives into a dozen or so square blocks.

They provided for themselves what the outside world would not: schools, markets, medical care and entertainment, building a home in a country that was intent on making them feel unwelcome.

The 1906 earthquake destroyed the old Chinatown, along with most of downtown San Francisco. Some local leaders saw it as an opportunity to sweep the enclave away altogether.

“The cities in the immediate vicinity of the San Francisco Bay never in the past had such opportunity as now to forever do away with the huddling together of Chinese in districts,” the Oakland Enquirer wrote days after the destruction.

Instead, the neighborhood was rebuilt, this time in an elaborate Oriental style whose curved eaves and colorful lanterns were designed to attract tourists even as it continued to house traditional family associations, herb shops and restaurants.

Culture center
Even as immigrants established themselves and moved to outlying neighborhoods, San Francisco and especially Chinatown grew to become “a center of Chinese and Chinese-American culture,” says historian Judy Yung, who grew up in the neighborhood during the 1950s and recently published “San Francisco’s Chinatown - Images of America.”"

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