Web Log
Dec 23, 09:45 AM | Author: jane kim | Category: personal
Chinatown CDC Youth Program featured in the New York Times!
Chinatown Alleyway Tours is a youth-led and initiated program started by amazing youth leaders in San Francisco. It started my first year at Chinatown CDC and I am proud to have been a part of the development of this program.
A Personal Look at Chinatown
Tammy Yan, a Galileo high school student, leads an alleyway tour in San Francisco.
By BONNIE TSUI
Published: December 22, 2006
IN one of the characteristic alleyways of San Francisco’s Chinatown, Rosa Wong-Chie told to a group of visitors that these narrow lanes have always served as shortcuts for neighborhood residents who want to avoid crowds on main streets like Stockton or Grant.
“The alleyways are heavily used by both cars and people as quick routes,” said Ms. Wong-Chie, 23, as two delivery vans rolled by behind her, and a mother and child squeezed through the remaining space. “Not to mention as front yards and back yards, too.”
She should know — she grew up in Chinatown, and she calls these alleyways her “playground.”
Ms. Wong-Chie is a guide for Chinatown Alleyway Tours, walking tours that take guests off the dim-sum path to explore the history and modern-day life of the San Francisco community through five key neighborhood alleys. The program is led and run by teenagers and young adults and is sponsored by the nonprofit Chinatown Community Development Center. It is one of a handful of unusually authentic tours that can be found these days in Chinatowns across the United States.
These tours aim to reveal a bit of real life behind what other guides might call the mystery of Chinatown. Many are led by local residents, touching on under-the-radar places that reveal both savory and unsavory aspects of the neighborhood — a traditional eight-course dinner in Seattle, a sweatshop operation in New York’s.
The Chinatown Alleyway Tours include discussions of current public housing issues and the history of racism against the Chinese in San Francisco.
“Other tours are more ‘friendly,’ ” said Jason Tan, a 17-year-old guide for the group. “They won’t tell you about the social problems in the community, for instance. Or how dirty the alleys were until very recently, when we started raising public awareness.”
He told a recent tour group about the historical prevalence of neighborhood family associations, which helped new arrivals from China find jobs, housing and a place to socialize and feel at home; what distinguished a street from an alley (a street has to be at least 32 feet wide, he said); and his own family background.
Like Ms. Wong-Chie, Mr. Tan hails from Chinatown, and the San Francisco alleyway tours are led by young people with roots in the neighborhood.
Read the whole article HERE
Details: SAN FRANCISCO
Chinatown Alleyway Tours (415-984-1478); $15 until Jan. 1, then $18) leads guests through historic alleys.
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